Signs of Strudel?

Many of you may be familiar with Hebrew's resurrection story.  Around the time that Jesus showed up, Hebrew was used by some for daily communication, but folks were more likely to speak Aramaic (Jesus included).  After the Second Temple Period and the Roman quashing of the Jewish Revolt (around about 66 CE), the Jews were dispersed (again). Hebrew pretty quickly fell out of use as the diaspora adopted the languages of their new locations and created hybrids -- Yiddish being the most familiar one on account of the large percentage of Ashkenaz in Jewish North American populations.  So, for most of the last two millenia, Hebrew has been chiefly a liturgical language (you prayed in it).

Enter Herzl and the Zionist vision. You have a political vision to create a state for a people that haven't lived together for nigh on 2000 years; the cultural and religious practices are still shared, but they don't share a language anymore. What to do? Enter Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (yes, there is a street named after him in Jerusalem, and you can visit the house he lived in, which is not on Ben Yehuda, but on Ethiopia St) who thought revival of Hebrew would unite Jews worldwide.  Of course, Ben Yehuda's project wasn't without controversy -- the ultra-Orthodox objected to the use of the religious language for everyday use (it seems they are over it now).  Driven by his vision, he raised his son (in the 1880s-1890s) as the first native Hebrew speaker and the rest is ... well, history ... or maybe more appropriately, alive. Hebrew is the lingua franca of Jewish Israelis and there is a serious industry in teaching it through ulpan (language courses) to anyone interested (mostly Jews who made or plan to make aliyah). 

Resurrecting a biblical language for everyday use poses some obvious problems: daily life changes considerably in 2000 years. If you cannot find the word in the Bible you need to invent it or borrow it from some other language. In some cases Hebrew has adopted words from other languages like French: soap is sabon (the "v" is often/somewhat interchangeable with "b"); mushrooms are champignons. For a really modern example -- this is my favourite that I know about -- how do you call the @ ? In English this usually goes by the ever-so-boring "at sign". But, in Hebrew it is a "strudel". So, if you were ask me my email address, I'd say: "username, strudel, gmail, dot, com".

why is "@" called strudel? Obviously, because it looks like the pastry!