dvash

My friend, the blogger and bee-keeper Treppenwitz berated thanked me (and others) for sending him a link discussing the discovery of beehives showing a beekeeping industry going back to First Temple times.

Well, to show him that he's not the only one discussing the issue, I'll take it on - but from a linguistic standpoint. (The fact that I was planning on discussing the word anyway, in my series on the simanim, is pure coincidence...)

This article discussing the discovery has this quote about the Hebrew word d'vash דבש:

While the term "honey" (dvash in Hebrew) appears 55 times in the Bible, it refers to date or fig honey in all but two references: Judges 14:8-9, when Samson took honey from the lion's carcass, and I Samuel 14:27, when Jonathan dipped his rod in a honeycomb during a battle and his countenance brightened.

Sarna has a similar note in his commentary on Shmot 3:8 -

Honey in the Bible (Heb. devash) is predominantly the thick, sweet syrup produced from dates and known to the Arabs as dibs. Apiculture seems to have been unknown in Palestine; the few explicit references in the Bible to bees' honey pertain to the wild variety. While the date itself is never mentioned, the inclusion of honey among the seven characteristic products of the land listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 indicates that, like all the others, it too derives from the soil.

I happened to take out a book from the local library that discusses this issue in detail: Fruit Trees in the Bible and Talmudic Literature, by Yehuda Feliks (Rubin Mass, 1994). The chapter on dvash is in Hebrew, and I can't quote the entire thing here, but I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. I will summarize a few points he brings up:

• The phrase ארץ זבת חלב ודבש ("land flowing with milk and honey") in the Torah is clearly referring to honey from fruit trees, as it is praising the agricultural bounty of the land.
  
• However, in Yeshayahu 7:22, when it mentions כי חמאה ודבש יאכל כל הנותר בקרב הארץ "Everyone who is left in the land shall feed on curds and honey", it is a parody of the Torah verses. For here, the prophet is describing a time when the land is desolate - and therefore the bees can proliferate. (The milk for the curds will also be widely available, because the cows and sheep will be able to graze on the previously tended croplands).
  
• Bee honey is not seen as a sign of blessing for the land, even though it is seen as fortunate to find it (as in the story of Yonatan mentioned above). Yaakov also probably sent bee honey to Yosef (Bereshit 43:11), because it mentions מעט דבש - "a small amount of honey", and bee honey would have been hard to obtain.
  
• Many sources where the honey is mentioned as coming from rocks (Devarim 32:13, Tehilim 81:17) it is likely referring to fig honey, as figs (unlike dates) grow in rocky terrain.
  
• Although the rabbis generally identify the biblical dvash with dates (Sifrei Devarim 297, Mechilta D'Rashbi 13:5), when they used the word dvash themselves, they were referring to bee honey. For example, the Yerushalmi (Bikkurim 1:3) interprets the biblical word: "And dvash - this is dates. Could it be actual dvash (e.g. bee honey)?" They answer that since the dvash in the verse is obligated in tithes, it cannot be referring to bee honey, but rather date honey. We also see that if someone makes an oath that they will not eat dvash, they are allowed to eat date honey (Nedarim 6:9)

While the article was written before the recent discovery (and sadly Prof. Feliks passed away last year, and did not merit to review it), I don't think the discovery radically challenges anything in the article. Certainly bee honey was considered a rare treat, and there would have been efforts to make the product more widely available. And by Talmudic times, these efforts had succeeded so well, that bee honey became the dominant meaning of "dvash".

But the meaning of eretz zavat chalav u'dvash still refers to the agriculture of the Land of Israel, particularly, as Feliks points out, in comparison to that of Egypt, whose dates were much dryer and did not easily produce honey.

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silka

Another one of the simanim is silka - סלקא. I had always assumed that silka meant beets, as in the Modern Hebrew word for beet - selek סלק.

So I was surprised to see that there are those that identify the silka with spinach. For example here:

Spinach is called Silka in Aramaic. Beets are called "Selek" in Hebrew, so either (or both) are fine.

Where did this understanding come from? One explanation about the Sefardim, as mentioned here, is that:

Their custom for the food "Silka" was cooked spinach, because the Arabic term for the word was "Salk."

In fact, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu (the former Sefardi Chief Rabbi) here says not only is spinach preferable, but that the use of beet is more recent!

Stahl confirms that salk means both spinach and beets in Arabic. A Google comparison between "salk + spinach + arabic" (16,300 hits) and "salk + beet + arabic" (9,790 hits) shows an advantage to spinach. But it turns out that the Portugese word for beet - acelga - comes from the Arabic salk.

However, I have another theory for the identification of silka with spinach.

The gemara (Brachot 38b) mentions מיא דסלקא maya d'silka. Rashi explains this term as "water in which was cooked teradin." And in Eruvin 28b, raw teradin are equated with raw silka. What are these teradin תרדין? Every authoritative source I could find says that the tered mentioned here is beet (Rambam on Kilaim 1:3 [according to Kapach], Jastrow, Ben-Yehuda, Klein, Melamed).

However, in Modern Hebrew, tered means spinach! How this happened is not clear - perhaps due to the similarly looking leaves. Ben-Yehuda already complained about it. (He suggested a new word for spinach - kotzit קוצית - but like some other of his suggestions, it was not adopted.) So if someone was to read the talmudic passages above, they would likely believe that silka was spinach as well. (That is apparently the basis for this halachic question.)

