gizzard

Several years ago, I wrote about the root gazar גזר - "to cut". After pointing out that it's not related to gezer גֶּזֶר - "carrot", I pointed out a number of Hebrew and Arabic words that likely derive from the root and its cognates.

Well, I recently discovered another word that may have גזר as its etymology: gizzard.

Admittedly, the Online Etymology Dictionary doesn't offer a Semitic origin:

"stomach of a bird," late 14c., from Old French gisier "entrails, giblets (of a bird)" (13c., Modern French gésier), probably from Vulgar Latin *gicerium, a dissimilation of Latin gigeria (neuter plural) "cooked entrails of a fowl," a delicacy in ancient Rome, from PIE *yekwr- "liver" (see hepatitis). The unetymological -d was added 1500s (perhaps on analogy of -ard words). 

However, Klein, in his CEDEL entry, does offer one. He also writes that the English derives from the French, but from there offers a different Latin one:

From Latin gizeria, 'cooked entrails of poultry', which is probably a Punic-Phoenician-Hebrew loan word. Compare Hebrew gezarim, construct state gizrei, 'pieces of sacrificed animals', plural of gezer, 'anything cut, a piece,' from the stem of gazar, 'he cut, divided'.

I assume that Klein's inspiration for gezarim being "pieces of sacrificed animals" comes from the story of the Covenant of the Pieces, where God tells Abraham to sacrifice a number of animals, and then after Abraham prophesized,

וַיְהִי הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ בָּאָה וַעֲלָטָה הָיָה וְהִנֵּה תַנּוּר עָשָׁן וְלַפִּיד אֵשׁ אֲשֶׁר עָבַר בֵּין הַגְּזָרִים הָאֵלֶּה׃ 

When the sun set and it was very dark, there appeared a smoking oven, and a flaming torch which passed between those pieces [ha-gezarim]. (Bereshit 15:17)

That is the only mention of gezer indicating a sacrifice in the Bible.

You may have noticed that Etymonline has the Latin gigeria, and Klein has gizeria. That is also addressed in his CEDEL:

In Latin, gigeria, a collateral from of gizeria, z has been assimilated to the preceding g.

From searching through Google Books (see here, here, and here), it seems that it's not clear which word Latin used - gigeria or gizeria - so that may have added to the confusion over the etymology.

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karov, korban and kerev

The Hebrew word karov קרוב means "near." All the verbs that derive from the root of that word - קרב - mean "to come near, approach". In Biblical Hebrew, we find that meaning in the kal (karav), piel (kirev), and hifil (hikriv) forms. The hitpael form - hitkarev התקרב - only appears in Hebrew literature after the biblical period.

 The form hikriv has an additional meaning. Rabbi Amnon Bazak, in his book Nekudat Peticha (p. 219) points out that for the first two books of the Torah, hikriv means "to approach" (e.g. Bereshit 12:11, Shemot 14:10). However, in the beginning of the book of Vayikra, we find a new meaning:

דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם אָדָם כִּי־יַקְרִיב מִכֶּם קָרְבָּן לַיהוָה מִן־הַבְּהֵמָה מִן־הַבָּקָר וּמִן־הַצֹּאן תַּקְרִיבוּ אֶת־קָרְבַּנְכֶם׃

Speak to the Israelite people, and say to them: When any of you presents an offering of cattle to the LORD, he shall choose his offering from the herd or from the flock. (Vayikra 1:2)

Here hikriv means "bring an offering" and we also find the first mention of the nouns korban קרבן - "offering, sacrifice." Bazak points out that there were many sacrifices earlier in the Torah, but they always use other words like mincha מנחה (Bereshit 4:3), olah עולה (Bereshit 8:20) and zevach זבח (Bereshit 46:1). So why did the Torah start using the word korban only now?

He says that this is due to the meaning of the verb hikriv. Since previously it meant "to draw close to", he claims that only in Vayikra, when God established a permanent location in the Sanctuary, could these sacrifices be considered a way to become near to God. Previously, there might have been a spiritual closeness in sacrifices. Now, when one could actually approach the sanctuary, there was a physical dimension that expressed itself in this new word - korban.

In his book Midabrim Besefat Hatanach, Rubik Rosenthal notes (p. 140-141), that in Modern Hebrew, the words hikriv and korban have left that earlier meaning regarding ritual sacrifices, and split into two different meanings. The verb hikriv means sacrifice in the secular sense: to give up something important for a higher purpose (and the noun form of this verb is hakrava הקרבה - "self-sacrifice."). Korban, however, refers to someone harmed or killed by someone else's action - i.e. a victim. So for example, victims of terrorism are korbanot hateror קרבנות הטרור. There were those that opposed such usage, because the religious sense of korban would seem to instill a higher purpose to those who perpetrated the crimes. But as we've seen many times before, language has a path of its own, and that usage stuck.

