Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective

kalgas

2009-10-15T23:24:00.000+02:00

Today I heard on the news a word I wasn't too familiar with: kalgas קלגס. The dictionary definition is "soldier", but the connotation seems to always be a brutal, thuggish soldier. It certainly sounded like it was not of Semitic origin, and Klein confirms that:

soldier, warrior (mostly used in the plural קלגסים). [Latin caliga (= heavy military shoe), whence figurative 'military service'. Related to calx (=heel), calcar (=spur), calceus (=shoe).]

Klein, as well as most sources I checked, doesn't connect calx as "heel" to the Latin calx meaning "lime, pebble", which is the source of such words as calcium and calculation. However, this site suggests that perhaps

The Latin word for heel is calx, calcis. Here we must take another short digression, because the Latin word for lime is also calx. The Century tells us that the underlying Latin means "small stone," and perhaps that is the connection between "lime" and the "heel." Lime, or chalk, begins as a small stone that is eroded while the heel bone can appear, to the eye, as if stone-shaped. The Latin word for shoe is calceus, or something that goes over the heel.

In any case, caliga - the Roman sandals, secured with nails (which made quite a bit of noise) - were apparently frightening enough to give their name to the Roman soldiers in general (pictures here). For example, the Mishna (Sota 8:1) interprets part of the verse of Devarim 20:3 - "Let not your heart faint; fear not, nor be alarmed" - as saying not to fear the noise of the (enemy) troops - שפעת הקלגסין. The notorious Roman emperor Caligula also got his name from those shoes - his name mean "little (soldier's) boot", because as a child he accompanied his father, a general, in military campaigns.

You may have noticed that we don't have many words from the Talmudic period that derive from Latin; far more come from Greek. On the face of it, that seems strange: at the time of the Mishna and later, the Romans were in control of the Land of Israel, not the Greeks. However, Hellenistic culture continued to have significant impact even in the Roman empire, and Greek remained the literary language and lingua franca in the region. The Romans did not enforce their language on conquered areas, so it should not be such a surprise that Latin did not enter Talmudic Hebrew. In fact, a large portion of the words that did enter Hebrew, are related to the military - such as gardom גרדום - "gallows", ligyon לגיון - "legion", pigyon פגיון - "dagger", and of course, kalgas.

budke

2009-10-12T23:22:00.000+02:00

Sukkot was last week, and we just put away the last part of our sukkah. So it seems like a good time to finish one last sukkot related word.

During the holiday, we took a tour of the Herodion fortress. The guide told us to meet at the בודקה budke - the little cabin/shack/hut up the hill (the proper Hebrew word is beitan ביתן). I pointed out that maybe the word means "little booth" - since the (originally Russian) suffix "-ke" is used as a diminutive in Yiddish. He hadn't thought of that before, and liked the idea.

However, I was wrong.

While a few web sites propose an English origin of the term, almost all the sources I saw say the whole word entered Hebrew from Yiddish (where the spelling was בודקע). There is an issue for debate, however. Does the Yiddish come from the German bude (or bode) meaning "small house" - which is cognate with the English word "booth" (and according to some - but not all - "abode")? Or does it derive from the Russian будка budka with the same meaning?

Since most Central and Eastern European languages have some cognate to this root, I think it will probably be difficult to prove the origin one way or another. One thing I am a little more certain about is the preferred spelling. Both Even Shoshan and Rosenthal provide budke before butke בותקה - which is how I had previously assumed the word was spelled. However, since both Russian and German use "d" and not "t" - I think the spelling (and pronunciaton) budke is somewhat more authentic.

And now - I can finally file budke away!

petek

2009-10-09T14:37:00.001+02:00

On Hoshana Rabbah there is a custom to greet people with the Aramaic expression פתקא טבא pitka tava - for which the Hebrew equivalent is פתק טוב petek tov. In Modern Hebrew petek means note (or the piece of paper the note is written on), so the phrase would mean "good note". What does that mean?

Well, it turns out that the original meaning of petek wasn't "note", but "lot" or "ballot". Klein gives the following etymology:

from Greek pittakion (=tablet for writing on, label, ticket; votive tablet; list of members of an association), which is of uncertain, possibly Thracian origin

(Ben Yehuda points out that while petek is certainly of a Greek origin, there is also a Semitic root פתק meaning "to break, split", and this verb could have become associated with the Greek word, as the Hebrew word for "lot", goral גורל, also originally meant a "small (broken) stone".)

Arabic has a cognate term (also deriving from the Greek) - bitaqa, meaning "ticket". Latin also borrowed the Greek for their pittacium, meaning "label, plaster, patch", which gave us the English word petechia, meaning a skin eruption caused by a minor hemorrhage. The Spanish word pedazo, meaning "piece", also comes from the Latin.

As explained on this site, the Greek pittakion meant "an imperial administrative order in the form of a letter." This seems to be an appropriate understanding of the term for Hoshana Rabbah, as described here:

In the Talmud, Hoshana Rabbah is referred to as a day when everyone comes to the synagogue. Its special character was emphasized during the time of the geonim, who saw it as the day in which each human being receives from heaven a note on which his fate is registered. And so there are those who greet each other on this day with the Aramaic blessing a pitka tava, or in Yiddish gut kveitl.

Since this is a relatively late custom, it is possible that the Yiddish term preceded the Aramaic one. The Yiddish word kvittel is used to describe a written petition of a hasid to his rebbe, as well as the notes placed in the Western Wall. The Yiddish word derives from the German quittung - "receipt". Quittung is cognate to the English "quittance" - meaning

1. Release from a debt, an obligation, or a penalty.
2. A document or receipt certifying such release.

Quittance, in turn, is related to the words "quit", "acquit", "quite" and "quiet" - all reflecting a sense of "free (from war, debts), clear, calm, resting". Together, they sound like a great blessing for all my readers!

cherem and harem

2009-09-27T15:11:00.001+02:00

The Hebrew word cherem חרם is familiar to most of us as a ban, an excommunication. This type of censure developed in Talmudic and Medieval times. However, the Biblical word also means "to ban". Klein says that in Biblical Hebrew it meant to ban, devote, confiscate. (There is a discussion here as to whether the meaning "to destroy, exterminate" has the same origin, for in Arabic the two meanings are spelled differently.) In Talmudic Hebrew it also began to refer to a type of vow (as we find in the Kol Nidrei prayer.)

Even-Shoshan, in his Concordance, notes that of the 51 occurrences of the Biblical verb, all but three of them have a sense of "to destroy". One (Yishayahu 11:15) means "to dry up" and two (Micha 4:13 and Vayikra 27:28) refer to dedication to God. This meaning is reflected in the Arabic cognate harim - "sacred, forbidden". This root appears in a number of Arabic phrases, such as Al-Haram ash-Sharif - the Arabic name for the holy Temple Mount.

The English word harem also derives from this root:

1634, from Turk. harem, from Arabic haram "wives and concubines," originally "women's quarters," lit. "something forbidden or kept safe," from root of harama "he guarded, forbade."

Another related word is Marrano - the Jews of Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity, but secretly observed Judaism. It has a fairly distasteful etymology:

1583, from Sp., lit. "pig, swine," an expression of contempt, from Arabic muharram "forbidden thing" (eating of pork is forbidden by Muslim and Jewish religious law), from haruma "was forbidden".

Because of this origin, the term is not commonly used today. Hebrew uses Anusim אנוסים - those forced to convert. In English, Crypto-Jews has become an acceptable alternative.

Three place names are related to this root as well. Mount Hermon - הר חרמון, Israel's tallest mountain and the only snow-capped one, is generally assumed to derive its name from חרם. Some say that this is due to it being inaccessible, unapproachable, "off limits". Others say that it served as a holy site to the Canaanites who lived in the area (see Shoftim 3:3, where it is called Har Baal Chermon הַר בַּעַל חֶרְמוֹן, indicating worship there). The Ramban, in his commentary to Devarim 3:9 reflects both of these theories. (A third theory is mentioned in the apocryphal book Chanoch (Enoch) I, chapter 6 and quoted in Hebrew here, where it is written that the mountain is called Hermon because the angels took a vow there).

Another location that derives its name from this root is Wadi Haramia ואדי חרמיה, north of Jerusalem (near the towns of Eli and Maaleh Levona.) As described here, it

literately means the valley of the bandits. This narrow passage through two very high mountains leaves no room for detours. As mentioned earlier, this road is historically the highway of the bible. Throughout the ages pilgrims and travelers would pass though this valley on their way to Jerusalem. Local bandits would take advantage of the topography and take their toll from the travelers.

These bandits would "confiscate" the property of their victims. The valley was also the site of an important battle in the time of the Maccabees.

A different type of place name related phrase is the Hebrew ad chorma עַד-חָרְמָה - meaning "until complete destruction." This phrase is found in Bamidbar 14:45 and Devarim 1:44. However, this actually refers to a Canaanite city called Hormah - about 25 kilometers to the east of Beer Sheva.

solet and semolina

2009-09-14T22:26:00.052+03:00

In a previous post, I said I would discuss the difference between solet סולת and kemach קמח. There's a lot of confusion about this issue. Both are ground wheat; and while kemach is consistently translated as "flour", the best translation of each isn't entirely obvious. The most obvious distinction between the two is the granularity, but here too we find uncertainty. If you go to a supermarket in Israel, the solet you can purchase is coarser than the kemach. However, when I asked a number of people as to whether they thought the "original" (Biblical and Talmudic) solet was more or less coarse than kemach, they generally thought that kemach was coarser. So what's the story?

For now, let's look at the "ancient" solet. There are a number of opinions as to its granularity. The common translation of solet is "fine flour", and this is also found in most dictionaries. (Since the word fine can mean both "of superior quality" and "consisting of very small particles", I'll be using the synonym "powdery" from here throughout this post - except when quoting sources). A number of commentaries insist that solet is coarser than kemach (Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rashi, Menachot 66a, s.v. shel garosot¹). Of those who agree with these commentaries, they translate solet as "semolina" (which we'll look at later). One of the most prominent ones to do so was Milgrom (Leviticus p.179), who writes:

Solet is identified with grits or, more precisely, semolina, "The grain-like portions of wheat retained in the bolting-machine after the fine flour has been passed through" (Webster)²

How did this significant disagreement arise?

The answer seems to lie in the process of milling and sifting the flour. The one thing that I think almost everyone can agree on is that solet was more precious than kemach, as can be seen in here in Melachim I 5:2

וַיְהִי לֶחֶם-שְׁלֹמֹה, לְיוֹם אֶחָד: שְׁלֹשִׁים כֹּר סֹלֶת, וְשִׁשִּׁים כֹּר קָמַח

[King] Shlomo's daily provisions consisted of 30 kors of solet and 60 kors of kemach

What made it more valuable? Well, part of it may have been the granularity, but that was a side effect of its purity - how white it looked³. Today we get our white flour white by bleaching, but that wasn't available back then. They used a two part process to remove the bran and germ, and to leave only the white endosperm. If the kernel was ground to a fine powder right away, then it wouldn't be possible to sift out the bran later. So for special occasions, in order to make particularly refined flour, they would grind the kernel coarsely, creating "grits" (or "groats"), sift out the two kinds of coarse bran (subin סובין and mursan מורסן) and the "bran dust"⁴, which is very powdery and not desirable, and then grind the remainder again. What was left was more white and powdery than what would have resulted from a one-time milling. (In the Temple, they would repeat this process a number of times to get a purer result⁵).

So actually both those that say that solet was coarse and those that say that it was powdery were correct. In the beginning of the process, solet was coarser than the kemach that would result from a standard milling. But by the end of the process, solet was powdery⁶, whereas the kemach would have been comparatively coarse. Nahum Sokolow (in Bemarot Hakeshet, pgs 552-4) distinguishes between the two stages, by calling the first one "solet" and the second one "kemach solet"⁷, which was later abbreviated to simply "solet", adding to the confusion. But in the end, what distinguishes solet from kemach is quality more than granularity⁸.

All of this helps to explain a well known, but not so well understood passage in Pirkei Avot (5:15): a student is compared to a sieve (napa נפה), which "lets out the kemach and retains the solet":

וְנָפָה, שֶׁמּוֹצִיאָה אֶת הַקֶּמַח וְקוֹלֶטֶת אֶת הַסֹּלֶת

For those who claim that solet is more powdery than kemach, the sentence is difficult to understand - since a sieve retains the coarser material. There have been attempts to force the mishna into this preconception. Kaempf, in his siddur, Siach Yitzchak, emends the text to read "pesolet" פסולת - waste - instead of solet. The Tiferet Yisrael commentary explains that the solet actually refers to the undesired dust (which is more powdery than the preferred kemach), and it is "retained" by sticking to the sides of the sieve. But both approaches miss the point, as the mishna clearly is referring to a good student, who keeps the good and ignores the worthless⁹. But if we note that the mishna is referring to the beginning of the process, then yes - the coarser solet is retained, and the kemach is discarded (as explained by the Bartenura).

So what's the best definition of solet? The JPS suggests "choice flour"¹⁰. Despite Ginsberg's protests (see footnote #2), I think this is the most accurate definition, since it isn't dependent on the variation in granularity found in the different stages of the process. However, I believe I have what might be even a simpler suggestion. As seen here, the English word "flour" was spelled "flower" until the 19th century, and was short for the "flower of meal" - the best (part) of the (ground) meal. This is still the term used in many European languages, such as the Italian fiore di farina¹¹ and the French fleur de farine, as quoted by Ben Yehuda in his translation of solet. Meal is defined as "the usually coarsely ground and unbolted seeds of a cereal grass or pulse" - this seems appropriate for kemach. So maybe the best definition of solet would simply be "flour", and kemach could be translated as "meal".

Of course all this applies to ancient solet - not how it is used in Modern Hebrew. Today solet means semolina, which is indeed coarser than regular flour. But there's more to semolina than its granularity - let's look at why I don't prefer Milgrom's translation of ancient solet as "semolina".

First of all, the meaning of the word semolina as Milgrom suggests is relatively recent (its first mention in the OED is from 1797), but it has a long and interesting history. We've looked at it briefly earlier, but I've since found sources that explain it better, particularly an Italian article by Gabriella Giacomelli entitled "'Semola' in Italia: ambiguità di una parola", which discusses the semantic shift of the word semola. As we pointed out, the Aramaic semida סמידא gave us the Greek semidalis and the Latin simila¹². Both are good parallels for solet, as they are generally translated as "fine flour" (although we're still stuck with the ambiguity of the word "fine" - powdery or best?). Giacomelli quotes Pliny and Celsus as saying that the Latin simila (and a similar term similago) wasn't the most powdery of flours - that would be reserved for other terms, such as the Latin pollen (our English word pollen is related) - it was rather of an intermediary granularity, somewhat coarse, although of good quality, and that meaning is still found in some parts of Italy (although the more widespread use is more recent). In the Northern part of Italy and further north into Germany, the derivatives of simila mean "powdery flour" (Italian semola, German semmel, Yiddish zeml, and later the English word "simnel" - cakes or rolls made of fine wheat flour.). But in the rest of Italy, to the south, semola progressed in the other direction, to the coarser "bran"¹³. From here came the diminutive "semolino" (from which came the English "semolina"¹⁴) - little bran, i.e. a coarser flour than the generic Italian word for flour "farina" (although it originally meant "meal"¹⁵).

So I think the complicated history of the word and the various definitions of its "ancestors" makes it an awkward choice of a translation. It's particularly disingenuous to hint to semidalis being the Septuagint's translation of solet and the Vulgate using simila¹⁶ - the word has gone through so many changes from semidalis and simila to semolina to render the connection almost irrelevant. And if we go back far enough, semida was used by Targum Yonatan as an Aramaic synonym for solet - so a derivative of semida doesn't really describe what solet was¹⁷.

However, there's another reason to reject this translation. Since we're focusing on the modern word semolina, we shouldn't limit ourselves to Webster's definition, but we should rather take into account the word's general connotation. Today semolina is not used for preparing bread¹⁸ - which solet certainly was during Biblical times. A more comprehensive modern definition of semolina can be found here:

The inner, granular, starchy endosperm of hard or durum wheat (not yet ground into flour); used to make pasta and semolina milk pudding.

That's not a good definition for ancient solet. However, while solet does appear more frequently than kemach in Biblical Hebrew, in later Hebrew kemach is much more prominent. It seems that since Temple times, solet has fallen out of common usage¹⁹. Therefore, I don't see any problem with solet becoming the modern word for semolina, which is used for products like couscous and pasta. Modern solet/semolina is more coarse than regular flour, and as we've seen during one stage of the ancient process, solet was more coarse than kemach. And although it does lead to some confusion, it encourages the discussion of the granularity of solet - which is what led me to research this post...

notes

¹In his commentary on Menachot 27a (s.v. misolta), Rashi goes so far as to say that solet and grits (geres) are synonymous: גרש וסולת חד הוא.

² H.L. Ginsberg defended the translation "semolina" a number of times, such as in his article, The Grain Harvest Laws of Leviticus 23:9-22 and Numbers 28:26-31. There he writes about the word semolina: "This is notoriously the exact equivalent of the Hebrew solet; see G. Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Palastina, III, 292-294. I therefore apologize for the pusillanimity that made me yield to the vehement objections of my colleagues on the committee that produced the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the Torah and the Nevi'im, who are such esthetes that they insist on poetry in a recipe; whence that translation's 'choice flour,' which is not very choice." However, I do see that the JPS translates solet as semolina in Melachim I 5:2.

