malakh and angel

The most common English translation for the Hebrew word malach מלאך is "angel." Is that a good translation? 

Well, it depends. If you think the definition of angel is (only) a divine, celestial being, perhaps with wings and a robe, then no. But as we'll see, that's not really what a malakh or an angel originally meant.

In Biblical Hebrew, malakh simply means "messenger." It can either refer to a divine messenger (in 124 cases) or a human messenger (88 times). To indicate that the malakh is sent by God, the word is conjugated with a name of God. If we look at Bereshit 32:2-4, we see examples of both kinds of messengers:

וְיַעֲקֹב הָלַךְ לְדַרְכּוֹ וַיִּפְגְּעוּ־בוֹ מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹהִים׃

וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב כַּאֲשֶׁר רָאָם מַחֲנֵה אֱלֹהִים זֶה וַיִּקְרָא שֵׁם־הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא מַחֲנָיִם׃ 

וַיִּשְׁלַח יַעֲקֹב מַלְאָכִים לְפָנָיו אֶל־עֵשָׂו אָחִיו אַרְצָה שֵׂעִיר שְׂדֵה אֱדוֹם׃

Jacob went on his way, and angels of God [malakhei Elohim] encountered him. When he saw them, Jacob said, “This is God’s camp.” So he named that place Mahanaim. Jacob sent messengers [malakhim] ahead to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom.

While it is possible that Jacob sent the same angels to his brother that he encountered earlier (as Rashi writes), the plain sense of the verse is that these were human messengers (as Ibn Ezra and Radak comment.)  And there are many verses, such as Melachim I 19:2, where there is no question the malakhim are human.

Malakh derives from the root לאך, which has cognates in other Semitic languages, and means "to send." (It is not used as a verb in Hebrew, but it is used as one in Ugaritic and Arabic.) Some, like Stahl, say that לאך is related to the root הלך - "to go, to walk." The root לאך is also the origin of the word melacha מלאכה - "work, labor, craft." There are different opinions as to the connection between melacha and sending a messenger. Klein writes that melacha comes from the root meaning "to send", and therefore literally means "mission" (presumably of the person assigned to do the work.)

Others point to the phrase mishlach yad משלח יד, which literally means "sending of the hand", also means "work" (see for example Devarim 15:10,23:21). So perhaps if in that expression the laborers "send their hands" to do the work, in the parallel melacha (with the roots שלח and לאך being synonyms) maybe the hands are being sent as well.

In post-biblical Hebrew, the use of malakh began to change. It came to only mean the divine messengers, where as shaliach שליח was the term used for earthly ones. 

When the Bible was translated into Greek, a word was needed to render malakh into Greek. The word chosen was angelos, Angelos was used to refer to both human and divine messengers, as Greek didn't have a word specifically for messengers sent by God. Later the Bible was translated into Latin as well. Latin, like Greek, didn't have a word specifically for divine messengers. So those translators used the already existing Latin nuntius for human messengers (related to "nuncio" meaning envoy), and borrowed the Greek angelos for divine ones. The word angelos entered the European languages with this meaning as well. So this is how angel, in English, came to mean specifically a divine, celestial agent. 

But where does the Greek word angelos originally come from? There are a number of theories, but Klein's is particularly interesting. He says it has Semitic roots, and is cognate with familiar Hebrew words. He writes in his CEDEL:

...of Persian, ultimately of Semitic origin. Compare Akkadian agarru, 'hireling, hired laborer,' from agaru, 'to hire', which is related to Aramaic agar, eggar, 'he hired', (whence Arabic ajara, of same meaning), Hebrew iggereth, Aramaic iggera, iggarta, 'letter', properly 'message.' ... The sense development of Greek angelos [...] from a Semitic noun meaning 'hireling,' may be illustrated by the phrases 'hireling, hired messenger, messenger.'

We've actually discussed agar אגר as "to hire" before. But I didn't know then that igeret אגרת - "letter" was related to agar, and I certainly didn't know it could be related to "angel." Klein doesn't discuss the Persian bridge word between Greek and the Semitic languages, but Ben Yehuda does. He says that perhaps igeret comes from the Persian angar - meaning "story, narrative." The "n" in angar could explain the "n" in "angel" as well. From there it gets a little confusing. Perhaps the Persian was borrowed from Semitic, or maybe igeret came straight from the Semitic agar. 

In any case, igeret certainly has Persian associations, as it appears only in the books of Esther and Nechemiah (which take place in the Persian period) and in Divrei HaYamim (whose composition is also from that time.) And just like in English a messenger is one who sends a message, so too in the Semitic-Persian-Greek development of the word, it's not hard to see how igeret and angelos are connected. 