A word that derives from this root is krav קרב - "battle." Klein says it probably originally meant "hostile approach." In Israel, a combat soldier is called kravi קרבי - "ready for battle."

A different word that at first glance looks like it should be from the same root, but perhaps isn't is kerev קרב - "midst, interior." The Ben-Yehuda dictionary provides three possibilities:

a) That kerev derives from karav. If this is the case, kerev originally meant something like "drawn close, closeness."

b) They could be from entirely different roots. This what Klein suggests:

1 midst, interior. 2 inward part, bowels, intestines. [Related to Moabite בקרב (= in the midst of), Ugar. qrb (of same meaning), Akka. qirbu (= inward part, interior), qirib (= in). These related words show that the orig. meaning of קֶרֶב was ‘midst, interior’, and that the meaning, ‘inward part, bowel, intestines’ is secondary. However, according to several scholars, Heb. קֶרֶב is related to Arab. qalb (= heart); see קבל ᴵ. 

His reference to קבל (to be opposite, which we've discussed before) brings us this entry:

BAram. לָקֳבֵל, JAram. קְבֵל, לִקְבֵל (= in front, before), Syr. מֶן קֽבוֹל (= opposite); whence Aram.–Syr., also BAram. קַבֵּל, Heb. קִבֵּל, ‘he received, accepted’), Arab. qabila (= he received, accepted), OSArab. קבל (= to receive, accept), Ethiop. qabala (= he went to meet, encountered), Akka. qablu (= battle; middle of the body, middle). However, according to some scholars Akka. qablu in the meaning ‘middle’ is related to קֽרָב (= battle). According to other scholars Akka. qablu in the meaning ‘middle’ is related to Arab. qalb (= heart; see קֶרֶב)

So according to Klein's approach, the Arabic word qalb - "heart" - developed into two different meanings. One developed into the Hebrew kibel - "to receive, accept" and the other kerev - "interior, inner part." Neither are related to karov - "near."

c) The third possibility mentioned in Ben Yehuda is that one root split into two meanings. This seems to be the approach of Gesenius, whose entry for kerev mentions the Arabic qalb but says that here the "r" softened into an "l" - i.e. the Arabic meaning came later. This understanding would allow that even qalb is related to karov.

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mayonnaise

After discussing Cyprus and Rhodes, this time we'll look at another Mediterranean island in our discussion of "mayonnaise." (And no, I'm not looking into the origin of Thousand Island dressing.)

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides this possible etymology for mayonnaise:

1815, from French sauce mayonnaise (1806), said by French sources to be corrupted from mahonnaise and to have been named in recognition of Mahon, seaport capital of island of Minorca, captured by France in 1756 after the defeat of the British defending fleet in the Seven Years' War

(For a more detailed discussion about this and other theories about the origin, see this article.)

But of course, we need to go a little deeper. Where did the city of Mahón get its name?

This goes all the way back to the brother of the famous general of Carthage, Hannibal. According to this book,

His youngest brother Mago ... possessed himself of the island now called Minorca, where Port Mahon (Mago's Harbour) still preserves the memory of his visit.

If you're still asking why is all of this being discussed here, we need to remember (as we've discussed before) that Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony, and so they also spoke a Semitic language.

So could this Mago have a Hebrew cognate? This article about Mago Barca says that Mago is from Phoenician mgn, meaning "godsent". This root already seems similar to the Hebrew magen מגן - but in Hebrew it means "shield". Could "godsent" somehow be related to "shield" or "protect"?

Many sources claim that a better translation for "godsent" would be "benefactor" - one who gives or helps others. Perhaps surprisingly, there are two different roots (having the same spelling) for מגן. One  means "to shield, protect" and, as Klein writes, derives from the noun magen, which in turn comes from the root גנן - "to cover, protect."

Regarding the other מגן, he says it means "to deliver up, deliver" and provides this etymology:

Phoen. מגן (= he gave), Aram.-Syr. מַגָּן, Arab. majānan (= as a gift, gratis), Ugar. mgn (= to beseech).

Ibn Ezra, on Bereshit 14:20, points out that in this root the letter mem is radical (part of the root), which is not the case of magen as shield, where the root is גנן and the mem serves as a prefix.

In Biblical Hebrew magen as shield is far more common, but there are three verses where the root מגן means "to give" or "to deliver" - Bereshit 14:20, Hoshea 11:8 and Mishlei 4:9. (Some say that magen in Bereshit 15:1 has the meaning of suzerain or benefactor as well, and not shield as commonly translated.) The root with that meaning appears much more frequently in Talmudic literature.