³In addition to purity, the Roman doctor Celsus (quoted here) felt that the more flour was bolted (sifted) the healthier it was. While modern science certainly says that whole wheat flour is healthier than white flour, "Joe Pastry" correctly points out that the fat in whole wheat flour can cause it to become rancid much sooner, so there were other considerations to sifting flour other than "purity".

⁴This is probably the avak אבק which rendered the solet for the sacrifices invalid (Menachot 85a).

⁵Menachot 76b. See this article by Rabbi Shalom Ohana for a detailed description of the process in the Temple and the various opinions in the commentaries as to how it was performed. He points out that while in general at the time the wheat was wetted before grinding to help the bran separate from the endosperm (as described here), that couldn't be done in the Temple since most of the grain sacrifices were matza (and therefore couldn't have extended contact with water.)

⁶Gesenius says that the word solet derives from the root סלל meaning "shaking, sifting", but most other sources (such as Klein and Milgrom) link it to the Akkadian salatu (to crush) and siltu (grits), which would connect it to the connotation of "coarse".

⁷This is the phrase found in Bereshit 18:5, where Avraham had Sarah prepare "kemach solet". For a full discussion of the meaning of the phrase there, see this article by Gil Marks. He discusses the disagreement between Rashi, who says it refers to two separate items (not a construct), and the Ramban, who says this means solet that is made from kemach. The Gur Aryeh explains Rashi's approach by saying that you can't say "kemach from solet", because solet is made from kemach (this would of course support the Ramban as well.) However, Onkelos translates the phrase (in some versions) as קמחא סולתא kimcha d'solta - kemach of solet, which would seem to support Sokolow's view that the kemach was made from solet. Note also Rav Saadia Gaon here, who explains the phrase as meaning "powdery solet."

⁸Another factor that some discuss is the type of grain. The Sifra, based on Shmot 29:2, points out that only wheat (not barley) can be used for solet. In addition, some sources distinguish between the various kinds of wheat. See the Gil Marks article mentioned above, as well as this blog post.

⁹This is clear from the parallel section in Avot D'Rabbi Natan (chapter 40) where it says that the sieve-like student "lets out the bad and retains the good". Neusner makes an interesting point that in this chapter the wicked category is listed last, but I don't see how he can ignore the Avot D'Rabbi Natan.

¹⁰Strangely, the JPS Numbers 28:12 has "choice flour", but the following verse has "fine flour." Everett Fox has "(proper) flour". Another suggestion (found here) is חלב חיטה chelev chita - the "fat of the wheat", i.e. the best of the wheat. It is possible that the cereal "Cream of Wheat" was inspired by this earlier term.

¹¹ This 1820 book describes fiore di farina in a manner that strongly recalls solet: "The flour is divided into three parts, to obtain the kind which is proper for manipulation. The first separated is the coarse and husky part; the next, the white impalpable powder; after which operation remains the fiore di farina, which is neither very finely pulverized, nor remarkably white, and is by far the smallest quantity of the whole mass. This is found to contain the purest part of the wheat, and to make the finest bread."

¹²For a detailed description of how the Greeks borrowed the Akkadian samidu (both the term and the product) for their semidalis, as well as what type of wheat was used in both locations, see Robert Sallares, Ecology of the Ancient Greek World, pgs. 317-326.

¹³This leads to the strange phenomenon of semola being translated in Italian-English dictionaries (such as Cassell's) as "bran; fine flour".

However, the more common word for "bran" in Italian is crusca. This led to even more confusion for me in my research, since the name of the Italian Language Academy is Accademia della Crusca!

¹⁴I think that Giacomelli's etymology is much more clear than the popular one: "Alteration of Italian semolino, diminutive of semola, bran, from Latin simila, fine flour."

Why should "bran" derive from "fine flour"?

¹⁵Note that the Vulgate on 1 Kings Chapter 4, Verse 22 has simila for "solet" and farina for "kemach". In Modern Italian, the derivatives have switched connotations.

¹⁶I refer to Ginsberg's comment here, where he writes, "Yet it is my personal opinion that we should have gone farther. Our 'choice flour' is, to be sure, a better rendering of soleth than the conventional 'fine flour,' since the word certainly means in actuality "semolina" (witness, among other proofs, the renderings of the ancient versions), which is not at all 'fine.' I do not see why we could not have said 'semolina,' at least in a great majority of the relevant passages, which are technical descriptions of ritual." [emphasis mine]

¹⁷However, Targum Yonatan was a later translation than Onkelos (who used solta סולתא), and had a lot of Greek influence. So it could be that TY used semida for stylistic reasons - it was an Aramaic word similar to the familiar Greek semidalis.

¹⁸Somewhat complicating the issue is the fact that semolina has a different meaning in British and American English. This book writes: "In the U.K. where Triticum durum wheats are not regularly milled the term 'semolina' is used to describe a coarse intermediate stock produced from the break system, in the milling of flour from T. aestivum wheats. In the U.S.A., where durum, common and club wheats are milled, the term 'semolina' is reserved for the durum product; and the coarse milling intermediate from the other wheats, equivalent to the U.K. 'semolina' is called 'farina'."

¹⁹It appears that not only did the terminology change, but the technology as well. Tosafot (Taanit 9b, s.v. nehila) describes the Talmudic process of creating solet, but notes that it "was not done as we do in our times". The Tosafot were composed in the 12th and 13th centuries, but as this book notes, only around 1300 did the process of advanced sifting return to Europe: "From the 1300s to the 1700s, the sifting process consisted of putting the flour first through a net or sieve to remove the coarse particles, and then through a woolen bolting cloth. The resulting flour [was] the finest white flour of its day...". This description, nearly identical to the Talmudic description of the creation of solet, implies that until then, the wheat was ground whole without significant sifting. However, Ibn Ezra, a contemporary of the Tosafot, notes (Shmot 29:2, extended commentary) that in the Arab lands they still prepare solet, and make the best bread from it.

aguna and ogen

2009-05-27T20:30:00.005+03:00

In our last post, we discussed the possible connection between almana (widow) and the root אלם - "to bind". Steinberg wrote that one meaning of the root is "restrained, imprisoned, alone" and provided another Hebrew root with a similar meaning - עגן. From this root we get the word agunah עגונה - a deserted woman, a woman whose husband has disappeared, and who is restrained from marrying again.

The root עגן only appears once in the Bible, in Ruth 1:13, when Naomi addresses her daughters-in-law, discussing her future, unborn sons:

הֲלָהֵן תְּשַׂבֵּרְנָה, עַד אֲשֶׁר יִגְדָּלוּ, הֲלָהֵן תֵּעָגֵנָה, לְבִלְתִּי הֱיוֹת לְאִישׁ

"Should you wait for them to grow up? Should you shut yourselves off for them (te'agenah) and have no husbands?"

(Ibn Ezra, perhaps deliberately, notes that the word is unique by writing that it "has no friend".)

Rashi in his commentary on Ruth tries to show that actually the root here is עוג and that the word תעגנה is the feminine plural future form of the verb. His proof for this is that if the nun was part of the root, it should have had a dagesh or appeared twice. He still says the word means "restriction", but gives the example of Honi HaMe'agel who "עג עוגה ועמד בתוכה" - drew (ag) a circle and stood inside it until it rained.

However, Avineri in Heichal Rashi points out that according most grammarians the nun is part of the root (for example the Radak in Sefer HaShorashim), and even Rashi himself in his commentary on Bava Kama 80a (s.v. ha'aguna) connects the word aguna and the verse in Ruth.

Many people connect aguna and the Hebrew word for "anchor" - עוגן ogen. For example, this book:

...an aguna, a woman whose husband for whatever reason cannot be reached for the purposes of a divorce. She is legally married, but she has no husband and yet cannot remarry. (The Hebrew word ogen means "anchor"; the woman is "anchored," tied to a situation from which there seems to be no release.)

There seems to be support for the connection from the gemara in Bava Batra 73a:

משנה: המוכר את הספינה מכר את התורן ואת הנס ואת העוגין...

גמרא: תורן איסקריא ... נס אדרא ... עוגין תני רבי חייא אלו עוגינין שלה וכן הוא אומר (רות א) הלהן תשברנה עד אשר יגדלו הלהן תעגנה לבלתי היות לאיש

Mishna: If a man sold a ship, he sold also the mast, the anchor (ogin)
Gemara: Toren is the mast (iskarya) ... Nes is the sail (idra)...Ogin (anchor) - R. Hiyya taught: these are its anchors, as it said, "Should you wait for them to grow up? Should you shut yourselves off for them (te'agenah) and have no husbands?" (Rut 1:13)

And both Jastrow and Ben Yehuda write that ogen and aguna are related.

But the more recent dictionaries, like Klein and Even Shoshan say that the etymology of ogen is Greek - from the word onkinos, meaning "hook". Why do they reject what seems to be a shared meaning of the two words, the gemara in Bava Batra and the opinion of Ben Yehuda, who they generally follow?

Well, on a linguistic level, some other heavyweights have shown that ogen has a Greek source, such as Fraenkel on page 229 here, Fleischer on page 557 here, Krauss in his Tosafot Ha-Arukh Ha-Shalem, page 155b (although conspicuously not in his dictionary of Greek and Latin loanwords in Rabbinic Literature) and Sperber in his Nautica Talmudica (page 139). They point out that the Yerushalmi version of Bava Batra (as well as a number of manuscripts of the Mishna) has hogin הוגין (with a heh) instead of ogin (with an ayin). This spelling is found frequently throughout Rabbinic literature, such as in Sifrei Devarim 346 and Bereshit Rabba 12:12. They believe this is the earlier spelling, and as such is more likely to come from the Greek than the Hebrew עגן (and it's important to remember that both Jastrow and Ben Yehuda tend to emphasize Semitic origins for words).

It also seems that the original meaning of עגן was not to "tie down" or "hold back", but more to "shut in, imprison", as found in the Arabic cognate ajama - "to lock up". So we have a coincidence of two similar sounding words having a similar meaning, but not a common origin.

So what do we make of the gemara? According to Gabriel Birnbaum in his book "Mishnaic Hebrew as Reflected in the Cairo Geniza", the explanation of the gemara is due to folk etymology, helped along by the admittedly similar meanings, and perhaps as well by the Babylonian difficulty distinguishing between the guttural letters (see here, note 165.)

But I'm willing to cut them a little more slack. If we look at the other terms in the gemara, we see the following pattern:

Hebrew word -> explained with "foreign" word (Aramaic with Greek origin)

So if R' Chiya was familiar with the Greek origin of ogen, it would make sense that he'd reverse the order:

foreign word -> explained via Hebrew word (by asmachta - where a verse is given as "proof", even though the author knows the verse may be referring to something else)

By the way, if we look at the Greek word onkinos (as well as the related Greek word onkos and the Latin uncinus, all of the same meaning) we find some interesting cognates. They all seem to derive from the Indo-European root *ang-/*ank, meaning "to bend":

ankle - ME ancle, ancleou from OE ancleow (& ? ON ǫkkla) from IE base *ang-, limb, var. of *ank-, to bend > angle, angle, Gr ankōn, elbow, ankylos, crooked
oncidium (type of flower) - New Latin Oncidium, genus name : Greek onkos, barb, hook (from the shape of its labellum) + New Latin -idium, diminutive suff. (from Greek -idion)
angle - both the verb (to fish):

Middle English angelen, from angel fishhook, from Old English, from anga hook; akin to Old High German ango hook, Latin uncus, Greek onkos barbed hook

and the noun (intersecting lines):

from L. angulum (nom. angulus) "corner," a dim. form from PIE base *ang-/*ank- "to bend"
Angles: a modern English word for a Germanic-speaking people who took their name from the cultural ancestral region of Angeln, a modern district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The region got its name due to"its hook-like shape". When the inhabitants of that region together with the Saxons (and Jutes) invaded Britain, they gave it the name "England" and the language "English".
and of course the word anchor: O.E. ancor, borrowed 9c. from L. ancora, from or cognate with Gk. ankyra "anchor, hook"

Over the course of researching this post, I kept saying words like onkinos, ankylos and ankle, and had a hunch that perhaps the name of the famous convert and translator Onkelos was also related. And indeed, according to these two sources - his name did derive from Greek and probably meant "crooked" - possibly alluding "originally to some physical imperfection". (I won't get into the question of whether Onkelos and Aquila were the same person - for more read the sources linked to above.)

I wonder if perhaps an Eastern European immigrant to America ever thought he heard "Onkelos translation" when someone mentioned an "English translation" to the Torah. Certainly Onkelos didn't know English, but their names might actually be related...

aluma

2009-05-23T21:54:00.002+03:00

Previously we discussed the word "omer", and I mentioned that one of the definitions is "sheaf". Someone wrote to me with the following request:

One suggestion: most English speakers, myself included, do not have a clue what the word "sheaf" really means--in English. A word or two explaining what on earth a "sheaf" is would be helpful!

Fair enough. So according to the American Heritage Dictionary, a sheaf is:

A bundle of cut stalks of grain or similar plants bound with straw or twine.

This may actually would be even a better definition for aluma אלומה than for omer עומר. Why? Because as we discussed, the word omer may be related to "handful" or "armful". But the word aluma clearly is related to "bind/bundle", as we see in Yosef's description of his dream (Bereshit 37:7)

וְהִנֵּה אֲנַחְנוּ מְאַלְּמִים אֲלֻמִּים, בְּתוֹךְ הַשָּׂדֶה

"There we were binding (me'almim) sheaves (alumim) in the field"

Onkelos translates both the noun and the verb with the root אסר, and the Targum Yerushalmi uses the root כרך (see Rashi on Bava Metzia 21a) - both of which mean "to bind".

There are a number of other words that have the root אלמ - and various authorities connect them. Let's look at a few:

אלם - ilem: mute, silent. Klein writes that is usually explained as meaning "bound in one's speech".
אלמוני - almoni: anonymous. It is always found in the Bible as part of the phrase פלוני אלמוני ploni almoni - "an uncertain man". Klein derives it from the root אלם - "to be silent" and says it literally means "one whose name is unknown". (The etymology of ploni is unclear.)
אלים - alim: Originally meant "strong", in Modern Hebrew "violent". Eliahu Netanel, in his column in Shabbat B'Shabbato writes that the root אלם had different, but related, meanings in the various Semitic languages: in Arabic - pain, Aramaic - strength, Syriac - anger. He feels that binding is related to strength. This is also the opinion of both Jastrow and Steinberg, who both connect the root to an earlier two-letter root א-ל, meaning "strength". (We discussed that root in the post about ilan.) However, Klein feels that the Arabic and Syriac roots mentioned are not related to the Hebrew root meaning "to bind". He says the root אלם - "to be strong" is related to the root עלם - "to be mature".
אלמנה - almana: widow. Jastrow says this is connected to our root by the associated meanings "to be tied up, excluded, lonely, mute". Steinberg points out the verse in Shmuel II 20:3 where it describes women who:

וַתִּהְיֶינָה צְרֻרוֹת עַד-יוֹם מֻתָן, אַלְמְנוּת חַיּוּת
"remained in seclusion (tzerurot) until the day they died, in living widowhood (almenut)"
The root צרר also means "to bind". The Ritva on Ketubot 1ob writes that the almana is like someone who is mute, for no one defends her. (The gemara there has a drasha to prove a a halachic point.) This is also the opinion of many of the Medieval Hebrew grammarians.
However, many sources say that almana is not related to the root אלם. For example, Klein quotes Barth as saying that the base is רמל, related to the Arabic words murmil, armal, meaning "needy, helpless." He also quotes Noldeke and Ruzicka as connecting the word with the Arabic alima - "he felt pain" (which we've already seen that Klein does not connect to the meaning "to bind".)
אולם - ulam: Jastrow says the word means "in front of, opposite", and from there "entrance, hall". He says it also derives from the root אלם, but doesn't explain how (perhaps he feels there's a connection between "in front of" and "surround / bound". In any case, no one else connects the terms, but I was surprised to see that the two meanings of ulam - "but, however" and "porch, vestibule, hall, parlor" are accepted by most as deriving from the Akkadian ellamu - "in front of, opposite."

afifyor

2009-05-11T06:27:00.003+03:00

With the Pope visiting Israel, we hear the unusual Hebrew translation for pope - afifyor (or apifyor) אפיפיור. What is the origin of the word?

It appears once in the Talmud, in Avoda Zara 11a, in a story describing Onkelos the convert, and how the Emperor (his uncle) sent Roman soldiers to arrest him. However, Onkelos was able to convert them as well, by presenting arguments to them. One the arguments was the following:

אמר להו אימא לכו מילתא בעלמא ניפיורא נקט נורא קמי (א)פיפיורא (א)פיפיורא לדוכסא דוכסא להגמונא הגמונא לקומא קומא מי נקט נורא מקמי אינשי אמרי ליה לא אמר להו הקב"ה נקט נורא קמי ישראל דכתיב (שמות יג) וה' הולך לפניהם יומם וגו'

He said to them: 'Let me tell you just an ordinary thing: [In a procession] the torchlighter carries the light in front of the afifior, the afifior in front of the leader, the leader in front of the governor, the governor in front of the chief officer; but does the chief officer carry the light in front of the people [that follow]?' 'No!' they replied. Said he: 'Yet the Holy One, blessed be He, does carry the light before Israel, for Scripture says. "And the Lord went before them … in a pillar of fire to give them light" (Shmot 13:21)

Onkelos was demonstrating God's "humility" as compared with the Roman leader's pride.