So to return to the original question - is "angel" a good translation for malakh? Well, considering both the fact that it was used specifically to translate malakh, and may even have roots in Semitic languages like Hebrew - I'd venture to say it's the perfect word for it! 

 

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segula, segel and mesugal

 Way back in 2006, I mentioned briefly the etymology of segulah:

segula סגולה - "property" is related to the Akkadian word sugullu - herd of cattle

And a few months later, I pointed out that segula is not related to segol סגול - "violet, purple" (for a more in depth discussion see Elon Gilad's article here.)

But segula deserves much more attention. It's a word with a fascinating history, that has led to many different meanings. Let's take a look.

Much of what I'll be discussing here is based on an article (in Hebrew) by M.Z Kaddari, in his book The Medieval Heritage of Modern Hebrew Usage (Dvir, 1970). Here's a section of the English abstract which summarizes his extensive discussion Hebrew about segula:

An instructive instance in the dialects of emotional connotation is the word segula. In Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, this word was an emotional one ('valued property', 'peculiar treasure'); however, it seems to occur as a pure concept word also ('treasure', 'fortune'). This emotional change happens similarly in the language of the Piyyutim (Liturgical Poetry) and in Medieval Hebrew. Later on in Middle Hebrew, influenced by Arabic, the word designated 'characteristic feature' too, without any emotional overtone (the former emotional overtone had disappeared). But it had been used in special environments (designating objects endowed with the power of recovery); consequently, an emotional secondary meaning had developed in it ('magic quality'), which has survived up to our days in some vernacular usages. However, due to the last generations's alienation from misbeliefs, sometimes this renewed emotional meaning of segula has been suppressed: hence the word is used simply as a term of 'character,' 'quality'. In Modern Hebrew, we find segula in both meanings: the general and literary languages have its notional meaning ('quality'), while the substandard vernacular (influenced by the Musar and Hasidic literature, and by Yiddish) keeps carrying its emotional meaning ('magic quality').

I can't transcribe all 14 pages here of his Hebrew essay, but I'll try to summarize the main developments of the word.

1. As I mentioned in my original post, segula meant "herd of cattle" in Akkadian, and that probably was the original meaning in Hebrew as well.
2. From there, the word came to mean "property". As I pointed out in my 2006 post, the development from cattle to property can also be found in the Hebrew words rechesh רכש, kinyan קנין, and neches נכס. It is used with this meaning in Kohelet 2:8 and Divrei HaYamim I 29:3.
3. In the Torah, Israel is described as God's segula (Shemot 19:5; Devarim 7:6, 14:2, 26:18). While it clearly indicates a close relationship between God and Israel, ultimately it indicates that the nation is His property -  a suzerainty. In the biblical context, segula does not imply any inherent advantages or positive traits. (Shemot 19:5 is noteworthy in this regard, because the nation becoming God's segula is dependent on following the laws.)
4. In Rabbinic Hebrew, segula continues to mean "property." This is where we first find the verb סיגל sigel - meaning "to acquire property" and mesugal מסוגל - "belonging to."
5. Once the verb sigel became widely used, segula was understood to be its gerund, so it also took on the meaning "what one acquires for oneself" - i.e. treasure.
6. This sense of "treasure" was expanded beyond the sense of property, and came to mean something "dear" to someone. So a person could also be a segula to someone else. 
7. In the piyuttim, a number of these meanings were combined, and so Israel is described as a segula, meaning "dear treasured nation" or "dear possession." The piyyutim literally had "poetic license," and they created new words and grammatical structures. So they created the new word segel סגל, synonymous with segula. As Yaakov Etsion discusses here, one of the phrases found in a Rosh Hashana piyyut is segel chavura סֶגֶל חֲבוּרָה. The phrase literally means that Israel is an "association of segula, a treasured group" The author flipped the semichut (construct form), as Etsion describes. This phrase was used in other contexts as a fancy, poetic expression. But over time, it was assumed to have "normal" semichut, and eventually the chavura was dropped. Today, as a result, segel means "corps, cadre, senior staff" in Modern Hebrew.
8. In Medieval Hebrew, segula came to mean something of great importance, and particularly something "select, chosen." This is how it is used in the writings of Yehuda Halevi, for example. (Much of these Medieval uses are borrowed from parallel phrases in Arabic, which I won't go into here.) 
9. This led to a distinction between the masses and special people, who became known as yechidei segula יחידי סגולה.
10. Following its Arabic parallels, segula also came to mean "characteristic feature." This goes back to its early meaning of "property." The same phenomenon can be found in words in English (deriving from Latin), like "peculiar" which means "belonging exclusively to one person; special, particular", but derived from a word meaning "private property", and even further back - "cattle." The English word "property" also means both "possession, thing owned" and "nature, quality." We find this use of segula in the translations of Rambam's Arabic writings into Hebrew.
11. Over time, segula didn't just mean "characteristic" but specifically a "positive" characteristic. (Think of how in English, we tell someone to "behave", but we mean "behave well.") It specifically became attributed to the positive attributes plants and other objects had in providing healing and health. 
12. This association with medicine and the natural world, eventually expanded to the supernatural and the magical. A "segula", in this context, is a kind of charm or ritual, that would bring good fortune or protect from harm. 
13. As Kaddari mentioned above, as the Jewish world became more secularized, the belief in magical segulot faded, but the word remained. Just as a segula had magical abilities, once stripped of that belief, it just became an ability. And this was particularly found in the verbal. If a person is מסוגל mesugal, he is able or capable (of performing an action). And in the hitpael form, הסתגל, means "to adapt oneself" and histaglut הסתגלות is "adaptation, acclimation."

