misken, sakana, and sochen

In the beginning of Shemot, the Israelites were forced to build arei miskenot ערי מסכנות - "storage cities" (Shemot 1:11).

The root סכן is found in a number of Hebrew words going back to Biblical times - some still in use today, some less so. Let's first look at the different meanings, and then try to see if they are connected.

1) The verb סכן (in the kal form) can mean "was useful, benefited". This sense is found in Iyov 15:3, 22:2, 34:9, 35:3.

2) In the hifil form (הסכין), it means "was accustomed, was used to". This form appears in Bamidbar 22:30, Tehilim 139:3, and Iyov 22:21.

3) The familiar word sakana סכנה - "danger" does not appear in the Tanach (it appears frequently in Rabbinic Hebrew). But it does appear as a nifal verb once in Kohelet 10:9  יסכן - "will be harmed". In Rabbinic Hebrew we find the piel form, meaning "to expose to danger". Derivatives include sikun סיכון - "risk" and misukan מסוכן - which in the Talmud meant "in danger" but by Medieval Hebrew meant "dangerous".

4)  The noun sochen סוכן is found in Yeshayahu 22:15, and as sochenet סוכנת in Melachim I 1:2,4. It is usually translated there as "steward" or "attendant". In Modern Hebrew, sochen means "agent" and sochnut סוכנות is "agency".

5) The word misken מסכן means "poor, miserable", and appears in Kohelet 4:13;9:15-16.  The noun, miskenut מסכנות - "poverty" is found in Devarim 8:9. Klein (in his CEDEL) points out that the word "mesquin", defined as "mean, sordid" has its origins in this word:

French, from Italian meschino, from Arabic miskin, (in VArab. pronunciation meskin), 'poor, wretched, miserable', which is borrowed from Hebrew or Aramaic misken or Syriac mesken, 'poor', which are perhaps loan words from Akkadian mushkenu, 'beggar, needy'.

6) As I mentioned above, miskenot means storehouses. In addition to Shemot, the word also appears in Melachim I 9:19, and Divrei HaYamim II 8:4,6; 16:4;17:12 and 32:28.

So what are the connections between the words? Let's start with Klein. Without explaining why, he puts verbs 1 and 2 in the same entry. I assume that if one is good at something, he is both "useful" and "becomes accustomed". He says it is related to the Akkadian phrase sakanu ana as found in the Tel Amarna letters, which means "to care for". Based on this, he connects this root to sochen, who cares for people.

However, he also mentions that some scholars (possibly Kutscher, who has a chapter about it) say that sochen "is related to Akkadian shaknu (governor of a province)", which is connected to segan סגן - in Biblical Hebrew a government prefect, and later in Rabbinic Hebrew a deputy. He says that shaknu comes from shakanu, meaning "to lay, set, appoint", and is cognate with the Hebrew שכן - "to settle down, dwell". Both verbs he writes are

Shaph'el forms of כון (=to be, be set up, be established), hence literally mean 'to cause to be, cause to be set up, cause to be established'.

(Others disagree and say that shaknu ultimately has a Sumerian origin.)

Klein claims that miskenot is also related to שכן, and gives the following etymology:

Probably a loan word from Akkadian mashkanu (=storehouse, magazine), from shakanu (= to lay, place deposit, store up), which is related to the Hebrew שכן (= he dwelled, abode).

However, he doesn't connected misken or sakana to any of the others.

The Daat Mikra on Devarim 8:9 connects (5) and (6) by pointing out that storehouses are needed when food is not plentiful, and needs to be rationed, like with a poor person.

Steinberg connects all the meanings under the general header of "concerned about the needs of his master". This concern causes one to try to do his best job to help (1), and to be very careful about doing things (2), and to be aware of danger (3). Naturally, this is the role of the sochen, a poor person is concerned about food, and the storehouses stored food for a country concerned about famine in the future. He rejects the unnecessary complications of Gesenius and Furst, when it is clear to him that the words are related. His explanation is certainly clean and inviting. But I think in a way, it's a bit too clean, and language doesn't usually develop just like that. So I'm inclined to accept the opinions of the later scholars who show various sources for the different meanings of the root.

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tichon

The word tichon תיכון is of biblical origin, but the precise biblical usage isn't found much today. It means "middle", from toch תוך (midst, interior), in the same way that chitzon חיצון - "external" derives from chutz חוץ (outside). In the Bible, it is mostly used in describing construction, as in Shemot 26:28  -  וְהַבְּרִיחַ הַתִּיכֹן בְּתוֹךְ הַקְּרָשִׁים  - "the middle bar in the midst of the boards".