From this story we can see that afifyor had no religious standing, but was a type of dignitary or high official (so explain both the Arukh and Rashi). This Aramaic word is generally assumed to come from Greek. Krauss says that it derives from the Greek papias - which Ben Yehuda explains as "torch bearer", Klein as "keeper or janitor of the palace" and Steinsaltz as "the official responsible for the gates". (This book says that the Greek noun papias means "porter, conductor or guide".)

Even-Shoshan says that perhaps the word derives from the Greek epiphoros. I couldn't find an exact match for that word, but I do see that epiphero and phoros can mean "carrier" or "bearer". This would fit Jastrow's definition of apifior as "litter carrier, chief lecticarius" (see my post on apiryon for a description of this position). Phoros can also refer to a tribute or tax, so maybe the word describes someone who collects or receives tribute.

Kohut in the Arukh Hashalem quotes the Maharif (Rabbi Yaakov Feraji Mahmah?) as saying that afifyor derives from the Greek purphoros - meaning "torch bearer".

Kohut then goes on to mention the Christian Hebraist Johannes Buxtorf, who in his important Talmudic dictionary says that afifyor means "Papa, Pontifex Romanus" - i.e. the Pope. Kohut correctly points out that this was clearly not the meaning in the Talmudic passage. But by Medieval times (see examples here), this was the term Jews used to refer to the Catholic Pope.

Why was this obscure word chosen? Ben Yehuda offers a few suggestions.

It may have been due to a similarity to the Greek title "papas" (father) for the Pope, or a longer title: "papas hiereus" - chief priest or "papas hieros" - holy father. (Even Shoshan's transliteration papas ieros seems to perhaps be in error.)

He quotes Berliner as claiming that the word comes from "avi pior" - Father (avi אבי in Hebrew) and Pior (Peter in Italian, the first pope). Similarly, Meir Wiener, in his German translation of Emek HaBacha says that afifyor comes from "epi Pior" - after (epi in Greek) and Pior (Peter) - the Pope is Peter's successor.

The question still remains - why use this unusual word, instead of a direct translation? Ben Yehuda suggests that the Jews were avoiding saying the Pope's title ("papa") directly (the Pope generally wasn't such a good friend of the Jews). I'm sure that the Jews living in those times could never have imagined that the Pope would be hosted by a Jewish state, and that the visit of the afifyor would be the top of the news...

orez and orzo

2009-04-24T09:22:00.006+03:00

When I was researching the meaning of the word "omer", I found that Rabbi David Zvi Hoffman quoted Shadal as saying that the word in Vayikra 23:10 probably means "sheaf". In my copy of Shadal's commentary on the Torah he doesn't discuss that there, so I contacted someone who has a copy of Shadal's translation of the Torah into Italian (with notes.) He wrote to me:

Although Shadal has no comment on Vayikra 23:10, his Italian translation is apparently what R. Hoffman was referring to. Here it is:

"...recherete al sacerdote un manipolo [secondo la tradizione: farina d'orzo della misura d' un Omer] delle primizie della vostra messe."

In English: "...you shall bring to the priest a sheaf [according to the tradition: barley flour of the measure of an Omer] of the first fruits of your harvest."

When I first read this, I was confused. I saw the word "orzo" and thought it meant rice, like the Hebrew orez אורז. It made sense, since "orzo" in English means "rice shaped pasta". But it turns out there's no connection.

Let's first look at orez. It derives from the Greek word oryza - from where the European words for rice also derive:

rice - 1234, from O.Fr. ris, from It. riso, from L. oriza (cf. It. riso), from Gk. oryza "rice," via an Indo-Iranian language (cf. Pashto vrize, O.Pers. brizi), ult. from Skt. vrihi-s "rice." The Gk. word is the ult. source of all European words (cf. Welsh reis, Ger. reis, Lith. rysai, Serbo-Cr. riza, Pol. ryz).

(See here for the words for rice in even more languages).

Professor Yehuda Feliks, in his article אורז בספרות חז"ל - "Rice in Rabbinic Literature" (Bar Ilan, Vol 1), writes how the Greeks were exposed to rice (oryza sativa) when Alexander the Great reached India, and that rice spread to the Land of Israel at the end of the Second Temple period. By the times of the Mishna, it had become a very important crop, and there were many discussions amongst the Tannaim as to the halachic status of rice - what blessing should be made on it, what is the status of rice on Pesach, how do we relate to rice in terms of the various agricultural mitzvot (chadash, terumot and maaserot, shemita, gifts to the poor), etc. (See also the Encyclopedia Talmudit entry on orez for further discussion.)

The Medieval commentators have some disagreement as to the identification of orez. Rashi, for example, in Berachot 37a, says orez is "mil" - meaning millet, probably specifically proso millet (this site points out that Rashi probably never saw rice, as it was only introduced to his area of Europe in the 15th century). Tosfot there disagrees, and says that orez is rice. In any case, both based on the description of orez in Talmudic literature, and the etymology of the word (orez and oryza), Feliks says there is no doubt at all that orez refers to rice, and this is also the position of the Aruch HaShulchan (Orach Chaim 208:21).

Orzo, on the other hand, in Italian means "barley" (where they make an espresso type drink called caffé d'orzo from ground roasted barley.) It derives from the Latin hordeum meaning barley (and isn't connected to oryza), as offered by the Oxford English Dictionary:

Italian orzo, lit. ‘barley’ (1231-62; c1200 as orzeo; hordeum barley: see HORDEATE n.), in allusion to the shape of the pasta.]

A variety of pasta formed in small pieces shaped like grains of barley or rice.

1917 J. CUSIMANO Econ. Ital. Cookbk. 7 Take two pints oysters..boil them ten minutes..into this add half pound No. 39 Orzo, boil twenty minutes.

1952 N. TSELEMENTES Greek Cookery 110 Simmer for 15 minutes and add the kritharaki (orzo).

1983 J. FAMULARO & L. IMPERIALE Joy of Pasta x. 165 We have filled whole tomatoes with orzo and crabmeat and we have used tomatoes, basil, and garlic to fill giant pasta shells.

1994 Mod. Maturity July-Aug. 59/1 This morning in my supermarket I counted 53 different pasta shapes. Six were the tiny variety used in soups or as side dishes: stelline, acini di pepe, farfalline, tubettini, orzo and ditalini.

I'm not sure when orzo took on the meaning of "rice shaped pasta" in English. It probably first meant "barley shaped pasta" (whole barley looks much more like rice than the pearl barley we usually eat). As far as the references in the OED, I'm not so sure about the first two. The 1917 reference comes from an Italian cookbook, so perhaps it's talking about actual barley (the Italians call rice shaped pasta "risi" or "risoni"). And the Greek word kritharaki, mentioned in the 1952 quote, does mean "rice shaped pasta" today, but I found a couple of sources that say that kritharaki refers to barley as well. The earliest quote I could find that confirmed that orzo meant a rice shaped pasta was from this 1968 magazine article:

Orzo, sometimes called manestra, is a pasta sold in Greek stores which resembles rice in appearance.

It then appears fairly infrequently (usually mentioned as a specialty item) until the 1990s - which is when I first encountered the terms, working in a rice and pasta factory in Massachusetts. In fact, that's probably where I first made the connection between orez and orzo.

In Israel, we also find a rice shaped pasta, but it's not actually orzo (or called that). These are rice shaped petitim פתיתים (related to the Hebrew word pat פת). These were created by the Osem company during Israel's austerity period in the 1950s (when rice was scarce), and received the nickname "Ben Gurion Rice". Later, they developed round petitim that imitate couscous. Recently, these have become trendy in the West, and are known as "Israeli couscous".

What's the difference between orzo and couscous on the one hand, and Israeli petitim (whatever the shape) on the other? Orzo and couscous are made from solet סולת (semolina), whereas petitim are made from kemach קמח (flour). What's the difference between kemach and solet? That will be dealt with in an upcoming post...

omer

2009-04-17T14:22:00.003+03:00

We're between Pesach and Shavuot now, the time that we "count the omer". But do we really?

Let's look at the word "omer" עומר. It has clearly different meanings in its various appearances in the Tanach. In Devarim 24:19, Rut 2:7 it is usually translated as "sheaf" - a bundle of stalks of grain. However, in the story of the mahn (manna) מן - Shmot 16:16-36, it refers to a measure of volume, one tenth of an ephah.

However, the real question is what does it mean in Vayikra 23:10-16 - the section discussing the omer offering and the subsequent counting. The Septuagint translates the word here as "sheaf" and this is also the translation of the Vulgate and most non-Jewish translations and modern scholars. However, almost all Jewish sources say that the word omer in this section is referring to the measure of volume.

This brings up a number of questions. First of all - what is the source of the disagreement? And secondly, why hasn't this question received more attention? If we look at another verse in the same section - 23:11, it discusses how the omer was brought on ממחרת השבת - the day after "shabbat". Starting with the earliest mishnaic sources, we find countless discussions about the meaning of that phrase. Does it mean a "Sunday" or the 16th of Nissan (the day following the first day of Pesach)? However, in regards to the discussion about the meaning of omer, we find very few "proofs" in Talmudic literature. Even Rashi, who clearly states in his commentary on 23:11 that omer here means "measure", doesn't bring a proof, only quotes the verse in Shmot. Why?

When approaching this issue, it is important to note at the beginning that there is a significant lack of consistency in the translation of the word. The translation "sheaf" has become so popular, that even sources that openly take the view of the Rabbis occasionally use the other translation. For example, the Artscroll siddur describes omer as the "Omer meal offering" in the section "Counting the Omer". But in their commentary on Avot 5:7, they write that the omer was "the sheaf of barley offered in the Temple". This caution may serve us in understanding earlier sources as well.

Let's start by looking at the translation "sheaf". Actually, we should be discussing the Greek word dragma δράγματα, since that's what was used in the Septuagint. While most people translate this as "sheaf", that's not the only opinion. The literal meaning of dragma is "handful". The Greek-English Lexicon defines dragma as "handful; esp. as many stalks of corn as the reaper can grasp in his left hand." Milgrom, in his Anchor Bible (page 1983) says that "handful" is a good translation based on an Egyptian painting (unfortunately, no mention of what painting). He also mentions a theory mentioned by the scholar Gustaf Dalman, and promoted by H. L. Ginsberg in The Israelian Heritage of Judaism (page 73), that the translation should be "armful" - "whatever is swathed with a sickle and swooped under the arm". If we trace the word dragma, we find that it is the origin of dram, which interestingly is also a unit of measure. I don't think that this indicates that dragma in the Septuagint meant a measure - a handful of flour. It uses a related word - draka - for that (e.g. to translate קמץ in Vayikra 2:2). But this could have led to some confusion as to the meaning of the word later.

I think it is rather difficult to separate the terms handful and sheaf. The Latin Vulgate translates omer as manipulus (the root of the word "manipulation"), which also means "handful" and "sheaf". The Syriac Peshitta translates omer in Vayikra 23:10 as kafa, as does R' Saadia Gaon in his Arabic translation to Devarim 24:19 - and I assume there's a connection between kafa and kaf (hand). And even in Hebrew the two words are related, as in Tehilim 129:7 -

שֶׁלֹּא מִלֵּא כַפּוֹ קוֹצֵר; וְחִצְנוֹ מְעַמֵּר.

"It will never fill a reaper's hand, nor an yield an armful for the gatherer of sheaves (me'amer)"

So what are the arguments of those who claim that omer in Vayikra means sheaf (or handful/armful)? Well, they would probably say that the burden of proof lies on those who want to claim otherwise. If it means sheaf - then the meaning of Vayikra 23:10 is clear:

דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם, כִּי-תָבֹאוּ אֶל-הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לָכֶם, וּקְצַרְתֶּם אֶת-קְצִירָהּ--וַהֲבֵאתֶם אֶת-עֹמֶר רֵאשִׁית קְצִירְכֶם, אֶל-הַכֹּהֵן.

"Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring the first sheaf [omer] of your harvest to the priest" (JPS translation)

But if omer is a unit of measure - then what exactly is being measured?

The Rabbis in their description of the omer service (Mishna Menachot chapter 10), complete the picture by integrating the offering described in Vayikra 2:14

וְאִם-תַּקְרִיב מִנְחַת בִּכּוּרִים, לַה'--אָבִיב קָלוּי בָּאֵשׁ, גֶּרֶשׂ כַּרְמֶל, תַּקְרִיב, אֵת מִנְחַת בִּכּוּרֶיךָ.

The JPS translates this as, "If you bring a meal offering of first fruits to the Lord, you shall bring new ears parched with fire, grits of the fresh grain, as your meal offering of first fruits". Levine in his JPS commentary points out that some of the same words appear in Vayikra 23:14 (קלוי, כרמל) and continues:

The similarity of our text to 23:14-17 has raised the question as to whether both texts are speaking of the same offerings. Both are called bikkurim, "first fruits", and most traditional commentators, including Rashi and Ramban, have argued for the identity of the two laws.

Rashi writes that the word "ki" should be read as "when", not as "if", making it the mandatory offering we find in chapter 23.

However, a number of challenges can be brought to show why these are two different offerings:

1) This article notes that in Vayikra 2, all the other offerings are voluntary, and none are calendar based. That makes it less likely that this one offering would be mandatory and brought at a specific time.

2) This article (page 374 in the original pagination) points out that in Vayikra 23:10, we find the phrase "omer reishit". The author points out that like all first fruits, they should be viewed not as a mincha (meal offering), but rather as a korban (sacrifice). However, Milgrom (quoted above) says that reishit actually refers to processed fruits:

The priestly texts distinguish very clearly between bikkurim and reshit (Num 18:12-13; cf. Ezek 44:30; Neh 10:36,38). The former is designated as first-ripened fruits; the latter as first-processed fruits. Thus the first of the grain kernels, wine and oil (Num 18:12) as well as fruit syrup (Lev 2:11-12; 2 Chr 31:5), leaven (Lev 2:11-12) and dough (Num 15:20-21; Neh 10:38) are termed reshit. Hence this term could not be applied to standing grain. Since it also cannot denote first ripe fruits, a meaning reserved for bikkurim, it takes on the connotation "first" in a temporal sense - the very first 'omer to be harvested.

While Milgrom clearly believes that the offering was a sheaf, I think that his arguments could actually be used to prove that the offering was processed grain - flour - as the rabbis claim.

3) Rav David Tzvi Hoffman writes that many of the menachot (meal offerings) were one tenth of an ephah - why weren't they called omer? And even in the section dealing with the omer offering, we find the mention of two tenths of an ephah (23:13) - וּמִנְחָתוֹ שְׁנֵי עֶשְׂרֹנִים - why isn't it called here "two omers" שְׁנֵי הָעֹמֶר as in Shmot 16:22?

In fact, even some of the Jewish commentaries such as Ibn Ezra and Shadal say that the plain meaning of Vayikra 2:14 is referring to a voluntary offering.

One interesting "proof" is brought by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in their pamphlet about the three festivals. They point out a comparison between the omer offering, and the Shavuot offering 50 days later. If we explain the word according to the understanding of the rabbis, we see a nice parallel between the two first fruit offerings:


.		Omer	Shavuot
.	grain brought	barley	wheat
.	form brought	flour	bread
.	amount	1 tenth of ephah	2 tenths of ephah

So if we view the omer offering as the beginning of a process, and the Shavuot offering as its culmination, then it makes sense that the omer would be a measure of flour - not a sheaf.

One other potential proof of the omer meaning here a tenth of an ephah comes from a comparison between the mahn and the omer offering. But we'll discuss that later.

An interesting third option is presented by Rabbi David Zvi Hoffman in his commentary on Vayikra 23:10 (quoted partially here by Nechama Leibowitz, and the full original German is here). He has difficulty accepting either the explanation of omer as "sheaf" or "measure" in this verse. He then quotes the Sifra on Emor (156):

והניף את העומר לפני ה' (ויקרא כג, יא) – ג' שמות יש לו: "עומר שבלים", "עומר תנופה", "עומר" שמו

The omer has three names: omer of the ears of grain, omer that is waved and omer as such.

R' Hoffman explains (based on the Raavad, and a similar view found in the Vilna Gaon's commentary) the Sifra as saying that in addition to the understanding of omer as sheaf ("ears of grain") in Devarim and Rut, and omer as a measure ("omer as such") in Shmot - the verses in Vayikra are talking about an independent third meaning - "omer that is waved". He writes that omer he should be translated as "gift" or "levy". He quotes Fleischer as saying that the Hebrew word meches מכס, meaning "tax, levy" has an Arabic cognate meaning "oppress", and so omer as "levy" could be cognate with the Hebrew verb עמר, which is also explained as meaning "oppress" (Devarim 21:14, 24:7).

While this theory helps avoid the conflict between the two prominent explanations of "omer", there are some serious issues. First of all, the Malbim in his commentary shows how all three names for omer mentioned in the Sifra are referring to Vayikra: "Omer as such" refers to the volume of the offering, "omer of the ears of grain" relates to how the grain was cut for the offering, and "omer that is waved" refers to the special requirement of waving that is only found with the omer meal offering (and that of the sotah).

