bagel

One of the columnists who inspired this site is Philologos of The Forward. He writes about Jewish words and phrases, and specifically has a good knowledge of Yiddish (which I do not share). Nowhere on the site is his name given, but most of the speculation on the internet indicates that it's the writer Hillel Halkin. I have no inside knowledge to confirm or deny this, but there are some hints in his writing. For example, in this week's column he quotes Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan, who happens to be Halkin's cousin. (We've also seen him quote Halkin's uncle Rabbi Saul Lieberman before, but Lieberman was such a well known expert that it doesn't necessarily indicate a family relationship.)

Until recently, I hadn't read any of Halkin's identified writings. But not long ago, I started reading a very interesting book by him called Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist's Polemic. The book consists of long letters that Halkin, living in Zichron Yaakov in the 1970s, wrote to an American friend. The letters discuss the roles of Israel and the diaspora, and the importance of making aliya. I haven't finished the book yet, but although it's over 30 years old, I think it still seems very relevant (and some of the anachronisms are fun too.)

At one point reading the book, I got a feeling that if Halkin isn't Philologos, they certainly share an interest in Hebrew etymology (as of course, I do.) On page 22, Halkin quotes his anonymous American correspondent:

It's a little like that butt of so many old jokes, the bagel. What other item of food is more quintessentially Jewish in America? And then you come to Israel and discover that there is something called a bagel there too, or rather, a bageleh (Moisheleh, Saraleh, imaleh, why not bageleh?), and that it shares certain properties with the bagel you know: it's round, there's a hole in the middle, etc. ... only the taste just isn't the same. (For one thing, it's sprinkled with sesame, and I happen to hate sesame. The hole is too big, the dough is too soft, I won't even mention cream cheese or lox, which you can look high and low for - a grilled porkchop is far easier to find in your Jewish state.) One could, I suppose, investigate the common European ancestor of the two to determine which is more authentic, but this would lead to the discovery of a third bagel, resembling the first two yet unique unto itself. And why should one have to choose among them?

And regarding the bagel, Halkin responds:

Concerning the real sesame on your metaphorical bagel, by the way, it certainly is not European in origin; in fact, it derives from the Arabs, who bake a hard, round doughnut calld ka'ak similar to the Israeli; yet this only complicates the problem, since it's likely that the Arab ka'ak is a descendant of an ancient Palestinian Jewish bagel or ka'ach that is referred to in the Mishnah. Such are the strange dialectics of the return of a people to its land.

So this is one of those anachronisms - today it's easy to find in Israel lox, cream cheese and "American bagels". (Haven't tried looking for pork chops for comparison). But lets look a little further at how the Israeli bageleh and the American bagel diverged.

Clearly the words have the same origin. The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following origin for "bagel":

1919, from Yiddish beygl, from M.H.G. boug- "ring, bracelet," from O.H.G. boug, related to biogan "to bend" and O.E. beag "ring"

William Safire (the first language columnist to inspire me) writes in this 1994 column:

The bagel, according to the Yiddishist Leo Rosten, was first cited in the community regulations of Cracow, Poland, in 1610; the toroidal roll was said to be a gift to women in childbirth. (That strikes me as apocryphal; next we'll hear that the Civil War expression about bearing pain, to bite the bullet, was rooted in to bite the bagel. Not so.)

The word for the medieval jawbreaker was imported into English from the Yiddish beygl, which in 1919 was spelled beigel and in 1932 was shortened to bagel. According to the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, it is rooted in the Old High German boug, related to biogan "to bend," from the Proto-Germanic biuzanan and the Indo-European bheugh-, the pronunciation of which is a melancholy exhalation.

If bending, ring shaped dough reminds you of another food - the pretzel - that's not a coincidence. This book writes that

Pretzels are a very old form of baked goods and were referred to in Jewish sources as early as the first half of the thirteenth century. (A bagel is simply a type of pretzel.) Bagels, with many local variations, were known throughout the historic territory of the Ashkenazi Jews.

The term bageleh in Hebrew therefore refers to pretzels. The original association of course is with soft bagels, not the hard ones found in vending machines, but the term applies to both.

If you're finding it difficult to make the connection between bagels and pretzels, take a second and try to describe the difference (other than the sesame seeds mentioned above - I always been a fan of sesame bagels.) It turns out that the difference is in the boiling process:

Homemade pretzels and soft pretzels are often made much the same way as bagels, by poaching them in boiling water before baking, the difference being that bagels are usually poached in salt water rather than water and baking soda.

So we today find in Israel bageleh בייגלה - pretzels and bageleh amerikai - American bagels. What about ka'ach כעך?

While it might be the more official word, it seems to be much less popular than bageleh. This is evidenced by the discussion on the Hebrew Wikipedia page, where the writers aren't sure whether a ka'ach is a bagel or a pretzel.

Stahl writes that the word ka'ach was chosen in Modern Hebrew because of its use in Talmudic Hebrew (see Pesachim 48b and Brachot 38a where it appears as כעבין). Then it seemed to mean small loaves of bread. Klein defines it as "ring-shaped cake", and provides the following etymology:

Aramaic כעכא, borrowed from Persian kak, whence also Arabic ka'k.

Stahl says that there are even earlier references in Ancient Egyptian and Coptic. The word kahk seems rather similar to the English word "cake", with cognates in other European languages. However, Stahl writes that linguists do not feel that the words are connected, but perhaps both developed independently from baby-talk, similar to "mama" and "papa".

I'll end with a cute joke I found while researching this topic.

שני בייגלה יושבים על המדף בחנות.
פתאום בא מישהו
ולוקח אחד מהם, אז השני צועק: "לאא!!!! היינו כאחים!!"

"Two bagelach were sitting on the shelf of a store. Somebody comes and takes one of them, and the other shouts - 'No!!! We were k'achim!! (literally 'like brothers')"

cinnamon

A reader asked what the connection is between the English word "cinnamon" and the Hebrew kinamon (or qinamon) קינמון.

Well, the English word comes from the Greek kinnamomon, which in turn was borrowed from the Hebrew / Phoenician. This etymology is rather old - the famous Greek historian Herodotus mentions it here, in discussing spices from Arabia:

Still more wonderful is the mode in which they collect the cinnamon. Where the wood grows, and what country produces it, they cannot tell- only some, following probability, relate that it comes from the country in which Bacchus was brought up. Great birds, they say, bring the sticks which we Greeks, taking the word from the Phoenicians, call cinnamon, and carry them up into the air to make their nests.

