Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective

agartal

2026-02-23T09:22:00.003+02:00

The word אֲגַרְטָל agartal, meaning "vase" in Modern Hebrew, doesn’t look like a native Hebrew word. But it actually has a biblical origin. It appears in only one verse, in a list of vessels taken by Nebuchadnezzar from the Temple in Jerusalem and then returned by Cyrus:

וְאֵלֶּה מִסְפָּרָם אֲגַרְטְלֵי זָהָב שְׁלֹשִׁים אֲגַרְטְלֵי־כֶסֶף אָלֶף מַחֲלָפִים תִּשְׁעָה וְעֶשְׂרִים׃

"This is the inventory: 30 gold basins, 1,000 silver basins, 29 knives" (Ezra 1:9)

The verse only has the plural construct אֲגַרְטְלֵי־, so the singular isn’t written there. Older sources sometimes vocalized it אֲגַרְטֵל (agartél), but Modern Hebrew uses אֲגַרְטָל (agartál).

Agartal certainly refers to a type of vessel or container, but exactly which one isn't clear. Translations suggest basin (as above), along with bowl, platter, and dish. The Septuagint translation into Greek renders agartal as ψυκτήρ (psyktḗr) - a wine cooler, or cooling vessel. Some rabbinic sources, such as Ibn Janach, suggest it was a handwashing vessel or jug.

The construct form also leads to some ambiguity. While generally the understanding is of containers made of gold and silver ("gold basins ... silver basins"), some conjecture that they were made for holding gold and silver, in which case they could be baskets or bags made of other materials.

That possibility aligns with one theory as to the etymology of agartal. Klein writes:

Of uncertain origin. Prob. related to Aram. קַרטַלָּא, Gk. kartallos (= basket).

Another suggestion for a Greek origin, found in this article, proposes that it comes from κρατήρ (kratḗr). The author argues this fits better with "gold basin", since a krater is a large mixing bowl, which would be made from valuable metals.

Other theories suggest a Persian origin, often framed as a type of bag or container, or a Hittite word which might have meant basket.

Outside Ezra, the word is rare, but it later became the Modern Hebrew word for the fancy word "vase."

Sources:

casbah and katzav

2026-02-16T09:24:00.000+02:00

A casbah is a citadel or a fortified quarter of an Arab city. Does it have a cognate in Hebrew?

Casbah (sometimes spelled kasbah) entered English from French, which got it from North African Arabic, where kasba meant "fortress." In Hebrew today it is spelled קַסְבָּה.

In Arabic, in addition to fort/citadel, kasba can also mean "reed, cane, pipe." There are two theories as to how the two meanings are connected. Some say that word originally referred to reeds (cane) used in building (for example as insulation), and from there became associated with the kind of buildings/fortified compounds where that material was used. Others say that both meanings descend from a common root, "to cut." Just like pipes are cut when preparing them, a citadel or walled district is "cut off" from the area that surrounds it.

The meaning "to cut" is where we find the cognate in Hebrew - קצב katzav. It can either mean literally "to cut" (as in Melachim II 6:6) or more associatively, "to set aside a fixed amount."

The root קצב only appears a handful of times as a noun or verb in Biblical Hebrew. But its use expands beginning in Rabbinic Hebrew, and then continuing into Modern Hebrew.

Maintaining the original physical sense of cutting, is the word katzav קַצָּב meaning "butcher." But the associative sense gives more meanings.

Money / amounts / bureaucracy:

הִקְצִיב hiktziv - “allocated”
תַּקְצִיב takziv - “budget”
קִצְבָּה kitzba - “allowance / pension”

Measuring time:

קֶצֶב ketzev - "pace / rate / tempo / rhythm" (in music and in life)

Additional sources used:

20th anniversary of Balashon!

2026-02-09T21:49:00.000+02:00

Today is Balashon’s 20th anniversary. I didn’t want to write a typical post about a single word or root, so I’m doing something different: an interview-style Q&A. I’ll ask myself the kinds of questions readers might be curious about - how the blog started, who it was for, what kept it going, what the numbers look like - and answer them as honestly as I can. It’s part nostalgia, part curiosity, and part excuse to share a few surprising stats.

Hard to believe this is real—Balashon is twenty?

Yes. I started Balashon on February 10, 2006. I’m marking the anniversary with something a little different: a quick interview, a little history, and a few stats.

What made you start Balashon in the first place?

I’d been interested in etymology since I was a little kid. And a couple of years before Balashon, I started blogging on a personal blog, just because blogging was what people did then.

The moment those two interests really collided was when I bought a Hebrew slang dictionary shortly before starting Balashon. I remember flipping through it and thinking: this is great. Israeli slang has all these stories and origins, and most people don't know where the phrases come from. Blogging was popular, the barrier to entry was low, and I thought: why don’t I just start?

When you started, who did you think you were writing for?

Honestly, I didn’t know. I assumed there were people out there who would be interested, but I didn’t have a specific audience in mind. It felt like a topic that wasn’t really being covered in the way I wanted to see it covered, so I wrote it partly for myself and partly to fill that gap for whoever might show up.

What did you think the blog would be, and what did it become?

I don’t know if I had a grand plan. In the beginning it was mostly about my own enjoyment: sharing discoveries, making connections, putting sources together, and writing it up for people who shared that interest. Over time it turned into something more stable than I expected - something I still identify with, even as my posting rhythm has changed.

If someone asks you, “What is Balashon?” what do you say?

I usually say it’s a blog about the origin of Hebrew words and phrases: how they relate to each other, how they connect to words in other languages, and how borrowing happens in both directions: Hebrew borrowing from other languages, and other languages borrowing from Hebrew.

And because I write in English, I often end up focusing on connections to English in particular. More broadly, it’s a way of talking about how Hebrew developed from biblical times until today.

What kinds of questions pull you in so much that you can’t let them go?

The ones where I feel like something hasn’t quite been put together yet, but it can be. I’ll find one person saying one thing and someone else saying something else, and it feels like the real story is the connection between them - the piece that nobody bothered to assemble into a complete explanation. When I can make that full connection, those are the posts I most enjoy writing, and most want to share.

When did it hit you that people were actually reading?

When people started coming up to me and asking me questions about Hebrew.

That’s happened for years now: someone will say, “I have a Hebrew etymology question for you,” or “I have a language question.” That was surprising at first. It’s one thing to write something into the ether; it’s another when it becomes part of how people think of you.

Okay, give me the numbers.

A few basic ones:

As of now, Balashon has 713 posts.

Traffic stats are a little split because the tracking changed over the years. In the earlier period I was using Sitemeter, and by that stage the blog already had a few hundred thousand pageviews. Later I relied on Blogger’s built-in stats; those numbers start around 2011, and from then to now Balashon has had 7.41 million pageviews.

That “7.41 million” is still hard for me to picture.

Do you still watch your stats the way people used to in the early blogging era?

Not really. In the early days I checked almost every day—partly curiosity, partly that blogging-era habit. I don’t do that now. But seeing the long arc is still amazing, especially because a lot of blogs that started back then simply stopped. The fact that Balashon is still around, and still attracting readers, feels meaningful.

What posts do people keep finding?

Blogger’s “most popular posts” list (from 2011 onward) is a funny window into what people are looking for. The top post is “ish and isha,” and the rest of the top ten is a mix of topics that people keep stumbling on:

“ish and isha”
“avuka and ptil”
“rubia and lubia”
“gmar”
“arnona”
“pri”
“blo”
“Khartoum and hartumim”
“eshkolit”
“lion”

I like that it isn’t my "greatest hits." It’s more like a record of what people needed explained when they landed on the site.

Does it make sense to you that “ish and isha” is number one?

It does, and it doesn’t. It’s the kind of question people assume has an obvious answer: ish and isha must be related. And the twist is that they aren’t related in the way people think. That counterintuitive element is part of what makes it sticky.

I don’t know exactly what brings people there. Maybe they heard somewhere that they’re not related, and they come looking for the explanation. But I hope they leave with a clearer sense of what the relationship is, and what it isn’t.

Where are readers coming from?

This one still surprises me. Here are the top countries since 2011:

United States — 3.26M
China — 449K
France — 231K
Israel — 193K
Germany — 186K
United Kingdom — 186K
Hong Kong — 150K
Brazil — 143K
Canada — 118K
Other — 2.5M

I don’t have a confident theory for every line in that list. My best guess is that some people are looking for words that appear in multiple languages, or words that mean something in their language and are surprised to find it on a blog about Hebrew. I hope they end up finding something that keeps them reading.

How has the writing process changed over twenty years?

Two big shifts.

First, sources: I have a large library of dictionaries and books, and I still use it, but the amount that’s available online now is enormous. There were times I used to have to go to the library regularly to chase something down. That’s much rarer now.

Second, rhythm: in the beginning I posted constantly. Sometimes almost every day. Over time life got fuller, and the blog moved in and out of intense periods. I remember taking a break around my son’s bar mitzvah. I took breaks while working on my Kohelet book. I’ve also been writing in other venues, which changes the balance.

I’d like to get back to writing on Balashon more regularly, and part of the reason I’m doing this anniversary post is that I’m hoping it nudges me back into that rhythm.

What do you get out of doing this that you wouldn’t get if you just kept private notes?

Sharing, collaboration, and something like participation in the public record.

Early on, a lot of my posts were: I found this in a book, here’s what it says. Over time I started developing my own ideas more - still grounded in sources, but also trying to assemble an argument or a history that wasn’t already laid out cleanly. And there’s something powerful about the idea that someone can search for something - first via Google, now increasingly via AI - and the answer they find may trace back to something I contributed, even if they never knew it was me.

That’s fascinating to me.

So what’s next?

I do hope to return to more regular posting. Every time I find a source (book, journal, website) that might provide interesting information for a post, I add it to my "sources" doc. That doc has over 2300 entries, and even though I've written about some of them, I have many many more to go.

I also have a dream of writing a book connected to Balashon: something with a particular angle that I don’t think has really been done before. I’m not ready to say more yet, but I’m hoping that within the next year or two I’ll be able to share what that looks like.

If someone discovers Balashon today, what do you hope they come away with?

That Hebrew is a fascinating language with a long, continuous history: an evolving, living language.

I hope readers don’t leave thinking Hebrew is purely ancient, frozen in time. And I also hope they don’t leave thinking modern Hebrew is purely new and disconnected. What’s interesting is the continuity: how the language changes, how it adapts, and how it still stays connected across biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern layers.

Where should people go if they want more than Balashon?

My homepage has links to other things I’ve written and published, and to the other places I post: https://davidcurwin.com

And to everyone who has read, shared, emailed questions, or simply wandered in from a search result and stuck around: thank you.

email subscriptions are back

2026-02-02T08:18:00.002+02:00

If you’ve been wondering about Balashon email updates, here’s the good news: they’re working again.

I wrote up the background and why this has been complicated here:
https://www.balashon.com/2025/11/email-updates.html

To subscribe now, you can use the subscription box in the sidebar (it uses the same link), or subscribe directly here:

https://blogtrottr.com/?subscribe=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.balashon.com%2Fatom.xml

You’ll enter your email address, choose whether you want each post as it’s published or a digest, and then confirm via email.

I wanted to get email subscriptions working again so that anyone who prefers reading Balashon by email can do that, and now that it’s set up, I hope to start posting again soon.

email test post

2026-02-01T22:07:00.002+02:00

Just a test.

email updates?