What about the etymology of silka? Klein says that the etymology is unknown, but Jastrow has a reasonable explanation. He says it comes from סלק ( also שלק) which means "to boil down". Therefore silka originally meant a "well-boiled vegetable." (We've seen Jastrow's approach before - in regards to lefet - where the way a vegetable was prepared or eaten eventually gave the food its name.)

In regards to the prayer associated with silka, we say שיסתלקו אויבינו - "may our enemies depart, be removed". However, the verb סלק originally meant "to go up, ascend", and is related to the root נסק (from where we get masok מסוק - helicopter). To "ascend" seems perhaps too complimentary for our enemies. So if we call the beets tered instead of silka (or actually eat spinach, like the Sefardim), then our association can be with the root ירד (to descend) - perhaps "שתרד קבוצת אויבינו"...

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karti

What holiday tradition could be more fun for fans of Balashon than that of the puns we recite about food on the first night of Rosh HaShana? What a great way to start the New Year! Over the next few days before the holiday, I'll try to write a bit about these "simanim".

We already discussed tapuach - apple (plus it's not really a pun), so let's go to the next word: כרתי karti - "leek". Klein writes that it is "a secondary form of כרשה". Kreisha is the proper Hebrew word for leek today, although we do also see the word luf, as we saw here. However, in the Mishna (Shviit 7:1), we find both wild luf and kreisha - so they were then known to be different species.

Karti is also used as a color - "leek green", which is used to describe the sky (Berachot 1:2) and an etrog (Sukka 3:6). This identification was used by the Greeks as well - they called the Indian Ocean the "Leek-Green Sea".

The biblical word for leek was chatzir חציר - see Bamidbar 11:5. However, chatzir in the Tanach primarily means "hay, grass", and that is its meaning today, so don't ask for chatzir in the supermarket if you're looking for leeks.

On the other hand, don't make the same mistake I did many years ago, and say karish כריש - instead of kreisha. Most supermarkets in Israel probably don't carry shark. It's not kosher (and not related to kreisha etymologically either)...

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schwa

In the past few months, I've become more aware of the distinction between the vowels shva na (voiced) and shva nach (unvoiced). (For a good introduction to the concept, read the beginning of this post and this Philologos article.) While there are some words where the proper pronunciation affects the meaning (for example, the word וְיִירְאוּ in Tehilim 67:8), I think in general it is a good idea to improve my reading, particularly in prayer. I have also recently become aware that there are disagreements among the scholars as to the whether a particular shva is na or nach - some of which come in rather important sections of prayer. For example, in the Kriyat Shma, Devarim 6:7, there are those who say that the first bet in וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ has a shva na, others say a shva nach. How do we properly recite this word in the regular prayers? This is an issue I'm still researching; maybe I'll have a post about it in the future.

But while I've only recently become curious about the Hebrew shva, I've been aware of the English cousin "schwa" for many years, ever since I noticed the interesting rotated "e" back in elementary school:

However, until I started this blog, I had never thought about how strange it was that this English word would have been borrowed from Hebrew. How did this happen?

From the Oxford English Dictionary, we see that the word "schwa" entered English in 1895, borrowed from German. But English had other forms of the word for the Hebrew vowel, such as:

• Like to a silent Hebrew Scheua (1589)
• the Sheva of the Hebrews (1818)
• When no vowel is expressed, then as in the Hebrew, a Sheva..will be implied and read accordingly (1837)

There are similar older quotes in French and German.

But the question remains - why would European linguists borrow a Hebrew word? The word shva only shows up in Medieval Hebrew, so it didn't have any of the Biblical sentiment that the Christian scholars might have attached to it. My guess? It was a matter of necessity. Until more recent linguistics, European languages could suffice with the Latin letters for all of their vowels. But when they "found" a vowel that couldn't be represented by any of the existing letters - it was convenient to use a foreign word. And here the Hebrew shva was a perfect fit. I'm still curious to see exactly what Hebrew texts were read by Christian scholars when they discovered the word, but that may be lost to history...

What about the etymology of the Hebrew word shva? The most well-known etymology (as suggested by the OED) is that it comes from the Hebrew שוא shav - "nothing, vanity" (also "lie, falsehood".) However, Klein provides a different source:

borrowed from Syr. שויא (= the seven points), lit.: ‘even’ or ‘equal’ (points) ... related to Hebrew שוה (was even, smooth, or like)

But Ben-Yehuda, while providing the same theory as Klein, does also mention the "nothingness" theory in the name of earlier Hebrew scholars. And I admit, it's what my first guess was...


(Thanks to my new friends at the Wordorigins.org Discussion Forums, for helping me find some of the sources.)

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abracadabra

Well, as you can see, my vacation - at least from blogging - took a little longer than I originally expected. But I did have a nice time, got to travel a bit, picked up some new books, and even made my computer a little easier to work with.

One new site that I have started to follow and highly recommend is Ethan Dor-Shav's The Hebrew-Wisdom Dictionary. Some deep thoughts and original insights - I hope to have some posts relating to his work in the future.

I did hope that my latest quiz would tide you over during my break. But I haven't even got one guess! So now that I'm back, you can give it a shot.