I had assumed that Hebrew and Phoenician were similar enough to simply share the word kinamon. However, Philologos writes that the Phoenicians probably borrowed the word from Hebrew:

The Greeks indeed had no clear idea of what the source of cinnamon was. Herodotus, according to whom the Greek word kinnamomon was borrowed from Phoenician traders, knew only that the latter purchased it from “the Arabians,” who “do not know where it comes from and what country produces it.” In the same breath, however, he then fancifully related that these same “Arabians,” by whom he presumably meant the Nabateans living in what is today Israel’s Negev and southern Jordan, collected the spice from the nests of large carrion-eating birds built of cinnamon bark and mud on “mountain precipices… which no man can climb.”
...

Phoenician, the West Semitic language of the seafaring peoples living along the Mediterranean coast north of Palestine, was closely related to Hebrew, and since Hebrew kinnamon occurs in the Bible while no parallel Phoenician text has survived, Hebrew is commonly given as the word’s source. Indeed, since cinnamon probably reached the Phoenicians from the Nabateans via a land route crossing Palestine, it is just as likely that the word entered Phoenician from Hebrew as the other way around.

So now the question needs to be asked: Where did the Hebrew word kinamon come from? Klein curtly notes that it is a "word of foreign origin".

One etymology mentioned here, suggests that:

English cinnamon, German Zimt, Lithuanian cinamonas, Belarusian cynamon [цынамон], Serbocroatian cimet [цимет], Yiddish tsimering [צימערינג] and Armenian ginamon [կինամոն] all derive from Latin cinnamomum, which was in turn a loan from Greek kinnamomon [κιννάμωμον]. The Greek had borrowed the word from a Semitic tongue, cf. Old Hebrew kinamom [קנמון] and Aramaic qunimun [ܩܘܢܝܡܘܢ]. However, these words can hardly be native Semitic, and their further origin is not known; it has been suggested that they ultimately stem from early Malaysian language and are thus related to modern Indonesian kayu manis “sweet wood” (although this is a problematic assumption).

The Malaysian origin is supposedly mentioned in the BDB - unfortunately, I no longer have access to that book. Can anyone confirm?

In the article I quoted above, Philologos rejects this theory:

For one thing, cinnamon, which is prepared from the bark of the young branches of an Asiatic tree, seems to have reached the Mediterranean world in ancient times not from Malaysia or Malay-speaking Indonesia but rather from China, in which it was known as kwei, and Sri Lanka, in whose native Singhalese language it is called kurundu. And for another thing, no other Eastern or Central Asian language listed by Katzer has a word resembling either kayu manis or “cinnamon” — which is qurfa in Arabic, darchin in Persian, durusita in Sanskrit, tuj in Gujarati, ilavangam in Tamil, op cheuy in Thai, chek tum phka loeng in Khmer, yuhk gwai in Cantonese, rou gui in Mandarin and so on. Even if the ancient Greeks had gotten their cinnamon from Malay speakers, it would have had to pass through many other hands on its way to them; how, then, would a Malay word for “cinnamon” have reached them without leaving its imprint anywhere else?

That makes sense to me, and in fact, most sources that quote the Malaysian theory go on to reject it.

In the end of the article, Philologos (can I call you Phil?) sticks with his theory that "our English word 'cinnamon' can be etymologically traced back no further than Hebrew kinamon."

However, I think that one of the points he made could actually help us find an earlier source. He mentioned that cinnamon originated in China. Kaddari writes that Loew (Die Flora der Juden II:107) rejects the suggestion that kinamon derived from the root קנה (reed) or קנמ as suggested by Delitzsch (as well as Jastrow and Gesenius.) Instead, he feels that the word refers to China - "Kina" in Hungarian (Wikipedia points out that it is so spelled in many Northern and Eastern European languages - Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Danish, Bosnian, Serbian etc.)

I don't have access to Loew's works and couldn't read them in their original German even if I did. (If anyone out there can do both - please tell me!). But I'm guessing that he was influenced by this article by W. Desborough Cooley from 1849.

Cooley discusses the Chinese origin of the spice:

But we cannot suppose the Chinese to have been equally heedless of the riches scattered by nature over their hills, or remiss in turning such advantages to account; and indeed there is good reason for presuming that they were the earliest dealers in this spice. The Persian name for cinnamon is Darchini, which signifies Chinese wood; and as this name has been adopted in the languages of India with little or no change, it is evident that the article so called arrived in the latter country by the overland route, or through Persia.

He then goes on to take apart suggested etymologies (some of which we've seen before):

The Hebrew word kinamon is said by some to be derived from the Arabic verb kanima, to have a strong or foul smell - a derivation the flagrant absurdity of which is inconsistent with the fundamental laws of language.

...

But again, we are told that cinnamomum is derived from the Malayan kashiomanis, which signifies sweet wood. Now, to say nothing of the torture and mutilation necessary to change the latter word into the former, what can be more ridiculous than to seek the derivation of a word used on the shores of the Mediterranean 3000 years ago, in the Malayan, which we know only as a modern language ? Or how did this solitary Malayan term find its may into Phoenicia, without leaving a trace of its passage through India, Persia, or Arabia?

...

Cinnamomum. cardamomum and costamomum are apparently compound words, denoting so many species of amomum ... With respect to the first syllable of this name, Dr. Vincent supposed it to he derived from keneh (קנה), a cane, pipe, or tube, as if kinamomum signified pipe-amomum. But to this it may be objected, that the name in question, to whatever language it belongs, ought to serve the ends of language, by marking distinctly the object so named, but cinnamon appears to have been brought to market in early times in unpeeled twigs; and if, on the other hand, it were peeled off, then it had the rolled and tubular form in common with
cassia, so that in neither case could it have been appropriately called pipe-amomum.

...

An ingenious, and by no means unlikely, explanation of the fables in which the origin of cinnamon was involved by the early Greek writers, who relate that it was taken from the nests of birds, which had collected it in unknown regions, is suggested by Bochart. He supposes that the Greeks were deceived by some popular Phoenician etymology playing on the word קנן (kinnen), to build a nest. The fable, in short, originated in a quasi derivation, and proves at once the antiquity of the word, and the foreign origin of its first and disputed element.

And then he offers what he believes to be the most convincing etymology:

The only explanation then of the word cinnamon which does not savour of arbitrary etymological fancies, and which accords strictly with the principles regulating the formation of words, is that which considers it as meaning simply Chinese amomum or spice, and thus differing only by a slight and natural modification from the Persian name darchini, under which the spice in question was probably received by the Hebrews and Phoenicians.

