email subscriptions are back

If you’ve been wondering about Balashon email updates, here’s the good news: they’re working again.

I wrote up the background and why this has been complicated here:
https://www.balashon.com/2025/11/email-updates.html

To subscribe now, you can use the subscription box in the sidebar (it uses the same link), or subscribe directly here:

https://blogtrottr.com/?subscribe=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.balashon.com%2Fatom.xml

You’ll enter your email address, choose whether you want each post as it’s published or a digest, and then confirm via email.

I wanted to get email subscriptions working again so that anyone who prefers reading Balashon by email can do that, and now that it’s set up, I hope to start posting again soon.

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email test post

 Just a test.

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email updates?

For many years, I provided the ability to subscribe to Balashon posts via Google FeedBurner. That feature shut down in 2021. I've since switched a few times - including MailerLite and Mailchimp, and most recently "follow.it". All of them have now removed the option for free email subscriptions, and I have not yet found a replacement.

So first of all, you should know that I am aware that there are no email updates. I'm still not back to writing regular posts, but I do hope to soon(ish) and when I do I'd like to make sure that everyone who wants to can read them by email.

Therefore, if anyone is aware of a platform that provides free email updates for blogs (with at least a mention of the post title and link to the latest post - even better more of the post or all of it), please let me know.  Alternatively, if anyone would like to sponsor a paid email subscription service, I would certainly be grateful. Thanks!

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where I've been writing lately

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here on Balashon. But I haven’t stopped writing about Hebrew and language. For some time now, I’ve been publishing a weekly column in HaMizrachi Weekly, where I explore language issues connected to the weekly Torah reading.

You can read the archives and subscribe here:
👉 HaMizrachi Weekly

In addition, I’m working on a new book - more details coming soon!

So while I do hope to continue posting here on Balashon, for regular language insights you can follow my weekly pieces in HaMizrachi.

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ghibli and kibel

The latest viral internet trend is creating AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli. You've very likely seen them by now—or maybe even created some yourself. 

They look something like this:

But did you know there's a connection between Ghibli and a very common Hebrew root?

As noted, the images are inspired by the style of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation (anime) studio. The Wikipedia entry gives this explanation for the origin of the studio’s name:

The name "Ghibli" was chosen by Miyazaki from the Italian noun ghibli (also used in English), the nickname of Italy's Saharan scouting plane Caproni Ca.309, in turn derived from the Italianization of the Libyan Arabic name for a hot desert wind (قبلي qibliyy). The name was chosen by Miyazaki due to his passion for aircraft and also for the idea that the studio would "blow a new wind through the anime industry.".Although the Italian word would be more accurately transliterated as "Giburi" (ギブリ), with a hard g sound, the studio's name is written in Japanese as Jiburi.

And where does the name of the wind come from? The Wiktionary entry for ghibli defines it as: "sirocco (a hot, dust-carrying desert wind in North Africa, somewhat similar to the foehn)." The sirocco is a similar type of wind to the hamsin familiar in Israel.

The same entry also provides this etymology:

From Italian ghibli, from the Libyan Arabic form of Standard Arabic قِبْلِيّ (qibliyy, “coming from the qibla”)

And what is the qibla? It is the direction Muslims face when praying toward Mecca, literally meaning "direction." For those in Libya, the qibla would be east, toward Saudi Arabia. The Wiktionary entry notes that the etymology comes from Arabic قِبْلَة (qibla, “that which is opposite”).

And this meaning, "opposite", brings us to the Hebrew root קבל kibel, which as I've written about here previously, also originally meant "opposite":

The root קבל in earlier biblical texts did not mean "receive", but rather "to be opposite", or "before, in front of". From the sense of "opposite" comes the meaning of makbil מקביל - "parallel" or "corresponding", as found in the description of the loops of the tabernacle (Shemot 26:5). As with the previous verb, קבל was also influenced by Aramaic, and so in the later books of the Tanach, came to mean "receive", since a person receiving stands opposite the person giving.

So while it's quite a journey from Japan to the Middle East, we've once again found a connection between a popular modern word and an ancient biblical cognate.

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leitzan and mukion

Let's look at two Hebrew words for clown - לֵיצָן leitzan and מוּקְיוֹן mukion. 