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nasi

Why is the Hebrew word for "president" נשיא nasi? I'm not entirely sure, but I'll share my ideas with you. Let's start out by looking at the history of the word.

The word appears in the bible 129 times (not including four other cases where it means "rain cloud", but that's unrelated). The Even-Shoshan concordance says it means "head of a tribe, head of a congregation, ruler, etc." One thing I noticed from looking at the concordance was that it shows up in some biblical books, but not others.

Milgrom notes this in Excursus 1, "Some Political Institutions of Early Israel", in JPS Numbers. He defines nasi as "chieftan" or "clan leader", and sometimes the leader of the entire tribe. He then writes:

The term nasi' occurs over one hundred times in the Bible in a striking distribution. It clusters in the first four books of the Torah and in Joshua and again in Ezekiel and the postexilic books. It is totally absent from Deuteronomy, Judges Samuel and all the other prophets.

He continues:

The antiquity of the term nasi' is corroborated by its occurrence only among those non-Israelite societies that are nomadic: Ishmaelites (Gen 17:20, 25:16) and Midianites (Num. 25:14)

Sarna, in his comment to Shemot 22:27 in JPS Exodus makes a similar comment:

Hebrew nasi'  is the title given to the chief of a clan or tribe in the period before the monarchy.

And in his commentary on Bereshit 34:2, Sarna notes that Hamor, is called the nasi of the land, and not a king, as the Canaanite leaders usually are, because "the ruler of Shechem has dominion over rural - that is, tribal - territory as well as the urban center ... Such a complex situation does not permit absolute power. Indeed, Hamor does not act like a king."

So from all this we see that nasi refers to a leader who is not a king, and therefore is absent from many sections of the bible that focus on the monarchy. There are some biblical synonyms for nasi, such as nasich נסיך and nagid נגיד. It might seem, due to their similar sounds that nasi and nasich  are related, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Nasich, while meaning "prince" in current Hebrew, derives from the root נסך, "to pour", and as Klein writes, originally meant "he upon whom the anointing oil was poured". Nagid  (which today is used as "governor", as in "governor of the Bank of Israel") does not share a common root with nasi, but as Klein writes, they share a similar path of development. Here is his entry for the etymology of nasi:

Derived from נשא and literally meaning 'lifted up, exalted'. For sense development, compare nagid (=leader), from נגד, 'to be high'. According to G. Hoffman, nasi literally means 'speaker', and derives from נשא in the sense 'he lifted up (his word)'; compare nagid, which may have also meant originally 'speaker, spokesman'.

Later the term nasi was adopted to mean the head of the Sanhedrin, e.g. Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi. This Encyclopedia Judaica entry describes how it was used even after the end of the Talmudic period:

The title nasi persisted for many centuries and in different lands throughout the Middle Ages, sometimes as the title of a defined head of a Jewish institution, sometimes as an honorific title only, given to important personages and to sons of illustrious families.

But why president? My theory is that there had always been a clear distinction between a king - מלך melech, and nasi. This certainly doesn't mean that the word nasi ever meant a democratically elected ruler before modern times - but in earlier periods, when the role of king had very significant implications (particularly in Jewish law), there needed to be an alternate term for such a leader. And since nasi had been used throughout the generations, it was a natural choice for a translation of "president", when that term began to be used.

Of course, I wouldn't need to resort to conjecture if I could find any source mentioning the coinage of the modern use. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any such source. As I did when I researched artzot habrit, I turned to the archives of the Historical Jewish Press. The earliest mentions of nasi there meaning "president" appear in the 1860s, describing Abraham Lincoln (there's an interesting Hebrew article here about how Lincoln was covered in the European Jewish press at the time). It's unclear to me if this means that the sense was coined then, or if it had been used earlier, but no one happened to be writing about presidents before that point.

This 1858 article in Hamagid, mentions James Buchanan, but calls him the ראש ממשלה Rosh Memshala of America, a term that today means "prime minister" and sar שר, "minister":

By 1861, the newspaper Hacarmel describes Lincoln as nasi, but puts the term "president" in parentheses to help the reader:

The parentheses are gone by this 1862 article in Hacarmel, although they call him ראש נשיא - rosh nasi:

And the earliest mention I found of "president" in Hebrew was from this 1853 book discussing Napoleon III, who had the title of "prince-president".

As mentioned in this Wikepedia entry, the term "president" has a history going back quite a while before being adopted by the founders of the United States. But those usages weren't so well known, so I can see why I wouldn't be able to find any references to them in Hebrew texts. However, certainly there must have been some awareness of US presidents before Lincoln, even if the Jews were not paying so much attention to the goings on in the States at the time (and their press wasn't as fully developed).