While it might seem far to get from China to the Land of Israel, it should be noted that the word kinamon appears only three times in the Bible. Once (Shmot 30:23), is referring one of the spices in the incense, that was used in the Temple. The other two quotes - Shir HaShirim 4:14 and Mishlei 7:17 - are both from books attributed to Shlomo HaMelech (King Solomon), who was certainly known for trading with distant lands...

pargit

I recently received a great gift (thanks!) - the unabridged Even-Shoshan dictionary, which includes etymologies. Flipping through it, I found something interesting.

I noticed the entry for pargit פרגית - meaning "young / spring chicken", also rendered poussin, pullet or Cornish game hen. (In Israeli restaurants, it means dark meat from the thigh of the chicken - particularly boneless chunks.) It said it likely comes from the Greek pterix (pterygos) meaning wing. When I saw that, the first word that came into my head was "pterodactyl", the extinct flying reptile. An interesting association, as long as it's etymological, not culinary!

My instinct about the etymology of pterodactyl turned out to be right:

from Fr. ptérodactyle (1821), from the Mod.L. genus name, from Gk. pteron "wing" (from PIE base *pet- "fly;") + daktylos "finger"

There are a number of other words containing derivatives of pteron, including helicopter:

From Gk. helix (gen. helikos) "spiral" + pteron "wing"

The word pargit appears in Berachot 39a, where Rashi translates it as perdriz - the Old French word for partridge, and in fact, the source for the English word partridge as well.

It also is found in Tosefta Bava Metzia 6:5, parallel to the word efroach אפרוח meaning "chick". I haven't been able to find any difference between the two terms - perhaps it's an issue of age.

Jastrow tries to connect the two words, by saying that pargit derives from the verb פרג, meaning "to break through, sprout". The root פרח has the same meaning, from where he derives efroach. I assume here that Jastrow would include פרג and פרח together with a number of other roots beginning with פר that mean "to separate" or "to break out", such as פרץ, פרד, פרה, פרס and פרש.

However, first of all, it is not agreed by all that the somewhat obscure root פרג means "to sprout". Klein, for example, offers "worsened"; Ben Yehuda has "to be quite changed."

Secondly, as we've seen, Ben-Shoshan gave pargit a Greek etymology. He followed Ben-Yehuda, who disagreed with the majority of the researchers, including Loew, who said pargit had a Semitic origin.

Whether or not pargit and efroach are related, they both share an additional meaning - "a young woman". Pargit has the sense of an innocent, naive young woman.

On the other hand, the slang term frecha, is the Arabic cognate of efroach, also means a young woman, but with a different connotation. Haaretz gives this definition:

Mega-coutured female characterized by stiletto heels and language to match. Protective coloration provided by blinding if precision-executed patterns on nails of fingers and toes.

The slang term generally refers to Sefardic women, perhaps influenced by the North African Jewish name Frecha, which derives from the Arabic word farcha, meaning "joy".

English too has the term "chick" meaning "young woman", and in British slang "bird" as well. I wonder what causes these associations?

halva

Last year we discussed the origin of etrog. But I've recently found out that not only was the etrog used for a mitzva on Sukkot, but also had medicinal value as well.

In the gemara on Shabbat 109b, there is a discussion of antidotes if a person drinks uncovered water (where there is a concern that perhaps a snake would come overnight, drink some of the water, and inject its venom.) Rav Huna bar Yehuda suggests taking a sweet etrog, scooping out the inside, filling it with honey, and placing it on burning coals.

Interesting ancient medicine aside - why am I discussing this here? Because of the word for "sweet", describing the etrog: halita חליתא. The Aramaic adjectives חלא and חלי mean "sweet".

A certain relative of the Aramaic is the Arabic hilu, meaning sweet. From here we get the name of the sweet confection halva, which has entered into Hebrew, English, Turkish and many other languages.

Another related Arabic word that entered into Hebrew - this time slang - is אחלה achla, meaning "great, excellent", but originally meaning "sweet". (I used to think the phrase achla gever אחלה גבר - "a great guy", meant "(he's) the brother of a guy". I guess to figure out things like that I needed to buy the books, that got me to start the blog, so you all benefit.)

So far we've seen Aramaic and Arabic roots meaning "sweet". Are there any Hebrew words with the same etymology?

We discussed once before how there is a theory that the word challah חלה might get its name due to its sweetness. When I wrote that post, I quoted Stahl. I now see that he probably got the idea from Ben Yehuda, who mentions the theory, but notes that "challah is not specifically sweet."

Klein writes that the biblical words for jewelry: chali חלי (Mishlei 25:12, Shir HaShirim 7:2) and chelya חליה (Hoshea 2:15) - also derive from the root חלה meaning "sweet". This too appears in Ben Yehuda who says that חלה can also mean the related "pleasant", as well as "sweet".

Lastly, we have the verb חלה - meaning "to implore", often found in the expression חילה את פניו chila et panav. The midrashim (Devarim Rabba 3:15) identify this root with "sweetness", and scholars (Ben Yehuda, Kaddari) do as well. The idea here is that by imploring to a person, or praying to God, the anger is sweetened, and reduced.

However, Kaddari does say that there is another theory - that the anger is weakened, softened. It would therefore be connected to the root חלה meaning - "to be weak, to be sick".

But even here, perhaps there's a connection to sweetness. Jastrow says the root חלה means "to soften" - which can apply in a positive sense - "to sweeten", or in a negative sense - "to be sick".

So going back to the gemara quoted in the beginning, I wonder if there wasn't some play on words by having a healing etrog called "halita"...

marek and marak

This year for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur I bought new machzorim, after using the same ones for the previous 15 years. One of the main reasons for the change was my desire for a machzor that marked shva na and shva nach. But I also just wanted to shake things up a bit. By using a new text, I was forced to pay more attention to what I was saying, which improved my prayer experience overall. I don't know if I can afford a new machzor every year, but once every 15 sounds reasonable...