One book that I did finish reading during my vacation was the last installment of the Harry Potter series. Not much Hebrew in there, but we do find the killing spell "Avada Kedavra". J.K. Rowling herself believes that it comes from Aramaic:

Does anyone know where avada kedavra came from? It is an ancient spell in Aramaic, and it is the original of abracadabra, which means "let the thing be destroyed". Originally, it was used to cure illness and the "thing" was the illness, but I decided to make it the "thing" as in the person standing in front of me. I take a lot of liberties with things like that. I twist them round and make them mine.

While it is difficult to disagree with a talented and successful writer like Rowling, I don't quite buy it. First of all, she doesn't provide a source here. Secondly, it falls into a long list of theories that connect the word abracadabra with Hebrew or Aramaic:

• אברא כדברא - avra k'davra - "I will create as I speak" (which is actually the opposite of Rowling's intent)
• עברה כדברא - avra k'davra - "It will pass as I speak"
• אברכה אדברה avarcha adabra - "I will bless, I will speak"
• הברכה ודברה - habracha v'davra - "the blessing (perhaps a euphemism for a curse) and dever -disease"
  
• אב, בן, רוח הקודש - av, ben, ruach hakodesh - "father, son, holy spirit"
  

Despite the temptation to connect the term to Hebrew or Aramaic, I'm inclined to follow Klein, who writes:

Late Latin, from Greek abracadabra, in which word the letter c (= s) was misread for k. It was originally written as a magical formula on abraxas stones, whence its name.

But don't give up Harry Potter fans! I've found two interesting coincidences to keep you going.

First of all, the Encyclopedia Judaica writes about "abracadabra" that:

It first appears in the writings of Severus Sammonicus, a gnostic physician of the 2nd century C.E.

(highlighting mine*)

And in Klein's Hebrew dictionary, the entry immediately before אברקדברא abracadabra is אברק avrek, which means nothing less than Sirius (the star)!


*Yes, I know that the name was probably Serenus, but we are dealing with fiction here, so I'm sticking with the more interesting option...

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ga-ga

At my son's birthday party last week, I noticed that he and his friends were playing the game Ga-ga. I used to love that game as a kid in my Jewish summer camps in the States, but it was interesting to watch a group of Israelis play. Naturally, I had to interrupt their game to discuss the etymology. Would they know what Hebrew word the game came from? I certainly wouldn't have known when I was their age...

Rosenthal confirms the theory put forth in the Wikipedia article that the Hebrew name gaga געגע is a duplication of the imperative גע "touch!" (or perhaps better "hit!"). The game was apparently imported to Jewish camps in English speaking countries by Israeli visitors.

The game Ga-ga is not related to the identically spelled געגע - a verb meaning "to long, to yearn". This verb derives from the word געגועים ga'agu'im - "longing, yearning". Klein writes that this word is "probably derived from געה ( = he cried, wailed, wept.)" The verb געה means "to moo, low, bleat", and Jastrow says the meaning "homesickness, longing" is "as the cow lows after her calf".

We find the term ga'agu'im in the Talmud (Shabbat 66b) where it discusses a son who longs for his father - בן שיש לו געגועין על אביו. Rashi translates the term as ברמור"ט, which Steinsaltz says comes from the Old French bramore, meaning "great love".

Now I have found one more location where the term גע גע ga ga shows up, and it is not clear whether it is a relative of the game or of longing.

In the apocryphal Book of Ben Sira, we find the following verse (13:22) -

עשיר מדבר ועזריו רבים ודברוי צכוערים מופים
דל נמוט גע גע ושא ודבר משכיל ואין לו מקום

Now first of all, it should be mentioned that there are a number of different versions of the Ben Sira text in Hebrew, and I do not know which one is the most accurate. One of the ones I found, I believe older than the one quoted above, does not have the same text. But from what I can tell, this version is today considered the most legitimate.

Also, I don't know much about English translations of Ben-Sira, but this one seems to be decent:

When a rich man is fallen, he hath many helpers: he speaketh things not to be spoken, and yet men justify him: the poor man slipped, and yet they rebuked him too; he spake wisely, and could have no place.

The translation for גע גע is "they rebuked him". What's the connection? Ben Yehuda writes that the word ga גע here is an exclamation of disrespect and contempt. He offers the following translations (no languages given, but the idea seems clear): "pfui, fi, fie". He says that this is similar to the Talmudic קעקע - the onomatopoeic "to cackle" as found in Kiddushin 31a. He quotes an English translation "hoot", which is both an animal sound, and indicates derision as well. While he doesn't say it explicitly, it would seem to be related to the mooing sound which led to ga'agu'a.

However, Klausner, in his book HaIvrit HaChadasha U'Ba'ayoteha rejects this approach. He says that גע here means "to arrive" (the verb הגיע "arrive" is the hifil of the verb נגע "touch"). The meaning of גע גע ושא is therefore "Go to your place, and take what you have with you, because we don't want you and your things." He says he doesn't understand how Smend came up with the translation "Pfui".

So in summary, looking back I guess I do long for ga-ga and summer camp. But if I'm honest with myself, I think that probably Ben-Sira's advice was true then too. Certainly the rich and popular were more likely to get support when they fell, even in a game of ga-ga...

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kookoo

Tonight my son and daughter had a little fight. She came to me saying that he called her "kookoo" קוקו (crazy) - he claimed he only said she had a kookoo (a ponytail). I wasn't terribly interested in their bickering, but the linguistic question got me wondering - are the two words related?