If any of you readers know of earlier uses of nasi or other Hebrew synonyms for "president", or any other sources that discuss the coinage of the term, I'd love to hear...

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nesher and ayit

Sometimes how you define a word actually "defines" you as well.

For example, let's take the Hebrew words nesher נשר and ayit עיט.

From an informal survey I have taken, most native English speakers (who know Hebrew) will identify the nesher with the eagle, and if they have an answer - the ayit with the vulture.

Israelis, on the other hand, generally reverse the definitions. If they know English - they'll say nesher = vulture, and ayit = eagle. For those that didn't know, I showed them this picture:

The Israelis would usually say that #1 is an ayit, and #2 is a nesher.

Typically, the modern commentaries reflect this division. The JPS translates nesher as eagle, for example in Shemot 19:4, where the translation "on eagles' wings" sounds much more natural than "on vultures' wings" (82,000 hits on Google for the former vs. 7 for the latter.) On the other hand, the Daat Mikra almost always identifies the nesher with the Griffon Vulture.

The dictionaries also know their audience. The Even-Shoshan Dictionary (Hebrew-Hebrew) has the Griffon Vulture as the primary definition for nesher, with eagle as only a secondary option. Even-Shoshan also has eagle for ayit. The Alcalay Dictionary (Hebrew-English) has exactly the opposite order.

But of course, there are always those people who take it upon themselves to correct popular usage and put the masses on the proper path. And here we find two articles - each trying to convince the reader that they should change their initial association.

First we find an article by Rabbi Nosson Slifkin - no stranger to controversy. In his article, The Identity of the Nesher, he tells an English speaking audience why they should think of vultures, not eagles, when they say nesher.

Here are some of his reasons:

• Rav Saadia Gaon and Ibn Ezra "translate nesher with the Arabic term nesr, which refers to the griffon vulture" (but see below)
• Despite our association of the eagle as noble and the vulture as loathsome, in ancient times, the vulture was revered
• The nesher is described as eating carrion (the carcass of a dead animal) in Iyov 39:27-30 and Mishlei 30:17, which fits a vulture, not an eagle
• The nesher is described as bald in Micha 1:16, which matches the vulture not the eagle. As far as the "bald eagle", Slifkin writes:
  
  

  Even the bald eagle is not actually bald; it merely has white feathers on its head (its name comes from the Old English word balde, which means “white”). Besides, it only lives in America, and Scripture would therefore not discuss it.

• The nesher is described as "the highest flying bird", a title which belongs to the griffon vulture, not the eagle
• The vulture better fits the Talmudic description of the nesher (Chullin 61a) and Tosfot on 63a (s.v. netz) says that those who say the nesher is an eagle are mistaken (such as the Chizzkuni on Vayikra 11:13)
  

On the other hand, we have an article by one of Israel's premier linguists, Ze'ev Ben-Hayyim. Ben-Hayyim was one of the founders of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, and its president. In his book, B'Milchamta Shel Lashon (The Struggle for a Language) he has two pieces about nesher and ayit (both originally published in the journal Leshonenu).

He writes (in 1943) that every "Ivri" knows that nesher is eagle and ayit is vulture. But then came those who turned everything upside-down and began teaching the opposite. He says it is clear that when we refer to the Rambam as "HaNesher HaGadol" הנשר הגדול - we are talking about a symbol of royalty, just as the Romans had an eagle for their royal symbol.

So where did this "mistaken" view originate? According to Ben-Hayyim, from two faulty etymologies.

On the one hand, there were those who thought the word nesher derives from the root נשר - "to fall out, to drop, to shed". This would seem to be appropriate for the vulture, who, as we saw above, has more of a bald head - one whose feathers "fell out". But this does not work out when we realize, as Horowitz writes, that shin is "a double letter". Nesher (the bird) in Arabic and Aramaic becomes nesr and nishra נשרא respectively, but the verb "to fall out" is נתר (with a tav) in Arabic and Aramaic.

He also writes that the identification of ayit as eagle is mistaken. This was based on the Greek word for eagle, aetos, which looks a lot like ayit, but isn't connected etymologically. (Gesenius mentions both terms together here.)

(About 20 years after that article was written, a heated debate took place in the Academy between zoologists and linguists. In the end the vote was 12 to 3 to have nesher mean "eagle", followed by a unanimous vote for nesher kerech נשר קרח to be the term for vulture.)