One interesting change I noticed was in the end of the personal vidui. In my Rinat Yisrael machzor I had always read:

ומה שחטאתי לפניך מחק ברחמיך הרבים

"And what I have sinned before You, may you erase (mechok) with your abundant mercy"

But in my new machzor (Keter Melucha) it had:

מרק ברחמיך הרבים

"May you cleanse (marek) with your abundant mercy"

After perusing a number of machzorim, I found that some (Koren, Machzor Rabba) had mechok and some had marek (Artscroll, Ezor Eliyahu). So I went to the source of the prayer in the gemara, and Berachot 17a has marek. An alternate version appears in Yoma 87b - מרוק merok. But nowhere did mechok appear. (The Rambam actually has מחה.) I'm guessing that maybe it was originally a printing error - the resh and vav together were assumed to be a chet. But if anyone has any more information, I'd be interested in seeing it.

What does the root מרק mean? It means "to scour, to polish, to cleanse". Derivatives include the biblical tamruk תמרוק - "ointment, cosmetics", and in modern Hebrew merek מרק - "putty".

Now this got me thinking - and maybe it was just my hunger on the fast - was there any connection between marek and marak - "soup"?

Most of the sources I consulted did not connect them. The word marak appears only a few times in the Tanach - Shoftim 6:19-20 and Yeshayahu 65:4 (although some say the correct reading there should be פרק.) The meaning seems to be more gravy than soup (but it is easy to mistake the two.)

Based on this definition, the Radak (on Shoftim, as well as Sefer HaShorashim) does connect the terms. He says that the verb מרק means "to rinse, wash with water", and marak is "the water that the meat was cooked in, because that is where the rinsing (merika) of the meat takes place."

Ben Yehuda points out that the word marak as soup / gravy was not in use in Talmudic times. They preferred the synonym zom זום - which derives from the Greek zomos - also meaning broth (and the root of the word osmazome - "obsolete name given to meat extract regarded as the ‘pure essence of meat’" and originally deriving from Greek osma - "smelling" and zomos - "broth".)

It isn't clear from Ben Yehuda's dictionary whether he was the one who reintroduced marak as the word for soup, or if this happened earlier. In any case, the connection between marak and marek should lead to a nice siman for next year's Rosh Hashana for a creative reader ...

rubia and lubia

In the spirit of the season, I'll open with an apology: I'm sorry I didn't finish all of my simanim posts before Rosh Hashana. I hope I receive from you all selicha and mechila ...

Another one of the simanim is rubia רוביא. This is generally identified as fenugreek (although Jastrow also offers flax seed.) I could not find an etymology for this word, but a number of sources say that fenugreek was known from ancient times to increase milk production in nursing mothers. So perhaps the connection between rubia and רבה - "to increase" is not just a pun.

However, many people (including my family) eat black-eyed peas on Rosh Hashana for this siman. Where did this custom originate?

This source says it is of Sefardic origin:

The custom among the Sefardic Jews of Egypt for the food "Rubia" was black-eyed peas because the Arabic term for the word was "Lubia," pronounce liked "Rubia."

The term is still used in Arabic. Stahl, in his Arabic etymological dictionary, quotes Karl Lokotsch as saying that the word lubia entered Arabic via Aramaic, where it was originally borrowed from the Greek lobos. Lobos meant "pod" in Greek, and is the source of the English word "lobe".

However, there is another opinion as to the origin of the word lubia. Rav Nissim Gaon (990-1062) on Shabbat 90b writes that the Egyptian bean is known as "el-lubia" in Arabic, and it is "a small bean with black in the middle". He then goes on to quote the Yerushalmi (Kilaim, chapter 8):

Rabbi Yonah of Bostra said, from what we see that they call a green Egyptian bean Libyan (lubi לובי), but a dry one Egyptian ... it means that Libya (luv לוב) is identical with Egypt.

So from this source it would seem that the name lubia derives from the location Luv - Libya. There is a nation called Luvim who appear a number of times in the Tanach (Nachum 3:9, Divrei Hayamim II 12:3). There are those, such as Josephus, who identify the Lehavim in Bereshit 10:13 with the Luvim. The Daat Mikra rejects this approach saying that Luv was spelled with a vav, not a heh. However, Cassuto feels that this substitution is not unusual.

In any case, the Luvim (and the Lehavim) lived west of Egypt, but were associated with them. Modern day Libya, also to the west of modern day Egypt, has a name related to Luv (the modern Hebrew name for Libya). However, since a form of the name was found in Ancient Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek as well, it is hard to pinpoint the origin.

Both theories as to the origin of lubia seems logical, but I don't see any way they can both be correct. Perhaps by next Rosh Hashana I'll have a more definitive answer...

dvash

My friend, the blogger and bee-keeper Treppenwitz berated thanked me (and others) for sending him a link discussing the discovery of beehives showing a beekeeping industry going back to First Temple times.

Well, to show him that he's not the only one discussing the issue, I'll take it on - but from a linguistic standpoint. (The fact that I was planning on discussing the word anyway, in my series on the simanim, is pure coincidence...)

This article discussing the discovery has this quote about the Hebrew word d'vash דבש:

While the term "honey" (dvash in Hebrew) appears 55 times in the Bible, it refers to date or fig honey in all but two references: Judges 14:8-9, when Samson took honey from the lion's carcass, and I Samuel 14:27, when Jonathan dipped his rod in a honeycomb during a battle and his countenance brightened.

Sarna has a similar note in his commentary on Shmot 3:8 -

Honey in the Bible (Heb. devash) is predominantly the thick, sweet syrup produced from dates and known to the Arabs as dibs. Apiculture seems to have been unknown in Palestine; the few explicit references in the Bible to bees' honey pertain to the wild variety. While the date itself is never mentioned, the inclusion of honey among the seven characteristic products of the land listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 indicates that, like all the others, it too derives from the soil.

I happened to take out a book from the local library that discusses this issue in detail: Fruit Trees in the Bible and Talmudic Literature, by Yehuda Feliks (Rubin Mass, 1994). The chapter on dvash is in Hebrew, and I can't quote the entire thing here, but I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. I will summarize a few points he brings up:

• The phrase ארץ זבת חלב ודבש ("land flowing with milk and honey") in the Torah is clearly referring to honey from fruit trees, as it is praising the agricultural bounty of the land.
  
• However, in Yeshayahu 7:22, when it mentions כי חמאה ודבש יאכל כל הנותר בקרב הארץ "Everyone who is left in the land shall feed on curds and honey", it is a parody of the Torah verses. For here, the prophet is describing a time when the land is desolate - and therefore the bees can proliferate. (The milk for the curds will also be widely available, because the cows and sheep will be able to graze on the previously tended croplands).
  
• Bee honey is not seen as a sign of blessing for the land, even though it is seen as fortunate to find it (as in the story of Yonatan mentioned above). Yaakov also probably sent bee honey to Yosef (Bereshit 43:11), because it mentions מעט דבש - "a small amount of honey", and bee honey would have been hard to obtain.
  