For me, watching a word develop that way is simply beautiful. That simple root has followed the speakers of Hebrew since antiquity, always adapting to the where the nation was at the time. Truly an am segula!

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almanac and menucha

There are a lot of theories as to the origin of the word "almanac." Here's what the Online Etymology Dictionary has to say:

late 14c., "book of permanent tables of astronomical data," attested in Anglo-Latin from mid-13c., via Old French almanach or directly from Medieval Latin almanachus, a word of uncertain origin and the subject of much speculation. The Latin word is often said to be ultimately from Arabic somehow, but an exact phonological and semantic fit is wanting: OED connects it to a supposed Spanish-Arabic al-manakh "calendar, almanac," which is possibly ultimately from Late Greek almenichiakon "calendar," which itself is said to be of Coptic origin. But the author of English words of Arabic Ancestry makes a detailed case  "that the word almanac was pseudo-Arabic and was generated within the circle of astronomers in Paris in the mid 13th century."

Those are all interesting suggestions, but one not mentioned in that entry allows for a connection to a Hebrew word. Stahl mentions a theory that does in his Bilingual Etymological Dictionary of Spoken Israeli Arabic and Hebrew, and it also appears in other sources, such as this and this. He points out that in Arabic manakh means "weather, climate" and derives from a word meaning "where the camels kneel and rest." That place was a camp, and for nomadic tribes, it took on the sense of a permanent settlement. This sense of permanence, became associated with other constant or expected things - in this case, the weather. And so an almanac was a book which included certain astronomical predictions (like the times of sunrise and sunset), dates for holidays, and meteorological forecasts.

This Arabic root - either via nakha, "kneel" or manakh, "camp" - is cognate with the Hebrew word root נוח meaning "to rest." That root gives us the word menucha מנוחה. In Modern Hebrew menucha means the condition of "rest, respite" or "calm, serenity." But in the Bible, it generally (perhaps always) means a resting place. In many verses it is synonymous with nachala נחלה - "inheritance", as in Devarim 12:9 where both refer to the Land of Israel:

כִּי לֹא־בָּאתֶם עַד־עָתָּה אֶל־הַמְּנוּחָה וְאֶל־הַנַּחֲלָה אֲשֶׁר־ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ

Now you have not yet come to the resting place [menukha] and hereditary land that God your Lord is giving you.

Another verse with the same meaning is Bereshit 49:15, which compares menucha  to aretz (land):

...וַיַּרְא מְנֻחָה כִּי טוֹב וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ כִּי נָעֵמָה

But he sees that the resting place [menucha] is good, and that the land is pleasant...

In this way, menucha is similar to the word meluna מלונה - "lodge" (and related to the word malon מלון - "inn"), which derives from the root לון - "to lodge, to pass the night." Meluna is clearly a place, and so too menucha means a resting place.

Of course, it's easy to conflate a resting place and a state of rest, and so there are some verses where it's not clear which meaning is intended. In the end, just as the Arabian nomads appreciated the chance to let their camels kneel and rest, so to did the nomadic tribes of Israel appreciate the chance to stop wandering and settle in their homeland. The resting place caused a state of rest.

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derash

The next word in our series of PaRDeS words is derash דרש -'interpretation" or "exegesis". The root דרש is unlike the previous word, remez. First of all, רמז does not appear at all in the Tanach, where as דרש appears well over 100 times. And the meaning of remez is fairly simple - "hint", but darash has many definitions, of which none can explain all of the occurrences. Sometimes when a word has a variety of usages, it is possible to point to the earliest, "original", meaning. This does not seem to be easy with darash. The dictionaries didn't help much. I looked at six Hebrew dictionaries, all of which pay attention to the history of the word. Usually, the first definition listed is considered to be the original one. But as you'll see below, each dictionary came up with a different list, with a different order:

Most of these meanings appear somewhere in the Tanach (with the exception of "preach, lecture"). So we can't claim biblical usage as a sign of original meaning.