However, there's even a bigger issue regarding R' Hoffman's interpretation - what was actually brought as the offering? His commentary seems to indicate that he follows the mishna, and that it was a meal offering, not a sheaf. So in the end, he too ends up on one side of the debate.

If R' Hoffman tried to split the word omer into three meanings, Abarbanel does the opposite. He writes that the verse in Vayikra is probably talking about a sheaf, but the yield of one sheaf of barley is approximately one tenth of an ephah. So by saying that the two meanings share a common etymology, he defuses the controversy - omer means both. This suggestion is also offered by Bechor Shor, Shadal on Shmot 16:36, and Mandelkern in his concordance.

I'm not sure whether or not the two meanings of omer have an etymological connection. Klein seems to indicate they don't. For omer as sheaf, he says it is "a metathesized form of ערם" - a verb meaning "to heap, pile". Gesenius writes that "heap" is the "primary sense of the Hebrew word", and HALOT goes so far as to say that sheaf should not be used for omer at all, but is reserved for aluma אלומה. (Mandelkern disagrees and writes that omer is connected to the Arabic word for coerce – so one forces all the stalks together and binds them in to a sheaf.)

As far as omer as a measure, Klein connects it to the Arabic ghumr - a small bowl (perhaps based on Driver). However, this site quotes the Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic as having the entry "غمر (ghumr) which means armful". We've seen before that armful is nearly identical with "sheaf", so this might mean the meanings have a common origin. And Steinberg writes that omer as measure might also derive from the root ערם - a "piled up measure".

Whether or not omer as sheaf and measure derive from a common root, I don't think it's as reasonable to say that they share a common meaning in the Torah. Omer as sheaf is measured, but not by the yield. In Masechet Peah, we find the laws of shichecha שכחה - the forgotten sheaves that are left for the poor (mentioned in Devarim 24:19 that we've quoted above). Mishna 6:6 says:

העומר שיש בו סאתיים, ושכחו--אינו שכחה
A sheaf which contains two se'ahs and was forgotten is not [considered to be] shichecha

The Yerushalmi explains:

א"ר אלעזר כתיב (דברים כב) כי תקצור קצירך בשדך ושכחת עומר בשדה עומר שאתה יכול לפשוט ידך וליטלו

Said Rabbi Elazar, "It is written (Devarim 24:19), 'When you reap the harvest in your field, and overlook a sheaf (omer) in the field [do not turn back to get it]' [This law refers to] a sheaf that you can reach back with your hand and take [but a sheaf too large for you to take your hand is not included in this law]

I think this law is very much in tune with the association we have seen between sheaf and handful that we have seen in many languages, including Hebrew. So if an omer meant any kind of measurement, it meant "a handful" (according to the mishna, not more than two se'ahs, and see this article as to why this is a question of volume, not weight).

So how do we resolve this issue? I think the answer lies in the fact that omer always appears in the Torah in an unusual manner. Why not just say isaron עשרון or tenth of an ephah when describing the mahn? Why not call it an aluma in Devarim? And most importantly, why use an ambiguous word in Vayikra?

I believe the Torah is trying to give us a message by using words this way. Had the word aluma been used in Vayikra, we would never have made any association between this offering and the mahn. But as these articles by Rabbi Frand, Rabbi Tzvi Shalva, and particularly by Erel Sharf (mentioned here, with a link to the ZIP file here) there is a very deep connection between the two.

They note that the mahn stopped the day they were obligated to bring the omer (Yehoshua 5:11-12). And Sharf writes that the purpose of the mahn was to help us realize that everything is from God – in the desert that meant all food was from Him. In the Land of Israel, there was human involvement via agriculture, but we still need to remember our dependence on God. So the word omer was used (according to Sharf an actual measure, but the message would still work if it meant sheaf but brought up the memory of the mahn.)

Similarly, immediately following the description of the omer offering are the mitzvot of peah and leket (already mentioned in chapter 19), which bring up the association of the mitzva forgetting the omer in the field (shichecha), which all emphasize passivity–and remind of the same educational message –that the land belongs to God. So with the use of one word, we are taught deep lessons about a number of commandments.

Now we can return to our second question - why did the issue of the meaning of omer receive less attention than the issue of the when the omer was brought? I think this is because the question of what omer meant was an issue of peshat vs derash (literal meaning vs exegisis) - but not a question of what was actually done. The Oral Law determined that a barley flour was offered as the omer, and that seems to have been widely accepted.

I have seen here and there sources that say that the Sadducees or other groups claimed that a sheaf should be brought. But I haven't found them very convincing. They are primarily based on the writings of Philo, does not describe the offering in detail - only calling it "the offering of the first ears, the sacred sheaf (dragma)" (2.11.41). But what did Philo base this on? Was it his understanding of the Torah or was he simply influenced by the Septuagint? Did he witness the sheaf being offered or have testimony as such, or was this a kind of misreading as we saw with Artscroll above?

In any case, Philo's contemporary, Josephus, also uses the term dragma to describe the offering, but then goes on to follow the opinion of the Rabbis:

They take a handful / sheaf (dragma) of the ears, and dry them, then beat them small, and purge the barley from the bran; they then bring one tenth deal to the altar, to God; and, casting one handful (draka) of it upon the fire, they leave the rest for the use of the priest.

So while the peshat of the verse in Vayikra may be talking about offering a sheaf, I think the halacha should clearly be a measure of volume.

Now that we know what the omer is (I hope!), it should be clear that there was only one omer offered, on the 16th of Nisan. The truth is that before I started researching this, I might have thought that an omer was offered each of the 49 days (and I've found a number of publications - 1, 2, 3 - who've made that mistake.) But aside from the verses themselves, the midrash in Vayikra Rabba 28 emphasizes how only one omer was brought:

R. Berachyah taught: The Holy One, blessed is He, said to Moshe: "Go and remind Israel that when I gave them the manna, I gave each and every one of them the measure of an omer, as the verse (Shemot 16:16) states: An omer for each person. But now that you offer the omer, I receive only one omer from all of you together!"

So if there is only one omer (per year), how do we "count the omer"? That should be a pretty short count - one!

The confusion is due to the unusual phrase "sefirat haomer" ספירת העומר that we find in the blessing recited before counting. I did a search of all Talmudic literature in the database of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, and only found it once - in Yerushalmi Megillah 2:6 -73c (the Bar-Ilan database also has it in Midrash Tanaim Devarim 16, but R' Hoffman corrects it to read "k'tzirat haomer" קצירת העומר). I then found a fascinating article by Prof. David Henshke called - מניין לספירת העומר מן התורה? (printed in the Sefer Hayovel for Rabbi Mordechai Breuer). He discusses when the practice of counting the omer verbally began. And discusses there how that source in the Yerushalmi should be viewed as being edited in much later. So the phrase was probably coined at the time of the Geonim.

If sefirat haomer doesn't mean "counting the omer" - what does it mean? I looked for other constructs with "sefirat" followed by a noun. One of the only ones I found was in Mishna Zavim 1:2, where it says l'sefirat zovo לספירת זובו, which means "counting after his flux". This seems like a very reasonable way to understand sefirat haomer as well, and in fact, we see that R' Louis Jacobs made that correction:

This practice is known as "counting the Omer," although, as we have seen, it is actually counting from the Omer.

(Noting that we count from the omer helps us to understand the disagreement between those who end their counting with la'omer לעומר vs those who end with ba'omer בעומר. The Taz 489 explains the Rama's position for saying ba'omer by saying that we count "in" the first day. But the Chok Yaakov says that only applies to the first day, not the entire counting period. The Shaarei Teshuva adds that the prefix lamed can indicate "from", as in Bamidbar 1.1 - בְּאֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשֵּׁנִי בַּשָּׁנָה הַשֵּׁנִית, לְצֵאתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם - "in the first day of the second month in the second year after they came out of the land of Egypt".)

I have found the form "to count the omer" לספור העומר in a number of Rishonim (Abudraham, Sefer HaAgur, Sefer HaIttur, the Ran and the Tur) and it is codified in the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 489:1 - interestingly the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch corrects it to לספור ספירת העומר.)

Why is it so common (and so comfortable) to make this error? I think it is due to the mulitple uses of the semichut (construct) form in Hebrew. I've recently heard a number of people say in Hebrew (or in English translation) that they blessed the trees (בירכתי את האילנות) or that they blessed the sun (בירכתי את החמה). This is based on a misunderstanding of the phrases birkat ha'ilanot ברכת האילנות and birkat hachama ברכת החמה - they blessed God, not the trees or the sun. However, not all is lost, as few people would say that the were going to bless the food (לברך את המזון) when they are going to say birkat hamazon ברכת המזון.

The different uses of semichut led to this cute joke in Hebrew (sorry, but really won't work in translation):

ב"הפסקת עישון"- כולם מעשנים.

ב"הפסקת אוכל"- כולם אוכלים.

ב"הפסקת קפה"- כולם שותים.

אחר כך מתפלאים ש...

ב"הפסקת אש"-כולם יורים.

To conclude, I'd like to mention Henshke's interesting idea that there was no verbal sefirat haomer in the times of the Temple (and even after - he writes that it only began when the calendar was made static). He brings a popular question as to why sefirat haomer is followed by a prayer for the rebuilding of the temple, when other mitzvot that are also in memory of the Temple (like lulav on the last 6 days of sukkot) do not have such a prayer. He writes that perhaps sefirat haomer is unique because the entire practice was initiated in memory of the Temple; it wasn't performed at that time at all.

Today we have no omer offering - only the counting. But we can at least study what was done, and try to be as familiar with the omer offering as if we were living in those times...

an etymological haggadah

2009-04-05T12:57:00.005+03:00

Well, maybe we're not quite ready for an etymological haggadah just yet. But this time of year I get a lot of requests (both by email and from search engines) for explanations for Pesach related words. So I've decided to compile them all here in one place. Enjoy!

Pesach means "pass over", right? Actually, probably not:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/pesach.html

Origin of the name "Mitzrayim" and the connection to the song Misirlou:
http://www.balashon.com/2009/03/mitzrayim.html

From Chur to Cherut(einu) to Uhuru:
http://www.balashon.com/2007/03/herut-and-uhura.html

The connection between "Leil Shimurim" and "shemarim" (yeast):
http://www.balashon.com/2007/04/leil-shimurim.html

Chametz, chometz and hummus - is there a connection?
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/chametz.html

Kitniyot may not be a small issue these days, but it is related to "katan":
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/kitniyot.html

Gebrochts is related to broke - but not "broker":
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/gebrochts.html

A connection between "seder" and Sderot (but not Shedrot!)
http://www.balashon.com/2007/03/seder.html

You've probably never noticed the first word in the haggadah. The meaning "mix" is much more significant than the common translation "pour":
http://www.balashon.com/2009/03/mozeg.html

We do netilat yadayim twice? Does it mean "taking the hands"?
http://www.balashon.com/2006/10/netila.html

On all nights we eat many yerakot - but is there a connection to yarok (green)?
http://www.balashon.com/2006/08/yarok.html

Does "mesubin" just mean sitting around? Well, it probably once did, then it took on a very specific meaning of reclining, and now we're back to sitting around again:
http://www.balashon.com/2008/04/mesubin.html

"Hit his teeth" or "blunt his teeth"? And a coffee connection:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/hakheh.html

Who was the Arami? What did he do to our father?
http://www.balashon.com/2007/03/arami-oved-avi.html

God saw our "amal" - what does that mean?
http://www.balashon.com/2006/05/america.html

Not by a "saraf" - perhaps connected to "syrup" and "sherbet", but not "serpent":
http://www.balashon.com/2006/06/saraf.html

The third plague is kinim. Does kmo ken mean "(to die) like them" or ("to die") like a louse?
http://www.balashon.com/2008/04/ken.html

Bechorim or bechorot? And a connection to albacore:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/11/albacore.html

When did they start calling hazeret "horseradish"?
http://www.balashon.com/2006/03/hazeret.html

Different theories about the etymology of matza:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/matza.html

Maror and mor (myrrh) - bitter to taste and sweet to smell:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/maror.html

The karpas from the haggadah and the karpas from Megilat Esther aren't related:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/karpas.html

Tzafun means hidden. Is it related to tzafon (north)?
http://www.balashon.com/2006/07/tzafon.html

We finish the meal with the afikoman or we don't finish the meal with the afikoman? It depends what the word means:
http://www.balashon.com/2006/04/afikoman.html

Echad mi yodea? Here's the story behind all the Hebrew numbers:
http://www.balashon.com/search/label/hebrew%20numbers

mitzrayim

2009-03-31T20:33:00.003+03:00

Since we discussed the father (Cham), let's talk about the son - Mitzrayim מצרים - the Hebrew name for Egypt. In the last post we ran into difficulties reconciling the Hebrew word cham with the Egyptian kmt. However, with Mitzrayim, there are less difficulties, since this word is only found in Semitic languages - the ancient Egyptians didn't use it themselves. Here's the entry for the etymology of Mitzrayim in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament:

The Hebrew name for Egypt, misrayim, corresponds to Ugar. msrm, Phoen. msrym, Egyptian Aram. msryn, Syr. mesrem, Akk. Musur/Musru/Misri, Old Persian Mudraya, Arab. Misr; the word is not, however, attested in Old Egyptian. The Egyptians themselves called their land ... t3.wy, the "two lands" (referring to Upper and Lower Egypt) ... If misrayim constitutes a genuine dual form, and if it is connected with Akk. misru, "border, region", and Arab. misr, "border, land, capital city," it might be a translation of t3.wy, although this explanation is extremely uncertain. Meir Fraenkel's derivation of misrayim, associating it with matar, "rain," "water," is untenable.

The singular form masor also occurs in the OT (Mic. 7:12; 2 . K 192:24 par Isa. 37:25; Isa. 19:6) and the gentilic form misri is richly attested.

A few notes about this entry:

1) There is a Hebrew cognate to the Akkadian misru -metzer מצר, which also means "boundary". According to Klein, the word only appears in post-biblical Hebrew (e.g. Bava Batra 61b, 62b) and is a secondary form of the biblical word metzar מצר. That word is said to mean either "distress" or "a narrow place" ("strait" in modern Hebrew). It is familiar from the phrase בין המצרים bein hametzarim - which is used to describe the three weeks preceeding Tisha B'Av. The origin of the phrase is Eicha 1:3 -

כָּל-רֹדְפֶיהָ הִשִּׂיגוּהָ, בֵּין הַמְּצָרִים

The JPS translates this as "all her pursuers overtook her in the narrow places", but adds their common note to "in the narrow places": "Meaning of Hebrew uncertain". The Daat Mikra says that "narrow places" is probably the plain meaning of the verse, but says there are those that explain it as meaning "distress", so the verse would mean "all her pursuers overtook her when she was in distress." Interestingly, they also quote the Rashbam as saying the word here means "border" - in the borders of the Kingdom of Yehuda, and that whenever the Jews would flee to the border, their neighbors would hand them over to their enemies. So perhaps the word does have a biblical origin.

2) The Arabic misr meaning "capital city" explains how Cairo is referred to as Masr in modern Egyptian Arabic. Stahl, in his Arabic etymological dictionary, writes that this title originally applied to Fustat. He quotes Maimonides, in a letter to Ibn Tibbon, where he writes, "I reside in Mitzrayim [meaning Fostat]; the king resides in Cairo."

3) The Daat Mikra generally writes that Matzor מצור is simply a poetic form of Mitzrayim, and not a singular form (however in their commentary to Bereshit 10:6, when the word Mitzrayim first appears in the Tanach, they write that it might be a double form, indicating the two kingdoms.) In a footnote to Melachim II 19:25, they note that Matzor might preserve an earlier form of the name, and that the suffix "-im" in Mitzrayim might be locative, like Yerushalayim. This explains the Akkadian and Arabic forms, which otherwise might appear to be singular.

4) Steinberg, while clearly aware of the division of Egypt into the Upper and Lower Kingdoms (he mentions it in his entry), writes that the plural nature of Mitzrayim is due to the Nile river splitting the country into east and west (or as this book writes, "the two banks of the Nile"). This could help answer the question raised in this book, who after acknowledging the theory that Mitzrayim is a dual form, writes:

However, prophetic texts from Jeremiah [44:1] and Isaiah [11:11] differentiate between מצרים [Mitzrayim] and פרתס [Partos] as Lower and Upper Egypt, indicating that מצרים [Mitzrayim], if it is to be located as a geographic reference, at least in these prophetic texts refers to Lower Egypt or the Nile delta.

This site writes that:

Northern or Lower Egypt is called Mazor, .. while Southern or Upper Egypt is Pathros, the Egyptian Pa-to-Res, or "the land of the south" (Isa. 11:11). But the whole country is generally mentioned under the dual name of Mizraim, "the two Mazors".

However, this explanation ignores the fact that Mitzrayim and Patros are listed together in Yishayahu and Yirmiyahu.

One unexpected derivative of Mitzrayim - actually the Arabic Misr - is the song Misirlou. Even if you don't recognize the name (it means "Egyptian girl"), there's a good chance you know the song. Listen to this brief NPR story, and you'll hear how the song spread all over the world, including to the niggunim of rabbis and to klezmer bands. I guess you can take the Jews out of Mitzrayim, but you can't really take Mitzrayim out of the Jews...

alchemy

2009-03-25T19:33:00.009+02:00

In my last post I dabbled in chemistry, so I thought it made sense to discuss the origin of the word.