• Many sources where the honey is mentioned as coming from rocks (Devarim 32:13, Tehilim 81:17) it is likely referring to fig honey, as figs (unlike dates) grow in rocky terrain.
  
• Although the rabbis generally identify the biblical dvash with dates (Sifrei Devarim 297, Mechilta D'Rashbi 13:5), when they used the word dvash themselves, they were referring to bee honey. For example, the Yerushalmi (Bikkurim 1:3) interprets the biblical word: "And dvash - this is dates. Could it be actual dvash (e.g. bee honey)?" They answer that since the dvash in the verse is obligated in tithes, it cannot be referring to bee honey, but rather date honey. We also see that if someone makes an oath that they will not eat dvash, they are allowed to eat date honey (Nedarim 6:9)

While the article was written before the recent discovery (and sadly Prof. Feliks passed away last year, and did not merit to review it), I don't think the discovery radically challenges anything in the article. Certainly bee honey was considered a rare treat, and there would have been efforts to make the product more widely available. And by Talmudic times, these efforts had succeeded so well, that bee honey became the dominant meaning of "dvash".

But the meaning of eretz zavat chalav u'dvash still refers to the agriculture of the Land of Israel, particularly, as Feliks points out, in comparison to that of Egypt, whose dates were much dryer and did not easily produce honey.

silka

Another one of the simanim is silka - סלקא. I had always assumed that silka meant beets, as in the Modern Hebrew word for beet - selek סלק.

So I was surprised to see that there are those that identify the silka with spinach. For example here:

Spinach is called Silka in Aramaic. Beets are called "Selek" in Hebrew, so either (or both) are fine.

Where did this understanding come from? One explanation about the Sefardim, as mentioned here, is that:

Their custom for the food "Silka" was cooked spinach, because the Arabic term for the word was "Salk."

In fact, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu (the former Sefardi Chief Rabbi) here says not only is spinach preferable, but that the use of beet is more recent!

Stahl confirms that salk means both spinach and beets in Arabic. A Google comparison between "salk + spinach + arabic" (16,300 hits) and "salk + beet + arabic" (9,790 hits) shows an advantage to spinach. But it turns out that the Portugese word for beet - acelga - comes from the Arabic salk.

However, I have another theory for the identification of silka with spinach.

The gemara (Brachot 38b) mentions מיא דסלקא maya d'silka. Rashi explains this term as "water in which was cooked teradin." And in Eruvin 28b, raw teradin are equated with raw silka. What are these teradin תרדין? Every authoritative source I could find says that the tered mentioned here is beet (Rambam on Kilaim 1:3 [according to Kapach], Jastrow, Ben-Yehuda, Klein, Melamed).

However, in Modern Hebrew, tered means spinach! How this happened is not clear - perhaps due to the similarly looking leaves. Ben-Yehuda already complained about it. (He suggested a new word for spinach - kotzit קוצית - but like some other of his suggestions, it was not adopted.) So if someone was to read the talmudic passages above, they would likely believe that silka was spinach as well. (That is apparently the basis for this halachic question.)

What about the etymology of silka? Klein says that the etymology is unknown, but Jastrow has a reasonable explanation. He says it comes from סלק ( also שלק) which means "to boil down". Therefore silka originally meant a "well-boiled vegetable." (We've seen Jastrow's approach before - in regards to lefet - where the way a vegetable was prepared or eaten eventually gave the food its name.)

In regards to the prayer associated with silka, we say שיסתלקו אויבינו - "may our enemies depart, be removed". However, the verb סלק originally meant "to go up, ascend", and is related to the root נסק (from where we get masok מסוק - helicopter). To "ascend" seems perhaps too complimentary for our enemies. So if we call the beets tered instead of silka (or actually eat spinach, like the Sefardim), then our association can be with the root ירד (to descend) - perhaps "שתרד קבוצת אויבינו"...

karti

What holiday tradition could be more fun for fans of Balashon than that of the puns we recite about food on the first night of Rosh HaShana? What a great way to start the New Year! Over the next few days before the holiday, I'll try to write a bit about these "simanim".

We already discussed tapuach - apple (plus it's not really a pun), so let's go to the next word: כרתי karti - "leek". Klein writes that it is "a secondary form of כרשה". Kreisha is the proper Hebrew word for leek today, although we do also see the word luf, as we saw here. However, in the Mishna (Shviit 7:1), we find both wild luf and kreisha - so they were then known to be different species.

Karti is also used as a color - "leek green", which is used to describe the sky (Berachot 1:2) and an etrog (Sukka 3:6). This identification was used by the Greeks as well - they called the Indian Ocean the "Leek-Green Sea".

The biblical word for leek was chatzir חציר - see Bamidbar 11:5. However, chatzir in the Tanach primarily means "hay, grass", and that is its meaning today, so don't ask for chatzir in the supermarket if you're looking for leeks.

On the other hand, don't make the same mistake I did many years ago, and say karish כריש - instead of kreisha. Most supermarkets in Israel probably don't carry shark. It's not kosher (and not related to kreisha etymologically either)...

kruv

What do angels and cabbages have in common?

Well, they both share the Hebrew word kruv כרוב, but except for Jastrow - who provides the unconvincing shared etymology "round" - no one says they share a common root.

For kruv as the Biblical word meaning "angel" - recognized clearly in the English word "cherub" - Klein provides the following etymology:

Related to Akkadian karabu (= to bless), karibu ( = one who blesses), epithet of the bull-colossus, and to ברך (= to bless)

Klein also writes that the words griffin and gryphon may be related:

[Klein] suggests a Sem. source, "through the medium of the Hittites," and cites Heb. kerubh "a winged angel," Akkad. karibu, epithet of the bull-colossus

The Jewish Encyclopedia provides some additional theories:

Following Lenormant's suggestions, Friedrich Delitzsch connected the Hebrew with the Assyrian "kirubu" = "shedu" (the name of the winged bull). Against this combination see Feuchtwang, in "Zeitschrift für Assyriologie," etc., i. 68 et seq.; Teloni, ib. vi. 124 et seq.; Budge, in "The Expositor," April and May, 1885. Later on, Delitzsch ("Assyrisches Handwörterbuch," p. 352) connected it with the Assyrian "karubu" (great, mighty); so, also, Karppe, in "Journal Asiatique," July-Aug., 1897, pp. 91-93. Haupt, in Toy, "Ezekiel" ("S. B. O. T."), Hebrew text, p. 56, line 11, says: "The name may be Babylonian; it does not mean 'powerful,' however, but 'propitious' (synonym 'damḳu')." For the original conception of the Babylonian cherubim see Haupt's notes on the English translation of Ezekiel, pp. 181-184 ("S. B. O. T."), and the abstract of Haupt's paper on "Cherubim and Seraphim," in the "Bulletins of the Twelfth International Congress of Orientalists," No. 18, p. 9, Rome, 1899. See also Haupt, in Paterson, "Numbers" ("S. B. O. T."), p. 46: "The stem of is the Assyrian 'karâbu' (= be propitious, bless), which is nothing but a transposition of the Hebrew .ברך" Dillmann, Duff, and others still favor the connection with γρύψ ("gryphus" = the Hindu "Garuda.")

