Coolest thing I learned this week (11/8)

It's been a little more than a week, but here is the coolest thing I learned recently:

The Hebrew word for ladybug is פרת משה רבינו. For those of you who don't read Hebrew, that says parat moshe rabbeinu. That literally translates to 'cow of Moses our teacher.'

This is something I've known for a long time, but not one person was able to answer why that was the word. Until last Tuesday...

We were on a field trip to the Academy for the Hebrew Language, essentially a place where a bunch of people sit in a room and make up new Hebrew words. At the end of the trip, I asked our 'guide' why ladybug was called פרת משה רבינו. He didn't have an answer for me at the time, but took my phone number and said he would look it up and call me back.

The next morning, I got a phone call, and it was the Professor from the Academy. He explained to me that in many different languages, including Russian, the word for a ladybug has devine influence. In Russian, it is called the cow of God. When Mendele Mocher Sefarim was creating the word for ladybug (its great, they know who created the word) he was originally going to call it פרת אלוהים, the cow of God, but instead, changed it from God to Moshe Rabbeinu.

Now you may be thinking, ladybug in English has nothing divine about it, but you would be wrong. The Lady of ladybug refers to Mary, mother of Jesus.

For more information, check out the wikipedia page of ladybug, it is very interesting.

I hope you learned something

להתראות