Today we might view chemistry as real science, as opposed to the unrealistic pursuit of a way to turn common metals into gold - alchemy. However, both the word and the discipline of chemistry derived from alchemy:

1605, originally "alchemy;" the meaning "natural physical process" is 1646, and the
scientific study not so called until 1788.

And from the Columbia Encyclopedia:

The alchemists became obsessed with their quest for the secret of transmutation; some adopted deceptive methods of experimentation, and many gained a livelihood from hopeful patrons. As a result, alchemy fell into disrepute. However, in the searching experimental quests of the alchemists chemistry had its beginnings; indeed, the histories of alchemy and chemistry are closely linked. Transmutation of elements has been accomplished in modern chemistry.

What is the origin of the word "alchemy"? Klein gives the following in his CEDEL:

alchemy, n. medieval chemistry. -- OF. alquemie (13th cent.), alchimie (14th cent.) (F. alchimie), fr. ML. alchemia, fr. Arab. al-kimiya, fr. al-, 'the', and MGk. chimeia, chimia, 'the art of the black land (Egypt)', fr. Gk. Chimia, 'Black-land, Egypt', fr. Egypt. khem, khame, 'black'. The derivation from Gk. chymeia , 'pouring', from the stem of cheein, 'to pour', is folk etymology. See W. Muss-Arnolt, Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. XXIII, p. 149

Muss-Arnolt writes in that article that the Greek word Chimia is

borrowed from the Egyptian (Coptic) kam (chame), 'black'

Now when I see Egypt and kam or khame - I can't help but thinking of חם Cham, the son of Noach, the father of Mitzrayim - the biblical Egypt. And indeed, in Tehillim (78:51, 105:23,27, 106:32) Egypt is called Cham.

It's important to note that Muss-Arnolt wrote this article in 1892. Doing a search of articles and books from the 19th century and early 20th century finds many sources that connect Cham and Khemia. For example, from this 1929 book:

It appears to be the Land of Kham or Ham, the oldest traditional name for Egypt, and a usual name for that land and its people in the Hebrew Old Testament ... The Greeks called Egypt sometimes Khemia or Khimia (Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 33)

Now I'm certainly aware that not everyone agrees with this theory. This 1812 book already writes that "the derivation of Chemia from this son of Noah, rest with me on grounds too slight and fanciful to be implicitly relied on". And since Noach's curse of the "dark" Cham and his son Canaan was often used to justify the slavery of blacks, it's not surprising that many more modern sources would challenge the whole proposition, including the etymology. For example, David M. Goldenberg's 2003 book "The Curse of Ham" spends many pages discussing the issue. He mentions a possible connection:

A derivation of Ham (ham) from kmt 'Egypt', also seemed like a good choice despite the differences between the first and last letters of the two words, and scholars until about a generation ago entertained the notion that Ham was a Hebraized form of this Egyptian word for "Egypt"...Not only Coptic documents provide us this information, but Plutarch (d. after 120 CE) does too. He noted that the Egyptians called Egypt "Chemia". With the loss of the final t and the realization of k as kh or the Greek [chi], the word looked very much like the biblical Ham. This theory too had more than phonology on its side. First, from a political-geographic perspective, the extent of Egypt's rule during the New Kingdom is neatly circumscribed by the four areas that the Bible allocates to Ham's sons...

However, he clearly rejects the theory:

Despite the attractions of the various theories, however, not one of these etymological suggestions is acceptable.

He goes on to give a thorough argument, which includes the fact that the Hebrew letter chet "is not transliterated at all or is transliterated by a vowel" in Greek - as in Noach נח becoming "Noah".

He concludes:

One thing is, however, absolutely clear. The name Ham is not related to the Hebrew or to any Semitic word meaning "dark," "black," or "heat" or to the Egyptian word meaning "Egypt". To the Early Hebrews, then, Ham did not represent the father of hot, black Africa and there is no indication from the biblical story that God intended to condemn black-skinned people to eternal slavery.

While I agree that the Bible did not justify the slavery of Africans, I'm still not fully convinced of the etymological proof. People from one language can refer to another nation by a word that sounds like what they call themselves, without fully matching up with the lingustic laws that generally determine word borrowings. Just look at how the Europeans "converted" the indigenous place names when they came to the New World. Some are so far off that it's hard to even see a connection (for example see here for the etymologies of the U.S. state names).

One person who did believe that there might be a connection between Cham and Khemia was Yitzhak Avineri. In a 1945 article published in Yad HaLashon (page 202), he complains about how recently the spelling of the Hebrew word for chemistry - chimiya - has changed from חימיה (with a chet) to כימיה (with a kaf). While the linguist pushing for the change base it on the Arabic cognate al-kimiya, he gives two proofs: 1) that chimiya might originate either in the chum (dark) color of the Nile soil, or be related to Cham, and 2) everyone pronounces the word chimiya, not kimiya. If it was to be spelled with a kaf, it would require a dagesh in the beginning, making it kimiya (my guess is the pronunciation is influenced by those of European languages, such as the Russian khimiya.) Avineri quotes a couple of dictionaries that still spell the word with a chet, but the new spelling won out, and only כימיה is found today.

mozeg

2009-03-18T20:17:00.006+02:00

With Pesach coming soon, I'd like to take a look at a word that appears in the very beginning of the Haggadah. Before Ha Lachma Anya, even before kiddush - there is the phrase: מוזגים כוס ראשון mozgim kos rishon. Generally translated as "pour the first cup", this might seem like a simple instruction, and not worthy of much notice. And in fact, none of the many hagadot that I checked discussed the word mozeg מוזג at all. But as we often see here, there's more to it than meets the eye.

Let's start by looking at the word mozeg. While it does mean "pour" in modern Hebrew, that wasn't the original meaning of the word. It appears in Biblical Hebrew once - in the noun form mezeg מזג, in Shir HaShirim 7:3. Its sister form, מסך, appears a number of times - both as a verb masach (Yishayahu 5:22, 19:14, Tehilim 102:10, Mishlei 9:2,5) and as the nouns mesek (Tehilim 75:9) and mimsak ממסך (Yishayahu 65:11, Mishlei 23:30). What does it mean? It means "to mix", specifically to mix wine.

Some of my readers will jump at the similarities between mezeg/mesek and the English word "mix" - or its Greek source misgein. As this scholar pointed out, the מָסְכָה יֵינָהּ - mascha yeina of Mishlei 9:2 looks a lot like English and Latin:

When Jerome must translate miscuit vinum, and the RSV "she has mixed her wine," we have an uncanny feeling that Latin and English are part of the same linguistic world as Hebrew.

And there are those who do try to connect them. We've seen before that there seems to be a Greek connection to many of the words in Shir HaShirim, and Graetz thinks that mezeg might be a Greek borrowing as well. However, most scholars think that's not likely, and they don't even point to a possible earlier common root (as we saw with wine and yayin). There are those that actually connect מזג / מסך to the Egyptian mdg/mtk.

While mesek shows up more times than mezeg in the Tanach, in Rabbinic Hebrew, the verb mozeg is much more common. (The Even Shoshan dictionary strangely quotes the Mishna in Berachot 8:2 and Pesachim 10:2 as examples in their entry for מזג under the meaning "pour", when the Mishna clearly meant "mix". ) In fact in Avoda Zara 58b, we see that the rabbis noted this development:

R. Assi asked R. Yochanan: How is it when wine is mixed (masak) by a heathen? — He said to him: Use the verb mazag! [R. Assi] replied: I used the Scriptural word as in, "She has slain her sacrifice, she has mixed [masekah] her wine" (Mishlei 9:2). He said to him: The language of the Torah is distinct and so is the language of the Sages.

The verb mozeg continues to mean "mix" in Medieval (and later) Hebrew as well. In fact, there's an interesting parallel between the English word "temper" and mezeg. Temper originally meant "to mix". From here we get temperament - the composition (mix) of one's personality, and mezeg had the same meaning in Jewish philosophical writings. Another derivative of temper is temperature - the composition of the weather - and in Hebrew, we have the related terms mezeg avir מזג אוויר- "weather" and mizug avir מיזוג אוויר or mazgan מזגן - "air conditioner". (There is also the English word temperance - but as it means "abstinence from alcoholic drink", I don't think we'll find a related word in Hebrew with the root מזג...)

We've skipped over an important question: Why was there a need to mix their wine at all? We see from Talmudic sources that wine was mixed with water, generally three parts water to one part wine (see Shabbat 77a, Niddah 19a). Since today we never mix wine with water, a common explanation is that the wine of that time was much stronger than the wine today.

However, as a doctor friend of mine pointed out to me, there's a problem with that explanation. Before the discovery and spread of distillation, no wine could ever reach a higher alcohol content than 14%. (In research for this post, I learned that brandy is wine that has been distilled, and can reach 36-60% alcohol content, and port is wine that has been fortified by adding brandy - and has approximately 20% alcohol.) Diluting such a wine by 75% leaves a very low alcohol content. It's not likely that they were so sensitive to alcohol that they need such a weak wine. So what's the answer?

So as we did when we looked at mesubin, let's go to the Greeks. They too diluted their wine (in a special bowl called a krater, from which we get the English word crater) - often at the same proportions mentioned in the Mishna. This book describes the Greek and Roman practice of diluting wine:

Wine was almost invariably mixed with water before being drunk, and drinking undiluted wine, called merum, was either viewed as a provincial and barbarian habit, or, as a drink reserved for the gods.

(The English word "mere" actually comes from the Latin word merum).
They continue:

The Romans usually mixed one part of wine to two parts of water, and hot water, or even seawater could be used. This contrasts somewhat with the Greeks, who also diluted their wine, but with three, or four, parts of water. According to Pliny, seawater was added to 'enliven the wine's smoothness'. Diluting wine in ancient times served two purposes: firstly, it turned it into a thirst-quenching drink that could be consumed in large quantities; and, secondly, the presence of alcohol made the water safer to drink, an important consideration in the growing cities of the Greek and Roman empires, where potable water was at a premium.

We see that drinking straight water was discouraged in Jewish sources as well (Gittin 69b).

The book The Road to Eleusis also discusses the issue of the Greeks diluting their wine, and comes up with the same question about the alcohol content. And the authors find something fascinating:

This custom of diluting wine deserves our attention since the Greeks did not know the art of distillation and hence the alcoholic content of their wines could not have exceeded about fourteen percent, at which concentration the alcohol from natural fermentation becomes fatal to the fungus that produced it, thereby terminating the process. Simple evaporation without distillation could not increase the alcoholic content since alcohol, which has a lower boiling point than water, will merely escape to the air, leaving the final product weaker instead of more concentrated. Alcohol in fact was never isolated as the toxin in wine and there is no word for it in ancient Greek. Hence the dilution of wine, usually with at least three parts of water, could be expected to produce a drink of slight inebriating properties.

That, however, was not the case. The word for drunkenness in Greek designates a state of raving madness. We hear of some wines so strong that they could be diluted with twenty parts of water and that required at least eight parts water to be drunk safely, for, according to report, the drinking of certain wines straight actually caused permanent brain damage and in some cases even death. Just three small cups of diluted wine were enough in fact to bring the drinker to the threshold of madness. Obviously the alcohol could not have been the cause of these extreme reactions. We can also document the fact that different wines were capable of inducing different physical symptoms, ranging from slumber to insomnia and hallucinations.

The solution to this apparent contradiction is simply that ancient wine, like the wine of most early peoples, did not contain alcohol as its sole inebriant but was ordinarily a variable infusion of herbal toxins in a vinous liquid. Unguents, spices, and herbs, all with recognized psychotropic properties, could be added to the wine at the ceremony of its dilution with water. A description of such a ceremony occurs in Homer’s Odyssey, where Helen prepares a special wine by adding the euphoric nepenthes to the wine that she serves her husband and his guest. The fact is that the Greeks had devised a spectrum of ingredients for their drinks, each with its own properties.

(One of the authors, Carl A. P. Ruck, discusses the issue in more detail in this book - pages 92-97).

So it wasn't the alcohol that made the wine strong - it was the spices! And in fact, we see that "spices" were added to wine in a number of Hebrew sources. We see that almost all the mentions of mesek can be explained to be adding spices or other drugs to the wine (see for example Daat Mikra on Yishayahu 19:14, and Shadal on Yishayahu 5:22, who writes, "they would add spices סמים to wine in order to make it more intoxicating"). In Maccabees III 5:45 it says that the elephants were driven to madness before battle by giving them "wine mixed with frankincense". Kaddari mentions Mark 15:23 , where we see that myrrh was added to the wine as an anaesthetic (we've previously discussed how in Jewish sources wine was provided before an execution.) And there are similar sources in the Talmud as well (Maaser Sheni 2:1). Note that the Aramaic word for intoxication was besumei בסומי- from besamim בשמים, "spices"!

We've mentioned before (for example in our discussion of afikoman) that the seder was modeled on the Greek symposium. However, the rabbis made sure that this special occasion did not denigrate into simple revelry or worse. So of course it was very important to mix the wine with water. In fact, there was an opinion in the Mishna that if one did not dilute the wine the blessing "borei pri hagafen" could not be made (Berachot 50b). And one of the descriptions of the "rebellious son" was that he drank neat wine - without dilution (Sanhedrin 70a). Certainly this would not be appropriate for the Seder night (see Pesachim 108b for a discussion of whether one fulfills the seder night obligation with undiluted wine).

Of course as time went on, as Rashi and the Tosafot mention (on Pesachim 108b), there was no longer a need or a practice to dilute the wine. However, I do find it strange that nothing is done at the Seder to recall this once common custom. We saw that with mesubin and afikoman that the the meaning and practice of the words have changed significantly over the generations. But we still do eat the afikoman and lean on our side - even if that wasn't the original intent. What is left of the mixing of wine? Maybe, if only to get the children to ask questions - we should be inspired by Shir HaShirim, and not leave out the "mezeg" -אַל-יֶחְסַר הַמָּזֶג al yechsar hamazeg!

bira

2009-03-08T19:42:00.006+02:00

Purim is coming up, so let's talk about the word bira בירה. No, I'm not talking about the Hebrew word for "beer" - although I will mention that Avineri in Yad HaLashon writes that it would be better if we used the Biblical shekhar שכר for beer. He also doesn't know why the letter heh was added to the end of bira - no European language calls it bira, so we may as well have called it "beer".

No, I'm talking about the unrelated word bira - which in modern Hebrew means "capital (city)". However, the word meant something different originally. It derives from the Akkadian birtu, meaning "fortress", and according to the Encylopedia Mikrait entered Hebrew via the Aramaic בירתא. We find it in the later Biblical books - Nechemiah (1:1, 2:8, 7:2), Divrei HaYamim I (29:1,19) where it referred to the Beit HaMikdash or the fortress protecting it, Daniel (8:2) and of course frequently in Megilat Esther as Shushan HaBira שושן הבירה.

The meaning in the biblical passages is up to some debate, but is generally understood to mean fortress, citadel or palace. My own theory is that perhaps it is equivalent to armon ארמון - which only appears in the earlier First Temple books (see also Radak, Sefer Hashorashim pg 42.)

Prof. Paul Mandel in his article "Birah as an Architectural Term in Rabbinic Literature" in Tarbiz 61 (1992) shows how by the time of Talmudic Hebrew, the word bira came to mean "a large building" or an insula. This is the sense used in the midrash where Avraham is compared to someone seeing a bira (mansion) on fire, and looks for the ba'al habira בעל הבירה (master of the mansion).

The idea that bira meant some kind of fortress (either one building or a compound) seems to have been universally accepted by both commentaries and translations until relatively recently. For example, Ibn Ezra on Esther 1:2 distinguishes between the city of Shushan and the bira of Shushan (see here for an extensive discussion of the Ibn Ezra in English, along with diagrams). This distinction seems quite necessary, since we see twice (3:15, 8:14-15) that both the city and the bira are mentioned - indicating two separate entities. This article by Avraham Korman (based partially on Reuvein Margolies in HaMikrah v'Hamesorah, which is also quoted here) points out a number of difficulties that our distinction helps resolve:

In 1:5 it says that the king made a banquet in his garden everyone who lived in Shushan HaBira. If it referred to the entire city, it would be hard to understand how thousands of people could fit in his garden. But if it was only for the king's fortress, it is a reasonable (although still impressive) number. The assumption is that within the royal fortress lived approximately 1000 people.
In 2:5 it mentions that a Jew lived in Shushan HaBira - Mordechai. This seems to indicate that he was the only Jew. How is that possible - there were many Jews in the city of Shushan? However, he was the only Jew in the king's compound. The Vilna Gaon points out in his commentary that this is mentioned to highlight the miraculous nature of the story, where Mordechai was fortunate enough to be in the king's stronghold.
In 9:6, it says that the Jews killed 500 men in Shushan HaBira. In 9:15 it describes how after receiving permission from the king, the Jews killed 300 people in Shushan. This indicates two different incidents.
He also quotes Rabbi Meir Mazuz as pointing out that Shushan is always spelled with a kamatz, whereas Shushan HaBira is always spelled with a patach.

This is also confirmed by more modern archeological research (famously done by Dieulafoy), for example here:

The fortress ... This distinguishes the acropolis, in which the palace lay, from the less strongly fortified surrounding "city of Susa", which lay on the other side of the river Choaspses.

