khnun and chanan

What is the origin of the Hebrew word for "nerd" - חנון khnun? 

At first glance, it might seem that chnun is related to the Hebrew word for a gifted student - מחונן mechonan. That word derives from the root chanan חנן. Chanan in turn, derives from chen חן - "grace." Chanan can mean to act graciously or mercifully, as in the verse: 

  וְחַנֹּתִי אֶת־אֲשֶׁר אָחֹן וְרִחַמְתִּי אֶת־אֲשֶׁר אֲרַחֵם׃

"...I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." (Shemot 33:19)

That meaning gives us such words as chanun חנון - "merciful, gracious" (as in the above verse); chanina חנינה - "favor" in Biblical Hebrew (Yirmiyahu 16:13) and "amnesty" in modern Hebrew; and the words techina תחינה and tachanun תחנון, both meaning "supplication for favor."

By extension, chanan can also mean "to grant" in general (in a gracious sense). This is how it used in Bereshit 33:5 -

הַיְלָדִים אֲשֶׁר־חָנַן אֱלֹהִים אֶת־עַבְדֶּךָ

"...they are the children who God kindly granted your servant"

It is also found in the fourth blessing of the weekday Amidah prayer:

אַתָּה חוֹנֵן לְאָדָם דַּעַת 

"You grant man knowledge"

From here we get the word chinam חינם - "gratuitously, for nothing, free", since something chinam was given for nothing. And it is also where the word mechonan - "gifted" comes from, since someone "gifted" was "granted" or "endowed" with a talent or knowledge.

But this is actually not the origin of khnun. Rather, it derives from a slang term, borrowed from Moroccan Arabic, sometimes spelled xnuna (or hnuna), meaning "nasal mucus" (snot). A snot-nosed kid was considered, as in English, a brat, or weak and teased for his condition, and from there it came to mean "nerd" as well. Perhaps that later meaning was influenced from an association with mechonan, but it wasn't the original derivation.

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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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chelek and chaklaut

A friend recently asked me a question about metathesis - the rearranging of letters in a word. Let's take a quick look at an example in Hebrew.

The word helek חלק - "part, portion" derives from the verb חלק - "to divide, share" (according to Klein). He does not connect this root to chalak חלק - "smooth", which he says is related to the Arabic halaqa "he made smooth" which is related to halaqa meaning "he created." Klein also mentions halaqa - "he measured, measured off" as a cognate of חלק meaning "to divide", but again, he doesn't connect the roots. Stahl, however, does connect them, saying that "he created" and "he measured" are related. And if I understand the footnote in Ben Yehuda correctly, he says that the meaning "smooth" could have evolved from a sense "to shave", which would have originally been "to cut, to divide." This sense - of shaving, making smooth - is the source of the halaka חלאקה - the Mizrahi version of the Ashkenazi upsherin,  the ceremony of the first haircut for three year old boys.

Chaklaut חקלאות - "agriculture" and chaklai חקלאי - "agricultural"/ "farmer" are modern Hebrew words coined by David Yellin, formed from the Aramaic words chakal חקל and chakla חקלא, both meaning "field." This Aramaic word is a metathesis of chelek - literally "a portion of land." We find chelek being used for a field in many places, such as Bereshit 33:19 - חלקת השדה chelkat hasadeh - "a portion of the field".

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kerach and kereach

It was frosty here this weekend, so I got to thinking - is there any connection between the homographs קרח kerach - "ice" and kereach - "bald"?

Even Shoshan discusses the verb root קרח (as found in Vayikra 21:5), and says that the meaning is "to pull out hair", and notes that in Arabic the cognate is qara'a - or קרע in Hebrew. In Hebrew this root means "to tear, rend." (Meshullam Klarberg writes here that only in modern Hebrew does kore'a mean to tear by hand, while in Biblical and Talmudic Hebrew it could also mean cutting with an implement.)

As far as kerach ("ice"), a footnote in the Ben Yehuda dictionary points out that the Syriac cognate primarily means "storm", and speculates that this might be a connection between the two meanings: a storm can tear the leaves off of trees (making them bald), and a storm can bring with it cold and snow.

Another theory is proposed by Gesenius, that the common root means "to make smooth", which applies both to ice and to a bald head. That might be a simpler suggestion, but his book was written in 1836, with far less exposure to research into related Semitic languages. So perhaps the evidence here leads to a more complicated conclusion.