Leitzan is the more common of the two, so we'll start by examining it. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew, meaning "scorner, scoffer, mocker, jester." It is parallel to the biblical לֵץ letz, which is both a verb "to scorn, scoff" and also a substantive noun meaning "scorner, scoffer." 

The word letz appears in the opening verse of the book of Tehillim:

אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר  לֹא הָלַךְ בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים לֹא עָמָד וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים לֹא יָשָׁב׃

"Happy is the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, or taken the path of sinners, or sat in the session of scoffers." (Tehillim 1:1)

In a Talmudic commentary on this verse, we can see the transformation from letz to leitzan:

ובמושב לצים לא ישב שלא ישב במושב אנשי פלשתים מפני שלצנים היו

"Nor sat in the seat of the scornful (Psalms 1:1) - this means that Abraham did not sit in the seat of the Philistines, because they were scorners who engaged in jest and buffoonery." (Avoda Zara 19a)

The word letz, in turn, derives from the root ליץ, which also provides the verb hitlotzetz הִתְלוֹצֵץ. That verb originally meant "to act as a scoffer" (as in Yeshaya 28:22), but today means "to joke, to jest."

There is another meaning of ליץ - "to translate, intercede." Klein lists this root as distinct from the one we mentioned earlier. However, the Academy of the Hebrew Language suggests that both roots (ליץ or perhaps לוץ) derive from an earlier meaning "to speak." One sense would have diverged to mocking speech, and the other to translating or interceding speech, like the melitz מֵּלִיץ (interpreter) mentioned in Bereshit 42:23. In the way an ambassador might serve as both a translator and an advocate, the sense of "intercessor" also developed (for example, Iyov 33:23). From here came the verb הִמְלִיץ himlitz - "to recommend".

Let's return to the sense of leitzan as "scoffer, scorner." This negative connotation is clear in another Talmudic passage in Avoda Zara. Again, the Talmud cites Tehillim 1:1, this time to criticize the Roman stadium culture:

ההולך לאיצטדינין ולכרקום וראה שם את הנחשים ואת החברין בוקיון ומוקיון ומוליון ולוליון בלורין סלגורין הרי זה מושב לצים ועליהם הכתוב אומר (תהלים א, א) אשרי האיש אשר לא הלך

With regard to one who goes to stadiums where people are killed in contests with gladiators or beasts, or to a camp of besiegers where different forms of entertainment are provided for the besieging army, and he sees there the acts of the diviners and those who cast spells, or the acts of the clowns known as bukiyon, or mukiyon, or muliyon, or luliyon, or belurin, or salgurin, this is categorized as “the seat of the scornful”; and with regard to such places the verse states: “Happy is the man that has not walked in the council of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful.” (Avoda Zara 18b)

The Talmud says that one who watches the acts of those various clowns is like one who sits in the seat of the scornful - the letzim. Rashi, in his commentary on the passage, refers to these clowns as leitzanim:

בוקיון מוקיון לוליון סלגריון - כולן מיני ליצנים הן:

Elon Gilad, in this article, notes that neither the Talmudic passage nor Rashi were attempting to present these clowns in a positive light. They were derided negatively, as scoffers. But he suggests that the linkage between leitzan and "clown" (as opposed to simply "scoffer") was due to the immense influence Rashi had. In later medieval culture clowns took on a more positive, entertaining role, and when 19th century writers of early modern Hebrew were looking for a word for clown, leitzan fit the bill.

The Talmudic passage mentioned six types of clowns, but only one of them still is in use today - albeit much smaller than leitzan - the mukion. (The clown term luliyan לוּלְיָן was later adopted for the word "acrobat.") The term mukion, like the previous term bukion, likely refer to the characters Maccus and Buccus, found in the Roman plays known as the Atellan Farce. Maccus and Buccus were both clowns, Maccus being the most popular of the stock characters in those plays. The etymology of Maccus isn't fully clear, but some suggest that it might be related distantly to the English word "mock."

Today mukion is rarely used, but when it is, it will refer to a professional or artistic role of an actual performing clown, while a leitzan can also refer to anyone who is joking around or acting foolishly. 