(It's interesting to note the the midrash in Megillah 15a notes that Mordechai had to cross a river in order to pass the message from Esther - who was in the bira - to the Jews in the city of Shushan.)

So if bira is distinct from "city", when and how did it come to mean "capital"? The linguist Yosef Klausner wrote in a 1912 essay that the use of bira as "capital" was common in literature, but should be abandoned, since the original meaning was "fortress". He says that this is a relatively new usage in any case, as it only began during the period of the Haskala - the Jewish Enlightenment.

And indeed if we look at the Biur, the Biblical commentary written by Mendelssohn and his students, we see that they deliberately gave the word a "new" definition. (Thanks so much to S. from On the Main Line for his help finding the Biur as well as other sources in this post.) According to this book, "the commentary on Esther (1788) contains a German translation by A. Wolfsohn and a Hebrew commentary by J. Lowe". Lowe (also known as Joel Bril) writes the following in his commentary on Esther 1:2 -

"the city where the king sits is called bira, and according to the Ibn Ezra, the meaning is palace"

Why they felt the need for this change is not clear to me. But it is evident that they "knew what they were doing". This wasn't a natural progression of meaning - it is a clear rejection of the Ibn Ezra, who represented the consensus.

The Biur's explanation seems to have had a major influence on Isaac Leeser, who wrote one of the first Jewish English translations to the Bible. According to this article

The Jewish prototype for the Leeser Bible was Zunz's Die vier und zwanzig Bucher der Heiligen Schrift (1838). Leeser even used the English equivalent, The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures, for his Bible. "As respects the translation," Leeser wrote in the postscript to his Pentateuch, "he feels it his duty to acknowledge that he has received the greatest aid from the Pentateuch of Arnheim, and the Bible of Zunz, even to a greater degree than from the works of Mendelssohn, Hochstatter, Johlson, Heineman, and several anonymous contributors to our biblical literature.

However, in this case, Leopold Zunz translates bira as burg, meaning "castle", whereas Leeser translates Esther 1:2 as

In those days, when this king Achashverosh was sitting on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the capital

Leeser apparently had a great impact on future Jewish translations. For example, Koren's The Jerusalem Bible, translated by Harold Fisch, draws on Leeser as well as the later Jewish Family Bible by Friedlander. All three use "capital" for bira.

A comparison of Google search results is helpful here:

"the fortress shushan" - 121
"the capital shushan" - 159
"shushan the capital" - 1,080
"shushan the fortress" - 1,730
"shushan the palace" - 12,900
"shushan the castle" - 274
"shushan the capitol" - 158

Now I'm sure that the high number of "shushan the palace" is due to it being used in the very popular KJV translation. But what I find interesting is that from looking at the examples of "shushan the capital" (and "the capital shushan") is that they are nearly all from clearly Jewish websites. Even very Orthodox sites use this "non-traditional" translation. I have a feeling that this is not only due to the influence of Leeser, but also from the impact of teaching and speaking Modern Hebrew, even in English speaking countries. Everyone knows now that Yerushalayim is the bira of Medinat Yisrael - so it is logical that Shushan would be the capital of Persia.

If you noticed, one of those search results is a little strange. "Shushan the capitol"? As a reminder, capital and capitol are not synonyms. From The American Heritage Book of English Usage:

Capital and capitol are terms that are often confused, mainly because they refer to things that are in some ways related. The term for a town or city that serves as a seat of government is spelled capital. The term for the building in which a legislative assembly meets is spelled capitol.

So who called Shushan the "capitol"? If I'm not mistaken, this was first used by Artscroll, in their very first publication, an English edition of Megilat Esther. Here's an excerpt from that book. They translate Esther 1:2 as:

that in those days, when King Ahasuerus sat on his royal throne which was in Shushan the capitol

But in the commentary, they write:

Shushan the Capitol
This was the palace surrounded by the less fortified עיר שושן, the residential part of Shushan where the Jews lived. [The capitol was separated from the city by a river.]

Even after considering this for a while, I haven't been able to figure out what Artscroll was going for here. Was capitol a spelling mistake and they meant to write "capital"? That doesn't seem likely, as they clearly identified Shushan as a palace in the commentary. In the introduction to the volume, they explain how their translation is more in tune with tradition than the JPS 1917 translation. That translation uses "Shushan the castle.". Maybe they figured they could appear different from the JPS, while also staying connected to tradition by giving it the name of a building? And so perhaps they appropriated the term capitol for bira? Not sure. And why do they jump between upper and lower case?

In any case, in this later book, the Interlinear Megillah - they use the more common "capital".

So what we have here, is an innovation that should have been rejected by both the traditional Orthodox: כָּל אִישׁ שֹׂרֵר בְּבֵיתוֹ "every man should wield authority in his home" as well as the Modern Hebrew linguists - וּמְדַבֵּר כִּלְשׁוֹן עַמּוֹ - "and speak the language of his own people". But in the end - וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא - the opposite occurred...

shoshana

2009-03-03T12:00:00.008+02:00

Purim is coming up soon, and I was recently asked about the meaning of the phrase שושנת יעקב shoshanat yaakov, found in the piyut sung after the reading of the megila.

I grabbed the siddur closest to me, an Artscroll, and it gave the translation "rose of Jacob". However, the Sacks translation in the new Koren English siddur has "lily of Jacob". A number of other siddurim have either "lily" or "rose", so I thought perhaps Birnbaum could break the tie. He actually translates the phrase as "Jews of Shushan", which probably is closest to the figurative sense of the phrase, but doesn't help us as to the question of whether a shoshana שושנה is a lily or a rose. (Just to make it clear, there's no etymological connection between Shushan and shoshana. However, the folk etymology is ancient - going all the way back to the Babylonian conquest of the city. So it certainly makes sense that the anonymous author of the piyut would make a poetic connection between the two terms.)

So let's look at the dictionaries. Here's there is much more uniformity. Klein has two entries - one for שושן (shoshan or shushan) and the other for shoshana -both primarily based on Ben Yehuda. First shoshan:

lily. (Some scholars identify shoshan with the lotus, others with the ranunculus Asiaticus, still others with the cyperus papyrus.) [Related to Aramaic שושנתא (whence Ugaritic twt, Arabic sausan, Vulgar Arabic susan), Akkadian sheshanu (=lily), Syriac shishno (=butomus flowers). Several scholars derive these words from Egyptian sshshn and sshn, Coptic shoshen (=big flower; lotus). According to others the above words go back to Akkadian shushu (six-sided), shishshu (=sixth). Greek souson, whence Latin Susanna, are Semitic loan words.]

As you may recall, we discussed the connection between shoshana and six in our post on shesh. I mentioned there that Ibn Ezra connects shoshana to shesh in his commentary on Shir HaShirim 2:2 -

It is a white flower of sweet but narcotic perfume, and it receives its name because the flower has, in every case, six [shesh] petals, within which are six long filaments.

Klein continues with his entry on shoshana:

1. lily. 2. Post Biblical Hebrew: flower 3. PBH knot of a nail 4. New Hebrew: erysipelas (disease). 5. NH rose [a collateral form of שושן]

Steinberg identifies both the shoshan and shoshana as a lily, and Kaddari specifies the lilium candidum, the shoshan hatzachor שושן הצחור - the flower on the one shekel coin. (He does say that it could be referring to the lotus in Melachim I 7: 22, 26). Amos Chacham in his Daat Mikra commentary on Shir HaShirim, distinguishes between the shoshana bein hachochim שושנה בין החוחים - lilium candidum (2:2), and shoshanat ha'amakim שושנת העמקים - narcissus tazetta (2:1), also known as the narkis נרקיס (which also has six petals). The Encyclopedia Ivrit (quoted in this interesting article about shoshana) goes so far as to say that when the lilium candidum was found growing wild in the Galil and Carmel - the long debate about the identification of the Biblical shoshana was over.

So if the Biblical shoshana referred to a kind of lily - when did it become associated with the rose? Ben Yehuda writes that in Talmudic Hebrew, shoshana came to indicate "flower" in general. Paul Romanoff, in this article, writes:

The lily, shoshanah, is used generically, as it embraced other related flowers. Lilies had grown on hills and in the field. The choicest of lilies were those that grew in the valleys, in the proximity of water. Perah - flower in the Bible - is often rendered shoshanah - lily in the Targum.

In a footnote, he notes Targum Onkelos to Shmot 25:31-34 and Bamidbar 8:4 as examples of perach being translated as shoshana.

He then goes on to discuss Jewish coins with flowers on them, including one with what looks like a rose. He explains this as follows:

This seeming inaccuracy is explained by the generic term of shoshan which might have included such flowers as the lotus and even the rose. In fact, the Midrash contains a few passages which speak of a soft lily, and the excellent of this kind is the lily of the valley, paralleling the rose of the valley. Besides these allusions, the Midrash specifically mentions a shoshanah shel wered -a lily-rose - which grows in orchards, this species of lily-rose being the symbol of Israel.

So we see from this example from Vayikra Rabba (23:3), that the shoshana shel vered שושנה של ורד was a subset of the more generic shoshana. Vered is a post-biblical word, to which Klein gives the following etymology:

Aramaic ורדא, borrowed from Iranian *wrda, whence Greek rodon, whence Latin rosa (=rose)

Ben Yehuda says that the association of the rose with the shoshana eventually led to later commentators to identify the shoshana with the rose in general. He gives two reasons: a) because they viewed the rose as the most beautiful flower, and b) the rose was well known to them, whereas they had difficulty identifying the Biblical shoshana. This Safa-Ivrit article mentions two other reasons: a) the shoshana is described as the queen of the flowers - which could apply to the rose, and b) the word vered doesn't appear in the Tanach, so they didn't need to say that shoshana = lily and vered = rose. I would also add that in no verse is the color of the shoshana or shoshan mentioned - leaving room for it to be either the white lily or the red rose. (Shir HaShirim 5:13 does mention שפתותיו שושנים - "his lips are like shoshanim". However, that does not necessarily mean color - as Ibn Ezra points out it could refer to the fragrance of the shoshanim, or as suggested by the Daat Mikra, the shape of the leaves.)

Rashi in particular reinforced the identification of shoshana with rose in his commentary on Shir HaShirim 2:2, where he describes it as always remaining red (although he doesn't mention the word rose or vered.) It also appears that the Zohar identifies the shoshana as a rose.

As the Safa-Ivrit article points out, immigrants to Israel from Europe with names related to Rose - Raisel, Rosa, etc - generally used to adopt the name Shoshana. So while vered was still known to be "rose", I'm guessing it was more of a technical term, and less of a popular one. However, now the name Vered is also popular - which I think came in parallel to the flower being more popularly known as vered.

So which translation is right? In a way, this is similar to the phenomenon we've seen before, such as in the question of what is the nesher. We now live in a scientific age, where every plant and animal is classified and sub-classified into genus and species. So we expect that the Hebrew names should reflect that level of precision. But the ancients weren't as concerned with that level of detail as we are today, and therefore shoshana could refer to a number of different flowers - even those fairly distantly related botanically.

So while both the Biblical and modern shoshana mean "lily", it could be that the author of the piyut was actually thinking "rose." So maybe Birnbaum had the safest translation after all...

ma pitom

2009-02-26T22:38:00.004+02:00

The Hebrew slang phrase ma pitom מה פתאום is used to express surprise or incredulity:

מה פתאום אתה נוסע ליפן? - Mah pitom atah noseyah l'yapan - "Why in the world are you going to Japan!?"

A: Are you worried about traveling to Turkey?
B: Mah pitom! (Don't be silly!)

A: "You just stepped on my foot!"
B: Mah pitom! (No way!)
The proper response in this case is ken nachon כן נכון - "Yes you did!"
(Steg points out that this is the type of dialogue between God, Avraham and Sarah in Bereshit 18:10-15.)

What does this phrase mean? Literally, ma means "what", and pitom means "suddenly". However, "what suddenly" doesn't make much sense (in English or in Hebrew), so we need to find the origin of the phrase. Rosenthal writes that it is a loan translation (calque) from the Yiddish vos plutsem וואס פלוצעם and the Russian chego vdrug. I asked some Russian speaking friends about chego vdrug, and they told me that:

The best way to translate this phrase is probably "why all of a sudden" or "why now"
chego in this case is why
vdrug: at this moment, suddenly

So an original meaning of "Why suddenly" makes more sense. As far as the Yiddish, vos means "what" and plutsem is "suddenly". (It comes from the German plötzlich, meaning "sudden, abrupt" which derives from platzen, "burst". This is the source of the Yiddish word plotz - "to burst, explode - from strong emotion.) However, the meaning is clearly, "why suddenly". Professor Nissan Netzer (author of the book "Hebrew in Jeans - The Image of Hebrew Slang", which I'm currently enjoying) has confirmed to me that a better adaption into Hebrew would have been "lama pitom" למה פתאום.

Both English and Hebrew have many Yiddish calques. Many expressions in English, such as "get lost" or "enough already" are borrowed from Yiddish, and perhaps aren't recognizable as such today. Hebrew is even more influenced by Yiddish - Netzer fills pages 212-230 of his book with loan translations from Yiddish to Hebrew.

Clearly, "what" and "why" are closely related. "What for" means "why". After thinking about it for a bit, I think I found an English loan translation from Yiddish where they replaced "why" with "what" - Alfred E Newman's famous catch phrase in Mad Magazine - "What, me worry?" The creators of Mad Magazine were very much influenced by Yiddish, and I'm guessing that phrase really means "Why should I worry?".

It turns out that the founder of Mad Magazine, Harvey Kurtzman, went to Camp Nitgedayget - "Don't Worry" in Yiddish. According to this book:

Mad's motto, "What me worry? I read Mad," transformed the Yiddish summer camp's name into a formula for nationwide comic relief from pressures to conform during the 1950s. Paul Buhle reports that Kurtzman attended Camp Nitgedayget in the thirties; perhaps this Mad man's satire of consumer culture and American icons was influenced by his summer days at Camp Don't Worry - certainly by the name of the camp.

And if we look at one of Kurtzman's early Mad covers, perhaps he knew the phrase vos plutsem as well...

egoz

2009-02-20T12:22:00.005+02:00

After discussing shaked and botnim, I thought it made sense to talk about the other biblical nut - the egoz אגוז. Like botnim, it only appears once in the Tanach, in Shir HaShirim 6:11 -

אֶל-גִּנַּת אֱגוֹז יָרַדְתִּי

This is generally translated as "I went down to the nut grove" but occasionally as "I went down to the walnut grove". And indeed, egoz can mean either "nut", or the more specific "walnut".

Like some of the other words we've looked at in Shir HaShirim, it is apparently of foreign origin. Klein writes:

Compare Aramaic אגוזא, אמגוזא, Arabic jauz, Ethiopian gauz. These words are probably borrowed from Persian gauz.

Even-Shoshan also adds the Armenian engoiz. There is also apparently a Ugaritic word 'rgz, which some scholars think may be related. This would make a Persian origin less likely.

In order to distinguish the walnut from other egozim (nuts), Modern Hebrew has two specific terms: egoz hamelech אגוז המלך - "the king's nut". This term has ancient origins - the Greeks called the walnut "basilicon", meaning "royal nut" (basileus meaning "king"); the species name is the Latin Juglans regia, of the same meaning.

It is also popularly called egoz moach אגוז מוח - "brain nut", due to the similarity between a walnut:

And the hemispheres of a brain:

(I don't think it has anything to do with the quote I've heard since I was a kid about the dinosaur Stegosaurus having a brain the size of a walnut.)

Other nuts also have egoz in their name:

coconut - אגוז הודו egoz hodu ("Indian nut"), אגוז קוקוס egoz kokus
pecan - אגוז פיקן egoz pecan
pine nut - אגוז צנובר egoz tsnobar
nux vomica - אגוז הקיא egoz haki
hazelnut - אגוז לוז egoz luz, אגוז אלסר egoz ilsar
brazil nut - אגוז ברזיל egoz brazil

I've seen that people mistakenly think that just egoz means "hazelnut" instead of "walnut". I have a feeling that this comes from the Israeli candy Egozi - a chocolate bar with a hazelnut filling.

botnim

2009-02-16T20:33:00.002+02:00

Previously, we discussed shaked שקד - almond. While shaked appears in a number of verses, a different nut - botnim בוטנים -shows up only once, in Bereshit 43:11 -

וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲבִיהֶם, אִם-כֵּן אֵפוֹא זֹאת עֲשׂוּ--קְחוּ מִזִּמְרַת הָאָרֶץ בִּכְלֵיכֶם, וְהוֹרִידוּ לָאִישׁ מִנְחָה: מְעַט צֳרִי, וּמְעַט דְּבַשׁ, נְכֹאת וָלֹט, בָּטְנִים וּשְׁקֵדִים.

Now for those of us familiar with modern Hebrew, we know botnim as peanuts. However, the English translation tells us a different story (I'm using the JPS, but all the English translations agree on this point):

Then their father Israel said to them, "If it must be so, do this: take some of the choice products of the land in your baggage, and carry them down as a gift for the man - some balm and some honey, gum, ladanum, pistachio nuts [botnim] and almonds.

