Hebrew Voices #211 – The Taste of Scripture: Part 1

Hebrew Voices #211 – The Taste of Scripture: Part 1

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Nehemia: Wow, so this is amazing stuff, guys. Guys, this is one of the most important interviews I’ve ever done.

Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices! I’m here with Dr. Sophia Pitcher, who earned her PhD from the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. She’s a research fellow with the University of the Free State, and she works with SIL Global on Bible translation, translating the Bible into languages for the first time. Those who follow the program have heard of Sophia because she has this groundbreaking… I don’t know if I want to call it discovery or hypothesis. I’ll decide throughout this program.

You probably don’t know this, Sophia, but I try to do what I call an SBL review, where I get people on to talk about what the best lectures they’ve heard at SBL are. And multiple people in multiple different years have mentioned your lectures as the best lectures they heard, maybe because they’re just the most innovative. Like, whether you’re right or wrong, I really don’t know, but you’re raising a question and offering an explanation that wasn’t satisfactory up until now, and you’re offering.

So, thank you for joining the program, Sophia. We’ve tried to have this for a while. We’ve been trying to do this and get together. Before we jump into the Hebrew accents, which… you are arguably the world’s foremost expert on the biblical accents, let’s say, in the biblical text. It’s interesting you’re working on translations, because I can see how that ties in. Give us a little bit about your background. You have kind of a really interesting story. When we first interacted, you said you were from Chicago. I said, “I’m from Chicago!”

Sophia: Yeah, so, that was really neat to see how our stories connect. I grew up in Chicago, the South Side of Chicago, and I went to school. I later learned that your grandmother was my biblical Hebrew teacher in elementary school. So, I went to school at Akiba Schechter in Hyde Park. And that is where I got my first introduction to the Hebrew language, and Jewish culture, and the Hebrew Bible, and its script, and the cantillation marks, all of that. And so, that’s kind of my introduction to how I got started with all of this.

Nehemia: So, I apologize for the question, but are you from a Jewish background?

Sophia: I’m not.

Nehemia: So, then how did you end up going to Akiba Schechter? And by the way, just so people understand, Hyde Park is the area around the University of Chicago. Correct me if I’m wrong; I’m a North-Sider. And I know my parents spent part of their years growing up in Hyde Park. And they eventually migrated, like much of the Jewish community, to the North Side. But a lot of Jews stayed there, and so there was a Jewish school all the way on the South Side, in Hyde Park. And my grandmother used to drive every day from 7033 North Kedzie all the way down. That’s probably like, wow, I don’t know, over 10 miles. She would drive to her job five days a week, or whatever, in Hyde Park at Akiba Schechter. So, when you said Akiba Schechter, I said, “I’m sure my grandmother was your teacher.” And you have to understand; I’ll be having dinner with my sisters and my mother somewhere in Jerusalem, and we’ll meet somebody from Chicago, and my grandmother was their Hebrew teacher… from a certain generation, let’s say. So, it wasn’t that surprising. So, why did your parents send you to Akiba Schechter?