Rosenthal told me that they indeed are. Kookoo meaning "crazy" is found in English as well - cuckoo, as in the bird. The Online Etymology Dictionary reports:

c.1240, from O.Fr. cucu, echoic of the male bird's mating cry (cf. Gk. kokkyx, L. cuculus, Skt. kokilas). Slang sense of "crazy" (adj.) is Amer.Eng. 1918, but noun meaning "stupid person" is first recorded 1581, perhaps from the bird's unvarying, oft-repeated call.

The English words "kook" and "kooky" are apparently also derived from the cuckoo.

In regards to the imitative origin of the name of the bird, Klein points out that the Talmud also mentions a bird with a very similar name: קוקיתא kukyata (spelled קקואתא in the Vilna edition of Hullin 63a). The identity of this bird is unknown, but its name also likely comes from the sound it makes.

Rosenthal also writes that the slang term kookoo for "ponytail" also may come from cuckoo, due to the extension of the tail feathers:


Rosenthal has a third entry for kookoo in his dictionary: the game of peek-a-boo. While there are those who think the game might be connected to the cuckoo clock, Rosenthal writes that it derives from the German gucken - to peek. In other German dialects it is pronounced "kucken" (as well as Yiddish) - which makes the connection to kookoo not such a stretch. In Low German and Dutch we find the related word kieken, which the Online Etymology Dictionary connects to the English words "peek" and "peep":

The words peek, keek, and peep all were used with more or less the same meaning 14c.-15c.; perhaps the ultimate source was M.Du. kieken.

Knowing all this also helps us understand that the surname of Israel's first chief rabbi - Rav Kook - isn't related to the bird, but rather comes from the German / Yiddish word meaning "to look".

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tarbut

Growing up in San Francisco, we used to have a joke about our neighbors to the south:
"What's the difference between Los Angeles and yogurt? Yogurt has an active culture..."
(when I googled this, I found the same joke about the American Bar Association, Canada, New Zealand, Portland, Texas ... )

Would the same joke work in Hebrew? Not exactly, but we'll examine why.

Let's first take a look at the etymology of the English word "culture". From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

1440, "the tilling of land," from L. cultura, from pp. stem of colere "tend, guard, cultivate, till". The figurative sense of "cultivation through education" is first attested 1510. Meaning "the intellectual side of civilization" is from 1805; that of "collective customs and achievements of a people" is from 1867.

We see here the development of the meaning, from gardening to education to civilization - the meaning we are most familiar with today. The Hebrew word for culture - תרבות tarbut - underwent a similar, but independent, development.

The word only appears once in the Bible, in this week's parasha (Matot). Moshe Rabeinu is castigating the tribes of Reuven and Gad, saying that their interest in settling the eastern side of the Jordan is like the sin of the spies a generation before. He says to them (Bamidbar 32:14) -

וְהִנֵּה קַמְתֶּם, תַּחַת אֲבֹתֵיכֶם--תַּרְבּוּת, אֲנָשִׁים חַטָּאִים
The JPS translates as follows: "And now you, a breed (tarbut) of sinful men, have replaced your fathers". Milgrom adds the following note:

Tarbut, from the root r-b-h רבה, "increase," is related to tarbit " (monetary) interest." Like the other nominal form marbit (I Sam 2:33), it carries a derogatory connotation (Ehrlich). Alternatively, it may derive from rav (root r-b-b רבב), "mighty," yielding the rendering "a force" (Meyuhas).

Kaddari, on the other hand, says that the word is related to the Akkadian tarbutu - which he translates as chanich חניך. I assume this means "student", and is therefore similar to the translation of Onkelos, תלמידי גובריא חיביא - "students of sinful men". (The idea being that the tribes of Reuven and Gad were followers of their fathers, the spies.)

In Rabbinic Hebrew, we see tarbut in general being related to education and training. For example, in the Mishna in the first chapter of Bava Kama (15b), we find tamed wild animals being called בני תרבות "bnei tarbut". Both Ehrlich's etymology and Kaddari's fit here - the animals were either grown (raised) in the human's house, or educated there.

But in general, in Rabbinic Hebrew we still find tarbut having a negative connotation, in such phrases as תרבות רעה tarbut ra'ah - "bad manners, depravity".

However, by medieval times, we find examples of tarbut being used in a positive sense, closer to today's meaning of "culture". For example, Rashi on Horayot 12a, s.v. דמתא mentions תרבות יפה - "tarbut yafe". Rabbeinu Gershon (Tamid 27b) discusses the tarbut of Persia, and how it is more modest than the tarbut of Rome. It does seem to mean "manners" in these examples, but in a general enough sense that it can apply to a civilization as a whole.

Early modern Hebrew continued to use the word kultura קולטורה for culture, particularly during the debates over the nature of Zionist culture in the early days of the movement. I'm not sure when tarbut took over as the more popular word, but Ben-Yehuda does seem to push the use of tarbut in his dictionary.

So today tarbut means culture - in almost all its forms. It can mean civilization (tarbut sinit - Chinese culture), manners (a "cultured person" is meturbat מתורבת), and artistic activity ("Let's go to the ballet and get some tarbut").

But the one sense that it doesn't really have to day is that of a culture of microbes - like in yogurt. What's the word for that in Hebrew? Tarbit תרבית - which we saw Milgrom say earlier means "interest". But with modern Hebrew using ribit ריבית for interest, tarbit was freed up for that kind of culture.

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kruv

What do angels and cabbages have in common?

Well, they both share the Hebrew word kruv כרוב, but except for Jastrow - who provides the unconvincing shared etymology "round" - no one says they share a common root.

