The road to Petah Tikva is well marked. Getting there is easy. Knowing what to call it once you arrive is another matter entirely.

Is it Petah Tikva? Petah Tikvah? Petah Tiqwa? Or, for travelers who enjoy arriving at their destination with a diacritical mark lodged in their throat, Petaḥ Tiqva?

After nearly eight decades of national uncertainty, the Israeli government has decided the time for ambiguity is over. Not regarding Gaza, the West Bank, military service, civil marriage, public transportation on Shabbat, the constitutional limits of the Supreme Court, or where exactly “the center of the country” ends and “the periphery” begins, forever, apparently.

Those remain open questions. This one, we are solving.

According to The Times of Israel, the government is preparing to spend NIS 250,000 to standardize the English and Arabic spellings of Israeli place names. The Prime Minister’s Office will work with the Academy of the Hebrew Language to create uniform transliteration rules for ministries and municipalities — which means that somewhere in Jerusalem, in a room with four fluorescent lights and six strongly held opinions, a committee will finally decide whether ק is a “k,” a “q,” or a personal failing.

For decades, visitors have followed signs to Caesarea, Keisarya, and Qesarya without realizing all three lead to the same Roman ruins and, eventually, the same overpriced iced coffee. Safed is also Tzfat, also Tsfat, also Zefat, depending on which relative is giving directions. Acre answers to Akko. Jaffa becomes Yafo whenever the neighborhood wants to raise rent. The Sea of Galilee has three names, which is still fewer than Jerusalem has definitions.

Ben Gurion Airport alone introduces every arriving tourist to the founding principle of Israeli public life: every........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)