So how did we get from pistachio nuts to peanuts? I found the answer in Yitzhak Avineri's book Yad Halashon (page 73). He points out that the word pistak appears in the Talmud (e.g. Gittin 59a, Yerushalmi Kilaim 27a) - either as פיסתק or פיסטק. This word was borrowed from the Greek, which also gives us the English word pistachio:

from It. pistacchio, from L. pistacium "pistachio nut," from Gk. pistakion, from pistake "pistachio tree," from Pers. pista "pistachio tree."

The pistachio is a nut that has been cultivated in the Middle East since ancient times; however, the peanut is native to South America. When it was brought back to Europe, each country gave the peanut a name in its own language. The Germans call the peanut erdnuss - literally "earth nut". And following this pattern, there are those that call the peanut egoz adama אגוז אדמה - "earth nut".

However, the French call the peanut pistache de terre - "earth pistachio". (They also call it cacahuète, arachide, and pois de terre. Not sure why they have so many names.) Following the French name, Hebrew originally had botnei adama בטני אדמה - "earth pistachio". However, pistachios were already being called fistuk פיסטוק - so the "adama" was dropped, and peanuts were just botnim. Avineri says this is also due to the fact that peanuts were much prevalent in Israel than pistachios (he wrote this piece in 1955; I'm not sure that's still true today.) He suggests the retronym botnei etz בטני עץ for pistachios, but is comfortable with the more foreign term of fistuk.

One interesting question is, what is the singular of botnim? I think most Israelis would say boten בוטן - like Ben Yehuda records it. However, since the word only appears once in the Bible, in plural form, it's not so easy to say. Klein and Even Shoshan have botne בָּטְנֶה for the the pistachio nut and botna בָּטְנָה for the pistachio tree (so the tree appears in the Mishna - Sheviit 7:5). Ben Yehuda also mentions this approach, as well as one that says that botna is both the name of the nut and the name of the tree.

shapaat

2009-02-11T20:32:00.003+02:00

As I've pointed out before, I'm a big fan of the comic strip Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis. Well, in today's comic he presents another great pun:

However, unlike some puns which only deal with homophones, the words "influenza" and "influence" are actually related:

1743, borrowed during an outbreak of the disease in Europe, from It. influenza "influenza, epidemic," originally "visitation, influence (of the stars)," from M.L. influentia (see influence). Used in It. for diseases since at least 1504 (cf. influenza di febbre scarlattina "scarlet fever") on notion of astral or occult influence. The 1743 outbreak began in Italy. Often applied since mid-19c. to severe colds.

The Hebrew word for influenza, shapaat שפעת has a similar origin. From Klein:

Formed, under the influence of Italian influenca, from השפיע (= he influenced) according to the pattern פעלת, serving to form names of diseases ... The disease was called influenca because it was originally attributed to the influence of the stars.

The פעלת pattern that Klein mentions is described in this article (see here for original Hebrew) by Dalia Marx:

In the course of discussing various afflictions and the methods of their purification, parashat Tazria lists a number of diseases and bodily conditions: baheret ["white discoloration"] (13:4), tzarevet ["scar"] (13:23), sapahat ["swelling"](13:2), tzara'at ["leprosy"], karahat ["baldness of the top of the head"] (13:42), gabahat ["baldness of the sides of the head"] (13:42). These terms all share a common grammatical form: although some of the words vary from it slightly due to the presence of a guttural stop.

When spoken Hebrew awoke to life in the end of the nineteenth century it needed new words to describe new diseases. Rabbi Aharon Meir MaZIA, an ophthalmologist and aboriculturalist who chaired the Language Committee (which eventually became the Academy for the Hebrew Language) from 1926 until his death in 1930, composed a lexicon of medical and scientific terms.

In order to invent names for diseases that were never mentioned in classical Hebrew sources, MaZIA and others following him used the biblical form for disease names - , a form exemplified repeatedly in our parashiyot - in combination with new roots. For instance; rubella, a disease that causes redness of the skin, is called ademet [adom = red]. Hepatitis, which causes the eyes to acquire a yellow hue (we will come soon to Hebrew's new color-terms), is called tzahevet [tzahov = yellow]. Edema, the pathological retention of fluids in the body, is called batzeket [batzek = swollen]. Rabies, a viral disease often found in dogs is called kalevet [kelev = dog]. One who coughs [mishta'el] may be suffering from sha'elet [pertusis]. The term influenza originates from reference to the occult influence [hashpa'a] of the stars, and so it is called shapa'at. Many suffer tiredness [ayeifut] from jet-lag, or ya'efet, one of the more recent words to be invented by the Academy of the Hebrew Language.

Sometimes it took a while for a word to really enter the language; some never make it at all. For example, Eliezer Ben Yehudah, the greatest reviver of Hebrew, wished to call tuberculosis (a disease from which he personally suffered) genihat hadam ["groaning of the blood"], but the term shahefet - which follows the standard form for disease-names and is of biblical origin - ended up taking its place.

The vitality of Hebrew is evidenced by the way names for social ills are invented in accordance with the schema mentioned above. For instance: sahevet [taking too much time to execute an action, from sahev = to drag or carry with effort] and sagemet [megalomania of young officers, from sagam = second lieutenant]. Many public speakers are chronic suffers of daberet [loquaciousness, from dibbur = speech], or worse yet, barberet [speaking nonsense, from levarber = to babble].

Neither Klein nor Marx say exactly when shapaat entered modern Hebrew. In Ben Yehuda's dictionary, it says that the word is "found in literature and speech." He doesn't indicate that he coined it - and I've seen that description used for other modern words that I know he didn't coin.

I wrote to the Hebrew Language Academy asking if they knew when the word was first used. They pointed me to the following entry in Ben Yehuda's newspaper Hatzvi, from July 21, 1893.

He describes the outbreak of a disease called אינפלואינצה - influenza, which he later calls shapaat. In a footnote there, he notes that shapaat is "the Hebrew name, according to the naming pattern for diseases, for influenza, according to the meaning of that word." In the following issue, he mentions shapaat three times - each followed by influenza in parentheses.

What's strange for me here, is that most European languages weren't calling the disease influenza. As you can see here, in Russian, French and German (among others), it was called "grippe". Only in English and Italian was it called influenza - neither of which I'm guessing were well known by the Jews living in Palestine in 1893. So it doesn't seem likely that the average person called the disease "influenza" and therefore the name shapaat came somewhat naturally.

What's also strange about the word, is while it does seem to follow the pattern as the other diseases above, it's a much less understandable one. Ademet, tzahevet, kalevet - the connection between the condition and the name was very clear. But I doubt most non-linguists knew the centuries old etymology of influenza and therefore figured shapaat was a good name for the disease. Couldn't some aspect of the disease - which Ben Yehuda describes at length in the first article - been used to come up with a Hebrew term?

It's possible that the word didn't have the astronomical connotations, as discussed here:

Originally, the word [influence] was used astrologically to describe power that flowed from the stars and controlled a person's destiny. In the centuries that followed, influence came to refer to the effect of nonastronomical forces such as alcohol ("under the influence") and germs (influenza, later clipped to flu) and especially financial power.

But it still seems like a strange choice. Maybe I'm missing something. Perhaps this was one of those stories lost to history, and there was a good reason for the name. If anyone knows more, please let me know...

One unusual etymology mentioned here (and rejected) is:

Influenza ... is a corruption of the Arabic word anfalanza. Anf in Arabic means nose and Al-anza means the goat. A coughing, drooling, nose-dripping goat is said to have anfalanza...

(This is actually a good example of the dropped nuns in Hebrew. Arabic has anf - Hebrew has אף af. Arabic has anza and Hebrew has עז ez.)

Maybe Pastis was hinting to this theory when he had Pig speak specifically to Goat (and notice his nose)...

shaked

2009-02-08T21:44:00.002+02:00

Today is Tu B'Shvat, and while it is the new year for all of the trees, it is very much associated with the almond tree. This is the time that the almond trees blossom, and therefore they star in Tu B'Shvat songs, including perhaps the most famous, Hashkediya Porachat.

The Hebrew Language Academy put out a page today discussing a number of Tu B'Shvat words. They mention that Levin Kipnis, the well known writer of children's literature, probably coined the word shkediya שקדיה in 1919. (I'm assuming they're referring to this song by Kipnis). They point out that originally, the word for the almond tree was shaked שקד - but the new word shkediya allowed a distinction between an almond (shaked) and an almond tree.

Hebrew also has a verb שקד - meaning "to work diligently, to labor, to strive". Is there a connection between the verb and the almond tree? Many sources make a connection. Klein, for example, points out that the original meaning of the verb was "to watch, wake", and the almond tree is "so called because it is the tree which flourishes ( = awakens) first."

Much earlier, this opinion was given by Rashi on Yirmiyahu 1:11-12 (and Rashi was likely influenced by midrashim such as Yerushalmi Taanit 4:5). The verse there has a play on words:

וַיְהִי דְבַר-ה' אֵלַי לֵאמֹר, מָה-אַתָּה רֹאֶה יִרְמְיָהוּ; וָאֹמַר, מַקֵּל שָׁקֵד אֲנִי רֹאֶה. יב וַיֹּאמֶר ה' אֵלַי, הֵיטַבְתָּ לִרְאוֹת: כִּי-שֹׁקֵד אֲנִי עַל-דְּבָרִי, לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ.

The word of God came to me: "What do you see Yirmiyahu?" I replied, "I see a branch of an almond tree".

God said to me: "You have seen right, for I am watchful to bring my word to pass."

Rashi writes, "The almond tree hastens to blossom before all the other trees - so too will I hasten to perform my word."

So after the winter, the blossoming of the almond tree on Tu B'Shvat symbolizes the coming spring (and two months until Pesach). George Bush writes here about how this makes the almond tree a powerful symbol:

The mention of the almond-tree is not of infrequent occurrence in the Scriptures, and it would seem, from its peculiar physical properties, to be well adapted to stand among moral emblems as symbolical of that spiritual prosperity, thrift, vigor and early productiveness, which we naturally associate with our ideals of the operations of divine principles in the souls of the righteous.

However, not everyone agreed with the connection between the verb שקד and shaked as "almond tree". For example Ben Yehuda (or maybe Tur-Sinai, not sure who wrote the footnote) writes that shaked (the tree) does not appear in other Semitic languages aside from Akkadian (shiqdu), which doesn't share the verb שקד. Therefore the Hebrew shaked, and the Aramaic שקדא (or שגדא) borrowed the word from Akkadian, who probably got it from some other language.

Kaddari actually has shaked (the tree) in Phoenician, and the verb שקד in Punic (both mentioned on page 318 of this book.) So maybe Ben-Yehuda's dictionary is dated. But even if it's not - should this be a sign of concern? Shouldn't we assume that if the verse in Yirmiyahu ties the two together, that's enough?

We discussed this issue at length in the post on "ish and isha". The lesson there was that puns in the Bible do not need to indicate an etymological connection - and in fact can be more powerful when they don't. And in fact, the Rambam discusses the verse in Yirmiyahu in his section on prophetic allegory (Guide to the Perplexed, 2:43) -

Compare makkal shaked, "almond staff", of Jeremiah (i. 11-12). It was intended to indicate by the second meaning of shaked the prophecy, "For I will watch" (shoked), etc. which has no relation whatever to the staff or to almonds.

So whether or not there's an etymological connection, Yirmiyahu's audience got the message - God's punishment will be coming soon, like the blossoming of an almond tree.

But since this is a holiday, let's end on a positive note:

The famed "Gaon of Rogatchov" (Rabbi Joseph Rozen, 1858-1936) writes that inherent in G-d's warning to Jeremiah was a consolation. Almonds start off bitter and become sweet as they develop (in contrast to another kind of nut called luz that starts off sweet and becomes bitter). This is why the 21 days of Bein HaMetzarim are alluded to by the 21-day "staff of almond-wood": not only are we able to negate the bitterness of these days, but we are capable of turning their bitterness to sweetness, of transforming these days of mourning into days of rejoicing and gladness."

marmita

2009-02-03T00:42:00.002+02:00

Today was Groundhog Day in America, and what better day for me to come out of my burrow. I wasn't sure if there was a Hebrew word for groundhog, but it turns out there is: marmita מרמיטה or marmuta מרמוטה. Now the groundhog (also known as the woodchuck, land beaver or whistlepig) is from the genus Marmota (which also includes other varieties of marmots). It would seem that the Hebrew derives from the Latin. That wouldn't leave much to write about.

However, Klein writes something very strange. He provides the following etymology for marmota:

Of uncertain origin. It is certainly not borrowed from Latin mus ( = mouse) and mons ( = mountain), nor related to French marmotte ( = marmot).

The first etymology that Klein rejects is precisely that given for marmot in the Wikipedia article:

The name marmot comes from French marmotte, from Old French marmotan, marmontaine, from Old Franco-Provençal, from Low Latin mures montani "mountain mouse", from Latin mures monti, from Classical Latin mures alpini "Alps mouse".

It is true that other sources give a different etymology for marmot:

French marmotte, from Old French, perhaps from marmotter, to mumble, probably of imitative origin.

Whatever the origin of "marmot" - is it really possible that the Hebrew word marmuta, which means groundhog - a type of marmot - isn't related to the word marmot or marmotte?

But what's even stranger here, is that Klein doesn't actually give a definition for the word! Preceding the etymology, where he usually gives the definition, all he writes is:

in שנת מרמוטה 'deep sleep'

What does that mean? We know groundhogs hibernate, so if this is a metaphor, it doesn't seem to sever the connection between marmuta and marmot.

If we go to Even-Shoshan, we get a slightly better picture. He identifies the marmita as a marmot (specifically the Arctomys Marmota). He then goes on to say that the word marmuta appears in midrashim, as part of the phrase sh'nat marmuta שנת מרמוטה or tardemat marmuta תרדמת מרמוטה. This literally means "sleep of marmuta", and it is the phrase that Klein mentioned earlier.

However, the word actually appears only once in the midrashim, in Bereshit Rabba 17:5 -

רב אמר: שלש תרדמות הן תרדמת שינה ותרדמת נבואה ותרדמת מרמיטה

There are three types of slumber (tardeima) - the slumber of sleep, the slumber of prophecy and the slumber of marmita.

Clearly, the sleep of marmita is the deepest type of sleep. But what does marmita mean? The various commentators on the midrash offer a number of suggestions. Jastrow says it is a corruption of the word מדממה and means "trance". Some say it is related to the Latin dormito - "to be sleeping" (as in "dormant"). The Arukh says it means like stone, like marble, as in the Latin marmor and Greek marmaros (from which "marble" derives). And some commentators make mention of an animal that hibernates.

While it is possible that more current research could identify the meaning of marmita in the midrash, it seems to me that we have a word that appears once and only once. And just like those hapax legomenons in Biblical Hebrew, we might be left guessing as to the original definition.

But whether it happened earlier or later, I think the association of marmita with marmot is a natural one - both in terms of the sound of the word, and the deep sleep.

ish and isha

2008-10-17T15:54:00.006+02:00

The first words the Torah quotes Adam as saying appear right after his wife was created. He gives her a name, but also mentions a connection between his name and hers:

וַיֹּאמֶר, הָאָדָם, זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי, וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי; לְזֹאת יִקָּרֵא אִשָּׁה, כִּי מֵאִישׁ לֻקְחָה-זֹּאת.

Then the man said, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman (isha) for from man (ish) she was taken". (Bereshit 2:23)

As you might imagine, I love the idea that the first recorded human sentence include an etymology! Ibn Ezra says that the words ish איש and isha אשה are related, and Rashi goes even further. Based on the midrash in Bereshit Rabba (18:4), he says that from this verse we learn that the world was created in Hebrew!

However, there are a few difficulties with what we've said so far. First of all, almost all modern linguists say that ish and isha aren't related. Ish comes from the root אוש, meaning strength (the related root אשש means "to strengthen"), and isha derives from אנש, meaning weak. (The common plural of both - anashim אנשים - "men" and nashim - נשים - "women" also derive from אנש). Aside from the fact that the Torah mentions them together, it might seem difficult to believe that they aren't from the same root. We see the letter heh added as a feminine suffix in many words. Why shouldn't we accept what appears to be the obvious etymology here as well?

Well, first of all, we should be careful of "obvious" etymologies. I've warned a number of times of the danger of assuming that words in English and Hebrew that have similar sounds and meanings are related. But we need to be just as careful when it comes to words in the same language. My friend Mike Gerver has a list of false cognates in English, with pairs of words that most people would find it hard to believe aren't from the same root: for example, pull and pulley, isle and island. I would add to this list one very relevant to our topic: male and female!

Secondly, it's important to note the the woman is receiving a name here. We see many times that the etymology of names given in the Torah does not match up exactly with the linguistic etymologies. For example, the Torah connects the name Noach נח with the root נחם, even though the two aren't connected. (For a good analysis of this phenomenon, read this post on Parshablog.)

But perhaps most significantly, there's a grammatical problem here as well. The word isha has a dagesh in the shin. Ibn Ezra says this is to distinguish it from the homonym ishah -"her husband." Modern linguists, however, have shown that this dagesh is due to the "dropped nun" phenomenon (see other examples here.) In addition, the shin in ish and the shin in isha aren't really cognate. Horowitz writes (page 107):

Strange and unbelievable as it seems the word אשה has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the word איש. In אשה in the first place a nun has fallen out; the word is really אנשה (insha). The plural נשים gives some hint of that. The really important fact, though, is that the shin of אשה is really a tav. In Aramaic the word for woman is either אתא or more commonly אתתא.