What about the name Korach קורח, found first among the sons and leaders of Esav (Bereshit 36:5, 36:16) and most famously the Levite who led the rebellion against Moshe. Daat Mikra (Bereshit 36:5) says that it probably means a bald man (which stands in contrast to the "hairy" name of Seir - also found in Esav's family).

This made me think: while certainly a bald man might get a nickname referring to his baldness, why would anyone name a baby that? Then of course, I remembered that my kids all entered life rather bald...

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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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baal and adon

When I was in eighth grade, I asked a rabbi a question. If we believe in only one God, why is God’s name in Hebrew a plural? I know I was thinking of the name Elohim אלו-הים, but I might have also been thinking of Adonai אדנ-י (which would seem to mean "my Lords"). I don’t believe the rabbi ever directly answered me, but did say something like, “Now that’s a good question.” My understanding at the time was that there was some significant theological significance to the plural forms. In more recent years, I would have assumed that some secular biblical scholars might attribute the plural forms to a polytheistic origin of the Israelite religion.

But due to a question a friend recently asked me, I’ve realized that the plural form doesn’t necessarily say much about the nature of God at all.  She asked why is it that a husband (in Hebrew) is a baal בעל, but the (single) owner (of a pet, or a company) is called baalim בעלים. (We've seen the phenomenon of a plural noun being treated as a singular one before, in our discussions about tavlin and Artzot Habrit.) At first I thought this might be a phenomenon only in Modern Hebrew, but I found baalim meaning "owner" a number of times in Biblical Hebrew (e.g. Shemot 21:29, Yishaya 1:3, Kohelet 5:12) and in the Mishna (Bava Metzia 8:1) as well. After digging a little deeper, I found that the same rule applies to the synonym adon אדון. While the singular form (referring to people, not God) is found in the Tanach (also on one occasion meaning “husband”, Bereshit 18:12), it is frequently found in the plural form adonim אדונים, even though that word is used as a singular meaning "lord, master" (see Yishaya 19:4, Malachi 1:6, and the many cases of אדוניך adonecha and אדוניו adonav in the story of Avraham's servant and the story of Yosef. In no place in the Tanach do the words אדונו or אדונך appear.)

Why is this? Both Rav Hirsch in his commentary on Bereshit 1:1 and Shadal in his essay "Tzelem Elohim" (printed in the collection Mechkerei HaYahadut, pg. 225) explain it as showing full sovereignty and authority over the subject (see also Rashi on Bereshit 35:7).

Hirsch writes:

Using a plural form to designate a plentitude of powers combined in one person is moreover by no means unusual in expressions of mastery and power in the Hebrew language, such as אדנים, בעלים. They always designate a person who possesses the various powers which rule over any object, to whom, accordingly, this object completely subjected in every direction.

Shadal adds that if adon was written in the singular, you might think that the subject would have this master, and additional masters as well.

Some people have claimed that because baal means both owner and husband, this implies that in Judaism the husband "owns" his wife. But as we have seen, there are two different words - baalim for owner, and baal for husband.

The case in Hoshea 2:18

וְהָיָה בַיּוֹם-הַהוּא נְאֻם-ה', תִּקְרְאִי אִישִׁי; וְלֹא-תִקְרְאִי-לִי עוֹד, בַּעְלִי

where in the future we will call God ishi אישי instead of baali בעלי (in the analogy of God as the husband and Israel as the wife) is referring to the negative connotations the word baal got from association with the Semitic deity “Ba’al”, as evidenced from the following verse:

וַהֲסִרֹתִי אֶת-שְׁמוֹת הַבְּעָלִים, מִפִּיהָ; וְלֹא-יִזָּכְרוּ עוֹד, בִּשְׁמָם

For I will remove the names of the Baalim from her mouth, and they shall nevermore be mentioned by name.

So we should not learn from it the nature of the husband / wife relationship in Judaism, although there are those in Israel who prefer to use "ishi" for husband based on this verse.(For more on ish and isha, see this post.)

In any case, the above principle applies to the title Elohim as well. It too has a few uses in the Bible where it refers to people, although it overwhelmingly is a term used for God. But the plurality here is, as Ibn Ezra says in his commentary on Bereshit 1:1, a “plural of respect” (pluralis excellentiae in Latin). This is similar to the “royal we” (pluralis maiestatis/majestatis in Latin) except that in general we don’t find cases of the sovereign referring to themselves in the plural. (For an excellent review of the meaning and usage of Elohim in the Tanakh, see the chapter “The Knowledge of God” in Man and God: Studies in Biblical Theology, by R’ Eliezer Berkovitz.)

