Samaritan Cookbook

Name & Logo

 

The Samaritan Cookbook springs from a partnership going back to 2007. We used the concept of “One Semitistan” for over a decade, describing our movement to promote cultural unity. And then we shortened our umbrella name to "One Sem" in 2020.

 

We represent a symbolic, apolitical concept for bringing together the Semites — particularly those in The Land.

 

The term “Semitic” comes from Noah’s son Shem: in Arabic Saam, سام ; in Hebrew Shem, שֵׁם ; and in Ge’ez Sem, ሴም. “Shem” in fact comes from the Semitic root S-M meaning “name.”

 

The symbol that we created to represent our cross-cultural mission has ancient origins, as we used versions of the Semitic letters that emerged around 4,000 years ago.

 

Initially from Egyptian hieroglyphics, the characters in the Sinaitic script circa 1600 B.C.E. made their way from Sinai to the Levant, evolving by 1200 B.C.E. into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet — the ancestor of Phoenician and paleo-Hebrew.

 

Pictorial drawings of things were transformed into the letters for just the first sound in the vocalized words for those same objects.

 

The essence of our branding is the fusion of ancient letters in one icon — the coexistence in one dwelling of two cousins, who are the same but different. The imagery also evokes the confluence of a mountain and a river, the earth and the sea.

 

Specifically, the logo is a modern incarnation of the two letters that spell the first part of Semitistan.

 

The first letter in “Shem” is shin, “sh” or “s,” which is the 21st letter in the Semitic alphabets. The glyph was based on a tooth, sin, and the later pictograms still reflect the original meaning.