2025-11-02T19:57:00.001+02:00

For many years, I provided the ability to subscribe to Balashon posts via Google FeedBurner. That feature shut down in 2021. I've since switched a few times - including MailerLite and Mailchimp, and most recently "follow.it". All of them have now removed the option for free email subscriptions, and I have not yet found a replacement.

So first of all, you should know that I am aware that there are no email updates. I'm still not back to writing regular posts, but I do hope to soon(ish) and when I do I'd like to make sure that everyone who wants to can read them by email.

Therefore, if anyone is aware of a platform that provides free email updates for blogs (with at least a mention of the post title and link to the latest post - even better more of the post or all of it), please let me know. Alternatively, if anyone would like to sponsor a paid email subscription service, I would certainly be grateful. Thanks!

where I've been writing lately

2025-08-18T18:44:00.004+03:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here on Balashon. But I haven’t stopped writing about Hebrew and language. For some time now, I’ve been publishing a weekly column in HaMizrachi Weekly, where I explore language issues connected to the weekly Torah reading.

You can read the archives and subscribe here:
👉 HaMizrachi Weekly

In addition, I’m working on a new book - more details coming soon!

So while I do hope to continue posting here on Balashon, for regular language insights you can follow my weekly pieces in HaMizrachi.

ghibli and kibel

2025-04-02T19:14:00.000+03:00

The latest viral internet trend is creating AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli. You've very likely seen them by now—or maybe even created some yourself.

They look something like this:

But did you know there's a connection between Ghibli and a very common Hebrew root?

As noted, the images are inspired by the style of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation (anime) studio. The Wikipedia entry gives this explanation for the origin of the studio’s name:

The name "Ghibli" was chosen by Miyazaki from the Italian noun ghibli (also used in English), the nickname of Italy's Saharan scouting plane Caproni Ca.309, in turn derived from the Italianization of the Libyan Arabic name for a hot desert wind (قبلي qibliyy). The name was chosen by Miyazaki due to his passion for aircraft and also for the idea that the studio would "blow a new wind through the anime industry.".Although the Italian word would be more accurately transliterated as "Giburi" (ギブリ), with a hard g sound, the studio's name is written in Japanese as Jiburi.

And where does the name of the wind come from? The Wiktionary entry for ghibli defines it as: "sirocco (a hot, dust-carrying desert wind in North Africa, somewhat similar to the foehn)." The sirocco is a similar type of wind to the hamsin familiar in Israel.

The same entry also provides this etymology:

From Italian ghibli, from the Libyan Arabic form of Standard Arabic قِبْلِيّ (qibliyy, “coming from the qibla”)

And what is the qibla? It is the direction Muslims face when praying toward Mecca, literally meaning "direction." For those in Libya, the qibla would be east, toward Saudi Arabia. The Wiktionary entry notes that the etymology comes from Arabic قِبْلَة (qibla, “that which is opposite”).

And this meaning, "opposite", brings us to the Hebrew root קבל kibel, which as I've written about here previously, also originally meant "opposite":

The root קבל in earlier biblical texts did not mean "receive", but rather "to be opposite", or "before, in front of". From the sense of "opposite" comes the meaning of makbil מקביל - "parallel" or "corresponding", as found in the description of the loops of the tabernacle (Shemot 26:5). As with the previous verb, קבל was also influenced by Aramaic, and so in the later books of the Tanach, came to mean "receive", since a person receiving stands opposite the person giving.

So while it's quite a journey from Japan to the Middle East, we've once again found a connection between a popular modern word and an ancient biblical cognate.

leitzan and mukion

2024-12-11T20:25:00.000+02:00

Let's look at two Hebrew words for clown - לֵיצָן leitzan and מוּקְיוֹן mukion.

Leitzan is the more common of the two, so we'll start by examining it. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew, meaning "scorner, scoffer, mocker, jester." It is parallel to the biblical לֵץ letz, which is both a verb "to scorn, scoff" and also a substantive noun meaning "scorner, scoffer."

The word letz appears in the opening verse of the book of Tehillim:

אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָלַךְ בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים לֹא עָמָד וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים לֹא יָשָׁב׃

"Happy is the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, or taken the path of sinners, or sat in the session of scoffers." (Tehillim 1:1)

In a Talmudic commentary on this verse, we can see the transformation from letz to leitzan:

ובמושב לצים לא ישב שלא ישב במושב אנשי פלשתים מפני שלצנים היו

"Nor sat in the seat of the scornful (Psalms 1:1) - this means that Abraham did not sit in the seat of the Philistines, because they were scorners who engaged in jest and buffoonery." (Avoda Zara 19a)

The word letz, in turn, derives from the root ליץ, which also provides the verb hitlotzetz הִתְלוֹצֵץ. That verb originally meant "to act as a scoffer" (as in Yeshaya 28:22), but today means "to joke, to jest."

There is another meaning of ליץ - "to translate, intercede." Klein lists this root as distinct from the one we mentioned earlier. However, the Academy of the Hebrew Language suggests that both roots (ליץ or perhaps לוץ) derive from an earlier meaning "to speak." One sense would have diverged to mocking speech, and the other to translating or interceding speech, like the melitz מֵּלִיץ (interpreter) mentioned in Bereshit 42:23. In the way an ambassador might serve as both a translator and an advocate, the sense of "intercessor" also developed (for example, Iyov 33:23). From here came the verb הִמְלִיץ himlitz - "to recommend".

Let's return to the sense of leitzan as "scoffer, scorner." This negative connotation is clear in another Talmudic passage in Avoda Zara. Again, the Talmud cites Tehillim 1:1, this time to criticize the Roman stadium culture:

ההולך לאיצטדינין ולכרקום וראה שם את הנחשים ואת החברין בוקיון ומוקיון ומוליון ולוליון בלורין סלגורין הרי זה מושב לצים ועליהם הכתוב אומר (תהלים א, א) אשרי האיש אשר לא הלך

With regard to one who goes to stadiums where people are killed in contests with gladiators or beasts, or to a camp of besiegers where different forms of entertainment are provided for the besieging army, and he sees there the acts of the diviners and those who cast spells, or the acts of the clowns known as bukiyon, or mukiyon, or muliyon, or luliyon, or belurin, or salgurin, this is categorized as “the seat of the scornful”; and with regard to such places the verse states: “Happy is the man that has not walked in the council of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful.” (Avoda Zara 18b)

The Talmud says that one who watches the acts of those various clowns is like one who sits in the seat of the scornful - the letzim. Rashi, in his commentary on the passage, refers to these clowns as leitzanim:

בוקיון מוקיון לוליון סלגריון - כולן מיני ליצנים הן:

Elon Gilad, in this article, notes that neither the Talmudic passage nor Rashi were attempting to present these clowns in a positive light. They were derided negatively, as scoffers. But he suggests that the linkage between leitzan and "clown" (as opposed to simply "scoffer") was due to the immense influence Rashi had. In later medieval culture clowns took on a more positive, entertaining role, and when 19th century writers of early modern Hebrew were looking for a word for clown, leitzan fit the bill.

The Talmudic passage mentioned six types of clowns, but only one of them still is in use today - albeit much smaller than leitzan - the mukion. (The clown term luliyan לוּלְיָן was later adopted for the word "acrobat.") The term mukion, like the previous term bukion, likely refer to the characters Maccus and Buccus, found in the Roman plays known as the Atellan Farce. Maccus and Buccus were both clowns, Maccus being the most popular of the stock characters in those plays. The etymology of Maccus isn't fully clear, but some suggest that it might be related distantly to the English word "mock."

Today mukion is rarely used, but when it is, it will refer to a professional or artistic role of an actual performing clown, while a leitzan can also refer to anyone who is joking around or acting foolishly.

One more Hebrew word should be mentioned in this discussion. In Tehillim 73:8, we find the root מיק (or מוק) in its only appearance in the Tanakh:

יָמִיקוּ וִידַבְּרוּ בְרָע עֹשֶׁק מִמָּרוֹם יְדַבֵּרוּ׃

"They scoff and plan evil; from their eminence they plan wrongdoing."

As with any word that only appears once in Biblical Hebrew, it's not easy to pin down its meaning. But most translations say it means "to scoff" or "to deride." Linguists suggest that it comes from Aramaic influence, where the cognate root has a similar meaning. In fact, the Aramaic Targum to Tehillim 1:1 translates letzim as מְמִקְנֵי memiknei, from that same root. So too does the Targum translate the verb ליץ in Mishlei 9:12 as מֵמִיק memik.

While the Hebrew root לוץ certainly has a parallel in the Aramaic מוק, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence that מוק is the root of mukion (and certainly not Maccus). It's likely just a coincidence, but one that may have strengthened the impression at the time that the mukion clown was also a scoffer.

inbal

2024-11-25T09:33:00.000+02:00

A reader asked about an Israeli grape juice called Inbalim ענבלים. I presume this is the brand:

He asked why the juice had that name.

I don't have an actual answer to that question. It's a label from the Arza Winery, and I don't see any official explanation online for that choice. But I can speculate, and I can certainly give more background to the word עִנְבָּל inbal.

The word inbal has two meanings. Either the clapper of a bell (the swinging metal piece that hits the bell and makes the sound) or the uvula (the little dangling ball in the back of the throat). As you can probably imagine, the two are related, since they both are small hanging spheres.

An early appearance of the word inbal is in the Mishna, Nazir 6:2. The mishna is discussing what kind of grape components are forbidden to the nazirite. The biblical verse (Bamidbar 6:4) uses two terms - חַרְצַנִּים chartzanim and זָג zag. By the time of the mishna, it was unclear what each of those words meant - the inner or outer parts of the grape?. One opinion is given by Rabbi Yosei:

כְּזוֹג שֶׁל בְּהֵמָה, הַחִיצוֹן זוֹג וְהַפְּנִימִי עִנְבָּל:

It is like a bell [zog] worn by an animal, in which the outer part, which corresponds to the skin of a grape, is called zog, and the inner portion of the bell, the clapper, which corresponds to the seeds in a grape, is called inbal.

Rabbi Yosei is stating the zag is like zog - a bell, and therefore the chartzanim, the seeds, are like the inner portion of the bell, the clapper.

So this association between grapes and inbal might have given inspiration to the brand of grape juice.

More such connections can be found in the etymology of inbal. In Ben-Yehuda's dictionary, there are two suggestions.

In the first, he quotes Musaphia who says it derives from the Greek word ἒμβολον. Klein accepts this suggestion:

עִנְבָּל m.n. PBH clapper of a bell. [From Gk. embolon (= lit.: ‘something thrown in’), from emballein (= to throw in), from en (= in) and ballein (= to throw)

The Greek ballein is the origin of a number of English words, including ballistics and metabolism. Interestingly, it's related to the word "ball", as in "dancing party", but not the round object "ball", which derives from a different Indo-European root (the etymologies of both appear here).

However, Ben-Yehuda rejects this etymology, favoring one with a Hebrew origin. He says it's more likely to come from עֵנָב einav - "grape," with the letter ל lamed added at the end. Other such words with a similar suffix may include barzel ברזל and karmel כרמל.

Possible support for this approach could be found in the etymology of the word "uvula," which, as we've seen, is a meaning of inbal:

late 14c., from Late Latin uvula, from Latin uvola "small bunch of grapes," diminutive of uva "grape," from PIE root *og- "fruit, berry." So called from fancied resemblance of the organ to small grapes.

So perhaps the inbal was also seen to look like a small grape, and from there got its name in Hebrew as well.