In addition to the definitions “husband” and “owner”, baal is a prefix in compounds meaning “possessing”, as in baal habayit בעל הבית – “landlord, host”, baal kriya בעל קריאה (or the Yiddish influenced, more popular, although less grammatically correct baal koreh בעל קורא) – “the Torah reader” (who possesses the knowledge of how to read), and baal teshuva בעל תשובה – a Jew who has returned to following the laws of the Torah, literally “master of return” (in Israeli Hebrew chozer b’teshuva חוזר בתשובה seems more popular.) However, the phrases baal-peh בעל פה - "orally", and baal-korcho בעל-כרחו - "against his will" do not use our word baal, but rather the letter bet as a prefix followed by the preposition al על.

Yet, while baal had the sense of “possessing” even in Biblical Hebrew, adon was used either to refer to God or a “master” even through Rabbinic Hebrew. Since slavery is no longer practiced, and even political leaders do not have full sovereignty over citizens today, that took the punch out of the second meaning of adon. Today it is almost entirely used to mean "mister" or “sir”. This meaning was lost (either deliberately or not) on the New York Times journalist David Shipler, who wrote in 1984 that Arab cab drivers in Israel refer to Israelis as “My Lord”. As Shmuel Katz (here) and David Bar-Illan (here) pointed out, calling someone “adon” or “adoni” does not necessarily suggest any respect, perhaps actually the opposite…

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mangal

Israel celebrates its Independence Day this week - Yom HaAtzamaut. And in recent years, one of the most widespread symbols of the day, perhaps even competing with the flag, is the mangal מנגל - Israel's barbeque. What is a mangal - and where does the word come from?

A number of years ago, David Bogner of Treppenwitz asked the same question. In the end he was less concerned about the etymology than he was about how much he enjoyed manning the grill for the soldiers in the area. Some of his readers suggested that the origin was Turkish. Another veteran blogger, Allison Kaplan Sommer, agreed, and wrote:

I made my little etymological discovery this year on my vacation in Istanbul, Turkey. I was touring one of the palaces, and they were showing us the little portable stoves that would be moved from room to room so that the sultans and their families could enjoy fresh tea anywhere. And the stoves were called....Mangals! So I guess the term is leftover from the Ottoman Empire days.

The best English translation for mangal is brazier, as defined here:

1. A metal pan for holding burning coals or charcoal.
2. A cooking device consisting of a charcoal or electric heating source over which food is grilled.

In Ottoman Turkey the mangal was primarily used for heat, and cooking over it was a secondary function. I found a number of sources from the 19th century describing the mangal (see here, here and here). The last one, from 1868, describes the mangal as follows:

The "mangal" is a large dish of live charcoal, and on the introduction of this into the room or ward they are dependent for warmth.

Other regions under Ottoman rule also borrowed the word, and so we find in Romanian, Albanian and other regional languages that mangal means "charcoal". In modern Hebrew, mangal came to mean almost exclusively a stove for grilling, and now refers also to the barbecuing event itself.

However, where did the Turks get this word? According to an article by Amnon Shappira of the Hebrew Language Academy (Leshonenu Le'Am 45:3), the Turks borrowed it from the Arabic word mankal (מנקל) - also meaning stoves. Where did the switch from mankal to mangal occur? Shapira brings up the theory that it could be from Bedouins or even Yemenite Jews, who substitute "g" for "k". However, he writes that the use of the mangal was not as common on the Arabian peninsula, but more likely entered Turkish via Persian, which makes a similar consonant switch.

What does mankal mean in Arabic? The root of the word is נקל, which means "transport, transmit, convey". So as Allison wrote, the "little portable stove" became known as mankal. (The Hebrew acronym for CEO - מנכ"ל, is not related).

This Arabic root is the source of the word nagla נגלה - which originally meant "load" (as in donkey-load) and took on the meaning "round" or "trip" in Modern Israeli slang. In this case, according to Stahl, the switch from nakla to nagla is via Bedouin pronunciation.

Another word deriving from the same root is the game mancala (also mankala / manqala). This game (popular with my kids, although I haven't actually played it yet), involves transferring stones around a board.