For kruv as the Biblical word meaning "angel" - recognized clearly in the English word "cherub" - Klein provides the following etymology:

Related to Akkadian karabu (= to bless), karibu ( = one who blesses), epithet of the bull-colossus, and to ברך (= to bless)

Klein also writes that the words griffin and gryphon may be related:

[Klein] suggests a Sem. source, "through the medium of the Hittites," and cites Heb. kerubh "a winged angel," Akkad. karibu, epithet of the bull-colossus

The Jewish Encyclopedia provides some additional theories:

Following Lenormant's suggestions, Friedrich Delitzsch connected the Hebrew with the Assyrian "kirubu" = "shedu" (the name of the winged bull). Against this combination see Feuchtwang, in "Zeitschrift für Assyriologie," etc., i. 68 et seq.; Teloni, ib. vi. 124 et seq.; Budge, in "The Expositor," April and May, 1885. Later on, Delitzsch ("Assyrisches Handwörterbuch," p. 352) connected it with the Assyrian "karubu" (great, mighty); so, also, Karppe, in "Journal Asiatique," July-Aug., 1897, pp. 91-93. Haupt, in Toy, "Ezekiel" ("S. B. O. T."), Hebrew text, p. 56, line 11, says: "The name may be Babylonian; it does not mean 'powerful,' however, but 'propitious' (synonym 'damḳu')." For the original conception of the Babylonian cherubim see Haupt's notes on the English translation of Ezekiel, pp. 181-184 ("S. B. O. T."), and the abstract of Haupt's paper on "Cherubim and Seraphim," in the "Bulletins of the Twelfth International Congress of Orientalists," No. 18, p. 9, Rome, 1899. See also Haupt, in Paterson, "Numbers" ("S. B. O. T."), p. 46: "The stem of is the Assyrian 'karâbu' (= be propitious, bless), which is nothing but a transposition of the Hebrew .ברך" Dillmann, Duff, and others still favor the connection with γρύψ ("gryphus" = the Hindu "Garuda.")

Kruv meaning cabbage entered Hebrew in Talmudic times. Ben-Yehuda introduced the related kruvit כרובית - cauliflower. As to the etymology of kruv (cabbage), Klein writes:

Together with Aramaic כרובא, כרבא, Syrian כרבא, borrowed from Greek krambe, which is related to krambos ( = dry shriveling), kromboyn (= to roast), and cognate with Old German hrimfan, rimfan ( = to contract, wrinkle), Old English hrympel (= wrinkle)

The English word "rumple" derives from hrympel.

From the Greek word krambe, we get the following expression: "dis krambe thanatos" meaning:

Cabbage, twice over, is death; repetition is tedious

Latin (in which crambe also means cabbage) has a similar phrase: "Crambe bis Cocta", meaning "cabbage boiled twice" - a subject hacked out.

These expressions led to the name of a game - "crambo" which is:

a word game in which one team says a rhyme or rhyming line for a word or line given by the other team

While I can't find any Biblical or Talmudic texts where it is unclear whether kruv refers to an angel or a cabbage, I did find one modern example. On the Hebrew version of Sesame Street, Rechov Sumsum, the Hebrew name for the Grover character is "Kruvi". The Muppet Wiki discusses the etymology:

Kruvi (most likely "small cabbage", although possibly "little angel", "cherub")

I never really thought about it before, but Grover's head is kind of cabbage shaped...

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rashut and reshut

In his book Yofi Shel Ivrit (chapter 31), Avshalom Kor points out a distinction I had never really paid attention to before: the difference between rashut רָשׁוּת and reshut רְשׁוּת.

Reshut (with a shva) means "permission". It comes from the root רשה meaning "to authorize, permit, allow". It is related to the word rishayon רשיון - "license". Reshut hadibur רשות הדיבור - "permission to speak".

Rashut (with a kamatz) means "authority". For example, the Postal Authority is rashut hadoar רשות הדואר, and the Broadcasting Authority is rashut hashidur רשות השידור. Kor writes that rashut comes from the word rosh ראש - "head". Klein agrees, and writes that the word is "probably a shortened spelling for rashut with an alef - ראשות". Today rashut with an alef means "chairmanship" and rashut without an alef means "authority". Kor gives the following example:

הרשות המחוקקת ברשאותו של ברק בן אבינועם

"The legislative authority (rashut without an alef) is under the chairmanship (rashut with an alef) of Barak ben Avinoam".

However, Klein also adds that:

Several scholars and lexicographers derive rashut רשות from base רשה ( = to empower, authorize).

But Kor writes that there are some sources that use the word ראשות (with an alef) instead of רשות rashut for "authority" - so I'm not sure which etymology is correct. Ben Yehuda writes that the meanings of the two words - reshut and rashut - are so similar, and the sounds are very close that it is impossible to seperate them (and therefore determine the precise etymology.)

Whether rashut and reshut are related or not, there certainly are cases where it is not clear which word is intended (particularly in non-vowelized texts.) For example, in the Mishna Moed Katan 3:3, we find the term אגרות של רשות. Kehati points out that the commentaries disagree whether it should be read igrot shel rashut or igrot shel reshut. Similarly, in the Talmud, Eruvin 41b, the term והרשות appears. Rabbeinu Chananel says it means "authority", but Rashi says it might have other explanations, and it is difficult to say.