However, this etymology is questioned by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, who note that in some Talmudic text, inbal is spelled with an alef instead of an ayin, which would make the Greek etymology more likely. They also note that Inbal has become a popular first name in Israel, perhaps because of the similarity to the European name Annabelle (and that it should not be confused with the similar sounding name Inbar.)

After all this, I think it's less likely that the Arza Winery was concerned about the etymology or even ancient use of inbal, and more interested in a nice sounding name that at least includes the Hebrew word for grapes. But if I ever find out, I'll be sure to let you all know.

Elul

2024-09-01T21:19:00.002+03:00

The Hebrew month of Elul אֱלוּל begins this week, so let's look at its etymology. As with the other names of the months in the current Hebrew calendar, it was adopted in Babylonia, and therefore has Akkadian origin. Klein writes that it derives from an Akkadian word reflecting its function as the beginning of the harvest period:

Akka. ulūlu, elūlu (= harvest, harvest time; lit.: ‘the time when the produce of the land is brought in’). Related to Aram. עֲלַל (= he brought in), Aram.-Syr. אֲלַלְתָּא (= that which is brought in, produce, harvest), Heb. עֹל (= yoke), Akka. allu, ullu (= yoke, chain), Arab. ahalla (= he put in, thrust in), ghall (= iron ring round a prisoner’s neck at which his hands are tied.

This etymology connects Elul to the root עלל, which is also the origin of ol עֹל - "yoke." However, עלל provides two roots, which Klein (and others) claim as unrelated.

We've been discussing the second meaning (according to Klein) of עלל, which he defines as "to insert, thrust in." This meaning is actually unused in Biblical Hebrew, but it does appear in the Aramaic sections of the book of Daniel. (Kaddari also suggests that the appearance in Iyov 16:15 has the same meaning, and was influenced by Aramaic.)

The other (first) meaning of עלל does appear in Biblical Hebrew. Klein defines it as "to act, do, work" and notes that it is related to the Arabic ‘alla, meaning "to do something a second time." While at times עלל can have the neutral meaning of "to act," in some instances it can mean to act severely or harmfully.

Here are some of the words deriving from this meaning of עלל:

עָלוּל alul - "liable, likely, capable (of doing an action)." In 1944, the linguist Yitzchak Avinery (Yad HaLashon, p. 450) lamented that people are using alul in a positive sense, and not just the negative sense it should have. He wrote that the positive equivalent is asui עָשׂוּי. According to Morfix, today alul still has a negative connotation, and is used when something bad is likely to happen. But perhaps it's used more broadly, even in positive scenarios, because asui has another meaning - "made of."
עֲלִילָה alila - This word has two meanings, the more neutral "act, deed" (now also "plot, story") and the more negative "false accusation, libel."
עִלָּה ila - "cause, reason."
הִתְעַלֵּל hitalel - "to act cruelly, to abuse."

Klein also adds olela עוֹלֵלָה - "gleaning (of grapes or olives)" but doesn't explain the connection. BDB, however, does provide an explanation, connecting it back to the Arabic root that Klein cited. They define gleaning as "going over a second time."

The similar word עוֹלָל olal, meaning "infant," does not derive from עלל, but rather from the root עול - "to suck, nurse."

I should note that Gesenius connects all of the terms we discussed. The nursing baby "drinks again", and the "thrusts" we saw in the second meaning of עלל (the one connected with Elul), are a "second blow." However, since the scholarship of Gesenius is older than the other sources I looked at, I don't know if it's still considered accurate.

kartis

2024-08-25T00:04:00.005+03:00

Rabbi David Bashevkin (of the enjoyable 18Forty podcast) recently posted on his Substack an essay entitled "The Revival of Hebrew." It's an interesting review of the history of the renewal of Hebrew and the religious response. I won't cover all of my thoughts about it here (you can read on Twitter/X some of my initial thoughts), but it mentioned a particular word that I'd like to explore here.

Bashevkin wrote:

Growing up in New York, high school students must take the Regents, a state-wide exam. Nearly all Jewish high school students take the Hebrew regents as their language requirement. I did not go to an elementary school that spoke Ivrit B’Ivrit (classes using instructional Hebrew), so I was pretty terrified for my 9th-grade Hebrew Regent. I still managed to get a 99 on the exam—hold your applause—I got stuck on one word during the oral conversational part of the exam. In conversation with our Hebrew teacher, Rabbi Dr. Joseph Ozarowski, I was supposed to ask him for a replacement train ticket. Except I forgot the Hebrew word for “ticket.” Hence a 99 instead of 100. I will never forget my כרטיס again.

Then later in the post, he found support in a quote from Theodore Herzl's Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State):

“We cannot converse with one another in Hebrew,” Herzl said, “Who amongst us has a sufficient acquaintance with Hebrew to ask for a railway ticket in that language?” As someone who personally got a point off on his Hebrew Regent for exactly that word—a train ticket—I find great comfort in Herzl’s skepticism. “Such a thing cannot be done,” Herzl concluded—instead he advocated for German to be the language of the Land of Israel.

So to help him (and any of you) not forget the Hebrew word for "train ticket", let's take a look at its history.

The word for train ticket is כַּרְטִיס kartis, and in Modern Hebrew it can mean "ticket" or "card" (as in credit card, greeting card, membership card, etc.) It first appears in Talmudic Aramaic meaning "document" and sometimes has the variant spelling קַרְטֵיס. In that last entry, Jastrow notes that it can also mean "paper." That meaning reflects its etymology, as Klein writes:

כַּרְטִיס m.n. PBH card, ticket. [Aram. כַּרְטִיסָא (= document), a loan word from Gk. chartes (= a leaf of the Egyptian papyrus, papyrus, paper), which is of foreign, possibly Egypt., origin.]

The word kartis remained obscure until the dawn of Modern Hebrew, when it was reintroduced for "ticket" (presumably due to the similarity to words in European languages like the German Karte and the Russian kartochka of similar meanings.)

Its Greek origin chartes is also the source of many words in English. For example, Here's the Online Etymology Dictionary's entry for card:

early 15c., "a playing card," from Old French carte (14c.), from Medieval Latin carta/charta "a card, paper; a writing, a charter," from Latin charta "leaf of paper, a writing, tablet," from Greek khartēs "layer of papyrus," which is probably from Egyptian.

Other words with the same origin include: chart, charter, cartel, cartography, carton, cartoon and cartridge.

The Egyptian origin mentioned by Klein and Etymonline is not universally accepted. Professor Gary A. Rendsburg, in his essay "The Etymology of χάρτης 'Papyrus Roll'" rejects the theory, since no convincing Egyptian etymon (the word from which the later word is derived) has been found. He then writes:

If, after generations in pursuit of an Egyptian etymon for the key Greek word χάρτης 'papyrus roll', none has been identified, perhaps it is time to set our eyes on a different horizon for the source of this lexeme [...] If Egyptian does not serve as a source [...] then our eyes should be set to the other great source of cultural influence on ancient Hellas, namely, the Semitic world in general and the Phoenician sphere in particular.

He then goes on to note mention of a Phoenician word, חרטית ḥrṭyt, which was generally assumed to mean "sculptures," but he suggests could mean "writings" or "scrolls." Based on this, and other evidence, Rendsburg proposes that khartēs could be therefore cognate with the Hebrew חרט, which as we've discussed here, meant "to chisel, engrave" and had associations with writing. He goes on to explore the further development of kartis in Aramaic and other languages. It's a really interesting investigation - I recommend reading it in full.

One Hebrew word related to kartis that Rendsburg did not cover was luckily reviewed by Elon Gilad. (By the way, I highly recommend his YouTube / Instagram videos - short clips discussing the history of Hebrew words in English.) Gilad discusses (in English and in Hebrew) the word khaltura חַלְטוּרָה - "side job, gig, part-time work."

After noting how the Greek chartes meant "page," he continues:

We move onto the Middle Ages, when the word chartularium, a diminutive meaning little page, came about. This medieval Latin word was used in churches for the list of people (usually donors and their family members) for whom prayers needed to be said every day, to facilitate their acceptance to heaven.
Somehow chartularium made its way into the Russian Orthodox Church in the corrupted form khaltura - and with a new meaning: the prayer that a priest says at a funeral.
Priests got paid extra for these private appearances at the homes of the deceased. But after the Communist Revolution in 1917, which discouraged the practice of religion, Russian theater folk commandeered the word for "moonlighting" - performances done outside the theater companies they worked for.

From this sense of "moonlighting" came the Hebrew meaning of "side gig."

I hope Bashevkin can now remember chaltura as well!

zonda

2024-08-14T18:47:00.000+03:00

The Hebrew word for "feeding tube" (or more technically a nasogastric or orogastric tube) is זוֹנְדָּה zonda. This is clearly not a natively Hebrew word. In fact, the Academy of the Hebrew Language coined machder מַחְדֵּר (from the root חדר - "to penetrate, enter") as a good Hebrew alternative. However, I've never heard it used, whereas zonda is common. So where does zonda come from?

This site suggests it comes from the German Sonde (when pronounced, it sounds very similar to the Hebrew zonda). Sonde in German means "probe" or "tube," and can mean specifically "feeding tube." The German in turn derives from the French sonde, with the same meanings as the German, but also used to describe a tool to determine the depth of water.

English has the cognate word "sound". The most common meanings of "noise" and "in good condition" are not related to sonde. (The latter usage, originally meaning "healthy", finds a related root in the German gesundheit meaning "Health!".) But there are two other uses of sound that are cognate with sonde. The Online Etymology Dictionary first presents a meaning of "sound" as verb that relates to the French noun we saw above:

sound (v.2)
"fathom, probe, measure the depth of water" with or as if with a sounding line and lead, mid-14c. (implied in sounding), from Old French sonder, from sonde "sounding line," perhaps from the same Germanic source that yielded Old English sund "water, sea."

This last suggestion appears in the etymology for another meaning of "sound," this time a noun:

sound (n.2)
"narrow channel of water," c. 1300, sounde, from Old Norse sund "a strait, swimming," or from cognate Old English sund "act of swimming; stretch of water one can swim across, a strait of the sea," both from Proto-Germanic *sundam-, from a suffixed form of Germanic *swem- "to move, stir, swim."

The sound I'm most familiar with is Puget Sound in Washington State. There are many others you might recognize.

chayil and chayal

2024-08-08T10:13:00.001+03:00

Devarim 8:17-18 includes a well-known passage where the people are warned against attributing their successes to their own talents, instead of attributing them to God:

וְאָמַרְתָּ בִּלְבָבֶךָ כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת־הַחַיִל הַזֶּה. וְזָכַרְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי הוּא הַנֹּתֵן לְךָ כֹּחַ לַעֲשׂוֹת חָיִל...

A repeated word in these verses is chayil חָיִל. Since the word for "soldier" in Hebrew is the similar chayal חַיָּל, I assumed that the Torah here was talking about military success. And yet, the translations consistently offer a very different meaning. Here is a typical translation:

And should you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” Remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to get wealth...

Chayil here is translated as "wealth." What is the connection between "wealth" and "soldier"?