Klein actually provides an etymology:

JAram.-Syr. דרש, Mand. דרש (= he examines; he instructed, taught). Arabic darasa (= he learned, studied), Ethiopian darasa (= he expounded, interpreted) are Aramaic loan words. The original meaning of this base probably is 'to tread, trample, rub', hence ultimately identical with base דרס.

Klein defines דרס as "to tread, trample" but doesn't explain the connection to darash there either. Perhaps one of you can see the connection between דרס and דרש, but nothing seems obvious to me.

Stahl, in his Arabic dictionary, connects דרש to both דרס and also to דוש, which means "to tread, thresh" (possibly based on Gesenius here). He writes (my translation):

studying requires repetition, as does the threshing of grain

He points us to the word "studio" for similar development. From the Online Etymology Dictionary for the word "study":

c.1125, from O.Fr. estudier "to study" (Fr. étude), from M.L. studiare, from L. studium "study, application," originally "eagerness," from studere "to be diligent" ("to be pressing forward"), from PIE *(s)teu- "to push, stick, knock, beat"

The problem with this theory is that darash only appears once in the Tanach with the meaning "to study" - in Ezra 7:10. This seems to be a pretty late source, and none of the dictionaries put that meaning near the top. Heschel, in Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations,   (pages 251-252) describes the shift of meaning in Ezra's time:

Scripture says that Ezra "dedicated himself to seek out the meaning [lidrosh] of the Torah of the Lord" (Ezra 7:10)

and in footnote 45, there continues:

It is worth noting that this verse expresses something of historic importance. Previously, the root drsh was used for seeking out God, that is, for consulting an oracle, a priest or a prophet. Now it is used for the teaching of God, for the Torah. Ezra begins to inquire of a test, and thus we are signaled that the era of prophecy is at an end.

The Encyclopedia Judaica article on "Midrash" (found here), also points to the Latin studium, but has a somewhat different description than Stahl:

The term Midrash itself derives from the root drsh (דרש) which in the Bible means mainly “to search,” “to seek,” “to examine,” and “to investigate” (cf. Lev. 10:16; Deut. 13:15; Isa. 55:6; et al.). This meaning is also found in rabbinic Hebrew (cf. BM 2:7: “until thou examine [tidrosh] thy brother if he be a cheat or not”). The noun “Midrash” occurs only twice in the Bible (II Chron. 13:22 and 24:27); it is translated in the Septuagint by βίβλοs, γράφη i.e., “book” or “writing,” and it seems probable that it means “an account,” “the result of inquiry (examination, study, or search) of the events of the times,” i.e., what is today called “history” (the word history is also derived from the Greek root ίστορὲω which has a similar meaning). In Jewish literature of the Second Temple period the word Midrash was first employed in the sense of education and learning generally (Ecclus. 51:23), “Turn unto me, ye unlearned, and lodge in my house of Midrash,” which the author’s grandson translated into Greek, “house of instruction or of study”; compare the similar development of the Latin studium which originated in the verb studeo which means “to become enthusiastic,” “to make an effort,” “to be diligent,” etc. and only in a secondary sense, in the post-Augustan era, in the sense of learning (with diligence and the noun studium passed through the same stages of meaning; cf. Ger. studium; Fr. étude, etc.).

So if I understand Moshe David Herr's EJ article, he says that first the word darash meant "to search" or "to seek", and from there developed to the sense of "to study", with a similar pattern in Latin. However, that leaves an obvious question. Where would the connection to דרס fit in to Herr's theory?

In the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Wagner has an extensive discussion about the usage and meaning of the root דרש, on pages 293-307. In the section on etymology, he writes:

The root drs is found in several Semitic languages: Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Syriac and Mandean, and is attested in Ugaritic (as yet only once, according to Bauer's reconstruction). It is debatable whether Akkadian darasu has anything to do with the same root. The original meaning of drs is hard to determine. It is probably correct to translate it by the English words "seek," "ask," "inquire (of)" (Ugar. "interrogate, question"?). The root must have undergone a change of meaning in the course of its use. In late Semitic languages such as Middle Hebrew, Jewish Aramaic and Syriac one encounters meanings like "interpret," but also "tread," "trample".

So Wagner basically reverses Klein's theory and says that דרס followed דרש.