There is actually one classical Hebrew word that might be cognate to the Arabic. That is the word makel מקל - meaning "staff" or "walking stick", and it is found in the Tanach (although far less frequently than the words mateh מטה and shevet שבט, of similar meaning.) The etymology of the word is unclear, and Ben-Yehuda lists many theories. One of them is that it is related to נקל. Stahl says this because the stick was used to move animals from place to place, as in Bamidbar 22:27:
וַיַּךְ אֶת-הָאָתוֹן בַּמַּקֵּל "and he struck the donkey with his stick"

I think perhaps another verse that could show a connection would be Bereshit 32:11, where Yaakov says "with my staff I passed over this Jordan" - כִּי בְמַקְלִי, עָבַרְתִּי אֶת-הַיַּרְדֵּן הַזֶּה

However, in the end, both Klein and Even-Shoshan say that makel might actually derive from the Egyptian word ma-qi-ra.

Let's end on a slightly more patriotic note. The official Hebrew word for mangal is matzleh מצלה, and nagla is masov מסוב. I haven't heard one yet for mancala...

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avuka and ptil

It's clear by now that my indexing is taking much longer than I originally expected. And there have been a number of "distractions" that have come up during this time period. But I have received a few requests to continue to write even before the index is done. So just so you know that I continue to pay my electric bill (and that I'm still alive), I'll make sure to put up a regular post (although less frequently than before.)

Although I've spent most of my time indexing books and websites that I've used in the past, I have come across some new material. Well, new to me anyway. An amazing book that I picked up a couple of weeks ago is Yad Halashon (1964) by Yitzhak Avinery, the linguist also well known as the author of Heichal Rashi. This 600+ page book has hundreds of articles that Avinery wrote over a course of decades. The English subtitle calls it a "lexicon of linguistic problems in the Hebrew language." I'm sure I'll refer to it regularly, as it provides an important bridge between the Ben Yehuda's dictionary and innovations and the modern Hebrew I speak in 2007. There are not a few entries about words that I've already written about - but it will probably take even longer for me to go back and review them.

Anyway, on to today's post. In a 1949 article, Avinery makes a connection between two words: avukah אבוקה - "torch" and ptil פתיל - "wick, cord" (also ptila פתילה). The etymology of ptil is well known. It derives from the root פתל - "to twist, twine". It also means "to wrestle", and from here we get the origin of the name Naftali (see Bereshit 30:8).

The origin of avuka is less clear. Klein says the origin is unclear. He is probably following Ben Yehuda, who writes that "the origin of the word is not clear, but perhaps it is a shortened form of אבהוקה avhuka, from the root בהק - "to shine, glow".

However, there is an earlier etymology for avuka, as presented by the Ramban in his commentary to Bereshit 32:25 In this verse we find the root אבק as a verb:
וַיִּוָּתֵר יַעֲקֹב, לְבַדּוֹ; וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ, עַד עֲלוֹת הַשָּׁחַר

"Yaakov was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn".

It is clear that the word ויאבק means "he wrestled", but what is the etymology? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi in Chullin 91a provides two different theories:

וריב"ל אמר אמר קרא (בראשית לב) בהאבקו עמו כאדם שחובק את חבירו
"Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: The Torah writes (Bereshit 32:26) 'as he wrestled בהאבקו with him' - as a person embraces - chovek חובק - his friend".

אמר ר' יהושע ב"ל מלמד שהעלו אבק מרגלותם עד כסא הכבוד
"Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: this teaches us that the dust - avak אבק - of their feet went up to the Divine Throne."

Each of these explanations finds expression in the views of the Rishonim. Rashi quotes Menachem as saying that the verb אבק meant "he was covered in dust", because they were kicking up dirt while they were moving. This is in line with the second opinion of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, and is the view of Ibn Ezra and Radak.

Rashi brings a second opinion, saying that the word אבק is of Aramaic origin, and means "he attached himself." Heb brings a few Talmudic quotes where אבק means "attached", and then says that it is the way of two who struggle, for one person to throw the other down, then he grasps him - אובקו - and entwines him - חובקו -in his arms."

By connecting the roots אבק and חבק, Rashi here seems to be following the first opinion of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi.

The Ramban continues in this vein, and points out that alef and chet often interchange, and brings a number of examples. And getting back to the topic of this post, the Ramban writes that the word avuka meant "a bundle of sticks bound together". And here we see the similarity between ptil / ptila and avuka - both may originate from the idea of string or wood bound or twisted together.