However, today the word is found mostly in three Modern Hebrew phrases. Let's take a look at them:

a) Yam Ha-Tichon ים התיכון. This phrase refers to the Mediterranean Sea. It's a little frustrating that this is what the sea is called in Modern Hebrew, because Biblical Hebrew has no shortage of names for it: Yam HaGadol ים הגדול - "the great sea" (Bamidbar 34:6, etc.), Yam Pelishtim ים פלשתים - "sea of the Philistines" (Shemot 23:31), and Yam HaAcharon ים האחרון - "the Western sea (literally "rear" sea, as they oriented themselves to the east.)" (Devarim 11:24, etc.)

So where does Yam HaTichon - the "middle sea" come from? Not actually from "Mediterranean", which literally means "midland". Rather it is a translation of the German Mittelmeer, which means "middle sea".

b) Mizrach Ha-Tichon מזרח התיכון. This is a direct translation of the English "Middle East", which we all know refers to the countries of southwest Asia and northeast Africa. Except that it's not entirely true. As Joel Achenbach writes in his book Why Things Are:

Q: Why do we always hear about the Far East and the Middle East but never the Near East?

A: The Near East is the Middle East; there isn't a Near East anymore. We start in the Middle, then go to the Far.

For centuries the term Near East referred, sensibly enough, to everything from Morocco to the Persian Gulf. The Middle East extended from there to Southeast Asia. The Far East included the nations along the Pacific. When World War II broke out, Britain transferred its Middle East military command from India to Egypt, to be closer to the action. The new station kept the old name. Gradually almost everyone picked up the new British nomenclature.

This of course includes Hebrew, where mizrach hatichon is the name almost exclusively given to the region.

c) Beit Sefer Tichon בית ספר תיכון. This is the most confusing of the three - I'm still not sure I've tracked down the etymology fully. Today it certainly refers to "high school", but as you might have guessed, the literal translation means "middle school." At first glance, one might assume (and I've seen a number of websites who claim) that high school is placed in the middle of elementary school and university. However, the senior Hebrew linguist Yechezkel Kutscher wrote:

The German “Mittelschule” – “high school” was first translated literally bet sefer benayim and today bet sefer tikhon.

This translation is rather old - Ben Yehuda mentions it in his dictionary, and when searching historic Hebrew newspapers, I found mention of "beit sefer tichon" as far back as 1895, but no mention of Kutscher's earlier phrase - בית ספר ביניים beit sefer benayim.

What did mittelschule originally refer to?  Apparently, it was an "intermediate school" for the "middle ranks" or "middle class", as described here:

Parallel to the Volksschule was the Mittelschule, intended for the middle classes.

Or also here:

The tripartite secondary school system, with the Gymnasium or Oberschule for the children of the educated class, the Mittelschule for the middle ranks, and Hauptschule (main school) for the ordinary workers

I'm not familiar enough with either the German educational system or the early Zionist / Israeli educational system to fully described the influence of the former on the latter, but clearly it existed. For example, two of Israel's oldest high schools - the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and the Hebrew Reali School, took their names from the German Gymnasium and Realschule respectively. In addition, as the Safa Ivrit website points out, the unusual nicknames for the high school classes: the 12th graders are called shministim שמיניסטים - "eighters", 11th graders are in shviit שביעית - "seventh", etc., is based on the German system, where secondary education would begin in fifth grade for eight years. This was the case in Israel as well until 1968, when the junior high schools - chativat beinayim חטיבת ביניים - were established, leaving high schools with only three or four years.

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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.

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totafot

Sometimes when I want to write about a word, I'm surprised that so little has been written about it. This is not one of those times.

When it comes to the word totafot טוטפת (or טוטפות) it seems that absolutely everyone is getting into the game. I'm not sure how to organize the discussion, with so many opinions. So bear with me if it seems a little scattered today.

The earliest source that discusses the etymology of totafot is Sanhedrin 4b:

והתניא (שמות יג) לטטפת (דברים ו) לטטפת (דברים יא) לטוטפות הרי כאן ארבע דברי ר' ישמעאל ר"ע אומר אינו צריך טט בכתפי שתים פת באפריקי שתים

[Translation from here]:

We learned in a b'raita: "Totafot," "totafot," "totafot."
[Ex 13:16, Deut 6:8, and Deut 11:18 describe the tfillin worn on the head as "totafot." The third time, the word is spelled with a "vav" after the first "tet" and before the final "tav," a plural form.]
That makes four [compartments within the tfillin box]; these are the words of R. Yishmael.
R. Akiva said: We do not need (this exegesis): "Tot" in Coptic means two, and "Fot" in Afriki.

