The modern Hebrew language is typically understood to be a modern creation. So what languages where the Sephardic Jews and Misrachi jews (and any other Jews) speaking before they came to Isreal? I know the German Jews spoke yiddish, did the other groups have similar hybrid languages?

Also, I understand that several Jewish groups lived deep in the middle east, do these people speak Arabic?- Are they simply Arabs who follow the Jewish religion?

Thanks.

While researching for a story centered around traditional whaling techniques of the Iñupiat tribe I began to wonder what would make them laugh. What types of things might have been considered funny to indigenous people in the Arctic 100, 200, 300 years ago?

Would they have relied on physical comedy? Or stories with life lessons? What types of subjects might they joke about?

I imagine maybe something like this;

A boy and his father and his uncle are out in their Umiak hunting for bowhead, the father and uncle are focused on the sea, harpoons held at the ready, but the boy is watching a flock of seagulls flying above them. his uncle tells him,

a true hunter keeps his eyes on the sea, not in the sky.

The father, quick to defend his son, tells the uncle

a true hunter watches all spirits of nature.

He says,

If the hunter does not watch for the seal to offer him it's spirit, he returns with shame in his belly and no meat. If the hunter does not watch for the walrus to offer him it's spirit, he returns with shame in his belly and no meat.

the uncle interrupts with a smug look,

and what will the hunter return with if he doesn't watch for the seagulls offering?

The father says,

A head full of seagull shit

Obviously to translate something complex like this, there's too much modern phrasing and verb modifiers that would most likely not have existed in earlier iterations of Inuit, at least to my limited understanding.

Any insight into something funny or amusing an Inuit would say or do 300 years ago?

I am reading "The Habsburg Monarchy" by A.J.P Taylor(1948) and on p24 he uses "Roumanian" spelling. Which made me curious.

You always hear about how Marcus Aurelius was one of the great emperors of Rome. A genuine philosopher king, of sorts.

Is his reputation and reign as unassailable as one commonly hears?

Thanks!

Like Bertrand Russell's account of meeting Lenin and Trotsky

We're all familiar with the adage that the holy Roman empire was neither holy, nor Roman , nor an empire.

But surely there must have been something Roman about it?

On his speeches, writings, battle planning and propaganda, did Hitler highlight Bismarck as his model, as one of the great Germans?

Are there reports of white people joining tribes and marrying/having children with Native Americans? What was the reaction from later travelers who encountered them?

Do we have lists or some kind of index, or is it just mentions in other documents that "hey, I read this thing at Alexandria"?

I apologize if the question seems vague, but it seems to me that an unusual number of manufacturing firms were bought out, went bankrupt, or otherwise ceased to be in both the UK and US during this period. Is there some particular economic reason for this?

He brings up how Republicans under Lincoln led to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, while the Democrats enforced segregation in the south after the Civil War up until the mid 20th century.

He does mention the Civil Rights act that was signed into law by LBJ, but states that this was done to appeal to the black vote. He also makes the claim that the transition from the south as a Democratic stronghold to a Republican one was because the south had become less racist.

How much of this is truth, and how much is a distortion of the facts?

Could they, in theory or practice, become citizens? Senators? Did they want to do so? What obstacles might they have faced? Was there a "best" time for the prospering of Jewry in pre-Christian Rome? Do we know of any prominent conversions to Judaism among the Roman nobility or inter-marriages?

Reading about the fall of the Soviet Union, and I can't help notice that the two opposing sides were both "Russia" one being the Soviet Union and the other being the SFSR. My question is; who actually ran the USSR if not the Russians? If Mikhail Gorbachev wanted out, who wanted in?

I'd like to find out more information about a family member that served in the US Infantry. I know their name, obviously, and the exact date they were wounded in combat. But I don't know how I would go about finding any additional information that may be recorded by the US military.

As historians I imagine you are uniquely qualified to answer this.

I've listened to Mike Duncan's podcast on the American Revolution, and am about 2/3 through his series on the French Revolution. In the American Revolution, army sizes for both the colonies and the British are frequently under 10,000 troops, with armies of 2,000 men cited. In the French Revolution, in the war against basically all of Europe, most of the nations field individual armies of 80,000+. Why did the British send so few troops to America? It seems like an army of even 50,000 would have shut down the revolt pretty quickly.

I was reading about the Międzymorze on wikipedia and it seems as though the main proponents of the plan were Poles, was there any serious interest from other countries/ethnic groups about forming such a Federation?

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