When I was researching the meaning of the word " omer ", I found that Rabbi David Zvi Hoffman quoted Shadal as saying that the wor...

We're between Pesach and Shavuot now, the time that we "count the omer". But do we really? Let's look at the word "...

Well, maybe we're not quite ready for an etymological haggadah just yet. But this time of year I get a lot of requests (both by email an...

Since we discussed the father ( Cham ), let's talk about the son - Mitzrayim מצרים - the Hebrew name for Egypt. In the last post we ran ...

In my last post I dabbled in chemistry, so I thought it made sense to discuss the origin of the word. Today we might view chemistry as re...

With Pesach coming soon, I'd like to take a look at a word that appears in the very beginning of the Haggadah. Before Ha Lachma Anya , e...

Purim is coming up, so let's talk about the word bira בירה. No, I'm not talking about the Hebrew word for "beer" - althou...