Gesenius supports Klein, by saying that the original meaning was "to tread a place, i.e. to go or come to it, to frequent" and from there "to seek, to search for". I'm not sure who's right. Gesenius is the only one to flush out Klein's theory (of course Klein read Gesenius, not the other way around), but it seems somewhat forced. And the fact that darash never actually means "to tread" in Biblical Hebrew leads me to give more weight to Wagner's theory.
Regardless of the original meaning, by Talmudic times the verb darash came to be almost exclusively associated with study, meaning "to expound, interpret" or "to teach, lecture". The former sense gave us the word מדרש midrash (actually appearing once in the Tanach - Divrei Hayamim II 13:22) meaning "homelitical interpretation", and the latter sense we find in both the words derasha דרשה - "sermon" and beit midrash בית מדרש - "house of study".
This Philologos column discusses the connection between the Hebrew beit midrash and the Arabic madrasah - "school":

Madraseh, like many terms used by the world's Muslims, comes from Arabic, in which it is a nominal form of the verb darasa, "to study." In contemporary Arabic, however, madrasa does not necessarily mean a religious seminary. It is the generic word for "school," so that a second-grader learning to read and write is attending a madrasa, too. It is only in non-Arabic languages spoken by Islamic peoples that the word specifically refers today to a religious institution of higher learning.
...
As for the Jewish beit midrash, or "house of study," it comes from the verb darash, "to seek" (exactly as the talib of "Taliban" comes from talaba, "to seek"), and goes back to early rabbinic times in Palestine — that is, to the very beginning of the Common Era. Jewish education in this period began with a beit sefer, a "house of the book" (the generic Hebrew word for "school" to this day) in which young children were taught reading, writing and Bible; continued with a beit talmud, or "house of learning," in which some Mishna and simple rabbinic jurisprudence was taught to older children, and progressed to a beit midrash, in which advanced students sat at the feet of famous rabbis. The original beit midrash was thus similar to what eventually came to be known among Jews as a yeshiva, literally, "a sitting." Over the centuries, however, as the word yeshiva replaced beit midrash for an institute of higher Jewish learning, beit midrash came to denote an informal place of study in which anyone could sit and learn on his own in the presence of a library of sacred books.
...
The interesting question is whether the linguistic connection between the Muslim madrasa and the Jewish beit midrash is more than a matter of the general kinship between Arabic and Hebrew and actually has a causal element — i.e., whether the word madrasa was modeled on beit midrash. Although I can't think of any way of proving or disproving this, my instincts tell me that it was probably what happened. Rabbinic Judaism had an enormous influence on early Islam, and many Islamic institutions and concepts were knowingly or unknowingly taken from it. Moreover, when one reflects that pre-Islamic Arab society had no system of formal education at all; that the word kuttab is allied to kitab, "book," like sefer in beit sefer, and that the original beit midrash was an institution of higher religious learning just as the madrasa was, it seems likely that early Islam borrowed its terminology for different kinds and stages of schooling at least partly from Jewish sources.

In Modern Hebrew, as often happens, we've returned to the Biblical sense, and the most common usage of דרש is "to require".
In the spirit of seeking and studying, I'd like to ask (not demand!) from my readers some help. In the course of researching this post, I found this page. In the section discussing Sanskrit, they write:

Among the derivative verbal systems are the causative and the desiderative ("desire to"); the former has an affix -ay- (gam-ay-a-ti "makes to go," kar-ay-a-ti "has do") or, after roots in -a, -pay- (stha-pay-a-ti "sets in place"). The desiderative is formed with -sa- and reduplication (repetition of a part of the root)--di-drk-sa-te "desires to see" (root drsh). The desiderative also has an agent noun in -u--di-drk-s-u "who wishes to see."

Does anyone know if there's a suggested connection between the Sanskrit and the Hebrew drsh? Let's keep the suggestions in the realm of peshat, not derash...

***********
Update: I've given the question of darash / daras some more thought, and I think I overlooked something. In addition to daras, we have another verb that clearly means "tread" - דרך darach. Klein says that darach is related to דרג - also meaning "to walk". So now we have three roots that mean "to tread/ walk", which leads me to believe that perhaps we're talking about an early two-letter Hebrew root. We might also be able to add דדב - "to be accustomed, be trained" and דרר - "to flow abundantly, run swiftly". In that case, it's not so farfetched to think that darash is also connected, maybe similar to Gesenius. First "to walk", then "to seek".

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prosbul

We're in the shmitta (sabbatical) year, so let's talk about a word related to it. According to the Torah, all debts are canceled in the shmitta year. However, Hillel the Elder made an enactment that would allow loans to be collected. This would help both the rich (who would get their loans repaid) and the poor (who would be more likely to have money lent to them). The document publicizing this enactment is called a prosbul (or prozbul) - פרוזבול (also occasionally פרוסבול).