What about רשות היחיד and רשות הציבור - private domain and public domain? Should it be rashut hayachid and rashut hatzibur OR reshut hayachid and reshut hatzibur? Kor explains that the correct form here is reshut. In the private domain - only the individual has permission to act, whereas in the public domain the entire public can do as they please.

One more "rashut" word that Kor doesn't mention is rashut רשות - "poverty", coming from rash רש - "beggar".

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navat

Sometimes I find a such an obvious connection between a Hebrew word and a foreign one that I'm really surprised I didn't notice it earlier.

The Hebrew word navat נווט, means "navigator", and the verb נוט means "to navigate". I imagine by now you notice the "nav" in both the Hebrew and English words, but I never paid attention to it.

And indeed the Hebrew נווט derives from the Greek nautes - "seaman, sailor", which in turn comes from the Greek naus - "ship". Naus is related to the Latin navis, of the same meaning. From the Greek and Latin we get a number of familiar English words:

• navy - a fleet of ships
  
• navigation - to sail, steer a ship
  
• astronaut - literally, "star sailor"
  
• nausea - sea sickness

Hebrew adopted the Greek word already in Talmudic times. For example, the Midrash in Bereshit Rabba 12:12, quotes the verse from Yishayahu (42:5) - בּוֹרֵא הַשָּׁמַיִם וְנוֹטֵיהֶם
"Who created the heavens and stretched them out (v'noteihem)".

But the midrash reads the verse as follows: בורא השמים ונווטיהם - "He created the heavens and her sailors (v'navteihem)".

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dir balak

Many years ago, when I was first exposed to Israeli slang, I came up with the following joke:

"How did Bilaam start the letter he gave to the messengers?" "Dear Balak..."

For those who aren't familiar with the term, dir balak דיר באלכ is an Arabic phrase meaning "pay attention", and is often used in Hebrew in the sense of "Watch your back! Pay attention (that this doesn't happen)!"

We can break up the phrase into two parts. Dir is a form of the Arabic verb dar, meaning "to turn around". Hebrew has the cognate דור - also meaning "to go in a circle." Stahl and Klein both list a number of derivatives, including:

• dira דירה - house, originally "buildings surrounding a court"
• dor דור - generation
• doar דואר - mail. davar דוור is the mail-carrier, one who goes around from house to house
• kadur כדור - ball. Klein writes that some experts "explain the word is formed from prefix כ (= as) and דור (= circle)."

But what about balak? Stahl points out that it is a form of the Arabic word bal ( באל ) meaning "sense, mind, attention". Besides in dir balak, it is used in a number of Arabic phrases:

• aja a-balo - he thought of it
• tawal balo - be patient
• rach min balo - he forgot

After doing a little digging, I was able to find an Aramaic cognate to the Arabic word, and with luck, it appears in the book of Daniel. In verse 6:15, we find the following:


אֱדַיִן מַלְכָּא כְּדִי מִלְּתָא שְׁמַע, שַׂגִּיא בְּאֵשׁ עֲלוֹהִי, וְעַל דָּנִיֵּאל שָׂם בָּל, לְשֵׁיזָבוּתֵהּ; וְעַד מֶעָלֵי שִׁמְשָׁא, הֲוָא מִשְׁתַּדַּר לְהַצָּלוּתֵהּ

"Upon hearing that, the king was very disturbed, and he set his heart upon saving Daniel, and until the sun set made every effort to rescue him" (JPS translation).

Now the word bal בל appears only here in the entire Tanach. Rashi admits that he does not know what it means, but can figure it out from context. However, the commentators who lived in Arabic speaking countries (Rav Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra) were familiar with the word, and noted that the Aramaic bal has an Arabic cognate meaning "thought", and so the phrase means "to pay attention". There is a similar phrase in Hebrew - sim lev שים לב, also meaning "pay attention", literally "set his heart". The similarity between the Aramaic bal and the Hebrew lev led some commentators (Radak, Ralbag) to conclude that the two words are related - just the letters switched places.

When I looked in the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, I found additional references to the Aramaic word bal, including some potentially interesting articles. However, I'm not familiar with the abbreviations used on the site, and I don't have access to the books and articles mentioned:

bl, blʾ (bālā) n.m. mind

1 mind Com.
2 in verbal and quasi-verbal expression: be mindful of BA, Jud, Man. --(a) w. סים, יהב: to pay attention BA, Jud. --(b) יהב בל מן: beware of Jud. --(c) plus pron. suffixes: pay attention! Man.
3 condition Man.
4 preoccupation Man.

LS2: 62.

CAL JPA dictionary search for bl N

        בל n.m. sense (CPA \f7bl\f1 LSp 23, Mal bo:la Berg, Gl 12) only in phrase:

יהב בל pay attention, be aware sg. לכון מיניהx{א}ב +ו<ב>ה

pay attention to him RH 59a(31); (אבא לכון בייתא text:) הבו בלכון מיני

Dem 23a(5)

On phrase יהב בל, v. Lieb, Greek 132+; id., Tarbiz 20(1960):111;

LSp 80, s.v. \f7yhb\f1, mng. 3.

So if anyone can help out with any of this, particularly access to the Tarbiz article or the Lieberman book, I'd be grateful.

**Update June 28, 2024: I've since found the Tarbiz article: Further Notes on the Leiden Ms. of the Jerushalmi / שוב על כת"י ליידן של הירושלמי on JSTOR

I also have since acquired the Lieberman book and found the relevant passage, but I don't have an online version to share.

