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györgy spiró
status over there in the Old
Country, because his mother’s
descent would apply to him
too. He might not be a slave
or new convert, and he would
count as an Israelite, but one
of least esteemed. It was a
stroke of luck to have been
born a Jew in Rome, where
only the paternal lineage was
taken into account.
For Uri, learning Latin was not
easy.
The young people of the
Jewish quarter spoke only
a broken Latin; they rarely
crossed over to the other
bank of the Tiber, where Rome
itself lay. They contented
themselves with the frenetic
life of Far Side, and they could
get by perfectly well with
their native Greek any time
they ventured over. Even the
non-Jewish inhabitants of Far
Side spoke Greek, or else they
spoke a language that no else
understood.
The Jews had a habit of writing
Latin with Greek letters,
which came readily to them.
They learned the Hebrew
alphabet as well, of course,
which they called Assyrian
lettering, so that they would
at least be able to read the
Sh’ma for themselves in
their daily prayers and, when
necessary, the psalms, if called
upon in the house of prayer.
Occasionally elements of all
three alphabets would be
mixed up in a single sentence,
even a single word. Uri was
fond of that sort of mixture,
and he did not transpose Latin
or Greek texts into Hebrew
lettering out of negligence or
ignorance or even just for fun.
He devised abbreviations in all
three languages for himself,
to copy things more quickly if
he was loaned a particularly
interesting scroll for a few
days. He would omit vowels