What is the origin of this word? There is a discussion about this in the gemara (Gittin 36b-37a):

מאי פרוסבול אמר רב חסדא פרוס בולי ובוטי בולי אלו עשירים דכתיב (ויקרא כו) ושברתי את גאון עוזכם ותני רב יוסף אלו בולאות שביהודה בוטי אלו העניים דכתיב (דברים טו) העבט תעביטנו אמר ליה רבא ללעוזא מאי פרוסבול א"ל פורסא דמילתא

"What is (the meaning of ) prosbul? R. Hisda says: Pros (an enactment of) buli and buti. Buli means the rich, as it is written, 'And I will break the pride of your power' (Vayikra 26:19). And R. Joseph explained: These are the bula'ot (city councils) in Judah. Buti means the poor, as it is written, 'You shalt surely lend him sufficient [ha'avet העבט is similar to buti בוטי] ' (Devarim 15:8). Raba asked a certain foreigner [who spoke Greek, Soncino suggests "linguist"] 'What is the meaning of prosbul?' He replied: 'The pursa (enactment) of the matter.'"

So we see here that while the Rabbis felt it was important to learn moral lessons by drashot that found Hebrew words in foreign terms, they also knew when to ask foreign linguists what the words actually meant.

Even now, we don't know exactly what prosbul meant in Greek. Klein writes:

Probably shortened from pros boule bouleuton ( = before the assembly of the councilors), from pros (= toward, to, against, before, in presence of), dative of boule (= counsel, deliberation, assembly) and general plural of bouleutes (= councilor), from bouleuein ( = to take counsel), from boule.

The boule mentioned here is the same as in the gemara (although clearly the overall etymology is different.) The lower house of the modern Greek legislature is known as the Boule.

Steinsaltz (and others) also offer the Greek word prosbole, meaning the delivery, transfer in a sale.

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leil shimurim

In the book of Shmot (12:42) we find a very well known description of the night of (or preceding) the Exodus and describing all future Seder nights:

לֵיל שִׁמֻּרִים הוּא לַה', לְהוֹצִיאָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם: הוּא-הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה לַה', שִׁמֻּרִים לְכָל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לְדֹרֹתָם.

The JPS translates this verse as follows:

"That was for the Lord a night of vigil to bring them out of the land of Egypt; that same night is the Lord's, one of vigil for all the children of Israel throughout the ages".

There are many explanations and interpretations of ליל שמורים leil shimurim - "night of vigil". They generally are based on the idea that the root שמר means "to watch, keep, protect" - but who was watching who and when? Was God watching the Jews? Are the Jews to keep the holiday? Is there still protection on that night? I won't go into all these issues, but Sarna points out an interesting irony. The Talmud notes that on the night of Pesach the Jews are under greater protection, however during the Middle Ages in Christian Europe, they actually had to be more vigilant, for the Christians would accuse them with the blood libel specifically on Pesach night.

However, this is not the only way to understand "leil shimurim". The Ramban hints to a different approach in his commentary (Chavel translation):

The intent of this is "that this night set aside by God to bring Israel out of Egypt is unto the Eternal. That is to say, it is to be sanctified to His Name. [It is] a night of watching for all the children of Israel throughout their generations, meaning that they are to observe it by worshiping Him through the eating of the Passover-offering, the remembering of the miracles, and the reciting of praise and thanksgiving to His name", just as He said And thou shalt keep this ordinance (Shmot 13:10) And He further said, Observe the month of Aviv, and keep the Passover (Devarim 16:1).

Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra explained that the intent of the expression, It was a night of watching unto the Eternal, is that God watched the Israelites and did not suffer the destroyer to come into their homes. This is not correct, since Scripture continues to state, It was a night of watching ... for bringing them out from the Land of Egypt.

The Ramban is saying here that leil shimurim means more than just that the Jews were protected on that night, but rather on that night they need to eat the Pesach sacrifice, remember the miracles and praise God - in other words, the Seder experience. Kaddari, in addition to quoting the Ramban, points out that shimurim has an Arabic cognate that means "stay awake all night" (this could of course be connected back to the word shomer meaning "guard", for guards stay awake all night.)

Goldschmidt in his Haggadah, quotes Derenbourg as saying that the Arabic word samara means to "entertain all night", and the Bedouins sit in front of their tents at night talking in what is called Samaroun. If the linguistic connection is accurate, then the story of the Rabbis staying up all night discussing the Exodus has a strong basis in the phrase leil shimurim.

The root שמר has many derivatives in Hebrew, most of them with a clear connection to each other: shomer שומר - "guard", shamran שמרן - "conservative", mishamer משמר - "preservative". However, I had trouble connecting one particular word, shmarim שמרים - "yeast", to this set.