As we've seen before, Rabbi Akiva is not afraid to derive biblical words from languages other than Hebrew. (However there is a lot of apologetics out there, saying that there is of course no way that a biblical word could come from any language other than Hebrew). Steinsaltz writes that the Coptic word is "aft" meaning "two", and "Afriki" means Phrygian in which פת means "two", and is connected to the Greek bathos, meaning "both".

Aryeh Kaplan in The Living Torah, also writes:

According to Talmudic tradition, the word totafoth alludes to the four boxes in the head Tefillin, since tot in a Caspian dialect is two and foth or poth is two in African or Phrygian (see note on Genesis 10:2; Menachoth 34b). The word tot appears to be cognate to 'two,' and possibly also to the Latin totas, and hence the English 'total.' Poth is cognate to the Gothic bothe, the English 'both,' and the Sanscrit botto.

Significantly in ancient Egyptian, ftu or fot means four, while tot can denote a gathering, resemblance, divine, or hard leather. Hence, totafoth may have had the connotation of a fourfold amulet, made of leather, as the Tefillin indeed are.

Rashi on Shmot 13:16 quotes Rabbi Akiva as well as another opinion:

This word means "tefilin". Because they are made of four compartments, they are called totafot. For tat in the Kaspi language means two, pat in the Afriki language means two. Menachem (ben Saruq) in his notes (connects it) with: והטף אל דרום "And speak" to the south." (Yechezkel 21:2) and אל תטיפו "Don't speak" (Micha 2:6). These are terms for speaking, like "and a reminder between your eyes" (Shmot 13:9) which is said in the first section, for whoever sees them tied between the eyes will remember the miracle and speak about it.

The Ramban on the same verse rejects Menachem's approach. He writes (Chavel translation):

No affinity is known to this word. Linguists (meaning Menachem), however, associated it with the expressions: 'v'hateiph' (And speak) to the south; And my word 'titoph' (dropped) upon them. The figurative usage thereof is based on the verse: And the mountains shall drop (v'hitiphu) sweet wine. Thus the verse is saying that you should make the exodus from Egypt a sign upon your hand,, and between your eyes a source for discourse distilling as the dew upon those who hear it. Our Rabbis, however, have called an object which lies upon the head totapoth, just as they have said (Shabbat 57a): "[A woman] many not go out [on the Sabbath] with a totepeth or head-bangles." Rabbi Abahu said: "What is totepeth? It is a forehead-band extending from ear to ear". Now it is the Rabbis [of the Talmud] who are the [true Hebrew] linguists, as they spoke the language and knew it and it is from them that we should accept [the explanation of the word ultotaphoth].

Why was the Ramban so critical of Menachem? The Ibn Ezra on Devarim 6:8 gives us a clue. He writes that the Karaites say that totafot derives from the root הטף (as we've seen Menachem say). He claims this is not possible, for the root of הטף is נטף - and totafot has no nun and two tets.

(Without getting into a major polemic, it is interesting to note that the issue of totafot was and still is central to the debate between Karaites and Rabbinic Judaism. The Karaites do not believe there is a commandment to wear tefilin, and that seems to be the concern of the Ibn Ezra and Ramban. On the other hand, those trying to prove the existence of the Oral Torah often write that with out such a tradition, we could never understand the meaning - and practice - of totafot.)

In regards to the Ibn Ezra's proof from the difference between נטף and טוטפת, Tigay (also the author of the JPS Devarim) discusses in this comprehensive article, On the Meaning of T(W)TPT how there is a precedent for such a shift in letters. He gives the example of לבלב becoming לולב, and the Ugaritic kbkb being related to the Hebrew כובב.

However, just because the root is נטף, it doesn't mean that totafot didn't refer to something physical, worn on the head. While הטף does mean "to preach", the earlier meaning is "to drop, drip" from where we get the word טיפה tipa - drop.

Amos Chacham in the Daat Mikra says that jewelry worn on the head would "hang, drop down", and we find jewelry called netifot נטיפות in Yeshaya 3:19.

Tigay also suggests "headband", but derives the word totafot from the Arabic tafa - "go around, encircle". (From this root we also get taifa, the Spanish districts under the Moslems.)