To answer this, let's look at the various meanings of chayil in Biblical Hebrew. It appears frequently, with over 200 occurrences in the Tanakh. Kaddari breaks down the various appearances into these meanings:

Physical strength (e.g., Tehilim 76:6)
Spiritual strengths, such as bravery, virtue, quickness, aptitude (e.g., Mishlei 31:10, the famous Eshet Chayil, "woman of valor")
Military power, army (e.g., Shemot 14:28)
Wealth (e.g., Tehilim 49:7)

Even-Shoshan, in his Concordance, has a somewhat different division:

Strength, bravery (either physical or spiritual)
Military
Success, wealth

(For an interesting comparison of those usages, see the various medieval commentaries on Shemot 18:21, who give different interpretations to the use of chayil in that verse.)

When we have such a variety of meanings, it's natural to try to find a common thread between them, and if possible, a shared origin. And linguistic sources do make those efforts. However, what I've found so far, I haven't found very convincing.

For example, here's Klein's entry:

חַֽיִל m.n. 1 strength, power. 2 wealth. 3 army, host, force. [Related to BAram. חַיִל, Aram. חֵילָא, Syr. חַיְלָא (= strength, army), Arab. ḥaul, ḥayl (= strength, force), Akka. ellatu (= army), Ethiop. ḫayl (= strength, army).]

I don't see an obvious connection between strength/power and wealth, other than a general sense of power including control over resources like wealth. BDB has a similarly vague entry, defining chayil as "strength, efficiency, wealth, army", and deriving from the roots חיל/חול meaning "be firm, strong." While it is possible that there's a general association between strength and wealth (as well as military might), from my experience, words like this typically move from a more specific meaning to the more abstract ones, and so this doesn't quite sit right with me. Ben Yehuda, at least, admits that the origin of the root is unclear.

I, however, propose (cautiously) another theory. To get there, we need to return to Ben-Yehuda.

I mentioned earlier that the word chayal means "soldier." Unlike chayil, this is not an ancient word, but rather was devised by Ben-Yehuda. As Klein notes:

coined by Eliezer ben Yehudah (1858–1922), from חַיִּל (= strength, army), on the analogy of Arab. ḫayyāl (= horseman, rider) from ḫayl (= horses).

The linguist Reuven Sivan (pp. 194-195 here) includes this coinage as part of Ben Yehuda's move from clumsier multiple-word phrases (common in Hebrew from the period of the Haskalah) for a term to single words. Prior to Ben Yehuda, a soldier may have been referred to as an איש צבא, איש חיל, איש מלחמה, etc. Ben Yehuda took an Arabic word (ḫayyāl), related to a Hebrew word which sometimes has military associations (hayil) and created the catchy chayal, which was quickly adopted.

But notice that Arabic word, ḫayl (or chail), meaning horses. There are cases in Biblical Hebrew where chayil is associated with horses as well, such as Tehillim 33:17, where horses are presented in parallel to chayil:

שֶׁקֶר הַסּוּס לִתְשׁוּעָה וּבְרֹב חֵילוֹ לֹא יְמַלֵּט׃

"The horse is a false [hope] for deliverance, neither does its great strength provide escape."

I would like to suggest that perhaps the earliest meaning of the root חיל is "horse." Later, it developed into the more abstract senses we've seen before.

Chayil meaning strength could certainly have come from horses. In English, we have the term "horsepower," which came about much later, but the association between horse and power is a very old one.

The military association is also not surprising, as the most powerful militaries of the ancient world were supported by cavalry on horseback.

But what about wealth (the original cause of my investigation)? Well, we've seen in the past here several words that associate horses (or cattle) with property:

rekhesh רֶֽכֶשׁ meaning "team of horses" (Esther 8:10) and רְכוּשׁ meaning "property"
mikneh מִקְנֶה - "cattle" and the verb קנה - "to purchase"
nekhes נֶכֶס - "wealth, assets" related to the Aramaic root נכס meaning "to slaughter" and so nekhes was originally "cattle (to be killed)
segula סְגֻלָּה meant both "herd of cattle" and "property, treasure"

So perhaps chayil can be added to this list as well, as another word where horses (and cattle) became associated with the more abstract concepts of property and wealth. There is even support from the very passage I quoted in the beginning. A few verses before the warning of claiming credit for the acquired wealth, the Torah describes the source of that wealth:

וּבְקָרְךָ וְצֹאנְךָ יִרְבְּיֻן וְכֶסֶף וְזָהָב יִרְבֶּה־לָּךְ וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר־לְךָ יִרְבֶּה׃

"And your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered" (Devarim 8:13)

While gold and silver certainly contribute to wealth, by placing the herds of cattle at the very top of the list, we can see the ancient association between the two concepts.

emunah, amen, emet, and umanut

2024-07-22T09:31:00.001+03:00

Someone recently asked me if I had written about the root אמן. I thought for sure I had already, but it turned out I only mentioned it very briefly as a sidenote in this post:

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

There's no question that the root אמן deserves its own post. It's one of the most significant and meaningful roots in Jewish literature over the ages. If anything, that provides a challenge. One could easily write an entire book about the meanings, uses, and implications of the various words deriving from it. For now, at least, I can't do that. But I will at least try to cover some of the main words it produced, and discuss some of the more interesting developments in those words that I noticed.

The root אמן has several core meanings, all within a general spectrum. Klein suggests: "to be firm, trustworthy." BDB says "confirm, support." Gesenius suggests "to stay, sustain, support." TDOT has "faithful, reliable, secure."

Here are the verbs that it forms:

אָמַן aman (kal form) - "to nurse, nurture, foster, bring up (a child)." TDOT notes that "it is used of men and women who are entrusted with the care of, or take it upon themselves to care for, dependent children." It also notes that even when describing women, it does not always refer to physically nursing. For example, in Ruth 4:16 it says that Naomi was the omenet אֹמֶנֶת of Ruth's son Oved, but she certainly did not nurse him. Rather, she was responsible for the child.
נֶאֱמָן neeman (nifal form) - "was [found] firm, trustworthy, true, reliable." In modern Hebrew this same word, as a noun, means trustee, ally.
אִמֵּן imen (piel form) - "to train, make skillful, coach." Unlike the previous two forms, this only first appears in post-Biblical texts (for example, Shabbat 103a). Ben Yehuda's dictionary notes that the kal version also means "to educate" - offering the example of Mordechai being the omen of Esther (Esther 2:7). Therefore it seems that he claims that this piel form is an extension of that earlier meaning. On the other hand, the Hebrew Wiktionary site focuses on the transitive nature of the piel form, saying imen means "to make someone capable" or "to grant authority." That would imply that imen derives from a transitive use of the original root - i.e., to make trustworthy, reliable.
הֶאֱמִין he'emin (hifil form) - "to believe, trust." While also used between people, it is commonly associated with one's relationship to God. In Biblical Hebrew its use meant that one trusted in God. In later times, it came to mean believing in God's existence (as opposed to His promises.)
הִתְאַמֵּן hitamen (hitpael form) - literally "to train one's self." Today used to mean "to practice; to exercise, work out."

Many nouns and adjectives also derive from the root אמן, including:

אֱמוּנָה emunah - over time this word progressed from "firmness, steadfastness" to "faithfulness, faith, fidelity, confidence" to "belief, dogma, religion." (For an extensive review of the changes in meaning, see this Hebrew essay by Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun.)
אִמּוּן imun - "training, exercise, practice"
מְאַמֵּן me'amen - "trainer, coach"
אֲמָנָה amanah - "agreement, treaty, pact, covenant"
אָמְנָם amnam - "truly, surely, indeed." When used as a question, it takes the form
הַאֻמְנָם ha'umnam - "Indeed? Is it true that ..."

Two words deriving from אמן are so significant that they deserve their own paragraphs.

One is אֱמֶת emet. Most commonly defined as "truth," Klein suggests that it had these meanings earlier: "stability, sureness; faithfulness; certainty." He writes that it probably derives from the unattested אמנת amint, a noun form of אמן, but as often happens in Hebrew, the letter nun dropped out. Emet provides its own set of derived words, including the verb אמת - "to verify" and אֲמִתִּי amiti - "true, real, genuine." For a detailed exploration of the word emet, see the chapter "Emeth, the Concept of Truth" in Man and God, by Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits.

The other is the word אָמֵן - "Amen." As seen in Yirmiyahu 28:6, it means "May [God] do so." It appears in a number of Biblical books (I was actually surprised to see that it only appears 30 times in the entire Tanakh.) In the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, it was generally translated as "so be it." However, in later Biblical books, such as Nechemiah and Divrei HaYamim, it was transliterated as "amen" instead of translated. In the Christian bible, the word appeared also in its transliterated form in Greek and Latin. As such, it entered every language where the Bible was translated, including of course English. Allegedly, this makes it the word found in the most languages worldwide.

There is one meaning of אמן that I have not yet discussed. In the Tanakh it only appears once in the phrase מַעֲשֵׂה יְדֵי אׇמָּן (Shir HaShirim 7:2). The noun oman אׇמָּן in the phrase is variously translated as "the handiwork of a master," "of a workman," or "of an artist." In Rabbinic Hebrew, it was usually vocalized as uman אֻמָּן, and had more or less the same meaning.

Modern Hebrew distinguishes between the two, with uman being the artisan, and oman being an artist. Their fields are also likewise distinguished: אֻמָּנוּת umanut is craftmanship, and אָמָּנוּת omanut is art.

But is there a connection between this use of אמן, and the one we discussed earlier, relating to "trust"? Some scholars say no, there is no connection, with the "craft" sense ultimately coming from the Sumerian language. For example, here is Klein's entry for oman:

Together with Aram. אֻמָּן, אֻמָּנָא, Syr. אוּמָנָא (= workman, craftsman, artificer), borrowed from Akka. ummānu, earlier ummiānu, which itself is of Sumerian origin.

A similar claim is found in Non-Semitic Loanwords in the Hebrew Bible (p. 55).

Others do suggest a common origin. Horowitz (p. 26) defines an oman as a "master workman, as one who is firm and sure in his workmanship." Almagor-Ramon, in Rega Shel Ivrit (241) writes that an oman is one strong and well-trained. And Gesenius, who as we noted earlier considers the basic meaning of אמן to be "to prop, stay, sustain, support", sees the development to oman going via a sense of "to build up" (which also applies to omen meaning "one who brings up a child.")

As I wrote in the beginning, there's still much more to say, but at least now I can point to this post when I get questions about אמן.

bara and bari

2024-07-15T13:22:00.000+03:00

The Hebrew root ברא has three distinct meanings. Two are very familiar, one much less so.

One meaning is "to create" and is found in the very first verse of the Tanakh: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא - "In the beginning God created..." (Bereshit 1:1). The noun form of this verb is beriah בְּרִיאָה - "creation."

Another is related to healthiness, and is found in such words as bari בָּרִיא - "healthy" and beriut בְּרִיאוּת - "health." It is generally accepted that the original usage of this meaning was "to be fat, to grow fat." Klein suggests that the Talmudic term bari בָּרִי meaning "surely, certainly" is related to בריא meaning "healthy, sound."

The last usage of ברא is "to cut down trees," as found in Yehoshua 17:15 and 17:18, and in the more metaphorical sense in Yechezkel 23:47, where it means "to cut down people."

Are there any connections between those three meanings?

Gesenius, admittedly an older source, claims that they are related. He writes that the common meaning to all is "to cut, to carve out, to form by cutting." That leads to the sense "to create, produce, fashion." He then writes that the meaning "to eat, feed, to grow fat," comes from "cutting food." And the connection between "to cut" and "to cut down" is fairly obvious. Gesenius also adds another meaning: "to beget", from which the word bar בַּר derives, connecting it to "creation.". I haven't seen anyone else say that bar comes from ברא, so I won't discuss it further here, but I did discuss that meaning of bar in this post.