Passing Phrase also has trouble making a connection, and provides this conjecture:

The root of the word "meshamer" is ShMR, which means watch or keep. Anything that is made to stay a long time is called "meshumar" (Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 34). In modern Hebrew, products in cans which can stick around until the next war or electrical outage would be called "shemurim." Long life milk would be "chalav meshumar" or "chalav amid." Interesting enough, from the same root, we have the word for yeast, "shemarim." I guess it's related because it has to be watched after you add it to the dough.

While it's a good guess, I don't think it's accurate historically.

We find the word shemarim in a few locations in the Bible, and throughout Rabbinic literature as well. In all of these sources, it only means "lees, dregs" - the residue remaining after wine ferments. Klein connects this word back to the root שמר - meaning "to keep" - what is "kept" after the fermentation process. (As an aside, my kids tend to mix up the concept of שמר as "saving" and "watching". When we say we're going out for the night, they often ask "Who will save on us?", a literal translation of מי ישמור עלינו - "who will watch us?".)

Now it's true that yeast is what creates the fermentation, and the residue is formed of dead yeast. But the origin of the word shemarim seems to indicate that it always meant "residue, remnant", and never meant active yeast. Additionally, Ben Yehuda's dictionary does not include one source that mentions shemarim in the context of baking bread or cakes, although this is the common meaning in Modern Hebrew (Even-Shoshan defines shemarim first as yeast, second as lees.). I do see that according to the Hebrew Language Academy site, in a 1938 dictionary of kitchen terms has reference to shemarim as yeast, and ugat shmarim עוגת שמרים as yeast cake. But it is not clear to me why Ben Yehuda didn't include this meaning. I'd be very happy to hear from any readers who can show me a source that discusses the development of the word.

In the meantime, I did find this interesting post by Orrin Tilevitz on Mail-Jewish, which discusses a common misconception - that yeast is forbidden on Pesach:

To the extent this myth exists - and I don't know anybody who thinks baking soda and baking powder are inherently not kosher for Passover - it may be a result of the widespread mistranslation of the word "se'or" (see, e.g., Exodus 12:15). Beginning with the King James and continuing through the original JPS and the current Art Scroll translations, the word is rendered as "leavening", which could include baking powder and soda - or, for that matter, egg whites. I once spoke to an Orthodox rabbi who told me that "se'or" meant yeast, and therefore yeast was inherently prohibited on Pesach. (My response was to ask whether he drank wine on Pesach, a question lost on him because he seemed not to understand what fermentation was.) But se'or doesn't mean any of these things. It actually means "sourdough starter" (see, e.g., Rav Saadia Gaon's commentary, and the supercommentary on it, in Torat Chaim), which is a mixture of flour, water and yeast spores from that air, that is left to ferment, in the process of which the yeast grows. AFIK, until recent times sourdough starter was the leavening agent in bread; bakers in chazal's era did not have yeast as a separate product.

So perhaps Ben Yehuda wasn't aware of yeast as we know it today (despite the relatively short gap between his death in 1922 and the publication of that cookbook in 1938.)

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resh

The 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is resh. It gets its name from the original shape of the letter - like a rosh ראש - head.

In addition to "head", rosh can also mean "chief, leader", "top, summit", "beginning" and "principal, capital". Some other word derived from rosh are rishon ראשון - "first", reshit ראשית - "beginning", and rashi ראשי - "chief, primary".

The Aramaic version of rosh is closer to our pronunciation of the letter - ריש resh. From here we get the word reisha רישא meaning "the first part (of a Mishna)".

In Arabic, ras as head is found in many place names such as Ras al-Khaimah ("top of the tent") and Ras Tanura ("head of the barbeque spit"). Rais is another Arabic derivation, meaning "president".

While there is some debate among scholars, one opinion as to the etymology of the word "race" meaning "tribe" is from our root, via Arabic. Klein writes in his CEDEL:

race, n., family tribe. -- MF. ( = F.), fr. earlier rasse, fr. It. razza, which together with Sp. raza, prob. derives fr. Arab. ra's , 'head, beginning, origin', which is rel. to Heb. rosh

As we have seen earlier, resh can interchange with lamed and nun. Steinberg adds that the similarity of the shapes of resh and dalet cause them to alternate as well - for example ראה (Devarim 14:13) and דאה (Vayikra 11:14).

Resh is occasionally added to three letter roots and words: שבט / שרביט , כסא / כרסא. In other cases, the resh is assimilated - כרכר becomes ככר.