Why did Avinery mention all this? Because he noticed that when people were talking about twisting someone's arm, they would say הוא מסובב את היד. But he points out that the root סובב means "to surround" - not "to twist". So he recommends using the verb ovek אובק - and here he is inspired by none other than Rashi, the subject of his major work. For it seems that Rashi coined the kal form of the verb אבק in his commentary we read above. (In Heichal Rashi, Avinery has a list of Hebrew words coined by Rashi.)

So while it would have made a nice Chanukah post to end with a discussion of wicks and torches, I can't leave out an interesting note about the word avak meaning "dust". Klein provides the following etymology:

Together with Aramaic-Syrian אבקא (= dust), probably derived from [the verb] אבק [related to the Arabic abaqa (= he ran away)] and literally meaning 'that which flees or flies.' ... Greek abax, genitive abakos (= a square tablet strewn with dust for drawing geometrical diagrams; reckoning board) is a Hebrew loan word.

So the word abacus may very well come from Hebrew. (See this Philologos article for a theory of how the word entered Greek from Hebrew.)

So maybe we can still connect all this to Chanukah after all. Two concepts which seem very much Greek - wrestling and abacus - both have a strong Hebrew background. Just to show that the relationship between the Jews and the Greeks wasn't always black and white, lightness and darkness...

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achbar

Last month, Treppenwitz, one of my daily reads and a fellow resident of Efrat, wrote a very funny post about how his wife Zahava thought that the word akbar in the Arabic phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great") meant "mouse" (like the Hebrew achbar עכבר). The Arab worker in the supermarket corrected her and said:

"No... 'Achbar' [with the 'ch sound scraped deep in the back of his throat] meant mouse. Akbar [with the 'k' sound coming percussively from the roof of his mouth] , was... something completely different."

I had enjoyed the story, but hadn't given much thought to the linguistic side of it, until last Friday. In our local library, I found a very important entry in the Encyclopedia Mikrait (Biblical Encyclopedia) called Milim Zarot (Foreign Words in the Bible) by the important Israeli linguist Chaim Rabin. The article mentions dozens of words that may have entered the Bible from neighboring languages, and as you can expect, it has provided me with many ideas for future posts.

While I was familiar with words of Akkadian, Egyptian and even Greek origins, I didn't realize that there were Biblical words that derived from Arabic (actually proto-Arabic or Ancient North Arabian). One of the Hebrew words that Rabin suggests comes from Arabic is none other than עכבר achbar, mouse! He writes that it probably meant "great / big one", in a euphemistic way. It would then very much be related to the Arabic akbar, which is אכבר in Hebrew, from the root כבר - "great". He writes that in certain Arabic dialects in the region it was common to switch between alef and ayin.

From the root כבר we get a number of other words, including the adjective kabir כביר - "great" and perhaps the Greek gods - the Cabeiri.

Two other homonyms to כבר may be related as well. The verb כבר means "to sift", and a kvara כברה is a sieve. Klein suggests a connection:

According to some scholars כבר ( "to be great") is identical with כבר ( "to sift"), the sense development of this base having been "to interturn, twist, make strong". They compare the bases גדל ( "to be great") and גדל ( "to twist, to plait") which seem to have undergone a similar sense development.

Another word with the same letters is kvar כבר - "already". In the Bible it appears only in Kohelet, and in the Gordis book on Kohelet, he writes the following:

It is frequent in Mishnaic Hebrew, but rare in Targumic Aramaic. It occurs also in Syriac, where it usually means "perhaps", though it occurs as "already" in Mat. 11:21; Heb 10:2 and in Mandaic כבאר. Its root is common in all Semitic languages in the meaning "be great", hence כבר = lit. "length of time:, while כברה is "length of land" (Genesis 35:16, 48:7, II Ki. 5:19)

In regards to kivra כברה, Ben-Yehuda does mention the approach that it is related to kabir, but primarily goes along with most other scholars that I read who claim that the kaf in kivra is not radical, and the root of the word should be seen as ברה or ברת.

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acharon

For those that haven't noticed yet, I made it to the Finals of the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards. As of this writing, it doesn't look like I'll end up first - rishon ראשון. But how bad would it be to be acharon אחרון ?

For the answer to this, I'll turn to a book by Avshalom Kor, Higiya Zman Lashon הגיע זמן לשון (strangely translated as It's Time to Tongue), 1994. I found it in my local library, but since it has a number of very interesting articles about things I'd like to write about (and some insights about topics I've already discussed), I'd love to get my own copy. If anyone knows where I can find one - please let me know.