Klein, however, does not make any of those connections. These are his three entries, unrelated to one another:

1) ברא to create. [cp. Aram., Syr. בּֽרָא (= to create), OSArab. (= to found, build), מברא (= building, structure), Mahri bere (= to bear a child). Arab. bara’a (= to create) is an Aram. loan word.]

2) ברא to be fat. 1 he made fat; PBH 2 he recovered (from illness), recuperated; PBH 3 he became fat; MH 4 he made healthy. [Arab. bari’a (= to recover from disease), JAram. בְּרָא, בְּרִי (= to get well, strong). cp. the related base מרא ᴵᴵ.]

3) ברא to cut down (a forest). [Arab. barā (= he hewed with an axe).]

In particular, he notes that ברא as "to be fat" is cognate with another root, מרא, with the same meaning. This is due to the occasional substitution of the letters bet and mem (for example, נשב and נשם, as we mentioned here.) That relationship to מרא would not be found in the other two meanings of ברא.

Here is Klein's entry for מרא:

מרא ᴵᴵ to be fat.
— Hiph. - הִמְרִיא he fed, stuffed. [Akka. shumrū (= to fatten), marū (= well-fed, fat), Ugar. mra (= to become fat), Arab. mari’a (= agreed with — said of food). Stem of מְרִיא (= fatling), מֻרְאָה (= crop).]

This root and its related words aren't common in Modern Hebrew. There is a homonym, המריא, meaning "to take off" (as in an airplane), which originally meant "to soar, fly" (found in the Tanakh only in Iyov 39:18). According to Klein, these two meaning of מרא are also unrelated. This is what he writes for the flight meaning of מרא:

Of uncertain origin. The orig. meaning was perhaps ‘to beat (the air) with the wings’, in which case מרא would be relative to Arab. marā (= he whipped or urged on a horse).

Back to ברא. There are scholars who do, however, connect some of the meanings. For example, BDB does not connect the meaning "fat, healthy", but does say the meanings "create" and "cut down" are connected. They write that the original meaning is "shape, create", and note an Arabic cognate meaning "form, fashion by cutting, pare a reed for writing, a stick for an arrow."

The TDOT (entry ברא) writes that "the Hebrew root br' probably has the original meaning 'to separate, divide.'" This would mean that ברא might derive from bar (or both have a common origin), not the other way around as Gesenius claimed. It also notes a Punic cognate meaning "a sculptor," and while the entry doesn't cite the meaning "to cut down trees," I can see a connection between sculpting and cutting (down).

Kaddari quotes a theory that claims that the use of ברא in Bamidbar 16:30 implies a type of fissure:

וְאִם־בְּרִיאָה יִבְרָא ה' וּפָצְתָה הָאֲדָמָה אֶת־פִּיהָ...

"But if the Lord creates a new-creation and the ground opens its mouth..."

I found the connection there to "cutting" fascinating, but Kaddari rejects it, saying that the Arabic root mentioned above by BDB means specifically sharpening reeds and cutting trees, but not cutting in general.

There is also a theory suggested the Wikitionary editors for ברא, in which the two meanings - create and cut down - are contronyms, similar to חטא meaning both sin and cleanse. Unfortunately, they did not provide a source, so I can't give further information.

As a final note, I've often been asked, "Which is the correct pronunciaton of לבריאות said after a sneeze - livriut לִבְריאות or labriut לַבְּרִיאות?" Well, the Academy of the Hebrew Language has determined that both are acceptable. This blessing is of relatively late import (borrowed from the German gesundheit), and so isn't found in traditional sources which could determine the correct pronunciation. The livriut version is supported by other phrases like lichaim לְחַיִּים, whereas the labriut version (which includes the definitive article heh) finds support in similar forms in verses such as Iyov 36:11 and Tehilim 24:4.

halakha and charig

2024-07-09T08:36:00.002+03:00

Halakha הֲלָכָה can refer to the system of Jewish law as a whole, or the set of laws dealing with a specific subject. Most etymologies connect it to the root הלך, meaning "to walk" or "to go". Here is a sample of those:

Klein brings support for this approach by noting that the word sugya סוּגְיָה also means walking:

סוּגְיָה, סֻגְיָה f.n. MH subject for study. [Aram. סוּגְיָא (= lit.: ‘walking, going’), from אַסְגִּי (= he walked, went). For sense development cp. הֲלָכָה (= law, rule, ‘Halachah’), which derives from הלך (= to go).]

I certainly thought that halakha was related to halikha הֲלִיכָה - "walking." This may have been supported by the well-known derasha found in several locations in Talmudic literature. For example, Megillah 28b:

תָּנָא דְּבֵי אֵלִיָּהוּ: כׇּל הַשּׁוֹנֶה הֲלָכוֹת, מוּבְטָח לוֹ שֶׁהוּא בֶּן עוֹלָם הַבָּא, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״הֲלִיכוֹת עוֹלָם לוֹ״, אַל תִּקְרֵי ״הֲלִיכוֹת״ אֶלָּא ״הֲלָכוֹת״.

The school of Eliyahu taught: Anyone who studies halakhot every day, he is guaranteed that he is destined for the World-to-Come, as it is stated: “His ways [halikhot] are eternal” (Habakkuk 3:6): Do not read the verse as halikhot [ways]; rather, read it as halakhot.

However, another theory gives halakha an entirely different, less obvious etymology. Prof. Saul Lieberman (quoted here) and others suggest that it may be related to the Aramaic word halakh הֲלָךְ meaning “toll, tax,” and therefore הֲלָכָה ultimately has the meaning of “obligation.” (See a challenge to Lieberman in "Alaktu and Halakhah Oracular Decision, Divine Revelation" by Tzvi Abusch, as well as furhter discussion here.)

Halakh is found in Ezra 4:13, 4:20, and 7:24. In each verse, it is listed as one of three types of taxes:

מִנְדָּה־בְלוֹ וַהֲלָךְ

The three are minda, blo (which we've discussed before), and halakh. The NJPS translates them as "tribute, poll-tax, and land-tax." The 1917 JPS translation has "tribute, impost, and toll." The Talmud (Nedarim 62b) identifies halakh with arnona אַרְנוֹנָא (a word we discussed here).

We see a related word in Talmudic Aramaic, karga כְּרָגָא (Bava Batra 8a) also meaning a type of tax. And a land tax called kharaj in Arabic is found in Islamic law.

Lieberman quotes Genenius-Buhl (the German dictionary, not the English one) here as noting that halakh derives from the Akkadian ilku.

The collaborative dictionary project Wiktionary claims that this Akkadian root also is the source of the Arabic root kh-r-j:

From خ ر ج (ḵ-r-j) in the sense “to extract” or “take out” [...] on the model of Imperial Aramaic 𐡄𐡋𐡊𐡀 (hlkʾ /⁠hălāḵā⁠/, “tribute, tax, any public charge based on land property”), itself calqued from Akkadian 𒅋𒆪 (il-ku /⁠ilku⁠/, “corvée, tribute, any public charge based on land property”). Also attested several times in Biblical Aramaic הֲלָכָא (/⁠hălāḵā⁠/) but otherwise missing in Aramaic.

I don't know the source of this entry, so I'm wary of making too many conclusions from it. But Klein write that the Hebrew root חרג is cognate with this Arabic root:

חָרַג he came out in terror, quaked. [Arab. ḫaraja (= he came out).]

That root is only found once in the Tanakh, in Tehilim 18:46:

בְּנֵי־נֵכָר יִבֹּלוּ וְיַחְרְגוּ מִמִּסְגְּרוֹתֵיהֶם׃
Foreign peoples lose courage, and come trembling out of their strongholds.

That meaning is not found in Modern Hebrew. Today it means "to deviate, to exceed; to digress, to diverge, to stray." Klein doesn't include that meaning in his dictionary, but he does include the words choreg חוֹרֵג - "step" (as in step-child), which he says literally means "born outside" and the Modern Hebrew word charig חָרִיג, meaning "execptional, unusual, irregular."

Klein doesn't connect halakh and khoreg, and I didn't see anyone else who did. And it's important to note that although the Wiktionary entries connect the meanings of the Arabic roots meaning "to extract" and "to exit", they might not be related. But if they are, it would be interesting to see that halakha and charig are cognates.

Nukhba and Nahbi

2024-06-30T23:14:00.002+03:00

I was curious about the etymology of Nukhba, the Hamas special forces unit that carried out horrific terrorist attacks on October 7.

The root n-kh-b in Arabic means "choose, select, elect," and so nukhba is an elite military unit. It's a fairly common root in Arabic, appearing in many words related to elections. However, I couldn't fnd any Hebrew cognates.

The Arabic Etymological Dictionary, while including words from that root, didn't provide any additonal Semitic cognates. It left it unknown with the entry (the etymology and cognates go in the brackets):

nachaba: choose, select [?]

I didn't see any entries in Stahl's Arabic dictionary, and a search of Klein's dictionary for related Arabic words also came up blank.

I was about to give up, when I found this brief mention in the Ben Yehuda dictionary:

נחב
ממנו אולי השֵם נַחְבִּי.
בערב' יש שני שרשים, נחב نحب במשמ' בכיה חזקה, ונח'ב نخب במשמ' בחירה ובררה.

This was a strange entry. It was for the root נחב nakhav for which the only word provided was perhaps the Biblical name "Nahbi". Nahbi, the son of Vofsi, appears only once in the Tanakh, in Bamidbar 13:14. He was one of the spies - the representative from the tribe of Naftali.

The Ben-Yehuda dictionary notes that in Arabic there are two (possibly related) roots. One is nahab which means "strong cry." The other is our nakhab, meaning "choice, select."

I still don't exactly understand why this hypothetical root was included in the dictionary, which might have been the source of a name, and may have a connection to one of two cognates. But it does at least leave the door open that Nahbi is related to nukhba, which could make sense, considering he was a prince of the tribe.

Once again, I looked to see if there was support for this theory. I suppose I was surprised how little is written (or at least I could find) about the name Nahbi (even speculation). The Encyclopedia Mikrait (EM) and Daat Mikra both said that no convincing etymology has been found. The EM did note the scholar Martin Noth, who proposed it is related to an Arabic root meaning "coward."

Noth's suggestion is also mentioned by James Barr in his essay, "The Symbolism of Names in the Old Testament." (also found here). On page 23 (of the document), in footnote 2, he writes:

Noth, p. 229, n. 12, derives from Arabic nakhb with the sense "fearful"; but one could also consider the sense "choice" on the same Arabic basis, and also derivation from a quite different root, cf. Huffmon, Amorite Peraonal Names in the Mari Texts, p. 189.

So Barr does entertain the connection. He also points us in the direction of Huffmon, who mentions yet another Arabic root, nhb, this time meaning "vow, implore, lament" (perhaps the last of these words equals the "strong cry" mentioned in Ben Yehuda).

One other suggestion for Nahbi doesn't include the letter nun as part of the root. Rather it says the name comes from the root חבא, meaning to hide. Prof. Alexander Rofe quotes his teacher Umberto Cassuto as noting:

Sethur, derived from the root str (to hide), brought to mind the son of Vophsi, Nahbi, from the root hb', with the same meaning.

Cassuto was pointing out that the name before Nahbi in the list of spies was סְתוּר בֶּן־מִיכָאֵל, whose name also indicates hiding. If that's the case, both names implying hiding would be fitting for spies.

