A recent issue of Moment magazine came bundled with a CD of new Jewish music -- a sampler, but full tracks and not just teases, so it's something I enjoy listening to. (Yeah, there are a couple tracks I skip, but there are some I like a lot.)

One song that I think is really pretty is "Min Hametzar" by Neshama Carlebach. I find myself understanding some phrases and occasional words, but not being able to put it together. But I think I could probably translate it if I could see it instead of hearing it. For one thing, written text is just easier. For another, I can't quite make out all the words, and anyway I might misspell when trying to write them down, and spelling matters. One thing that particularly trips me up when listening to foreign languages being spoken (or sung) is that I can't always tell where the word boundaries are because people slur text sometimes. For example, until I checked the CD I thought this song was probably called "mi nametzar". And for the longest time I thought the title phrase of "Ivdu et Hashem b'simcha" began with the word "ivduet" (I hadn't yet begun to actually learn the language at that point), which brought me no joy when trying to apply a dictionary.

I've been unable to find the lyrics of Min Hametzar by googling, which doesn't surprise me much. Even if I did find them, they'd probably be in transliteration instead of actual Hebrew, so the first thing I'd try to do is write out the Hebrew and fake it with the ambiguities of transliteration. But I don't think I'll get that far, unfortunately.

(I found an article about the song here -- down toward the end. Aha, it's a compilation of source texts -- so if I had citations I could reassemble it, maybe, but I don't so I can't. Oh well.)