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Kri and Ktiv - Game #5

Well.... Kri and Ktiv Game #4 finally has a winner! Simon has done it again...

I think this one should be much easier (but I haven't been a very good judge of difficulty in the past.)

a) royalty check
b) if I don't pay the rent

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otzar balum

Last week we had an example of a word that was originally written with a samech, but due to the similarity between that letter and a mem sofit, it began to be spelled with a mem in the end: leistes became listim. Today we'll look at another example.

The phrase otzar balum אוצר בלום means "a storehouse". In Gittin 67a, we find that Rabbi Akiva was called an otzar balum - "a storehouse of knowledge." Rashi translates balum as closez - "compartments" (I think related to the English word "closet"). He derives it from the root בלם meaning "to curb, restrain" - which is the source of the word for "brakes" in Hebrew blamim בלמים. (Although you do hear Israelis use the foreign term brakesim, which is somewhat redundant - a double plural.) Rashi bases this understanding on Avot D'Rabbi Natan, which explains that just like a container can store different types of grain in closed compartments, so Rabbi Akiva would store different types of knowledge.

However, Tosafot point out that a different version of the text reads otzar balus אוצר בלוס - a "mixed" treasure. This too fits along with Avot D'Rabbi Natan, for Rabbi Akiva was a mixture of many types of knowledge. Based on this reading, Avshalom Kor claims that the switch from balus to balum was due to a misreading of mem sofit instead of samech.

Kor mentions another word that would seem to be derived from בלם but is not related: בלימה blima. In the book of Iyov (26:7), God is described as:

נֹטֶה צָפוֹן עַל-תֹּהוּ; תֹּלֶה אֶרֶץ, עַל-בְּלִימָה.

"He it is who stretched out Tzafon over chaos; who suspended earth over emptiness (blima)"

The word blima here is actually made up of two word - bli בלי - "without" and ma מה- "anything". So it means "emptiness, nothingness". And in some editions of the Tanach, we find that the two words are separated with a hyphen: בלי-מה.

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pashat et haregel

In Hebrew, to say someone went bankrupt, we say that he pashat et haregel פשט את הרגל. This literally means "he extended his leg (or foot)", which doesn't seem to have much connection to bankruptcy.

But I happened to be reading a mishna from Masechet Ketubot, and I found the origin of this expression. Chapter 13, Mishna 5 (108b in the Gemara) reads: הפוסק מעות לחתנו, ופשט לו את הרגל

"If a person stipulated to give money to his son-in-law, and he pashat lo et haregel..." We'll explain the origin of the phrase in a minute, but the meaning here is that the father-in-law failed to pay the dowry to his son-in-law. It is easy to understand how the concept was extended to anyone who does not pay money they owe.

As to the strange imagery - it's first of all important to note that the phrase in the Mishna says pashat lo et haregel, he extended the foot "to him", and not as in modern Hebrew just "pashat et haregel" - "he extended the foot" (although this version appears in some manuscripts of the Mishna and Gemara). The idea here is that the father-in-law "stuck it to" his son-in-law.

Different commentaries explain the metaphor as follows:

Rashi: It is a derisive term, and can either mean "Take the mud and dust from my foot" (because that's all you're going to get) or "Hang me by my foot" (and you still won't get money from me.)

Rivan: "You can take my foot" (but I don't have any money to give you).

Rambam: It means the father-in-law fled to another country, "picked up his legs" and left.

Meiri: It is a way of saying the father-in-law died.

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gaza and gauze

I was going to write a post about the city of Gaza עזה, if it was related to the word עוז oz - strength, and the theory that the material "gauze" gets its name from Gaza. But it turns out that Lameen Souag already wrote the complete post.

So while I haven't done this before, instead of writing my own piece, I would like to recommend you read:

Ayin-less in Gaza

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listim

It's a good thing that I live in the age of computers. Had I tried writing this stuff in a time where I would need to write by hand - no one would have been able to decipher my handwriting. Usually, my unclear handwriting is only a problem to a small group of people who need to suffer it. But in the past, when everything was handwritten, the impact of an unclear letter could be very significant in determining the meaning of a word. And occasionally, a misspelling could alter the word itself.

That's what we find with the word listim ליסטים (or לסטים). In Talmudic Hebrew we find the word meaning "robber, bandit". According to Avshalom Kor (Yofi Shel Ivrit, ch 32), the word originally was ליסטיס leisteis - from the Greek leistes or lestes meaning "robber".

The Greek lestes does not appear in any common English words, but appears in a number of scientific animal names, usually as a suffix, meaning "predator". For example:

• Ornitholestes - a dinosaur, meaning "bird robber"
• Lestidae - the family of "damselflies", a type of dragonfly
• Caenolestidae - the family of Shrew opossum
  
• Canis latrans lestes - the mountain coyote
• Akidolestes - an extinct mammal found in China

Over time, the final samech of ליסטיס was incorrectly identified as a final mem, and the word began to be spelled ליסטים. I should point out that Steinsaltz writes that listim was an abbreviated form of listesim ליסטסים. However, Kor's view seems to be more widely accepted, and he brings other examples of samech / final mem mix-ups.

It seems that from here, listim came to be identified as a plural due to the -im ending. While I couldn't find an example of a person being referred to as a listi לסטי (as in Ben-Yehuda's dictionary), we do find cases where listim meant plural. Perhaps the most famous was quoted in Rashi's commentary on the first verse of the Torah - לסטים אתם - "You are robbers!".