Klein points out that there is an Aramaic form אנתתא, as well as the Arabic אנתת, which show both the dropped nun and the tav instead of shin.

A number of modern Jewish commentaries deal with the apparent conflict between the verse in Bereshit and the currently accepted etymologies. Sarna writes in the JPS Genesis:

Hebrew 'ishah ... 'ish, though actually derived from distinct and unrelated stems, are here associated through folk etymology by virtue of assonance.

Kil in the Daat Mikra in a footnote (with no apologetics) writes that ish is from אוש and isha is from אשש, whereas the plural of both comes from אנש. Cassuto makes a similar comment, but has isha coming from the root אנת / אנש as we've mentioned above.

Probably the earliest "modern" commentator that I could find who dealt with the issue was Shadal. He wrote:

Moses recorded these words as they were pronounced in his time, even though ishah was not actually derived from ish, but rather from enash, which becaem enesh (as gevar became gever), yielding the plural anashim, as well as the feminine form inshah, which became ishah. The word ish, however, has been preserved in its original form.

Now while I'm generally willing to explore any resource in order to find the history of words on this site, I was a little nervous going forward here. I needed to present an "unbelievable" etymology, and it seems to contradict a verse in the Torah! And from conversations with friends, I had the feeling that my "modern" commentators weren't going to cut it.

So I was relieved when I found that the Radak in his Sefer HaShorashim (entry אנש) wrote that:

ואפשר שתהיה אשה מזה השרש והדגש לחסרון הנו"ן והראוי אנשה

"And it is possible that isha is from this root (אנש) and the dagesh is due to the missing nun, and it is properly אנשה"

So we have some early grammatical proof. (By the way, I'm not sure if the Radak was the first one to come up with the אנשה theory - it was just the earliest I could find. If anyone has any other sources, I'd be glad to see them.) However, it doesn't entirely satisfy the issue. Rashi's quote from the midrash above still stands - aren't we supposed to learn something about the role of Hebrew from this verse?

Let's look a little closer at what Rashi wrote:

לשון נופל על לשון. מכאן שנברא העולם בלשון הקודש

Most of the English translations of Rashi imply that he's referring to an etymological connection between ish and isha. For example, this site translates it as:

[The words איש and אשה ] have the same root. From this [we derive] that the world was created with the Holy Tongue.

Another site has a similar translation:

One expression coincides with the other [i. e., the words אִישׁ and words אִשָּׁה have the same root]. From here is derived that the world was created with the Holy Tongue.

However, these are not precise translations of Rashi's language. He does not say that the words are from the root - he says "lashon nofel al lashon" - which means a play on words or a pun (literally "one expression falls on another expression"). We find this term in a related midrash in Bereshit Rabba (31:8). The midrash notes that God told Moshe to make a seraph (Bamidbar 21:8). Moshe, however, makes a copper snake - a נחש נחושת - nachash nechoshet (21:9). His reason for doing so was that this was lashon nofel al lashon - the words nachash and nechoshet resemble each other. And here too, the midrash learns from this that the world was created in Hebrew.

I think anyone reading that midrash alone would not assume that nachash and nechoshet are related etymologically (they're not, by the way, but that's for a different post). So perhaps here too, we don't need to assume that ish and isha are related etymologically by virtue of them being lashon nofel al lashon.

I think this point was well explained by Rabbi Yitzchak Arama, author of Akedat Yitzhak (chapter 8). He writes there that ish and isha do not have the same root. He connects ish to strength, but curiously does not present the etymology of isha. He distinguishes ish and isha from other animals where the female is marked by a heh suffix, such as par פר -"bull" and parah פרה - "cow", keves כבש -"lamb" and kivsa כבשה - "ewe", and more. (This is contrast to the Chizkuni on 2:23 who writes that humans are the only species that the terms for male and female come from the same root. How he missed the numerous examples where it does occur, I don't know.)

He then points out something very important about the concept of lashon nofel al lashon. He quotes the midrash that Rashi quoted above, and writes:

ומההכרח להיות כוונתם ז"ל מה שאמרנו שאל"כ מאי קאמרי שהוא לשון נופל על לשון והלא לשון אחד ממש הוא כמו פר ופרה כבש וכבשה

"And this must have been their intention (when they wrote the midrash), as we said (that the words come from different roots). For if not, then what does it mean, 'lashon nofel al lashon' - for is it only one lashon (expression), like par and parah, keves and kivsa?"

So from the Akedat Yitzhak's reading (which I think makes a lot of sense), the midrash and Rashi actually support the idea that ish and isha aren't etymologically related.

One other thing bothered me about the midrash. Not only does it say that the world was created in Hebrew, but it uses the proof from the verse that the Torah was given in Hebrew:

From here you learn that the Torah was given in Hebrew. R. Pinchas and R. Chilkiya in the name of R. Simon: Just as the Torah was given in Hebrew, so too was the world created in Hebrew. Have you ever heard gini ginia, anthrope anthropia, gavra gavreta? Rather ish and isha. Why so? For they are similar sounding words (lashon nofel al lashon).

The midrash is showing how in Greek and Aramaic the words for male and female are not related at all - there are no such words in Greek as gini and anthropia, nor gavreta in Aramaic. (This "proof" doesn't work as well in English, were we have the related "man" and "woman", but it does allow the English translation of Bereshit 2:23 to duplicate the assonance.)

But why would anyone even assume that the Torah was written in another language? I think we need to pay attention to the linguistic pluralism facing the Jews in the land of Israel at the time of the midrash (R' Simon lived in 3rd century Lod.) Both Greek and Aramaic were seriously challenging Hebrew not just as the vernacular, but for religious significance as well. The Aramaic and Greek translations of the Torah were very popular, and we find numerous permissions in Jewish law to pray in other languages. An example of just how far this trend had progressed can be found in the following midrash (Sifrei Devarim 343):

"ויאמר, ה' מסיני בא" (דברים לג, ב) - כשנגלה הקדוש ברוך הוא ליתן תורה לישראל, לא בלשון אחד נגלה, אלא בארבעה לשונות:
"ויאמר, ה' מסיני בא" - זה לשון עברי.
"וזרח משעיר למו" - זה לשון רומי [=לטינית].
"הופיע מהר פארן" - זה לשון ערבי.
"ואתה מרבבות קדש" - זה לשון ארמי.

"The Lord came from Sinai; He shone upon them from Seir; He appeared from Mount Paran; and came from Rivevot Kodesh" (Devarim 33:2)
When the Holy One gave the Torah to Israel, he didn't reveal himself in one language, but in four:
"The Lord came from Sinai" - this is Hebrew.
"He shone upon them from Seir" - this is Roman (Seir is Edom, identified with Rome. This is likely Latin, although some say that it refers to Greek.)
"He appeared from Mount Paran" - this is Arabic (Yishmael lived in Paran, from whom the Arabs are descended)
"And came from Rivevot Kodesh" - this is Aramaic (the word for came, ata, is Aramaic)

It was against this background that R' Simon needed to point out that the Torah was given in Hebrew. I'm sure that most Jews of the time knew that Moshe didn't speak Aramaic or Greek. But the message here is that word play can really only be appreciated in the original language. Something is always lost in translation. Puns, despite them being the "lowest form of humor", are the inside jokes of language, allowing a real connection between writer and reader.

I grew up in a family where we constantly made puns - some of them real groaners. And I still appreciate them today - you've seen me quote the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine". So as hard as it is for me to give up the first quoted sentence by a human as an etymology, I'm even more thrilled to see it was a form of a pun...

google now translates to and from hebrew!

2008-10-02T15:32:00.002+03:00

Thanks to our faithful commenter Joel Nothman, I now know that Google's translation services can now translate to and from Hebrew! It's not perfect (and Joel's blog post points out some of the flaws), but it's an important step forward. I wonder when they'll translate from Biblical and Talmudic Hebrew to Modern Hebrew...

dod

2008-09-12T09:15:00.005+03:00

The Hebrew word for uncle is dod דוד (aunt is doda דודה). It is also a biblical word for lover. What's the connection between the two?

Klein suggests that the meaning uncle came first. He provides the following etymology:

Related to Syriac דדא (=uncle; beloved), Mandaic, Nabatean and Palmyrene dada (=father's brother), Arabic dad (=foster-father), dad (=play, game, joke), Akkadian dadu (=beloved child). All these words probably derive from infants' babbling 'dad'.

"Dad" as a word deriving from baby talk can also be found in English:

recorded from 1500, but probably much older, from child's speech, nearly universal and probably prehistoric (cf. Welsh tad, Ir. daid, Czech, L., Gk. tata, Lith. tete, Skt.
tatah all of the same meaning).

Horowitz (pg. 50) offers a similar origin, although he says lover preceded uncle:

Dod is the most ancient Hebrew word for love. It is probably a primitive caressing syllable taken from the sound da-da that babies make. Babies' sounds are alos the origin of words like אמא - mamma, אבא - papa. This accounts for words like these being found in so many different languages.

דוד dod - lover, has come to mean "uncle". Next to the mother and father, the uncle was the lover and guardian.

As pointed out here (and discussed in the comments on this post), a connection between lover and uncle might be found in the fact that it was common, perhaps encouraged, for uncles to marry nieces in ancient times.

Horowitz also connects dod to the mandrake flowers known as dudaim דודאים because "women believed these flowers stimulated their husbands' love for them." I did find a source that tried to connect dud דוד - "kettle" (in Biblical Hebrew, now "boiler") to dod:

dod {dode}; from an unused root meaning properly, to boil, i.e. (figuratively) to love;

However none of my dictionaries connected dud to dod, and the Encyclopedia Mikrait says that dud actually comes from Egyptian.

A different view of the origin of dod can be found in Sanmartin-Ascaso's extensive article on dod in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. He writes:

Etymology. Little can be said with certainty about the etymology of Heb. dodh, pl. dodhim. It is possible that dodh is an onomatopoeic word (dad[u]) which arose out of repetition of the da, as is often the case with words that denote kinship. It is quite likely that dodh is a nominal form derived from the root w/ydd "to love" (-> ידד yadhadh). The question whether w/ydd can be traced back to an original onomatopoeic word (cf. Hurrian tat[t], "love") must remain open, as must also that of a possible connection between dodh and s/dad, "breasts".

He then goes on to describe how the different Semitic languages had different meanings for dod. In the Eastern languages, such as Akkadian, the word

means "beloved, darling" and denotes a (personal) object of love.

However, the Western Semitic languages such as Arabic

all use dwd in the sense of "(paternal) uncle"

He then presents the development of the word as follows:

One must assume a development form an original onomatopoeic word, perhaps *dada, "darling", to a verbal root (w/y)dd, "to love", from which the substantives dwd and ydd arose. If one assumes that the "uncle" played an important role in the Semitic family as provider and helper, the shift to uncle is easily understandable. In the East and Northwest Semitic region, dd retained the meaning "darling". But among the Aramean and Arabian tribes, where the way of life was influenced for a longer time by (semi-)nomadism and the family ties were stronger, the meaning "uncle" became predominant.

Sanmartin-Ascaso here provides a connection between the root ידד and dod. Klein, however, does not connect the two, but only writes the following in his entry for yadid ידיד - "friend, beloved":

Related to Ugaritic ydd (=friend, beloved), Syriac ידד, Arabic wadda (=he loved), Old South Arabic ודד ( = to love), Akkadian namaddu (=beloved).

Returning to Sanmartin-Ascaso, he points out that:

An initial survey makes it clear that in the OT two different meanings of dodh come together. One coincides with the Aramaic and Old South Arabic usage; here dodh means "(paternal) uncle".
The other corresponds to the meaning of the word among the old, sedentary and civilized peoples of Mesopotamia and Syria, viz. "darling, beloved".

We can now see three meanings of two (possibly) related words. In the Tanach, we find dod having only one of two meanings - uncle or romantic lover (very common in Shir HaShirim). In addition, we find the word yadid which seems to have only the platonic meaning of "friend". (This is also the meaning in modern Hebrew. When a girl says she has a chaver חבר, it means "boyfriend". If she wants to say just "friend", with no romantic connotations, she would say yadid. The same applies to chavera חברה and yedida ידידה for a boy.)

Gesenius brings two proofs that dod can mean "friend". I find this difficult. First of all, his only textual proof is from Yishayahu 5:1, and this is a difficult verse, but as Sanmartin-Ascaso writes (pg. 150):

To translate dodh by "friend" here would falsify the meaning and purpose of Isaiah's composition. In this context dodh means "beloved" in its fullest sense.

Gesenius then brings two parallel examples from other languages. He mentions the Aramaic חביבא as meaning "friend" and then "uncle". This is found in Bava Batra 41b, where Rav Chiya calls his uncle Rav by that term. However, Steinsaltz mentions a theory that חביבי might be a contraction of אחי אבי - "my father's brother". He also mentions that the Latin word for aunt, amita, is related to amata, "beloved". However, we've already seen that amita may very well be related to the Hebrew em. In any case, nothing he wrote convinces me that the Biblical dod means anything other than uncle or lover.

This division may help me solve my oldest etymological puzzle. For those that don't know, my name is David. I remember from when I was very young, I had a small framed card in my room, upon which it said that the name David meant "beloved". That seemed very nice - certainly "beloved" is a compliment. However, when I started learning Hebrew, that etymology seemed a little strange to me. I knew ahuv אהוב as "beloved", and that dod had connections to "love", but what was this strange form דוד (or דויד)? I know that it can be more difficult to determine the origins of names than other words - but why beloved? Why not "lover" or "loving"?

Most sources I've checked have connected david to dod. But the article on David by Carlson in the Theological Dictionary gave me some additional insight. It mentions that David, while mentioned 790 times in the Tanach, is associated exclusively with the king. Carlson writes that the meaning is "darling". He rejects a number of theories, including those that say that David wasn't his original name (but rather Elchanan) or that the name derives from the Akkadian word dawidum (found in the Mari tablets) meaning "(to inflict) defeat" (see the Encyclopedia Mikrait on David). He does write that:

From a linguistic point of view, the name Davidh can be understood as an imitation of yadhidh (homophony). It is less likely that Davidh is a passive participle of a verb dudh or that dodh was changed to davidh after the pattern of mashiach, "anointed one, messiah", or nasi, "chief, prince."

The suggestion that David derives from yadid and not dod, makes sense to me. As I mentioned earlier, in the Bible dod only means "uncle" or "romantic lover" - neither of which would be the likely source of the name David. There is also some textual evidence to support this. For example, we find that David's son Shlomo was also known as Yedidya (Shmuel II 12:24-25):

תֵּלֶד בֵּן, ויקרא (וַתִּקְרָא) אֶת-שְׁמוֹ שְׁלֹמֹה, וַה', אֲהֵבוֹ. וַיִּשְׁלַח, בְּיַד נָתָן הַנָּבִיא, וַיִּקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ, יְדִידְיָהּ--בַּעֲבוּר, השם.

She bore him a son and named him Shlomo. The Lord loved him, and he sent a message through the prophet Natan; and he was named Yedidya at the instance of the Lord.

In addition, we find that Binyamin was also called yadid of God in Moshe's blessing (Devarim 33:12). What is the connection between Binyamin, David and Shlomo? Carlson writes:

It is significant that the youngest brother often receives the name "darling". In the OT, Solomon's name "Jedidah" reflects this custom (2 S. 11:27, 12:24f). The youngest of the Jacob tribes, Benjamin, receives the epithet yedhidh yhvh, "the beloved of God" (Dt. 33:12). Therefore, it is understandable that the eighth (1 2. 16:10f; 17:12; according to 1 Ch. 2:13-16, the seventh) and youngest son of Jesse is given the name Davidh, "darling".

Tigay, in the JPS Devarim on 33:12, noticed the connection as well, but offers a slightly different explanation:

Beloved of the Lord: If this means that God favored Benjamin politically, it could reflect the tribe's prestige when Ehud the Benjaminite was chieftain, when Samuel's leadership was centered in the Benjaminite territory, or the choice of the Benjaminite Saul as Israel's first king (note that the future King Solomon was called Yedidyah, "Beloved of the Lord" [2 Sam 12:25].)

So either yadid referred to the youngest son or it meant the one chosen for the kingship. Perhaps it even meant both, since usually the oldest son would be chosen for leadership, and here, yadid designated a chosen, youngest, darling son. (A proof of my objectivity is that despite me being the oldest son and a David, I put forth that theory.)

Jastrow translates yadid as "chosen". His etymology is rather far-fetched so I won't go into it, but the usage in Rabbinic literature does seem to fit that definition. For example, in Mechilta Beshalach 2:5, it describes ידידי טובעים בים - I think the translation "my chosen ones are drowning in the sea" works better than "my friends are drowning in the sea."

In modern Hebrew, dod has no romantic connotation at all. When not used for "uncle", it can mean "buddy" in slang.

In biblical Hebrew we find the phrase ben-dod בן דוד for "the son of the uncle", i.e. cousin. Apparently at the time of the 1943 kinship terms dictionary (discussed here), it was decided that a better term for cousin would be dodan דודן (the female is dodanit דודנית). I'm not sure what motivated the change - perhaps they felt that ben dod wasn't accurate enough, since a cousin could be the son of an aunt, or even a second cousin (not the descendant of an uncle or an aunt.) But in any case, the term is rarely used, and Safa Ivrit says it is usually found only in translated literature.