The Last Bet
Hebrew (and Yiddish) uses a different alphabet than English. The picture to the right illustrates the Hebrew alphabet, in Hebrew alphabetical order. Note that Hebrew is written from right to left, rather than left to right as in English, so Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and Tav is the last. The Hebrew alphabet is often called the 'alef-bet,' because of its first two letters.
Note that there are two versions of some letters. Kaf, Mem, Nun, Peh and Tzadeh all are written differently when they appear at the end of a word than when they appear in the beginning or middle of the word. The version used at the end of a word is referred to as Final Kaf, Final Mem, etc. The version of the letter on the left is the final version. In all cases except Final Mem, the final version has a long tail.
- And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet. At supper he made fun of the young man, and said: 'Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two million is a trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best years of your life.
- Uses and abuses. Louis XIV first made use of tontines in 1689 to fund military operations when he could not otherwise raise the money. The initial subscribers each put in 300 livres and, unlike most later schemes, this one was run honestly; the last survivor, a widow named Charlotte Barbier, who died in 1726 at the age of 96, received 73,000 livres in her last payment.
- Note that Hebrew is written from right to left, rather than left to right as in English, so Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and Tav is the last. The Hebrew alphabet is often called the ' alef-bet,' because of its first two letters. Note that there are two versions of some letters.
So the team you bet on only has to win the game, not win by a certain number of points. The negative value indicates the favorite, just like a point spread (-170) and the positive value means an.
- Vowels and Points
- Styles of Writing
- Transliteration
- Numerical Values of Words
Vowels and Points
Like most early Semitic alphabetic writing systems, the alef-bet has no vowels. People who are fluent in the language do not need vowels to read Hebrew, and most things written in Hebrew in Israel are written without vowels.
However, as Hebrew literacy declined, particularly after the Romans expelled the Jews from Israel, the Rabbis realized the need for aids to pronunciation, so they developed a system of dots and dashes known as nikkudim (points). These dots and dashes are written above or below the letter, in ways that do not alter the spacing of the line. Text containing these markings is referred to as 'pointed' text.
Most nikkudim are used to indicate vowels. The table at right illustrates the vowel points, along with their pronunciations. Pronunciations are approximate; I have heard quite a bit of variation in vowel pronunciation.
Vowel points are shown in blue. The letter Alef, shown in red, is used to illustrate the position of the points relative to the consonents. The letters shown in purple are technically consonents and would appear in unpointed texts, but they function as vowels in this context.
There are a few other nikkudim, illustrated and explained below.
The dot that appears in the center of some letters is called a dagesh. With most letters, the dagesh does not significantly affect pronunciation. With the letters Bet, Kaf and Pe, however, the dagesh indicates that the letter should be pronounced with its hard sound (the first sound) rather than the soft sound (the second sound). In Ashkenazic pronunciation (the pronunciation used by many Orthodox Jews and by older Jews), Tav also has a soft sound, and is pronounced as an 's' when it does not have a dagesh.
Vav, usually a consonant pronounced as a 'v,' is sometimes a vowel pronounced 'oo' (u) or 'oh' (o). When it is pronounced 'oo', pointed texts have a dagesh. When it is pronounced 'oh', pointed texts have a dot on top.
Shin is pronounced 'sh' when it has a dot over the right branch and 's' when it has a dot over the left branch.
Styles of Writing
The style of writing illustrated above is the one most commonly seen in Hebrew books. It is referred to as block print or sometimes Assyrian text.
For sacred documents, such as Torah scrolls or the scrolls inside tefillin and mezuzot, there is a special writing style with 'crowns' (crows-foot-like marks coming up from the upper points) on many of the letters. This style of writing is known as STA'M (an abbreviation for 'Sifrei Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzot,' which is where you will see that style of writing.
There is another style used for handwriting, in much the same way that cursive is used for the Roman (English) alphabet. This modern script style is illustrated below, at right.
Another style is used in certain texts to distinguish the body of the text from commentary upon the text. This style is known as Rashi Script, in honor of Rashi, the greatest commentator on the Torah and the Talmud. The alefbet at left is an example of Rashi Script
Transliteration
The process of writing Hebrew words in the Roman (English) alphabet is known as transliteration.
Transliteration is more an art than a science, and opinions on the correct way to transliterate words vary widely. This is why the Jewish festival of lights (in Hebrew, Chet-Nun-Kaf-Heh) is spelled Chanukkah, Hannukah, Hanukkah, and many other interesting ways. Each spelling has a legitimate phonetic and orthographic basis; none is right or wrong.
Numerical Values of Words
Each letter in the alefbet has a numerical value. These values can be used to write numbers, as the Romans used some of their letters (I, V, X, L, C, M) to represent numbers. Alef through Yod have the values 1 through 10. Yod through Qof have the values 10 through 100, counting by 10s. Qof through Tav have the values 100 through 400, counting by 100s. Final letters have the same value as their non-final counterparts.
The number 11 would be rendered Yod-Alef, the number 12 would be Yod-Bet, the number 21 would be Kaf-Alef, the word Torah (Tav-Vav-Resh-He) has the numerical value 611, etc. The only significant oddity in this pattern is the number 15, which if rendered as 10+5 would be a name of G-d, so it is normally written Tet-Vav (9+6). The order of the letters is irrelevant to their value; letters are simply added to determine the total numerical value. The number 11 could be written as Yod-Alef, Alef-Yod, Heh-Vav, Dalet-Dalet-Gimmel or many other combinations of letters.