Kor has a chapter in the book (page 63) where he discusses the meaning of the word acharon, generally translated as "last". He quotes Hagai 2:9

גָּדוֹל יִהְיֶה כְּבוֹד הַבַּיִת הַזֶּה הָאַחֲרוֹן, מִן-הָרִאשׁוֹן

"The glory of the acharon house will be greater than that of the rishon house".

Hagai was trying to solace the people who saw the Second Temple being built, but remembered the First Temple and were disappointed. He was telling them that the Second Temple will be more glorious than the first.

Kor then mentions a polemic between Christians and the Rashba about the meaning of acharon. They claim it means "last" - and therefore there will be no Third Temple. Rav Yisrael Rozen also quotes the Rashba here (note that he says "Yishmaelim" instead of Christians):

The Rashba (Rabbi Shlomo Ben Aderet, from thirteenth century Spain) tells about a debate he had with "one of the wise men of the Yishmaelites" with respect to the future redemption of Bnei Yisrael (responsa, volume 4, 187). The style of the debate was typical of the controversies of the Middle Ages, with both sides liberally quoting from traditional sources.

"He replied to me from another angle, saying: The Torah states that there will be no Temple after the Second Temple (that is, the Temple will not be rebuilt), as is written, 'The glory of this last house (habayit ha'acharon) will be greater than that of the first' [Chagai 2:9]. See, the Second Temple is called the 'last house.' How could this be if another house will be built after it?

"I replied: It is called 'last' only in relation to the first (that is, it is later than the first one, but not last in an absolute sense). This is similar to, 'He put the maid-servants and their children first, and Leah and her children last (acharonim), and Rachel and Yosef last (acharonim)' [Bereishit 33:2]. Leah and her children are called last even though Rachel and Yosef came after them.

"He said: This is true when people talk... but when a prophet, who knows the truth, speaks, it is not so! I replied: No, it even appears in Divine words to a prophet. For example, the Almighty said to Moshe, 'If they do not believe the first sign, they will believe the last sign (acharon). And if they do not believe these two signs, take water from the Nile... And it will be transformed into blood on the ground' [Shemot 4:9-10]. As you see, the second sign was called acharon, even though the sign of the water (the blood) came after it."

There are those who add a note from this week's Torah portion: "The blood will be a sign for you on the houses" [Shmot 12:13]. This is a hint that the sign of the blood, which came after the "last" sign, is a proof relevant to the "houses" - that is, a Third Temple will be built, even though the Second one that preceded it was called "last."

Kor points out that the later "proof" is from the Shelah.

I should mention that the meaning "last" does appear in the Tanach as well - see Shmuel II 2:26, 19:12.

And as Kor points out in another chapter, acharon can also mean "behind", as in Yam HaAcharon ים האחרון - the Mediterranean Sea, which is behind you, when you face forward, to the east. Klein writes that this is the earliest meaning of the word, and connects derivates of the root אחר to a sense of "he was behind, he was late". From here we get meuchar מאוחר - "late", achar אחר - "after", as well as achrai אחראי - "responsible", where Klein writes that the word:

literally denotes a person who stands behind someone or something, for whom or for which he has accepted responsibility

So if you stand behind me (and please vote here), I can perhaps be acharon (next) and not acharon (last)...

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yamin

There are a number of explanations for the name Binyamin בנימין ( Bereshit 35:18):

"son of my right hand" (ben yamin - בן ימין , literal translation - although the Binyaminites were left-handed: Shoftim 3:15, 20:16)
"son of the south" (Rashi says south of Aram, Ramban says Aram is east of Eretz Yisrael, but Steg suggests that Binyamin is the southernmost tribe of the children of Rachel)
"son of strength" (Ramban)

All of these meanings - that is, understandings of yamin - are connected. (A different explanation, that the name should be read as בן ימים - " a son of my old age" as proposed by Rashbam, is not connected.)

As we've discussed before, east was forward in the Ancient Israelite culture (as well as others - we still "orient" ourselves to find the way), and so when facing east, south is on the right. From here we get the direction תימן teiman, which leads to the place name as well. However, while the country Yemen (at the southern end of the Arabian peninsula) also derives its name from a cognate of yamin, the Biblical Teiman was in Edom, near Petra. Teiman was also one of the descendants of Esav as well.