And with all this said, I still haven't scratched the surface. Rav Kasher, in the appendix to Torah Sheleimah Parshat Bo, has an article that lists eleven explanations to the word totafot. (Tigay quotes another article that has 21).

Aside from what we've already discussed, Kasher quotes the Chizkuni and others who say it may be related to the Aramaic word מטייפין - "will see". (Maybe this is an example of an alternation between tet and tzade - צפה also means "to see".) Kasher connects this theory to the opinion that a blind person is exempt from tefilin.

I think I'll leave it here for now. Maybe I'll come back to it for Parshat Vaetchanan...

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bracha

Last week we discussed the concept of nisayon, and I mentioned that I have a problem where the verb נסה would have one meaning from God to man, and an entirely different one from man to God.

Well, another verb that has that same issue, and has interested me for many years is ברך - the root of the word ברכה bracha - blessing. In this weeks parasha, we find God blessing man (Bereshit 24:1, 25:11), man blessing God ( 24:48), and man blessing man (24:60). God is also described as ברוך baruch (24:27).

There are those that describe bracha from God to man, or man to man as bestowing something on the recipient, but bracha from man to God is considered "thanks" (JPS on Devarim 8:10) or "praise" (Chizkuni on Bereshit 24:27, Abarbanel on Bereshit 27).

However, there are a large number of sources that do not take this approach, and rather say that when man blesses God, there is something "given". (See for example, Sefer HaIkkarim 26, Rabbeinu Bachye's intoduction to Zot HaBracha, Teshuvot Rashba 23, HaEmek Dvar Shmot 18:10, Harchev Dvar Bereshit 24:27). Perhaps the best description is by Rav Hirsch on Bereshit 9:58, discussing the word baruch:

The understanding of this term has been confused because people have objected to take this word "to bless" referring from man to God, in the same meaning as it has when used from God to man. It has been taken to be adjectival like חנון, רחום, so that, like these, it designates the active source, the holder of blessing as of pity and grace. But that does not get us much further, we are constantly called upon לברך את השם ... If the man is active is blessing God, then God must be blessed in a passive sense, He must be receiving blessing from man, one can not get away from it. And why should one have to try and get away from it? At the moment that God made the fulfillment of His Will on earth dependent on the free decision of Man He said to them ברכני , bless me...The whole Torah teaches us nothing else than how we can מברך את השם and that we are to do so. To take it to mean praise or thank God, by which one has lost the true conception of ברך את השם ...

Two other words that some scholars connect to the root ברך are berech ברך - knee, and breicha בריכה - pond, pool. Steinberg says bracha is related to berech, since bowing at the knee is part of prayer. Stahl connects breicha to berech by writing that animals kneel down to drink at the pool, as do people washing clothes.

And for those that missed it, we've previously discussed how perhaps the English word "broker" and the phrase "break a leg" derive from bracha...

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barzel

In this week's parasha (Ekev) we see Eretz Yisrael described as a land whose "stones are iron" - אֶרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אֲבָנֶיהָ בַרְזֶל (Devarim 8:9). What is the origin of the Hebrew word for iron - barzel ברזל?

Kutscher writes that names for metals have a tendency to "wander" from land to land, and therefore it is difficult to place their origin. I found this quote discussing barzel (I recommend reviewing the entire thread):

There is an article by G. Rendsburg in Scripta Mediterranea 3 (1982), pp.54-71 (Toronto):
Semitic przl/brzl/brdl, "Iron"* Rendsburg starts off stating that the etymology is most obscure. He eventually proposes an original *br, borrowed from some non-semitic proto-language, meaning copper or metals in general, from which came *brz which he took to be an early word for iron. The addition of -l to make brzl came later in Canaanite, Akkadian and Ugaritic which were probably borrowing from each other (p.55; fig.1, p.58). Rendsburg also links *brz with Indo-European bronze/brass.

Stahl writes that barzel derives from ברז, meaning "to drill, bore". In Aramaic we have the word birza ברזא - a hole in a barrel, which became the source of the modern Hebrew word for spout, faucet - ברז berez.

(Berez also gives us the Hebrew slang phrase: דפק לו ברז / שם לו ברז dafak lo berez / sam lo berez, which means "to not show up", and the verb להבריז - "to ditch (abandon)". Almagor writes here that there is disagreement as to why a berez is an obstacle: some say the closed berez prevents the water from running, others say the water from an open berez causes the problem. However, Rosenthal writes that in North African Arabic, birez means "to slip out of one's hand".)

