Pronunciation and Meaning of The Phrase
During his lifetime, Rebbe Nachman spoke of a "Song of Redemption" that would be revealed before the coming of the Jewish Messiah. This song would be in a "single, double, triple, quadruple" form. (Likutei Moharan II, #8). The Na Nach Nachma phrase has such a structure (keeping in mind that Hebrew often omits the vowels) and is based on the Rebbe's name, "Nachman":
- Na (One Hebrew letter: Nun) -- נ
- NaCH (Two Hebrew letters: Nun-Chet) -- נח
- NaCHMa (Three Hebrew letters: Nun-Chet-Mem) -- נחמ
- NaCHMaN (Four Hebrew letters: Nun-Chet-Mem-Nun) -- נחמן
- Me'Uman (a double entendre: it can mean "from Uman" -- Rebbe Nachman's burial place and can also mean "believed" or "accredited.") -- מאומן
The phrase is pronounced with a soft A sound as in "ah" and a guttural KH sound as in German "ach." It is usually accented as follows:
Nah-nakh-nakhmah-nakhman-meh-oo-mahn.
Speakers of Yiddish have also noted that na nach can mean "now to," which would loosely translate the phrase as "Now to Nachman from Uman," that is, traveling to the Rebbe on pilgrimage to his gravesite or in one's heart.
Read more about this topic: Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman
Famous quotes containing the words meaning and/or phrase:
“The words of the Constitution ... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.”
—Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965)
“It is, after all, very interesting that sound can reflect like water, like a mirror. And notice that Vinteuil’s phrase only shows me that to which I did not pay attention at the time. Of my worries, of my loves at that time, it does not recall a thing, it has made the exchange.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)