Kruv meaning cabbage entered Hebrew in Talmudic times. Ben-Yehuda introduced the related kruvit כרובית - cauliflower. As to the etymology of kruv (cabbage), Klein writes:

Together with Aramaic כרובא, כרבא, Syrian כרבא, borrowed from Greek krambe, which is related to krambos ( = dry shriveling), kromboyn (= to roast), and cognate with Old German hrimfan, rimfan ( = to contract, wrinkle), Old English hrympel (= wrinkle)

The English word "rumple" derives from hrympel.

From the Greek word krambe, we get the following expression: "dis krambe thanatos" meaning:

Cabbage, twice over, is death; repetition is tedious

Latin (in which crambe also means cabbage) has a similar phrase: "Crambe bis Cocta", meaning "cabbage boiled twice" - a subject hacked out.

These expressions led to the name of a game - "crambo" which is:

a word game in which one team says a rhyme or rhyming line for a word or line given by the other team

While I can't find any Biblical or Talmudic texts where it is unclear whether kruv refers to an angel or a cabbage, I did find one modern example. On the Hebrew version of Sesame Street, Rechov Sumsum, the Hebrew name for the Grover character is "Kruvi". The Muppet Wiki discusses the etymology:

Kruvi (most likely "small cabbage", although possibly "little angel", "cherub")

I never really thought about it before, but Grover's head is kind of cabbage shaped...

marshmallow

Lag B'Omer was a few days ago, but we're still talking about requirements for a bonfire. And as my kids will testify, you can't have a bonfire without marshmallows. But did you know that marshmallow may have a Hebrew origin?

The Maven's Word of the Day provides the following etymology of the word "marshmallow":

Marshmallow is one of those words that seems as if it should have a really interesting etymology, but is in truth rather mundane.

A mallow is a type of shrub. It is a member of the mallow family, which also includes hibiscus, okra, cotton, and some other plants. A marsh mallow, as you are probably about to guess, is a variety of mallow that lives in marshy places. Althaea officinalis, if you're keeping track.

Marshmallow is a confection made from the root of the marsh mallow (or, more often nowadays, from a bunch of unpleasant artificial sweeteners, flavorings, and thickeners)

From the mallow plant we also get the word "mauve". Take Our Word For It also discusses the marshmallow, and writes:

It may surprise some to see that marsh-mallow occurs naturally and is not that unholy amalgam of nutrasweet and styrofoam without which no camp-fire would be complete. In fact, it is a species of mallow plant which grows near salt marshes. This marsh-mallow has mauve flowers but this should not surprise us as mauve means (in French) "the color of a mallow flower" (from the Latin malva "mallow").

At least one more English word gets its name from the mallow plant - the mineral malachite. The Online Etymology Dictionary provides this etymology:

1398, from L. molochitis, from Gk. molochitis lithos "mallow stone," from molokhe "mallow;" the mineral traditionally so called from resemblance of its color to that of the leaves of the mallow plant.

So how is the word "mallow" derived from Hebrew? Klein, in his CEDEL, writes the following:

mallow, n., name of a plant. -- ME. malwe, fr. OE. mealwe, fr. L. malva, which, together with Gk. malache , of s.m., is borrowed fr. Heb. mallua h , 'mallow' (Job 30:4), derivative of melah, 'salt'; cp. Aram. milha, Syr. melha, Arab. milh, Akad. milu, 'salt'. (See H. Lewy, Die semitischen Fremdworter im Griechischen, 31 f., and Immanuel Low , Flora der Juden, I 227 ff. and 242 ff.) Cp. malachite, malvacious, mauve. Cp. also Malaga.

So according to Klein, we can connect the mallow in marshmallow to the Hebrew word מלח melach - salt. And his mention of Malaga? This is a port city in Southern Spain, who according to this travel guide:

Málaga, just like the other towns on the Costa del Sol, was settled by Phoenicians in ancient times, around the 7th to 8th century BC. Records indicate that the area was originally named "Malaka" from the Phoenician word for "salt." Because of the area's proximity to the sea, it became an important fishing center. Fish was salted and served as a staple food source for the local inhabitants. This is also the main reason behind the town's original name.

The American Heritage Dictionary also connects mallow to melach, although I should mention that some say that the word derives from "the Greek malake/maluke 'to soften'".

I've never tried a marshmallow made from an actual marsh mallow - I'd love to try. Probably healthier, and less kashrut problems. I just hope they're sweet, not salty...

shipud

Yesterday was Lag B'Omer, and of course we had a bonfire. Let's look at some of the foods eaten at a bonfire. We've already talked about naknik, so let's talk about another word - shipud שיפוד - "skewer". We find the word in the Talmud as שפוד shapud (or shefod or shefud) with basically the same meaning - "spit for roasting meat". A derivative is the verb שפד - "to put on a spit".

Everyone seems to agree that the word derives from the Greek spodos (no one suggests a connection to "spit" in English - it has a different etymology.) . Klein writes that the word is "borrowed from the Greek spodos (spit for roasting meat.)". Steinsaltz (Avoda Zara 75b) gives the same definition of the Greek word.

However, all the sources I've found online discussing the Greek word give it a different meaning: "ashes". For example, here is the etymology of the mineral spodumene:

French spodumène, from German Spodumen, from Greek spodoumenos, present participle of spodousthai, to be burned to ashes, from spodos, wood ashes (because the mineral becomes ash gray when exposed to air).

(Here are some more words deriving from spodos - always meaning "ashes.")