One more Hebrew word should be mentioned in this discussion. In Tehillim 73:8, we find the root מיק (or מוק) in its only appearance in the Tanakh:

יָמִיקוּ וִידַבְּרוּ בְרָע עֹשֶׁק מִמָּרוֹם יְדַבֵּרוּ׃

"They scoff and plan evil; from their eminence they plan wrongdoing."

As with any word that only appears once in Biblical Hebrew, it's not easy to pin down its meaning. But most translations say it means "to scoff" or "to deride." Linguists suggest that it comes from Aramaic influence, where the cognate root has a similar meaning. In fact, the Aramaic Targum to Tehillim 1:1 translates letzim as מְמִקְנֵי memiknei, from that same root. So too does the Targum translate the verb ליץ in Mishlei 9:12 as מֵמִיק memik.

While the Hebrew root לוץ certainly has a parallel in the Aramaic מוק, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence that מוק is the root of mukion (and certainly not Maccus). It's likely just a coincidence, but one that may have strengthened the impression at the time that the mukion clown was also a scoffer.

 

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inbal

A reader asked about an Israeli grape juice called Inbalim ענבלים. I presume this is the brand:

He asked why the juice had that name. 

I don't have an actual answer to that question. It's a label from the Arza Winery, and I don't see any official explanation online for that choice. But I can speculate, and I can certainly give more background to the word עִנְבָּל inbal.

The word inbal has two meanings. Either the clapper of a bell (the swinging metal piece that hits the bell and makes the sound) or the uvula (the little dangling ball in the back of the throat). As you can probably imagine, the two are related, since they both are small hanging spheres.

An early appearance of the word inbal is in the Mishna, Nazir 6:2. The mishna is discussing what kind of grape components are forbidden to the nazirite. The biblical verse (Bamidbar 6:4) uses two terms - חַרְצַנִּים chartzanim and זָג zag. By the time of the mishna, it was unclear what each of those words meant - the inner or outer parts of the grape?. One opinion is given by Rabbi Yosei:

כְּזוֹג שֶׁל בְּהֵמָה, הַחִיצוֹן זוֹג וְהַפְּנִימִי עִנְבָּל:

It is like a bell [zog] worn by an animal, in which the outer part, which corresponds to the skin of a grape, is called zog, and the inner portion of the bell, the clapper, which corresponds to the seeds in a grape, is called inbal.

Rabbi Yosei is stating the zag is like zog - a bell, and therefore the chartzanim, the seeds, are like the inner portion of the bell, the clapper.

So this association between grapes and inbal might have given inspiration to the brand of grape juice. 

More such connections can be found in the etymology of inbal. In Ben-Yehuda's dictionary, there are two suggestions.

In the first, he quotes Musaphia who says it derives from the Greek word ἒμβολον. Klein accepts this suggestion:

עִנְבָּל m.n. PBH clapper of a bell. [From Gk. embolon (= lit.: ‘something thrown in’), from emballein (= to throw in), from en (= in) and ballein (= to throw)

The Greek ballein is the origin of a number of English words, including ballistics and metabolism. Interestingly, it's related to the word "ball", as in "dancing party", but not the round object "ball", which derives from a different Indo-European root (the etymologies of both appear here).

However, Ben-Yehuda rejects this etymology, favoring one with a Hebrew origin. He says it's more likely to come from עֵנָב einav - "grape," with the letter ל lamed added at the end. Other such words with a similar suffix may include barzel ברזל and karmel כרמל.

Possible support for this approach could be found in the etymology of the word "uvula," which, as we've seen, is a meaning of inbal:

late 14c., from Late Latin uvula, from Latin uvola "small bunch of grapes," diminutive of uva "grape," from PIE root *og- "fruit, berry." So called from fancied resemblance of the organ to small grapes.

So perhaps the inbal was also seen to look like a small grape, and from there got its name in Hebrew as well.

However, this etymology is questioned by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, who note that in some Talmudic text, inbal is spelled with an alef instead of an ayin, which would make the Greek etymology more likely. They also note that Inbal has become a popular first name in Israel, perhaps because of the similarity to the European name Annabelle (and that it should not be confused with the similar sounding name Inbar.)

After all this, I think it's less likely that the Arza Winery was concerned about the etymology or even ancient use of inbal, and more interested in a nice sounding name that at least includes the Hebrew word for grapes. But if I ever find out, I'll be sure to let you all know.

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