The right hand was also considered stronger, and therefore the right side represented dexterity and strength. We see this in English as well, where the word dexterity itself is related to the word right, and of course both meanings of right ("correct" and "opposite of left") are related.

In Arabic, the related yamana means "be fortunate, happy". Yemen was known in Latin as Arabia Felix - "Happy Arabia". Mike Gerver writes:

Arabic maimun, “fortunate one,” is also from the verb yamana. This is the source of the name Maimon, used by Jews in Arabic-speaking countries, including the father of the medieval Jewish philosopher, physician and legal authority, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known in Hebrew by the acronym רמב''ם, and in English as Maimonides (Greek for “son of Maimon”). In Arabic, maimun also means “ape,” originally a euphemism since apes were considered to devils. It is probably the source, via Spanish mona, “ape,” of English monkey.

This author adds that the the suffix "key" is a diminutive.

Jastrow and Steinberg connect yamin to the root אמן meaning "firm, steady".

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lot

The origin of the name of Avraham's nephew, Lot לוט, is unclear. Sarna writes that the origin is unknown, presumably following Cassuto, who rejects a connection to the name Lotan in Bereshit 36:20 (which is the suggestion by Kil in Daat Mikra on Bereshit 11:27) or a connection to the old Egyptian name of the eastern portion of the Land of Israel - Ruten - as suggested by Paton in The Early History of Syria and Palestine.

However, Rabbi Eldad Zamir writes here that:

Lot is portrayed in a variety of different ways in the Torah, Midrash, and commentators. While at times he is portrayed as a positive figure, at times he is portrayed as a negative figure as well. This ambivalence can even be seen in Lot's name. 'Lot' has two possible meanings: it either comes from the noun lot (laudanum, a fragrant plant extract; see Bereishit 37:25, 43:11) or from the Aramaic verb lut (to curse; see Targum Onkelos, 12:3, et al.). Lot is either fragrant or worthy of curse.

Klein says that the name laudanum may derive from lot:

Probably related to Akka. ladunu, Arab. ladan ( = ladanum). Persian ladan is an Arabic loan word. Greek ledon ( = rockrose), whence ladanon ( = labdanum) is a Semitic loan word.

He also writes that the word "lotus" derives from lot, as does the Online Etymology Dictionary (who might be relying on Klein):

from L. lotus, from Gk. lotos, name used for several plants before it came to mean Egyptian white lotus (a sense attested in Eng. from 1584); perhaps from a Sem. source (cf. Heb. lot "myrrh")

Rashi on 37:25 identifies lot with לוטס - lotes as mentioned in the Mishna - Sheviit 7:6. However, the Mishna actually uses the word לוטם - lotem. Similarly, Shadal says that Onkelos translates lot as לטוס - but the edition of Onkelos that I have has the version לטום letom. This confusion could be related to a mix-up between the letters samech and mem-sofit, but there is also a plant called lotem - from which, according to Felix, the fragrance lot is made.

As to the Aramaic lut, Jastrow says it derives from the root לוט meaning "to cover", and the development to the meaning "curse" comes from a sense of "to talk secretly". The root לוט is used in the Hebrew phrase לוט בזה - lut b'zeh - meaning "hereby enclosed" (explained here).

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kapara

We're now up to the third term of forgiveness - kapara (or kapparah) כפרה. This is the most complicated of the three for a number of reasons:

1. Unlike selicha and mechila, there are a number of different words in the Tanach that share the root כפר , and it is not always clear if they are related.
   
2. The meanings of selicha and mechila were fairly clear - the debate was over the etymologies. With kapara, there is much disagreement amongst the rabbis and modern scholars over the actual meaning of the root and words.
   
3. The root כפר is the base of Yom HaKipurim יום הכיפורים - and therefore receives much more attention, and many more drashot about the root come in to play.
   

With so much discussion about kapara it will be hard to cover everything in one post. I will make an effort to be comprehensive, but I will recommend checking out "inside" the sources and links I present.

Here are some of the words with the root כפר :

• כופר - kofer: pitch, asphalt (hard to believe this is the third time I've discussed asphalt on this site)
• כופר - kofer: ransom
• כפורת - kaporet: the cover of the Holy Ark
  
• כפור - kfor: frost
• כפיר - kfir: a type of lion
• כפר - kfar: village
• כפירה - kefira: to deny

And of course there is the root כפר - which is variously defined, as we shall see.