That same theory is proposed by the BDB dictionary, as well as in a midrash in Sotah 34b:

אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן, אַף אָנוּ נֹאמַר: ״נַחְבִּי בֶּן וׇפְסִי״, ״נַחְבִּי״ — שֶׁהֶחְבִּיא דְּבָרָיו שֶׁל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא.

Rabbi Yoḥanan says: We can also say an interpretation of the name: “Nahbi the son of Vophsi” (Numbers 13:14): He is called Nahbi, as he concealed [heḥbi] the statement of the Holy One, Blessed be He, that the land is good, by delivering a distorted description of it.

All of these theories testify to the fact that other than the two spies who brought a faithful report of the land (Yehoshua and Kalev), the rest were soon forgotten and so their legacies are obscure. I hope that someday soon we can say the same about the Nukhba terrorists as well.

fukes

2024-06-23T22:06:00.002+03:00

I was curious about the origin of the Israeli slang term fukes פוּקְס, meaning "stroke of luck," referring to something positive that happened just by chance.

My first thought was to look in Ruvik Rosenthal's Dictionary of Hebrew Slang. He said it came from the English "flux", and originated as a lucky shot in billiards:

But as hard as I tried, I couldn't find any connection between "flux" and the game of billiards.

I put the question aside for a while, and then came back to it again after a few weeks. A new search for the origin of fukes once again led me to Rosenthanl, but this time to his websites (he has a few). And this time, the answer was much more obvious:

For example here, he wrote:

And here:

It turned out there was a typo in the printed book. The word wasn't "flux" but "flukes." He describes how Hebrew speakers during the British Mandate (in form of the language he calls "Finglish", meaning "Palestinian English") adopted the billiard term "flukes", and ignoring the plural form, and dropping the "L" sound, turned it into the singular fukes.

Proof of this comes from another slang term, hitfalek הִתְפַלֵּק, which is the verb form of fukes (meaning to do something unintentionally), but does preserve the "L" of "fluke" (and doesn't include the plural "S".)

Fluke is indeed a billiards term. The Online Etymology Dictionary has these entries for the different meanings of fluke, which may be related (our meaning is number 2):

fluke (n.1)
"flat end of an arm of an anchor," 1560s, perhaps from fluke (n.3) "flatfish," on resemblance of shape, or from Low German flügel "wing." Transferred meaning "whale's tail" (in plural, flukes) is by 1725, so called from resemblance.
fluke (n.2)
"lucky stroke, chance hit," 1857, also flook, said to be originally a lucky shot at billiards, of uncertain origin. Century Dictionary connects it with fluke (n.1) in reference to the whale's use of flukes to get along rapidly (to go a-fluking or some variant of it, "go very fast," is in Dana, Smyth, and other sailors' books of the era). OED (2nd ed. print) allows only that it is "Possibly of Eng. dialectal origin."
fluke (n.3)
"flatfish," Old English floc "flatfish," related to Old Norse floke "flatfish," flak "disk, floe," from Proto-Germanic *flok-, from PIE root *plak- (1) "to be flat." The parasite worm (1660s) so called from resemblance of shape.

Further discussion of the origin of "fluke" can be found in this post on the Inky Fool blog.

Certainly fluke has moved from billiards to a more general sense of an unexpected or accidental stroke of luck, in both English and in Hebrew via fukes.

I must conclude with a quote from one of my favorite televison shows, The Office. In the episode Trivia, the generally bumbling character Kevin gives an answer in a trivia contest which brings his team to win the game. Everyone doubted him, thinking it was just dumb luck, and in response he gives this retort:

Look, I know it's easy to say tonight was just a fluke, and maybe it was, but here's a piece of trivia: a fluke is one of the most common fish in the sea. So if you go fishing for a fluke, chances are, you just might catch one.

Wisdom for the ages.

dayal, doula, and degel - update

2024-06-16T19:34:00.001+03:00

I have a long list of words to write about. Today I started looking into one of them, and then only later did it turn out that I had already written about it. This happens occasionally - with nearly 700 posts, and often several words beyond the primary word discussed in each, I suppose it’s to be expected. I’m just relieved when I discover it before I write the whole thing.

This time, however, I found some new information, so I thought I’d write a post that updates the earlier one.

I had intended to write a post about the words dayal דַּיָּל - “steward” and “doula.” I was planning on pointing out how they share a common origin. But I had already discussed it in my post on meltzar מֶלְצַר, another word meaning “steward”:

However, as Elon Gilad writes here, Ben Yehuda did not want the word meltzar used for "waiter" in Modern Hebrew. He preferred dayal דייל (feminine dayelet דיילת). He coined dayal on the basis of the Talmudic Aramaic word dayala דיילא - "attendant", which in turn derives from the Greek word for slave or servant - doulos. Doulos is also the root of the English word doula, which literally means "female slave".

However, as happened on more than one occasion, Ben Yehuda's plans did not win out, and people continued referring to waiters as meltzarim. But his word dayal was eventually redeemed - when El Al airlines was founded in 1948, they needed a specialized word for someone attending to passengers - and so a few years later, dayal became the Hebrew word for steward. Quite the journey for these words!

But as noted, I forgot that post, and began to research. I found Klein’s entry for dayal:

NH waiter, steward (on an airplane). [Nomen opificis coined by Eliezer ben Yehudah (1858–1922) from JAram. דַּיָּלָא (= attendant, waiter), which derives from Gk. doylos (= slave), a word standing for doelos and derived from Aegean doëro (= slave).]

As well as the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for doula:

"woman trained to assist another woman during childbirth and provide support to the family after the baby is born," by 1972, a coinage in anthropology, from Modern Greek doule, from ancient Greek doule "servant-woman," fem. of doulos "slave, servant," which probably is a word of Pre-Greek origin.

That last sentence was interesting. When Etymonline says “Pre-Greek,” it sometimes refers to a Semitic etymology. But could that be the case here?

It turns out that it just may be. The Wiktionary entry for δοῦλος (doulos) has this interesting etymology:

Related to Mycenaean Greek 𐀈𐀁𐀫 (do-e-ro /⁠dohelos⁠/),[1] possibly from Canaanite *dōʾēlu “servant, attendant” (compare Late Babylonian 𒁕𒀝𒂵𒇻 (daggālu, “subject, one who waits on another, does their bidding”), Aramaic דַּיָּילָא (dayyālā), Hebrew דייל (dayyal, “flight attendant, store clerk”)).[2]

According to Parpola,[3] the word δοῦλος is related to the ethnonym Dahae (found as Δάοι, Δάαι, Δαι or Δάσαι in Greek sources) and thus related to Sanskrit दस्यु (dasyu, “bandit, brigand”) and Sanskrit दास (dāsa) which originally meant 'demon' and later also 'slave' or 'fiend'.

The first theory is the one that interested me - since it proposes a Semitic origin. However, it seemed rather mixed up, giving the anachronistic impression that the Greek doulos derived from not only the Aramaic dayala (which we had already seen is purported to derive from the Greek, not the other way around), but also mentions the Modern Hebrew dayal, which certainly couldn’t have influenced any Ancient Greek words.

But I thought I’d try looking around a bit more. I couldn’t find anything of note about the Canaanite *dōʾēlu, other than websites quoting or referring back to this Wiktionary page. But the Babylonian daggālu had more promise. Since Late Babylonian is another word for Akkadian, I looked in Tawil’s dictionary of Akkadian. In the “Akkadian to Hebrew Concordance,” under dagālu, he points back to his entry for דגל. In that entry he writes:

Akkadian dagālu … to look (at) …

Akkadian dagālu in the G-Stem and S-stem has a wide variety of nuances and meanings, including “to own” and “to be a subject.” With the prepositions ana, pan, and ina pan, it means “to wait for.”

This fits what I wrote in an even earlier post on the Hebrew word דגל degel. I quoted Milgrom on Bamidbar 2:2

Hebrew degel possibly originally meant a military banner. This is supported by the Akkadian dagalu, "to look", and diglu, "sight"

But while dagālu could mean “to be a subject,” is there further evidence that it’s related to dayal and doula?

Sokoloff, in his Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, does make such a connection. In his entry for the Aramaic dayala דַּיָּילָא, he provides two definitions. A type of official (as in Yoma 18a) or a servant (as in Pesachim 86b). And for the etymology, he says it derives from the Akkadian dajalu - “inspector.”

So Sokoloff says that dayala (the source of dayal) derives from dagalu. He makes no mention of the Greek doulos, but there’s nothing in what he wrote that would contradict doulos deriving either from the Akkadian or Aramaic.

Where then did Klein get his idea of a Greek origin for dayala? I assume this Ben Yehuda entry:

Ben Yehuda defines a dayal as someone who serves food (i.e., a waiter) and says it was common in Hebrew speech and also used in newspapers. In the footnote, after quoting Pesachim 86b (see above), it notes that there are those who say it is borrowed from Greek.

I don’t know who are “those who say” but I imagine it’s possible that Akkadian scholarship at that point had not advanced to the level it later did, and so the dictionary editors weren’t aware of the possibility of an Akkadian origin.

intifada and pitzutz

2024-06-09T20:58:00.002+03:00

In the past, I've talked about how I'm a fan of Mike Pesca's podcast, The Gist. Recently, Pesca had a segment, “Intifada Revolution? Or is that a linguistic delusion?” (starting at 26:30) where he railed against those claiming that because the Arabic word intifada (“insurrection, uprising”) originated in a more gentle meaning of “shaking off,” the protesters calling for an intifada today aren’t really inciting for violence.

It’s a great segment, where Pesca skillfully explains how words change meaning, and how we need to be honest about how the words are used today. The Palestinian expressions of intifada have been very violent, with thousands killed, and it is disingenuous to claim that calls for further “global” intifada would be any less violent.

I won’t repeat all of Pesca’s arguments here - it’s really worth listening to. But the essence of his position is against what is known as the etymologically fallacy - that a word’s meaning is determined by its etymology. On this site, I implicitly campaign against that approach constantly. By showing the development of words over time, even those with weighty religious usage, I try to show that words change, and we need to understand how they were used at the time they were said or written.

The segment on the Gist did get me thinking. Does the Arabic word intifada have any cognates in Hebrew? It took a little digging, but it certainly does.

As noted, the word intifada did mean “shaking off.” As noted here, it comes

from the verb intafada "to be shaken, shake oneself."

The verb intafada in turn is the reflexive form (similar to hitpael in Hebrew) of the verb nafada - “to shake, shake off.” Klein notes that nafada is cognate to the Hebrew verb נפץ - “to shatter, scatter”:

Prob. a secondary base derived from פוץ ᴵ. cp. Aram.-Syr. נְפַץ (= he shook out, emptied), Arab. nafaḍa (= he shook), Akka. napāṣu (= to shatter).

From the root נפץ, we get many words relating to shattering or exploding such as napatz נַפָּץ - “detonator” (or in modern Hebrew slang “firecracker”), mapatz מַפָּץ - “bang, explosion” (as in “the Big Bang” hamapatz hagadol הַמַּפָּץ הַגָּדוֹל), and the verb hitnapetz הִתְנַפֵּץ - “to shatter, disintegrate, crash.”

Klein noted that נפץ is probably a secondary form of the root פוץ. This root has a similar meaning: “to disperse, scatter, spread.” It’s most commonly seen as a verb in the form הפיץ - “to scatter, spread, disseminate, propagate.” As an adjective, it gives us the word nafotz נָפוֹץ - “widespread”, and as a noun tefutza תְּפוּצָה - “dispersion, diaspora.”