So where do we go from here? Let's start by looking at the word ayit. All seem to agree that it derives from the root עיט or עוט meaning "to rush down, to dart" - the description of a bird of prey. We see this description in Bereshit 15:11, where it says that the ayit descended on the carcasses. - וַיֵּרֶד הָעַיִט, עַל-הַפְּגָרִים.

Onkelos translates ayit as עופא - "birds", indicating that this is a more general term, not referring to a particular type of bird. (Drazin and Wagner in their Onkelos on the Torah, suggest another reason, saying that "Onkelos and Saadiah tone down the biblical "birds of prey descended on the carcasses," which seems a somewhat disrespectful and savage depiction of a solemn occasion.) So while an eagle might fit into the category of "ayit", there is no reason to make an exclusive association. (In fact, at least based on the Bereshit story, it would seem that an eagle is not the best word, since it does not generally eat carrion.)

What about nesher? One of the participants in my survey responded as follows:

Both in Biblical usage and modern scientific parlance, nesher is appropriately associated with the griffon vulture; whereas ayit refers to the eagle. The possible exception to this in Tanach is Yechezkel's depiction of Melech Bavel in Perek 17; as noted by Yehudah Feliks, the depiction of this particular nesher as "full of feathers" suggests an eagle rather than a vulture.

Indeed, even the Daat Mikra (on Yechezkel 17:3) agrees that this verse is likely referring to an eagle. But if we go by the rule that "The Torah speaks in the language of man" (Berachot 31b), then the word nesher in that context must have made sense to the reader. And so, it would seem that nesher as well, refers to a larger group of birds, including both vultures and eagles.

This is the explanation of the Encyclopedia Mikrait as well, who writes that the Arabic term nesr also does not refer to only one species, but to both eagles and vultures (in contrast with Slifkin above.) The EM also says that while most examples of nesher refer to vultures, Mishlei 23:5 is likely referring to the Imperial Eagle, and Shemot 19:4 to the Golden Eagle.

So I think that in the end, both native English speakers and native Hebrew speakers can go on referring to the nesher and ayit the way they always did, but hopefully with a great deal of understanding of the other side.

For further reading:

• HaSafa HaIvrit
  
• Atar HaNivut B'Tanach
• Jewish Encyclopedia (here and here)
• Philologos (from The Forward)
  

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chanukah

It's widely known that there is major disagreement as to the proper spelling of חנוכה in English. Andy Carvin has an interesting article about the different spellings and how Wikipedia has made Hanukkah more popular than Chanukah. And of course Wikipedia deals with the spelling issue in the main article and in the discussion page as well.

A book I picked up a number of years ago - How Do You Spell Chanukah?: A General-Purpose Romanization of Hebrew for Speakers of English by Werner Weinberg recommends Chanukah. Rabbi Josh Waxman in Parshablog suggests Chanukka. I'm partial to Chanuka or even Hanuka, but my wife quotes her fourth grade teacher as saying "The one rule about spelling חנוכה - it must have eight letters." And since shalom bayit (lighting Shabbat candles) comes before the mitzva of publicizing the miracle (lighting חנוכה candles) - see the last Rambam in Sefer Zmanim - I'll stick with Chanukah.

What I didn't realize is just how complicated the etymology of Chanukah is. The complication arises from the multiple meanings of the root חנך. While I am aware that חנך in modern Hebrew can mean "to educate" - as in chinuch חינוך , I always thought that חנך for chanukah meant "dedication". However, this article by Prof. Stefan Reif shows how the basic meaning of the root חנך is "to begin, initiate". Dedicate, on the other hand means "to consecrate to sacred uses" - קדש in Hebrew. He writes that this translation was based on the Latin translation of the Bible - the Vulgate.

One of Reif's proofs is Devarim 20:5, where it says:

מִי-הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר בָּנָה בַיִת-חָדָשׁ וְלֹא חֲנָכוֹ

While the JPS translates it as "Is there anyone who has built a new house but has not dedicated it?", Reif would translate it (as does Tigay in his JPS commentary, based on Reif) as "initiated it" or "started to live in it". Reif quotes an earlier article by Oliver Rankin as saying it means "not removing from the realm of the profane ... to that of the sacred, but the putting to common use." He also points out that no dedication of a private house is found in the Bible or "subsequent Jewish custom" and that "house dedication" is a modern Jewish custom.

He writes that the places where the verb חנך is used in regards to the Mishkan or Beit HaMikdash (Bamidbar 7:10, Divrei HaYamim II 7:5-9) a good translation would be "initation" or "starting upon their course of beneficial service". If "dedication" was intended, the verb should have been קדש or משח.