Ronen Ahituv discusses the opinions of Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Ramban as to the meaning of כפרhere (and here in the original Hebrew):

While awaiting the encounter with his brother Esau, our father Jacob sent him an offering. It is explained with these words:

For he reasoned, "If I propitiate him with presents in advance, and then face him, perhaps he will show me favor. And so the gift went on ahead, while he remained in the camp that night. (Bereishit 32:20-21)

The expression propitiate [akhaprah panav] appears here in Scripture for the first time. The commentators disagreed about its meaning. Rashi writes: "propitiate - I will end his anger,... it seems to me that the word kaparah when conjoined with avon [transgression] and het [sin], and panim [face] - all are expressions of wiping away, and they are Aramaic... Scriptural language also refers to the holy fountains as kipurei zahav, since the priest cleans his hands in them, in the lip of the fountain." Rashi explains kaparah as wiping out anger. The gift is intended to wipe out Esau's anger.

Ibn Ezra interprets it differently: "The meaning of akhaprah panav is I will cover-up and hide." It is not a matter of ending the anger permanently, but rather of temporarily hiding it, and especially, canceling its destructive outcome. Esau's anger and enmity are not cancelled; instead, they will be temporarily held off by the gift, saving the lives of Jacob and his household for the time being.

The RaMBaN takes pains to reopen the discussion of the meaning of kaparah and disagrees with Rashi:

The connotation of "wiping away" attached to forgiveness [kipur] is not valid in the Sacred Language but rather in the Aramaic tongue... for the word kaparah is never used in association with sin [het], meaning wipe away, but instead Scripture says: lekhapeir [to make atonement] for your souls (Shemot 30:15); lekhapeir for him, and he shall be forgiven (Bamidbar 15:28), i.e., for his soul. And Scripture also says: akhaprah [I shall make atonement] for your sin (Shemot 32:30). All of them are related to the expression, Then shall they give every man kofer for his soul (Shemot 32:12), which means a ransom. (Chavel translation)

According to the RaMBaN, the Hebrew language does not contain the concept of kaparah for a sin, but rather only kaparah for a soul. Kaparah is ransom for a soul, a replacement for death. Jacob is saying that he himself deserves to die upon seeing Esau, and the gift is being given in exchange for his life.

So we have three options for כפר : wiping, hiding/covering, and atonement/ransom. However, I have found a fourth explanation, which I find very convincing. Rav Menachem Leibtag explains in this article how כפר always means "protection". The article is too long to quote here, but it discusses how protection is an accurate definition for most of the words I quoted above, and also offers an explanation of the meaning of Yom HaKippurim. Take a minute and read the article.

However, while there is disagreement as to the meaning of kapara, it is less of an issue in regards to the etymology. As Klein writes:

The meanings 'to wash away, wipe off, cover, expiate' are interrelated, and, accordingly, etymologically connected.

I would add protection to the above list as well. (By the way, the English word "cover" is not related to kofer - it actually is a compound of two seperate roots.)

However, it should be noted that Levine, in the JPS Leviticus (4:20) sides with Rashi above, and claims there is a real difference between "wipe off" and "cover". He writes:

The Akkadian verb kuppuru, which corresponds to Hebrew kipper, means "to wipe off, burnish, cleanse". In cultic terms this means that expiation is conceived of as cleansing, as wiping away impurity, contamination, and, by extension, sin itself. This interpretation differs from the concept endorsed by many scholars that the verb kipper means "to cover, conceal" the sin or impurity from God's view. Such an idea is of course well known in the biblical literature, as it is in most other religious traditions, but is not the idea conveyed by the verb kipper.

What about some of the words that Leibtag does not discuss? Klein writes that kfir perhaps is related to the meaning "to cover" and denotes "a lion already covered with a mane".

Steinberg suggests that kfar means "a place covered with tents in a field".

Klein does not offer an etymology for kefira, but Jastrow writes that it means to wipe out the truth, and this site, discussing the cognate Arabic term kuffir, suggests "to cover or to conceal" the truth.

A related question: why is kippurim found in the plural in the Torah, and why do we more commonly say Yom Kippur (in the singular)? EMC gives the following answer:

Kippurim is a tantum plurale ("only plural") in Biblical Hebrew, a word occurring only in the plural. Pluralia tantum are often used in Hebrew to denote abstract notions, like "atonement," alumim, "youth," tanhumim, "consolation." etc. They are less frequent in later forms of the language, which might account for the eventual changeover to the singular in yom kippur.

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