So what's happening here? Ben-Yehuda does mention a theory that perhaps the word came from some language other than Greek, for Greek does not have the "sh" sound, and had it been from Greek it should have been spelled ספוד. But he does start by saying the word derives from spodos, and doesn't give any indication that spodos meant "ashes".

So while both ashes and skewers can be found at a bonfire, I'd still like to know where exactly the word שפוד came from. If it's Greek to you, please let me know...

melafefon

Last night I had dinner in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot, and it got me thinking about the foods available in the word talpiyot as well. One of the major theories about the origin of the word was that it was connected to the root לפפ - "to roll together, wrap, wind up, interlace". From this root we get a number of foods:

• laffa לאפה- the large Iraqi pita that is "wrapped" around the food
• luf לוף - a popular word for leek (although I believe the proper name is kreisha כרישה ) apparently from Arabic - and this seems to be the Rambam's opinion in his commentary to the Mishna (Peah 6:10, Shviit 5:2). Stahl writes that the leaves of the leek are wrapped around the center. (The famous Israeli army ration - loof - isn't related; it comes from the English "loaf".)
  
• lefet לפת - turnip. Klein also provides the definition "vegetables eaten with bread". Jastrow seems to say that this meaning preceded that of turnip, and is related to the roots לפפ / לפת for the vegetables "cling" to the bread". From lefet we also get liftan לפתן - "relish" in Talmudic Hebrew - although I'm not sure why it has the meaning of "compote, stewed fruit" in Modern Hebrew.

What about the melafefon מלפפון- cucumber in Modern Hebrew? This one actually comes from Greek, not Hebrew. From Klein:

Greek melopepon (= melon), compounded of melon (= apple), and pepon ( = cooked by the sun, ripe, soft, sweet). The first element is related to malon (= apple), whence Latin malus (= apple tree), malus ( = apple); probably of Mediterranean origin. The second element is related to pessein, peptein ( = to soften, ripen, boil, cook) and
cognate with Latin coquere (= to cook.)

Take Our Word For It provides a similar etymology:

Melon is actually the Greek word for "apple". Our usage came about as a shortened form of melopepon (Greek, "melon", from melo- "apple" + pepon "gourd" ). The pepon component of melopepon went on to spawn its own words for melon-y plants. In Old French, it became pompion, "a pumpkin or melon" which went on to become pumpkin in English.

However, we have a much earlier source of the etymology. Jastrow quotes the Yerushalmi in Kilaim (1:2) that mentions that the word derives from Greek and is a compound of tapuach תפוח - "melon, apple" and avatiach אבטיח - "pepon, gourd ". Jastrow also vowelizes the word as מילפפון milpipon - which is closer to the original Greek than our pronunciation melafefon.

But wait, isn't melafefon "cucumber", not "melon"? Well, I thought I'd find the answer in the Ben-Yehuda dictionary, but to my great surprise - there was no entry! I still have no official reason for its abscence, but this article by Reuven Sivan might give us a clue.

In it he writes (my translation):

In 1895 the researcher and linguist A.M. Luntz wrote in his "Luach Eretz Yisrael" about melafefon, and was referring to what we call melafefon (cucumber) ... Years later the Vaad HaLashon was very angry about this and claimed that the melafefon in the Talmud is a melon, and the cucumber should be called by its Biblical name - kishu קישוא (from Bamidbar 11:5 - זָכַרְנוּ, אֶת-הַדָּגָה, אֲשֶׁר-נֹאכַל בְּמִצְרַיִם, חִנָּם; אֵת הַקִּשֻּׁאִים, וְאֵת הָאֲבַטִּחִים, וְאֶת-הֶחָצִיר וְאֶת-הַבְּצָלִים, וְאֶת-הַשּׁוּמִים. "We remember the ... cucumbers (kishuim) ... that we ate in Egypt") and what we today call kishu (zucchini squash) ... should be called kishot קישות or kishu-bishul קישוא-בישול. Much confusion reigned over this issue in Hebrew literature, and the author Y.D. Berkowitz who wrote a story called "Kishuim Chamutzim" ("Pickled Cucumbers") had to rename it "Melafefonim Chamutzim" in light of the victory of the "incorrect" meaning of the word melafefon.

So perhaps Ben-Yehuda did not give the word melafefon its own entry because he would have had to concede its modern usage. Or maybe he just forgot...

hazeret

Last year we discussed maror; now let's talk about a vegetable that can be used for maror - חזרת hazeret (or chazeret).

The Mishna in Pesachim (2:6) lists a number of vegetables that can be used to fulfill one's obligation on the night of Pesach - and includes in the list hazeret. The gemara there (39a) translates hazeret from Hebrew into Aramaic - chasa חסא - lettuce. Rashi also identifies hazeret as lettuce - using the French word laitugue, which is related to the English word lettuce.

So how did hazeret come to be used for horseradish in Modern Hebrew? According to Dr. Yehuda Feliks here, when the Jews moved further East in Europe, lettuce was no longer available for Pesach. The Chacham Tzvi (1656-1718) wrote that the Jews of Ashkenaz and Poland would use tamcha תמכא for maror, because they couldn't find hazeret. Tamcha is one of the other vegetables listed in the mishna as acceptable, and the Tosfot Yom Tov (1579-1654) identifies it with horseradish (a relatively late identification- the Rambam identifies it with a type of chicory and Rashi translates it as Marrubium vulgare - horehound). Horseradish is known as chrain in Yiddish - the origin of the word is unknown, but it has many cognates in European languages. However, over time the word hazeret became associated with horseradish instead of tamcha. This entered Modern Hebrew as well, despite the availability of lettuce. However, lettuce seems like a better fit, because horseradish is not as bitter as it is sharp, and the Yerushalmi on Pesachim says that hazeret starts out sweet and ends bitter (like the Jews' experience in Egypt) - a much better description of lettuce than horseradish. For more about the development of the use of horseradish for maror, read this interesting article by Ari Zivitofsky (thanks to Parshablog for the link).

Interestingly, none of the sources I looked at - Jastrow, Ben Yehuda, Klein - offer an etymology for hazeret, despite the easily identifiable root of חזר (to return). I do suspect, however, that there are many drashot out there...

semolina

Well, I'm back from my trip, and it's almost Pesach, so time to get rid of the chametz.

Let's look at semolina, the coarse flour used to make cream of wheat and couscous.

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following etymology:

alteration of It. semolino, dim. of semola "bran," from L. simila "the finest flour," probably from the same Semitic source as Gk. semidalis "the finest flour" (cf. Assyrian samidu, Syrian semida "fine meal")

We find reference to a fine flour called semida סמידא in the Talmud (Pesachim 74b, Shabbat 110b, Moed Katan 28a). Semida is the Targum Yonatan translation for solet סולת - also meaning "fine flour".