According to Reif, the reading of חנך as "to train, instruct" comes from a mistranslation of Mishlei 22:6 - חֲנֹךְ לַנַּעַר, עַל-פִּי דַרְכּוֹ

While the JPS has "Train a lad in the way he ought to go", Reif prefers "Start a boy on the right road."

A number of Rishonim support Reif's approach. Rashi on Bereshit 14:14 writes that "the word חנך signifies introducing a person or a thing, for the first time, to some particular occupation in which it is intended that he should remain". Radak in Sefer HaShorashim follows the same approach.

He concludes with the following:

the later development of the noun חינוך chinuch in the sense of "education" also demonstrates that the rendering "dedication" is inimical to the essential meaning of the stem.

This all seems very convincing. However, Reif does not discuss a very important aspect to the etymology of חנך. Klein writes in that entry:

Denominated from chekh חך ( = palate) and originally meaning 'to rub the palate of a child with chewed dates'. compare Arabic hanak (= palate), hence hannaka (= he rubbed the palate of a child), hanaka ( = he taught, instructed).

So according to Klein, the development is palate -> rubbing the palate -> instruction. It is unclear how we get from there to "dedicate" (as Klein has it) or "initiate" (as Kaddari writes). As Reif wrote, the connection between "education" to "initiation" is stronger than that of "education" to "dedication", but in light of the linguistic evidence, perhaps the order needs to be reversed (i.e. education -> initiation.)

I'm also not sure where the "rubbing dates on the palate" theory first shows up. Jastrow, in his entry for חניכה (surname) writes:

[rubbing the infant's palate with a chewed fig, v. Fl. to Levy Talm. Dict II 206] the name given to the child by the person rubbing his palate

Jastrow is referring to Fleischer's addenda to Levy's dictionary. Fleischer was an expert in Arabic - so it is likely that he based his assumptions on the connection between Hebrew and Arabic. But I haven't seen his entry (and I can't read German in any case) - so I don't know just how convincing it is.

I did find this quote from the Islamic Hadith:

A son was born to me and I brought him to the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allāh be on him, He named him Ibrāhīm, and he chewed a date and rubbed thereby his palate, and prayed for blessings for him and gave him back to me.

with the following note:

The Arabic word is hannaka-hū. The word tahnīk is derived from hanak which means the interior of the upper part of the inside of the mouth, or the palate. The new-born baby is made to taste either a chewed date as in this case, or honey, by some elderly member of the family.

Was this a Jewish custom going all the way back to Biblical times (as it would need to be to be the root of the verb חנך)? I can't say.

However, there is certainly a connection between chekh and chanikhayim חניכיים - gums. As we've seen many times before the nun has a tendency to drop out of Hebrew words, so חך originally must have been חנך.

One interesting point is that the word chanich חניך - which today means "pupil, apprentice, member of youth group" might not be related to the root חנך at all. It appears only once in the Bible, in Genesis 14:14:

וַיָּרֶק אֶת-חֲנִיכָיו

Kaddari, apparently following Albright, claims that it comes from an Egyptian word ha-na ku-u-ka meaning "armed retainers". Others claim that the Egyptian word was borrowed from the Semitic.

Two more articles discussing חנך and Chanukah:

From the Jewish Agency (I'm not sure who the author is - does anyone know?)

By Dr. Joseph Lowin

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tzchok

We find the root צחק - "to laugh" a number of times in the story of Yitzchak (which isn't surprising, considering it is the source of his name.) The verb appears in both the kal form - צחק tzachak and the piel form - ציחק tzichek. Just as laughter itself can be interpreted many different ways (are you laughing at me or with me?) - so to does the verb have different connotations: joy (Bereshit 17:17, 21:6), surprise / disbelief (18:12-15), jesting (19:14), mocking / teasing (21:9) and intimacy / foreplay (according to Chizkuni) in Bereshit 26:8.

The root שחק is closely connected to צחק - both in meaning and form. As Al Silberman wrote in Mail-Jewish:

The verbs "tzachak" and "sachak" appear many times in Tanach. "Tzachak"occurs 15 times and "Sachak" occurs 51 times. Both have the same meaning; a"tzaddi" and "seen" are interchangeable consonants since they are formed from the same part of the mouth. I would like to offer up the following observation:

The form "tzachak" is used exclusively until the time of the Shoftim (Judges). The form "sachak" is used exclusively in the seforim written during the first Temple. Both forms appear in the seforim written after the destruction of the first Temple.

Thus, the subject name appears in the Torah and Yehoshua as Yitzchak. It appears exclusively as Yischak in Tehillim, Amos and Yirmiyahu. It appears again as Yitzchak in M'lochim (Kings) and Divrei Hayomim (Chronicles).