Another root that comes from פוץ is פצץ - “to break, to shatter.” In Biblical Hebrew it could refer to such actions as breaking rocks, like in Yirmiyahu 23:29

וּכְפַטִּישׁ יְפֹצֵץ סָלַע - “as a hammer that shatters rock”

In modern times, that verb was borrowed to mean “to explode, detonate,” giving such words as petzatza פְּצָצָה - “bomb” and pitzutz פִּיצוּץ - “explosion.”

As we can see, many derivatives of these related roots refer to volatile acts of explosions, detonations and shattering. I will remain consistent with my approach, and will point out that these words have also changed meanings over time (such as the coining of petzatza by Ben Yehuda). Even if the original meanings were more violent, that doesn’t mean that the original Arabic nafada had that connotation. But likewise, the meanings of those Arabic words have also changed, and so intifada cannot be divorced from its more recent associations with terrorism.

tallit

2024-06-04T19:45:00.002+03:00

The background to how I began exploring the etymology of tallit טַלִּית is complicated, but perhaps more interesting than simply the bottom line. Therefore, I’ll tell it more like a story, and hopefully it will be fascinating to you as well.

It began when I was watching a video from the wonderful Jewish history YouTube channel by Sam Aranow. This video is called The Revival of Hebrew? (1879-1908), which focuses on the contributions of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and others in the modern revival of Hebrew.

To get a better perspective on the Hebrew language, Sam brought on Yair from the Che Languages YouTube channel. At 2:20, they mention words originating in Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Latin. Many of those words I’ve written about here before. But one word caught my eye - tallit, which they claimed had a Greek origin.

I had never heard such a suggestion before. I was only familiar with the etymology provided by Klein:

טַלִּית f.n. Post-Biblical Hebrew 1 cloak. 2 prayer shawl. [Prob. from טִלֵּל (= he covered, roofed).]

In fact, I had mentioned that as a tangent on a post a while back:

The letters tzade and tet can switch between Hebrew and Aramaic, as can also be seen in the words tzel צל - "shade" and טלל - "to overshadow", the root of talit טלית.

But where was this Greek origin theory from?

It turns out that Yair had found the Greek origin for tallit on the Wiktionary page for טלית. The page provides two possible etymologies. One the one that I had heard, and the other claiming Greek origin:

Etymology

Unclear. Suggestions include:

From the Aramaic root ט־ל־ל (t-l-l) (related to the Hebrew root צ־ל־ל (ts-l-l); compare צל (tsél)).
From Ancient Greek στολή (stolḗ, “garment”).

The only source given on that page was a 2001 post on the Avodah email discussion list by Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel entitled Tallit/talles (a follow up from an earlier post of his and in response to a Philologos column). This is the relevant section from his post (links and italics are mine):

Furthermore, there is another, less well-known word in the Mishna which is certainly associated in meaning (remember, in the Mishna, tallet/t'lit does not mean exclusively "prayer" shawl). The word in most modern printed editions is vocalized itzt'lit: aleph, tzadi, lamed, tav, with some immot qriah thrown in as well. Look in Yoma 7:1 and Gittin 7:5. That word in the manuscripts is written in various ways: the Kaufmann ms. has estalet, with no yod at all, a segol under the aleph, then a samekh, then a tzere after the lamed (which has no dagesh). The Rambam own hand ms. of the Mishna also has the word without a yod before the tav, indicating the vowel is not a hiriq. That word, as the various spellings give away, is the Greek word stolé (also borrowed in English, by way of Latin, as meaning robe, commonly used as in mink stole). Aramaic and Leshon Hazal could not tolerate two consonants together beginning a word, and so a proclitic vowel was added to such Latin and Greek words, as also in words like itztadion (stadium) and many others. That Greek word, with the feminine Aramaic ending, was then estaleta/estalet or estalit. It seems clear that tallet was either a shortened form of this loan word, or some original Aramaic word from the root tll (which word is unattested) became influenced by the Greek loanword and its pronunciation. That would explain both tallet and t'lit: the Greek loanword had a short a vowel (commonly used as a reflex of the Greek omicron), so it either became a shva in Hebrew (and hence the Teimani form) or a pasah (which would require doubling of the lamed with a dagesh). Not only does a foreign origin explain the varying forms of tallet/t'lit…

[He then goes on to explain why tallit is often pluralized as talleisim in Ashkenazic Hebrew, for more details, read the rest of his post.]

Mandel is claiming that the word tallit derives from the from the Talmudic word itztela אִצְטְלָא meaning “robe, cloak,” which in turn comes from the Greek “stole.” The English word “stole” has the same origin. It either means a long scarf or shawl, particularly used by women, or it can refer to a liturgical vestment worn by Christians, which some say was influenced by the tallit.

It’s certainly an interesting theory, and Mandel’s explanation is certainly detailed and well thought-out. The words itztala and tallit could be connected linguistically, and certainly have a similar meaning. And the tallit was, as Mandel notes, a garment for general use - not only for prayer as it is today. But is the etymology his original idea, or did he base it on previous scholarship?

I intended to ask Rabbi Mandel directly, but sadly he passed away while I was researching the issue. But despite that loss, and hopefully to perpetuate his memory (and our shared love of Hebrew language history), I felt it was important to continue the search.

I first noticed that Rashi (Sanhedrin 44a, ד”ה איצטלא דמילתא) explains that itztela means tallit. That helps in identifying that the words have a shared meaning, but doesn’t necessarily speak to the etymology (and Rashi certainly does not make such a claim.)

I looked at more recent scholars for clues. Jastrow supports the טלל origin (not surprisingly, since he generally leans in the direction of Semitic roots for Hebrew and Aramaic words, even when more recent scholarship doesn’t justify it.) Kohut prefers a Persian origin (again, that seems to be his default preference.)

Ben Yehuda’s entry for טלית is interesting. The footnote (likely edited by Tur-Sinai) says that the origin of the word is unclear. It brings the טלל theory, but rejects it. (This makes Klein’s adoption of the theory surprising, since in general he follows the Ben Yehuda dictionary.)

In support of this rejection, he quotes an 1890 article by the scholar David Günzburg in the journal Revue des Études Juives. In the article, “Origine du mot Talit”, Gunzburg explores a number of possibilities as to the etymology of tallit.

Full disclosure, I wasn’t able to get a fully readable English version from online translation tools. If I’m not mistaken, he suggests a possible connection to the Latin trilix, meaning a three-threaded garment. That seems far-fetched, and I can see why Ben-Yehuda didn’t quote it.

But one claim of his did draw my attention. Just as Mandel had argued, Gunzburg also writes (page 18) that tallit is a masculine noun (not feminine as we use it today), which proves that it is a non-Semitic root. (In other words, the ת at the end is not a suffix, but part of the word.) But neither Gunzburg, nor Ben-Yehuda, offer a conjecture as to what that non-Semitic word might be.

Gunzberg didn’t, but Ginzberg did. I’m referring to the scholar Louis Ginzberg. I found a 1916 Festschrift for Adolf Schwarz, edited by the linguist Samuel Krauss. In the book, Ginzberg has a long essay (329-361) where he discusses the etymology of various Hebrew and Aramaic words. On page 359, he has a paragraph about the origin of tallit. He quotes Gunzburg, and accepts the non-Semitic origin of the word. He then goes on to propose that tallit derives from itztala.

Here’s where it gets a little confusing. Ginzberg cites Krauss (the editor of the Festschrift). Once again, full disclosure - I’m relying on online translation for Ginzberg’s German. Here’s the original:

The translation seems to indicate that Krauss a) acknowledged the derivation from itztala but rejected it, and also b) accepted that explanation in another source.

However, in Tosefet HeArukh (of which Krauss was one of the editors) the entry for tallit quotes Ginzburg in the Festschrift:

This entry also quotes Krauss (so maybe he didn’t write it? or it was written by committee?), and it says Krauss gives it an entirely different origin (the root טלא - “to patch”.) It also goes on to reject Kohut’s Persian origin (significant because one of the other editors was George Alexander Kohut, the son of the author of the Arukh HaShalem).

So it seems that Krauss was aware of the idea before Ginzburg. Did he come up with it only to reject it (a hava amina of sorts?), only to have Ginzburg remain convinced? Or was he quoting someone else?

I suppose more research needs to be done. And of course, the question remains: did Rabbi Mandel know about the theories of Krauss and Ginzberg? Either way, his scholarship is impressive. If he found their research, that must have taken a good deal of effort (certainly prior to the ease of internet searches which I benefited from). If he came up with it on his own, then he displayed creativity combined with serious intellect.

And now I’m at the end of my journey. I started off being surprised by a claim in a video from 2023, and ended up finding debates from the turn of the 20th century. I hope you enjoyed the ride!

edut, od, moed, and muad

2024-05-30T13:09:00.000+03:00

The Hebrew word for testimony is edut עֵדוּת. Two related words are ed עֵד - "witness" and teudah תְּעוּדָה - originally also meaning "testimony," but today means "certificate, document.". Klein provides two possible roots for the etymology of edut:

Prob. from עוד and lit. meaning ‘exhorting sign’, ‘reminder’. Several other scholars derive עֵדוּת from יעד (= to appoint, to fix), and compare Akka. adē (= statements, commandments).

Each of those roots provides many familiar Hebrew words. Let's look at each of them.

Klein defines עוד as "to return, repeat, do again." Therefore, he writes that the verb העיד (the source of edut) means "to affirmed solemnly", and originally meant "to repeat." Other meanings of that root include "to warn" and "to bear witness, attest, testify."

From the more general sense of "to return, repeat," we get from עוד the verbs עודד and התעודד - "to be restored, strengthened." As a noun, it appears as idud עִדּוּד - "encouragement."

Two words deriving from the root עוד are:

od עוֹד - an adverb with a number of meanings, such as "more, another," "yet, still," and "already." According to Klein, it was originally a noun meaning "duration, continuance."
eid עֵיד - a Talmudic word for an idolatrous festival. It is cognate with the Arabic eid which simply means "festival." Klein writes that the word literally meant "that which returns (every year)." Klein adds that a variant spelling is אֵיד, likely due to an association with the homonym אֵיד, which means "calamity, misfortune," but is unrelated etymologically to eid deriving from עוד.

Now let's take a look at the other root that might be the source of edut: יעד. Klein defines this root as "to appoint, fix, assign, designate." In the noun form, it appears as yaad יַעַד - "aim, target, destination" or yiud יִעוּד - originally "appointment, assignment," now "destiny, mission."

Other related words include:

moed מוֹעֵד - this is either an appointed time, like a holiday or festival (like the moadim listed in Vayikra 23) or an appointed place, like the ohel moed ("tent of meeting", the tabernacle sanctuary that the Israelites built in the desert). This latter meaning was used by Itamar Ben-Avi (Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's son) to coin moadon מוֹעֲדוֹן - "meeting place, club."
edah עֵדָה - "assembly, congregation." Klein writes that the original meaning was "a group assembled together by appointment." Today it frequently refers to an ethnic group.

Klein notes that the post-biblical root ועד is related to יעד. It also means "to appoint." It gave us three words that all originally meant "meeting", but today have distinct meanings: vaad וַֽעַד - "committee," vaadah וְעָדָה - "commission," and veidah וְעִידָה - "conference, convention."