To return to barzel, Klein writes of the etymology:

A loan word from Hittite barzillu, whence also Akkadian parzillu, Moab. and Phoen.ברזל, Ugar. brsel, Aram. and BAram parzel פרזל ( = iron). Arabic firzil is an Aramaic loan word. Latin ferrum (= iron) is a Semitic loan word. According to my opinion the loss of the Semitic ending -el, resp. -illu, is probably due to its having been mistaken for the Latin dimin. suffix -ellus, -illus, and consequently dropped.

Kutscher agrees that the word barzel does not seem and sound Semitic in nature. As far as the connection to the Latin ferrum (the source of the symbol Fe for the element iron), he provides an interesting piece of evidence. There is an ancient iron mine in Italy, on the "route of the iron", called Fursil (near the Castle of Andraz) whose name is remarkably close to parzel. Perhaps this place preserves the original Latin form of the word.

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dibrot

On Shavuot we celebrate the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and read the Ten Commandments. Or do we?

First of all, the "Ten Commandments" is not a good translation. As Philologos wrote:

Let's start with No. 1. What is called "The Ten Commandments" in English and other European languages, a phrase translated from the Latin Decem Mandati, is known in Hebrew as Aseret Ha-dibrot, "the ten dibrot." A diber (singular of dibrot) is not a mandatus or commandment; rather - a noun deriving from the verb daber, to speak - it means an act of speech or an utterance, as in the verse in Jeremiah, "And the prophets shall become wind and the utterance [diber] is not in them." The Aseret Ha-dibrot in Jewish tradition are thus "The Ten Utterances," not "The Ten Commandments."

Why is the singular of dibrot דברות diber דיבר? Dr. Eliyahu Netanel explained in his column, Lashon Limudim, in Shabbat B'Shabbato, Bamidbar 5766. He writes that diber is masculine, and the plural is dibrot (which appears feminine) and this is similar to kise כסא and kisaot כסאות - chairs. Here's a list of many more, and an explanation to the phenomenon.

Netanel also writes that where the term diber was used in Eretz Yisrael, in Bavel they would say dibur דיבור. This helps to explain a midrashic saying (Shvuot 20b; it also appears in the song Lecha Dodi) - שמור וזכור בדיבור אחד - shamor v'zachor b'dibur echad. This refers to the fact that the fourth diber - the mitzva of shabbat - appears with the word shamor in Sefer Shmot and zachor in Sefer Devarim. Generally, it is assumed that this means that they were spoken - dibbur - at the same time. But if dibur is the Bavli term for diber, than it means they were in the same fourth diber- also miraculous, according to the midrash, but a slightly different understanding.

However, if we go back even further, we see that in the Torah itself (Shmot 34:28, Devarim 4:13, Devarim 10:4), they weren't called aseret hadibrot, but עשרת הדברים aseret hadvarim. This leads some to think that the Greek term decalogue - "ten statements" or "ten words" - is the most accurate option for use in English.

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lechem

“Man cannot live on bread alone” - כי לא על הלחם לבדו יחיה האדם (Devarim 8:3)

While it is clear from the verse that there are more important things in life than lechem (or lehem/lekhem) לחם bread, by its placement it is also clear that lechem is of very high significance. What is the meaning of this staple word?

Well, first of all, it's not clear that it originally meant only bread. In Arabic lahm means meat, and as Ruth Almagor-Ramon points out here: http://msradio.huji.ac.il/wwwroot/INST/rega.doc
lechem meant "the main food". When flour was the basis of the main food, then lechem meant bread; for those who relied mainly on meat, then the same root took on that meaning.

Stahl explains the term similarly. He points out that Hebrew also preserves some of the non-bread meaning of lechem, as in the verse from Tzefania 1:17: וְשֻׁפַּךְ דָּמָם כֶּעָפָר, וּלְחֻמָם כַּגְּלָלִים - "their blood will be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung". Here l'chum refers to flesh, to meat.

In Hebrew, Bethlehem derives from Beit Lechem - the House of Bread. In Arabic, they call it Beit Lahm - House of Meat. (The English word bedlam derives from a London mental hospital called "Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem".)

What about two other words that share the same root with lechem - מלחמה milchama - war, and הלחמה halchama - welding? Both Stahl and Almagor explain that they are all connected. Welding brings things closer, and in war in ancient times, the combatants were very close to one another. And what about lechem? Almagor claims that man feels very close to lechem (food), whereas Stahl says that the flesh association is earlier, and explains that lechem (flesh) is very close to the bone.

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