The following are to be noted:

1. Both forms are used in the same posuk in Shoftim (Judges) 16:25. See Malbim for his explanation.

2. There is a dispute in Bava Basra 14b (and following folios) dealing with Iyov's era (when he lived or when the sefer was written). Iyov uses "sachak" exclusively.

3. Tehillim 105:9 and 1 Divrei Hayomim 16:16 are the same exact posuk with variant spellings of the subject name.

In Modern Hebrew שחק means "to play", and צחק retained the meaning "to laugh".

Kutscher writes that the origin of tzchok is onomatopoeic- it imitates the sound of laughter. (The English word "laugh" is said to have similar origins.) He also writes that the Aramaic roots גחך and חייך are related to צחק and שחק , and that the original Semitic root was probably close to the Arabic צחך (dahak). Why did all these various forms come about? Through a process called dissimilation, where "similar consonant sounds in a word have a tendency to become different over time, so as to ease pronunciation." (For a good description of the process in Hebrew, see here. I should have looked at that post when I wrote about keshet.) So for example, by changing from צחק to שחק - we end up with only one emphatic consonant, which is easier to pronounce.

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yarok

An Israeli once asked me, "Isn't it difficult to write in English about Hebrew words?". I unknowingly paraphrased Salman Rushdie, who wrote "The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame." This seems to be nowhere more true than in my posts describing colors. Take yarok ירוק for example. While in Modern Hebrew it means "green", there are those who say it once meant yellow or gold. Now how would I write that sentence in Hebrew? היום ירוק פירושו ירוק, אבל פעם ירוק היה צהוב או זהב? Yarok means yarok?

This is not only a challenge for those who write about colors in their own language, but it makes researching the issue difficult as well. For at some point, yarok does mean yarok, and kachol does mean kachol. But it becomes very hard to determine when that change happens. We've seen the ambiguity with some of the earlier colors, and we'll see it here with yarok as well.

Yarok appears only once in the Tanach - Iyov 39:8, but it is not clear from there exactly what color is being mentioned. A different form of the color - ירקרק yerakrak - appears three times: twice in Vayikra (13:49, 14:37), talking about tzaraat (like tzahov) and in Tehillim 68:14. Let's look at the latter.

The verse mentions בִּירַקְרַק חָרוּץ which we'll translate (for now) as "greenish gold". But the question here is really: is the gold yerakrak (and therefore different than common gold), or is the yerakrak gold (and is all yarok gold)? There is much evidence that yarok actually meant a goldish, yellow color. In Ugaritic yrq meant gold, and in Southern Arabic warq ורק still does.

We also have Rabbinic sources that connect the two. Tosfot (Sukkah 31b s.v. HaYarok) lists a number of such sources: Hullin 47b says yarok is like the yolk of an egg, and Tosefta Negaim 1:3 says it is the color of wax. Tosfot also mentions a very interesting Midrash, on Bereshit 14:14, where it says that Avraham וַיָּרֶק אֶת-חֲנִיכָיו - literally, he sent out his men. But Bereshit Rabba gives a number of explanations, all with the idea that וירק means "he made them shine (like gold)." (See Torah Shleimah Bereshit 14, #67 for a full explanation of the Midrash.)

(As far as the meaning of yerakrak vs yarok, it would seem that Ibn Ezra could be in trouble once again. The Sifra explains yerakrak, as ירוק שבירוקין - the most, strongest yarok. Ibn Ezra writes that the doubling indicates a weakening, so yerakrak would mean a pale yarok. In this case, Modern Hebrew seems to have taken the side of Ibn Ezra, for words with the last two letters of the root repeating - אדמדם, ירקרק - mean a less full version of that color.)

However, there are also Rabbinic sources that identify yarok with green - the above Tosfot mentions them. The Tosefta in Negaim writes that Sumchus said that yerakrak was like "the wing of a peacock." I had thought that was a sign of yarok meaning green, although this site takes an approach I had not yet seen (original Hebrew here):

What the sages called "green" is today called "tzivoni," meaning "colored." For example, the RAMA wrote, "What is called 'blue' is included in the category of green" [Yoreh Dei'ah 188:1]. The Tosefta compares the strongest green and the strongest red, asking: "What is the greenest of the green?" The answer given by Sumchus was, "like the tail of a peacock." In fact, a peacock has 365 different colors, with all possible colors, except red (Tanchuma, Tazriya) ... In principle, "yarok" is any color that is not red, and this led the Maharam of Rotenberg to write in response to a question, "All the colors blue, yellow, and green are included in the color 'yarok', green."

In any case, today yarok means only green. Perhaps it was through the influence of the words ירק and ירקות - meaning vegetables, or in English, "greens". Klein says that yerek derives from yarok, and many plants and vegetables are green, particularly the leaves. In Arabic, the related waraq means "leaf".