From this word we find a number of derivatives: לסטם - "to rob" and listiut לסטיות - robbery. But my favorite has to be a word I found in Jastrow, quoting Midrash Shir HaShirim Rabba on Shir HaShirim 6:4. It is the word for a "robbers' retreat, den": ליסטירין - listerine! While the mouthwash Listerine is not connected etymologically (it was named for Joseph Lister, whose surname did not come from our Greek word), one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, shows the predatory nature of Listerine:

When you put Listerine in your mouth, it hurts. Germs do not go quietly!

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nesher and ayit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some of his reasons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For further reading:

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

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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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psanter

Before we get started with today's post, I'm including a built in kri-and-ktiv game - the answer will come at the end. (But I'm still waiting for a solution to the last game - and remember, the winner gets his (or her) name and link on the Balashon sidebar!)

So here goes:

1) From Miriam's sister-in-law
2) A Piano

Now today's word - psanter פסנתר - follows the two previous posts - sudar and kalmar, for it too started as a Greek word that looked like a Hebrew plural and therefore eventually took on a "singular" form in Hebrew. Klein's entry:

New Hebrew: piano. Back formation from BAram פסנתרין or פסנטרין ( = a musical instrument), which was misconceived as a plural. BAram פסנטרין is borrowed from Greek psalterion ( = stringed instrument, harp) from psallein ( = to pluck, twitch the harp), which is cognate with Latin palpare ( = to touch softly, stroke), palpitare ( = to move quickly), palebra (= eyelid)

What's different about psanter(in) is that unlike the other two words, this one comes from a biblical source - the Book of Daniel. For example, in Daniel 3:5 we find:

בְּעִדָּנָא דִּי תִשְׁמְעוּן קָל קַרְנָא מַשְׁרוֹקִיתָא קַתְרוֹס [כתיב: קיתרוס] סַבְּכָא פְּסַנְתֵּרִין סוּמְפֹּנְיָה וְכֹל זְנֵי זְמָרָא

The JPS translates it as follows:

"When you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, zither, lyre, psaltery, bagpipe, and all other types of instruments..."

They translate psanterin as "psaltery" - and as we saw above, they have the same Greek root. So too does the word "psalm":

O.E. salm, from L. psalmus, from Gk. psalmos "song sung to a harp," originally "performance on stringed instrument," from psallein "play on a stringed instrument, pull, twitch." Used in Septuagint for Heb. mizmor "song," especially the sort sung by David to the harp.

While we've been identifying the psanterin with the harp, this site says it might be actually closer to our piano:

Though the Greek psalterion was a harplike instrument, Sendry [Alfred Sendry, Music in Ancient Israel, p. 297] suggests that Daniel's p^esantern was more akin to a dulcimer. He further suggests that it had been one of a number of musical instruments originally imported from the east, improved by the Greeks, and re-exported to the east.

And what is a "dulcimer"? From Answers.com:

A narrow, often hourglass-shaped stringed instrument having three or four strings and a fretted fingerboard, typically held flat across the knees while sitting and played by plucking or strumming.

Stringed musical instrument in which the strings are beaten with small hammers rather than plucked.

stringed musical instrument. It is a wooden box with strings stretched over it that are struck with small mallets.

I don't know much about musical instruments, but that seems more "piano-like" than the traditional harp.

Some of the other words mentioned in that verse in Daniel are familiar to us as well. Katros (zither) derives from the Greek kithara, which also gave us the words "guitar" and "zither" (and if we go back earlier, the Greeks got it from the Persians, from where we get the instrument "sitar".) And sumponia (bagpipe) is clearly related to the English word "symphony" - a number of instruments played together (which some say is a better translation than "bagpipe".)

And now back to the quiz we started with. If you haven't figured it out yet, the word is מכושית. Makoshit was Ben-Yehuda's suggestion for a Hebrew word for "piano". A makosh מכוש is a hammer, and was meant to be the key of a piano as well. I suppose that this word was good for Ben Yehuda for two reasons - a) it was of Hebrew origin, not Greek, and b) it better captured the hammering motion of the piano than the plucking of a harp.

But sadly for him, it was not to be, and psanter superseded makoshit as the Hebrew word for piano (I haven't found any source that explains exactly when and how, and if psanter was in use during his life). Today, even the Hebrew Language Academy recognizes psanter for piano.

However, according to here, the word makoshit is still used to describe something musical:

The small metal rod that is used to strike a triangle to produce a musical note is called a BADIT (bet-dalet-yud-tav) MAKOSH (mem-kuf-vav-shin) , by the way, is the little hammer for striking the keys of a xylophone, MAKOSHIT in Hebrew, or MACHOSHIT.

And I can't mention "xylophone" without quoting one of my favorite comedians, the late Mitch Hedberg:

'Xylophone' is spelled with an X. It should be a Z. Xylophone, zzzz. I don't see it. Next time you spell 'xylophone', spell it with a Z. If someone tells you that's wrong, say 'No it ain't.' If you think that that's wrong, then you need to get your head Z-rayed. It's like X didn't have enough to do, so they had to promise it more. 'Okay, you won't start a lot of words, but you will have a co-starring role in Tic-Tac-Toe. And you will be equated with hugs and kisses. And you will mark the spot. And you will make writing "Christmas" easier. And you will incidentally start "xylophone." Are you happy now, you stupid X?'

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