Because of this system of assigning numerical values to letters, every word has a numerical value. There is an entire discipline of Jewish mysticism known as Gematria that is devoted to finding hidden meanings in the numerical values of words. For example, the number 18 is very significant, because it is the numerical value of the word Chai, meaning life. Donations to Jewish charities are routinely made in denominations of 18 for that reason.
Sources: Judaism 101
Summary
Fifteen years ago, a party was thrown at a banker's home, where many intellectuals such a journalists and lawyers attended. During that party, the group in attendance had many lively discussions, ultimately turning to the topic of capital punishment.
As the group argued, the two sides of the debate coalesced into two representatives: the banker, who is for capital punishment and believes that it is more merciful, and a lawyer, who believes that life imprisonment is the better option, due to its preservation of life. The lawyer believes that any life is better than none, and that life cannot be taken away by the government, since life cannot be given back if the government realizes that it made a mistake.
The banker and the lawyer decide to enter into a bet, with the banker wagering that the lawyer could not withstand 5 years of imprisonment. The lawyer, young and idealistic, decides to up the ante and makes the bet longer: 15 years. If he could last to the end of his sentence, the lawyer would receive two million rubles for wining the bet.
The banker cannot fathom his good fortune, and even offers the young lawyer a way out, saying that he is being hasty and foolish. Nevertheless, the lawyer decides to stick to his word and the bet is carried out.
For fifteen years, the lawyer lives on the banker's property, in a small lodge, and has no human contact. He can have any item that he desires. At first, the lawyer does not comfort himself with any liquor or tobacco, confining himself to playing the piano. But as the years progress, he gives in and spends much of his time drunk or asleep.
Later, the main focus of his time becomes books, as he searches for adventures and comforts that he cannot possess physically. He takes great advantage of the banker's ability to provide any book, and asks that the banker test the result of his reading by firing two shots in the garden if his translations of several languages is indeed flawless. The banker acquiesces and confirms the lawyer's suspicion that he has mastered languages.
As the years go by, the lawyer reads virtually every genre under the sun. He makes his way from the lighter reading of the early years, to the dense text of the Gospels and Shakespeare. The banker, by this time, has gone broke due to his own recklessness and gambling. He begins to worry that the lawyer's bet with him will ruin him financially.
The banker begins to hope against all hope that the lawyer will break his vow and lose the bet. He doesn't even feel remorse at his evil thoughts, excusing them on the basis that they are in his own best interest. In fact, the banker even manages to convince himself that the lawyer is getting the better end of the deal, since he will still be relatively young at 40, and, with the 2 million rubles, relatively rich.
With this in mind, the banker goes to investigate how the lawyer is doing. He finds that his prisoner is asleep at his desk, looking much older and careworn than he ever imagined him to be. After observing him for a few seconds, the banker notices a letter on the table.
In it, the lawyer proclaims his intention to renounce earthly goods in favor of the spiritual blessings. The prisoner has become entirely embittered during his captivity. He has developed an intense hatred for other humans and believes that there is nothing that he or they can do to ever reconcile this chasm. To prove his seriousness, the lawyer decides to leave his prison five hours before the appointed time, and renounces his claim to the two million, thereby freeing the banker from his debt and from financial ruin.
The Last Bet Movie
The banker cries and kisses the prisoner with relief. The next day, watchmen alert the banker of the lawyer's escape, and the banker is unsurprised. He walks over, takes the letter from the lodge, and locks it in a fireproof safe.
Analysis
In The Bet, Chekov decides to analyze which is worse: life imprisonment or capital punishment. In order to do this, he sets up a bet that would likely never take place in real life. This is typical of Chekov, who likes to examine philosophical questions (against the backdrop of a simple plot) as they might play out in real life, with real consequences, rather than simply examining them in the abstract.
Through this story, Chekov demonstrates the pitfalls of idealism and the foolishness of youth. Had the lawyer been older and wiser, he would never have decided so impulsively to go through with this bet. Had he had a family, a wife, children–any support structure that depended on him–he would not have agreed. So the bet also demonstrates the selfishness of man and youth. With nothing to lose, and two million to gain, the lawyer cannot think of a reason to reject the bet.
It is very interesting that Chekov does not show the readers the thoughts of the lawyer as he makes this bet. The only time that we see the thoughts of the lawyer clearly is later in the story, through a letter. We never see the lawyer's thought process wholly unvarnished and unfiltered, as we often see the thoughts of the banker. This allows the lawyer to remain a pure model of idealism, sacrificing years of his life to prove his moral principles, something that most would find hard to stomach in real life. It lends the lawyer a polished, holier aura.
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The Last Bet
The story also shows the toll that separation from human society can take on a person. Whereas at first the lawyer was full of virtue, eschewing wine and tobacco, he later gives himself in to his vices, drinking and smoking constantly. He has lost some of his idealism, even as he continues to seek to prove it, and himself, right.
The story is left rather open-ended, with the reader left with a sense that the story hasn't finished. Chekov may have done this on purpose, to prompt the reader into thinking about the consequences of the banker and the lawyer's actions. What ultimately is the fate of the lawyer? Does he live out his days happily? Is the banker able to live remorse-free, feeling no guilt over taking so many years away from a young, bright man? Maybe the old banker realized the vanity and emptiness of his life; we will never know.
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The banker does feel some contempt for himself, but the story does not give the reader much more detail than that. It is possible that the banker struggles with his decisions for the rest of his life as he does choose to hold onto the lawyer's last letter, but it is equally possible that he simply forgets about the lawyer in a few years time, locking away all thought of him from his mind.