However, it should be noted that Steinsaltz, Ben-Yehuda and maybe even Jastrow say that the Aramaic derives from the Greek instead of the other way around.

yayin and wine

When my bilingual six year old is offered a drink at kiddush, she would like to know if it is grape juice or "wayin". She obviously senses the similarity between the Hebrew yayin יין and the English "wine". Are the words related?

According to most scholars, yes. What isn't clear is how. The Hebrew yayin is clearly related to the other Semitic words - Ugaritic yn, Arabic wayn, Akkadian inu. The Indo-European words are also connected - Greek oinos, Latin vinum, Albanian vone, Armenian gini - as is the English word "vine".

The words are all similar enough - what isn't clear is if the Semitic borrowed from the Indo-European, the Indo-European borrowed from the Semitic, or both borrowed from somewhere else. A popular theory is that wine making began in the Caucasus - in modern-day Turkey and Armenia, and the word originated there, perhaps the Hittite wiyana. There are those that connect this fact to the first story of wine in the Bible - Noah's planting a vineyard after landing on Mount Ararat, which is in that region (Bereshit 9:20).

And what of my daughter's wayin? According to Kutscher, this was probably the earliest Semitic form of the word - וין. Why did it change to yayin in Hebrew? Because of a general rule in Hebrew (as well as Aramaic and Ugaritic) that a vav in the beginning of a word becomes a yod. Arabic and Ethiopian do not have that rule, and we can see this in the Arabic word for boy - walad, which in Hebrew becomes yeled.

marzipan

Marzipan is a candy made of ground almonds, and the name of a famous bakery in Jerusalem. Is the name of Semitic origin? Mike Gerver thinks so:

Marzipan comes via Italian from Arabic mauthaban, “seated figure.” Marzipan originally came in fancy little boxes decorated with a picture of a Venetian coin showing Jesus sitting on a throne. The candy took its name from the coin, which was an imitation of Arab coins showing a seated king, called mauthaban. The Arabic word comes from wathaba, “sit,” which is from the same Semitic root as Hebrew ישב, “sit,” or “dwell.” (Note that ש in Hebrew corresponds to two different consonants in Arabic, either s or th, just as it corresponds to either ש or ת in Aramaic. The Aramaic word for “sit” is יתב.) Derivatives of ישב include שביתה, “strike” in modern Hebrew; מושב, a cooperative community with privately owned land, moshav in English; ישוב, “settlement” or “community;” and ישיבה, “place where people sit,” hence yeshiva, or “meeting” in modern Hebrew.

The Online Etymology Dictionary mentions this theory, and adds "Nobody seems to quite accept this, but nobody has a better idea."

This site says that marzipan might derive from a Persian word for governor, marzuban.

The Oxford English Dictionary presents another explanation:

What, then, is the ultimate origin of marzipan (and its cousin marchpane)? The original OED entry comments that 'Its etymology is obscure', and does no more than mention one scholar as having 'ingeniously' suggested a link with 'Arabic mauthabn "a king that sits still"'. Once again, recent scholarship allows the new OED entry to put forward a new derivation: in this case Italian philologists have furnished the basis for a link with - remarkably - the Far East. In Myanmar (Burma) there is a port, near the town of Moulmein, called Martaban, which was famous for the glazed jars which it exported to the West, often containing preserves and sweetmeats. Delicacies are often associated with the containers in which they are traditionally imported (ginger being an obvious example); it seems plausible enough that a name associated with a special container should transfer its association to the thing contained.

Plausibility would not, however, be enough were it not for a curious aspect of the words which correspond to marzipan in some of the other European languages: Italian marzapane, Spanish mazapán, French massepain. In each case the relevant word once also had another meaning, denoting various kinds of container - a casket in 15th-century French and 14th-century Spanish (specifically for confectionery in the case of French), and a container of a certain capacity in Venetian documents in the 13th. And then there is also the fact that Martaban is still known for its pottery: the same batch of recently published OED entries which contains marzipan also contains an entry for Martaban jar (sometimes simply Martaban), this being a kind of large glazed earthenware jar. (The same jars have also arrived in English via Afrikaans: the ships of the Dutch East India Company carried them to South Africa, where even English speakers came to call them Martevaans. By the same exacting criteria that separated marchpane and marzipan, we distinguish Martaban (jar) from Martevaan - the latter has its own entry in the OED, now published for the first time.)

If all the theories revolve around the container, I can't help wondering if perhaps the word somehow connects to the Talmudic word martzuf מרצוף , meaning "bag, sack". Klein provides the following etymology:

Latin marsupium ( = poudi, purse), from Greek marsypion, diminutive of marsypos, marsipos (=bag, purse), which is probably of Oriental origin.

If this somehow was the case, then you could connect marzipan to marsupial...

gezer

Is there any connection between gezer גזר - "carrot" and the root גזר - "to cut"? I was surprised to find out there is none.

I'm not entirely sure when gezer as carrot entered Hebrew. Klein lists it as Medieval Hebrew. My guess is that it came from the Arabic jazar, which was borrowed from the Persian gazar or the Pashto gazara (from this article.) This makes sense, for the carrot originated in Afghanistan. But Persian and Pashto are Indo-European languages, not related to Hebrew.

The root גזר , meaning "to cut", on the other hand, is certainly Hebrew. We've noted before that גזר is one of a number of roots beginning with גז that mean to cut : גזה, גזז, גזר, גזל, גזם, גזע

Horowitz points out that with metathesis, גזר becomes גרז - the root of garzen גרזן - "axe".

A development from "to cut" is "to decree" - and from here we get gzar-din גזר-דין "verdict" and gezera גזרה - "decree, edict". A migzar מגזר means "a sector (of the population) and a gizra גזרה is "a shape, figure, region."

As far as the famous ancient city of Gezer - Gesenius writes that it was "probably a steep place, precipice" - separated, cut off.

In Arabic, jazira means "island" - cut off from the land. The country Algeria gets its name from here. The country is known in Arabic as Al Djazair. Stahl writes that the name comes from a number of small islands not far from the coast (which have long been connected to the land), which gave the name to the city Algiers, which gave its name to the country.

The Arabic television network Al Jazeera also means "the island" - in this case the peninsula of Qatar, surrounded by water on three sides and desert on the other.