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See the hilarious street sign.

Why is it hilarious? Well, if you can read Hebrew you don’t have to ask. For the rest of you, here is the story.

Palermo, where this sign hangs, was home to a large and lively Jewish community in the middle ages. Then, in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand and Isabella, those of Columbus fame) found the time on their busy schedules to decree that all Jews be expelled from all their dominions, Sicily included, and that was that – even today the only Jews to be seen on this lovely island are tourists. Moslems didn’t fare much better, having been expelled in the 13th century.

And it is to this history that we owe the sign, which marks one of the streets of the medieval Giudecca – the Jewish Ghetto. Someone had the neat idea of adding Hebrew and Arab names to streets in that area, in acknowledgement of their history. So far so good.

The joke, however, is that with not a single Jew living there, the Sicilian sign makers evidently relied on someone sending them the Hebrew version of the street name – which they then diligently proceeded to copy, without any idea of how to read the Hebrew script. The result is a hilarious mess of typos, most notable the replacement of the letter Yod with an apostrophe, no less than six times in this example.

I have no idea if the Arabic is any better…

Here is a street sign from Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hachayal area, a vibrant hi-tech hub. The sign hangs on a building at Hanechoshet st., as stated in English.

The Hebrew is more detailed: it has the street name at the top, followed by the fine print, which explains the name. Nechoshet in Hebrew means copper, and so the text on the sign educates us:

Copper st. / An easily worked metallic element. Serves primarily to make thin electric wires.

Well, Duh!…

The origin of this utterly unneeded explanation can probably be traced to the commendable practice of adding explanations to street names referring to little known persons or events, such as

Rafael Weiss st. / Biblical scholar, 1940-1974.

Not every passerby can be expected to know every biblical scholar, or politician, or artist from bygone generations, so this is somewhat useful.

Knowing when to break a standard mold and leave a field empty in a template is a sign of intelligence…or perhaps a sort of mini Turing Test?