According to Steinberg, the etymological development should be reversed. He says the root ירק means "to empty out, to force out" and is related to the word reik ריק meaning "empty". From here the word ירק meaning "to spit" derives. A plant is called a yerek because it "comes out" from the ground. For sense development, he offers the German sprietzen - "to sprout" and spritzen - "to spray".

Rosenthal gives five meanings of yerukim in Israeli slang: a) environmentalists, b) soldiers from field units (due to their uniforms, as compared to Air Force and Navy), c) Border Police, d) dollars, and e) fans of Maccabi Haifa.

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eser

The Hebrew word for ten is eser עשר (and the masculine form is asarah עשרה). Does this number derive from an earlier word?

Klein follows the BDB, and writes about the root עשר:

The orig. meaning of this base prob. was 'gathering, collection, union'. cp. Arab. 'ashara (= he formed a community), 'ashirah ( = tribe), ma'ashar (=a group of ten men). Accordingly, Heb. עשר (eser), Arab. 'ashr, etc. prob. meant orig. 'a group collection', whence 'a group of ten', and ultimately 'ten'.

Rav Hirsch (Bereshit 14:20) follows the same line of thought, and mentions that other similar sounding roots also have related meanings: אסר, אצר, עצר, אזר, עזר.

Steinberg, in Milon HaTanach, has a different theory. He says that עשר is related to עצר, meaning "to stop". He therefore writes that eser got it's name because it is where you "stop" counting (when you're counting on your fingers.)

Strong takes a slightly different approach. He writes:

A primitive root (ident. With ashar); to accumulate

Should we accept the connection with the words ashir עשיר - wealthy, and osher עושר - riches? At first we might reject this approach because one has the letter sin and the other has the letter shin. But we can see here that many Semitic languages have the "sh" sound in their word for ten: esher in Akkadian, `asharah in Arabic.

So to determine if there is a connection, we should use Horowitz's advice (and Lonnie's Biblical Hebrew teacher's), and see how each term is used in Aramaic. Ten in Aramaic is עסר (asar), where rich in Aramaic is עתיר (atir) - a term still used in Modern Hebrew.

So it would seem that Strong's theory is hard to accept. However, the Rabbis did make use the similarities between "ten (or tenth/tithe") and "riches" to provide a play on words.

Jastrow provides two examples. One is from Shir HaShirim Raba:
אם זכיתם תעשירנה ואם לאו תעשירנה - "If you deserve well 'you make her rich', if not 'you reduce her to one tenth'.

The other source, from Shabbat 119a and Taanit 9a would seem to provide an opposite message:

עשר בשביל שתתעשר - "Give tithes in order that you become rich".

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asphalt

As we've discussed in the past, there are a number of Hebrew words that have made their way into Indo-European languages such as English. Since the passage of words from one language to another often happened thousands of years ago, it is difficult to authenticate any particular claim. Today I'll bring up one that I find interesting - and I'd like to hear from the readers whether they agree, and particularly if there are any sources that back them up.

The English word asphalt comes from the Greek asphaltos. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

c.1325, "resinous mineral pitch found in Biblical lands," from L.L. asphaltum, from Gk. asphaltos, probably from a non-Gk. source, possibly Semitic.

Horowitz (p. 285) has an interesting theory. He claims that "an ancient name for the Dead Sea was 'Yam Shafelet' from the Hebrew word שפל shafel meaning 'low'."

He then continues: "Along the shores of the 'Yam Shafelet' was a tough, sticky, substance useful in road building. The Greek who dug it out called it 'asphaltos'. The Greek language has no 'sh' sound. This becomes the English word 'asphalt'."

There is no question that the Dead Sea is associated with asphalt. The Jewish Encylopedia gives the sea the following names:

The Dead Sea, known at present as "Bahr Lut" (Lot's Sea), is called in the Old Testament "Sea of Arabah" (R. V. Deut. iii. 17; Josh. xii. 8), "East" or "Eastern Sea" (Ezek. xlvii. 18; Joel ii. 20; Zech. xiv. 8). and "Salt Sea" (Gen. xiv. 3). The Talmud refers to it as "Salt Sea," or the "Sea of Sodom"; and Josephus and Pliny call it "Lake Asphaltites." The name "Dead Sea" is used by Pausanias, Justin, and the Church Fathers.

So we see that even in ancient times it was known as "Lake Asphaltites". And it's true that shafel means low and that Greeks replaced "sh" with "s". But I can't find any source that called the Dead Sea "Yam Shafelet". So where does this leave Horowitz's theory?

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