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atzeret

After Sukkot comes שמיני עצרת Shmini Atzeret (or Shemini Atseret or some similar spelling). We find the term first in Bamidbar 29:35:

בַּיּוֹם, הַשְּׁמִינִי--עֲצֶרֶת, תִּהְיֶה לָכֶם
"On the eighth day you will have an atzeret"

Similarly we find it mentioned in Vayikra 23:36:
בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי מִקְרָא-קֹדֶשׁ יִהְיֶה לָכֶם ... עֲצֶרֶת הִוא--כָּל-מְלֶאכֶת עֲבֹדָה, לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ
"On the eighth day you shall observe a sacred occasion ... it is an atzeret; you shall not work at your occupations"

The last day of Pesach is called atzeret in Devarim 16:8:
וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי, עֲצֶרֶת
"On the seventh day, an atzeret"

Additionally, in Rabbinic Hebrew, the holiday of Shavuot is known as Atzeret.

What is atzeret? It probably won't surprise you to read that there are a number of opinions:

a) Assembly, gathering: In Yeshayahu 1:13, we find the word atzara עצרה which has this meaning. Onkelos translates the word as כניש kenish - "gathering", which is related to the word בית הכנסת - beit haknesset, literally "house of gathering".

b) Stoppage of work: The gemara gives this explanation in Hagiga 9a and 18a: עצרת - עצור מעשיית מלאכה - "atzeret - stop doing work". This is the opinion of Ibn Ezra and Sforno.

c) Delay: This is Rashi's explanation, based on the Midrash where God asks us to stay with him just one day more. Radak in Sefer Hashorashim takes a similar approach, and says that those that went up to Jerusalem for Sukkot were delayed there for one more day. Rav David Tzvi Hoffman writes that while the earlier meanings are found in other books of the Bible, in the Torah עצר only means "to delay, to restrain". The modern Hebrew verb לעצור - "to arrest, to detain" is related to this meaning.

d) Conclusion: This is how the Septuagint translates the word into Greek: exodion, meaning "finale" (and related to the word "exodus".) Bula in Daat Mikra Vayikra says this meaning applies well to the last day of Pesach and Shavuot - which concludes the period of the Omer. Jastrow defines the term as "a festive gathering for the conclusion of a festive season, concluding feast".

Of the more modern scholars, Steinberg and Klein agree with "stoppage of work", while Kaddari offers "assembly".

The concept that atzeret has more than one explanation can help us understand a difference in the text of the Yaaleh V'Yavo prayer (as discussed here and here). When mentioning Shmini Atzeret, Nusach Ashkenaz says:
ביום השמיני חג העצרת הזה
while Nusach Sefard has:
ביום השמיני העצרת החג הזה

The Nusach Ashkenaz version refers to the chag of atzeret - a holiday on its own, which fits with the definitions of "assembly" or "stoppage of work".

The Nusach Sefard version, however, has "the atzeret of the chag", where chag would seem to refer to Sukkot. Therefore the atzeret mentioned would be either be the conclusion of Sukkot, or one additional delay after the seven days of Sukkot.

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shor

In this week's Parasha (Re'eh) we see the shor שור - ox listed among the kosher animals. In Aramaic shor becomes תור tor (also note Ugaritic thor, Akkadian shuru, Arabic thowr). According to many scholars (Klein, Steinberg, Horowitz and Philologos) - the Greeks borrowed from the Semitic tor/shor for their taurus, also meaning "ox". From here we get the term toreador - bullfighter.

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anak

In this week's parasha (Devarim), Moshe quotes the spies as saying (1:28), "We saw the Bnei Anakim" - וְגַם-בְּנֵי עֲנָקִים, רָאִינוּ שָׁם

Who or what are the Anakim mentioned here? Is it simply "giants" as the term means in Modern Hebrew?

Tigay, in the JPS Deuteronomy, writes:

The exact meaning of "Anakites" is uncertain. Some take it as an epithet meaning "long-necked ones," based on Hebrew 'anak, "necklace," and its Arabic cognate meaning "neck". Others relate it to names of people or places in Canaan or across the Mediterranean containing the element 'anak or to Greek anax, "nobleman".

Lets look at each of these two theories. Klein says that anak ענק originally meant either a necklace for women, or a necklace for camels (Steinberg connects ענק with חנק - "to strangle, choke"). From this word we get the verb להעניק, which first meant "put something on one's neck" and later became "he loaded with gifts, presented." This verb only appears in Devarim 15:14, and indeed, Rashi and Ibn Ezra connect it there with the meaning of necklace. In modern Hebrew, a ma'anak מענק is a grant.

As far as the Greek anax (or wanax), we find that Homer frequently used the term in the Iliad, for example in the name Astyanax - meaning "prince of the city".

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