Lastly, we have a word I was familiar with, but didn't realize it actually was a homonym pair: muad מוּעָד. In the Talmud (Mishna Bava Kama 1:4) there is mention of a shor hamuad שׁוֹר הַמּוּעָד, an ox who has caused damage in the past, and so the owner is considered fully responsible for any damage in the future. Klein provides two entries for muad, each from a different root:

PBH forewarned, cautioned. [Part. of הוּעַד (= was forewarned), Hoph. of עוד ᴵ.]
adj. directed. [Part. of הוּעָד (= was set, was placed), Hoph. of יעד.]

Each of these could have presumably been the meaning of the shor hamuad - either the owner was forewarned of its dangerous behavior (definition 1), or it was designated as a dangerous animal (definition 2). But it's clearly definition 1 as seen from the verse where the concept originates:

וְאִם שׁוֹר נַגָּח הוּא מִתְּמֹל שִׁלְשֹׁם וְהוּעַד בִּבְעָלָיו וְלֹא יִשְׁמְרֶנּוּ וְהֵמִית אִישׁ אוֹ אִשָּׁה הַשּׁוֹר יִסָּקֵל וְגַם־בְּעָלָיו יוּמָת׃

"If, however, that ox has been in the habit of goring, and its owner, though warned, has failed to guard it, and it kills a man or a woman—the ox shall be stoned and its owner, too, shall be put to death." (Shemot 21:29)

This translation follows Rashi:

והועד בבעליו. לְשׁוֹן הַתְרָאָה בְעֵדִים, כְּמוֹ הָעֵד הֵעִד בָּנוּ הָאִישׁ (בראשית מ"ג):

"This is an expression of warning through witnesses, as in 'The man warned us' (Bereshit 43:3)

Every translation and commentary that I found says that וְהוּעַד here means either "warned" or "testified." It's rare to find such a consensus.

Well, nearly every translation. One well-regarded Torah translation, by Everett Fox, follows definition 2:

But if the ox was a gorer from yesterday [and the] day-before, and it was so designated to its owner, and he did not guard it, and it causes the death of a man or of a woman, the ox is to be stoned, and its owner as well is to be put to death.

I was very surprised by this translation. On the one hand, I find Fox incredibly reliable in providing a literal translation that very effectively captures the rhythm and syntax of the original Hebrew text. But on the other, I found no one else who provides a similar opinion, and unlike in other occasions, Fox did not provide any additional commentary explaining his choice. My only possible idea is that Fox was influenced by an earlier verse in that chapter (21:8) which uses the root יעד and everyone translates it as "designated." But that seems to be a very different context, so I don't see why it would influence his choice here. It's certainly possible I missed an earlier source or resource that justifies this translation. If any of you are aware of one, please let me know.

halva'ah and livui

2024-05-23T18:13:00.001+03:00

The root לוה has two meanings in Modern Hebrew: "to borrow" and "to accompany, escort." Are they related?

Many modern linguists do not make a connection. For example, Klein lists them as seperate roots:

1) to borrow [Arab. lawā (= he delayed payment of debt).]

2) to join [Aram.-Syr. לְוָא (= he accompanied)]

He does however, note that a third use of לוה, "to wind, turn, twist" is associated with meaning 2 (to join, accompany). For that meaning he provides this etymology: "Arab. lawā (= he wound, turned, twisted), Akka. lamū, lawā (= to surround, encircle)."

There are some scholars, however, who do suggest a common origin. Mitchell First, in his book Words for the Wise (p. 243) notes that both Mandelkern and TDOT say that a connection is possible. He quotes Mandelkern:

[He] points out that in Lain, a debt is called an "obligation." This word comes from a Latin word leig that means "to bind."

TDOT (Vol 7, p. 477) adds:

Arabic lawa(y), "put off a creditor, delay payment, fail to pay a dept" ... suggests that the basic meaning of the root lwy, "twist, turn" may well be the point of departure for the meaning of the Arabic verb and that Hebrew lawa is likewise just a a special development of this root lwy. We arrive at the same conclusion if we follow Jacob Levy in understanding lawa, "borrow" in the sense of "as if it were attached to or by..."

As often happens in these cases, it's difficult to determine with any certainty whether or not there is a connection between these meanings.

Each of the uses of the root לוה has provided us with a number of derivative words. Let's take a look at them.

Our first meaning of לוה is "to borrow," or in its piel form "to loan." A loan is a halva'ah הַלְוָאָה, a lender is a malveh מַלְוֶה and the borrower (or debtor) is a lo'veh לוֶֹה. This meaning of לוה is one of those cases where Hebrew has more specific meanings for words than English does. The verb לוה in Hebrew indicates a loan where the actual thing being borrowed is not necessarily expected to return to the loaner. The most common example would be money - when money is lent, there is no expectation that the same coins or bills given to the borrower will be used to repay the debt.

There is, however, a different root in Hebrew which does refer to the lending of an object which is expected to be directly returned: שאל (and it is not used in regards to money). In English שאל is translated as "to borrow" and the hif'il form, השאיל, means "to lend." In English, there is no such distinction found when using the words "lend" and "borrow," but it is important for Hebrew speakers to choose the word proper for the context of the loan.

The second meaning of לוה is "to join, accompany, escort." This gives us such words as livui לִוּוּי - "escorting, accompanyment" and melaveh מְלַוֶּה - "accompanier, escort." It's also the origin of the Hebrew word for funeral. A search on the Morfix website provides halvaya הַלְוָיָה for "funeral." However, most dictionaries will offer both halvaya and levaya לְוָיָה. Klein notes that "The more exact form is לְוָיָה." Horowitz (p. 330) goes even further:

הַלְוָיָה is a funeral, but the word should be לְוָיָה from לוה, escort. The verb הלוה, which would give rise to הַלְוָיָה means lending. It has nothing to do with escorting. In Yiddish the word is still correctly לְוָיָה.

However, this more recent review by the Hebrew Language Academy points out that neither word (in the sense of "funeral") appears in either Biblical or Talmudic literature, and that both appear for the first time in Medieval rabbinic literature. After reviewing the history of the words, it determines that both forms are legitimate.

Other more modern words from this meaning include lavyan לַוְיָן - "satellite" (a loan translation of the Russian sputnik, meaning "traveling companion") and lavay לְוַאי - "side" or "after" (as in a side effect or aftertaste.)

The third meaning, "to wind, twist, turn," does seem not appear directly with that meaning as a verb. From what I can tell, it is assumed based on the Arabic cognate of the same meaning (lawa) and the Hebrew words that derive from it. Klein provides three:

לִוְיָה livya and לוֹיָה loya - both meaning "wreath" (the first in Mishlei 1:9 and 4:9, the second in Melachim I 7:29,36)
לִוְיָתָן livyatan - the creature "Leviathan". Klein writes that it literarlly means "tortuous." It is variously identified as a serprent, dragon, crocodile, or whale. Feliks, in Nature and Man in the Bible (pp 267-269) notes that in the book of Iyov (from 40:25 to 41:26) there are verses where the livyatan is clearly a crocodile (e.g, 40:29) and others where it is clearly a whale (e.g., 41:11-12). Feliks concludes that "the author of the Book of Job ... decided to synthesize two wondrous creatures of great strength, and invented the leviathan."

Lastly, we have the name Levi לֵוִי. This son of Yaakov and Leah gets his name in Bereshit 29:34 -

וַתַּהַר עוֹד וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן וַתֹּאמֶר עַתָּה הַפַּעַם יִלָּוֶה אִישִׁי אֵלַי כִּי־יָלַדְתִּי לוֹ שְׁלֹשָׁה בָנִים עַל־כֵּן קָרָא־שְׁמוֹ לֵוִי׃

The translation of this verse is affected by the understanding and use of the root לוה. JPS translates it as:

Again she conceived and bore a son and declared, “This time my husband will become attached to me, for I have borne him three sons.” Therefore he was named Levi.

This translation understands לוה as "attached" as we saw in sense 2 ("to accompany.") Other translations, like Fox and Alter, have the phrase as "my husband will join me" or "will be joined to me."

Tawil, however, in his An Akkadian Leixcal Companion for Biblical Hebrew, leans closer to sense 3:

"and she (Leah) declared, 'this time my huband shall encircle (i.e., accompany) me', therefore he was named Levi (i.e., the one who encircles" (Gen. 29:34). [...] Whereas Anchor Bible Dictionary asserts that "the meaning of the name is uncertain," it seems that the equation with the Akk. lawu "to encircle, to move in a circle" depicts the actual function of the Levites, whose task was to encircle, i.e., protect the Tent of Meeting, e.g., וְנִלְווּ עָלֶיךָ וְשָׁמְרוּ אֶת־מִשְׁמֶרֶת אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לְכֹל עֲבֹדַת הָאֹהֶל וְזָר לֹא־יִקְרַב אֲלֵיכֶם׃ "they (the Levites) shall move in a circle around you and discharge the duties of the Tent of Meeting, all the service of the Tent, but no outsider shall intrude upon you" (Num. 18:4)

This is in contrast as well to Sarna in his JPS commentary on Genesis 29:34, who wrote:

The true origin of this name is obscure. A similar word in Akkadian and in Minaean inscriptions from northern Arabia designates a special class of temple servitors, but the present midrash, unlike that of Numbers 18:2,4 contains no hint of any future sacral role. The name is given a purely secular twist, for it articulates the mother's yearning for her husband's companionship.

It seems to me that Sarna looked at the same evidence that Tawil did, but came to very different conclusions. I find it difficult to agree that the verse "contains no hint of any future sacral role." Perhaps it does not spell it out visibly, but anyone familar with the sense provided by the Akkadian and Arabic roots would understand the foreshadowing of the role that appears for the Levites in Bamidbar, as Tawil sensibly points out.

tiron and turai

2024-01-14T09:19:00.000+02:00

After a soldier enlists in the Israeli army, there are two words to describe him (or her, although I'm providing the male forms of the words): טִירוֹן tiron - "new recruit" and טוּרַאי turai - "private" (his initial rank). While the two words apply to a similar time in the military, and look somewhat similar, they are actually not related etymologically.

Tiron entered Hebrew in the rabbinic period, borrowed from the Latin tiro. The English word "tyro" has the same meaning and origin:

"a beginner in learning anything," 1610s, from Medieval Latin tyro, variant of Latin tiro (plural tirones) "young soldier, recruit, beginner"

That Online Etymology Dictionary entry says that the pre-Latin origin is unknown, but Nicholas Ostler, in his book Ad Infinitum, says derives from Etruscan, which provided other military terms to Latin as well.

The more general sense of "novice" is seen in the early uses of tiron in Hebrew. For example, see this midrash:

בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁנִּגְלָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עַל משֶׁה טִירוֹן הָיָה משֶׁה לַנְּבוּאָה

"At the moment that The Holy One blessed be He appeared to Moses, Moses was a novice at prophecy" (Shemot Rabbah 3:1)

Today as well tiron can have that meaning, but it seems to me that it may be more influenced from its use in the military (since so many Israelis serve in the army) as opposed to its more ancient origins.

In contrast, turai is of much more recent coinage. Linguists such as Gilad and Rosenthal note that it was coined by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Edwin Samuel in World War I. Rosenthal is quoted here:

In later years, Ze’ev Jabotinsky – who served in the Jewish Legion in World War I together with Edwin Samuel, the son of the first High Commissioner of Palestine Herbert Samuel – published a two-page glossary of commands in Hebrew. One of their innovations was the rank of turai (private) since they marched in line formation (tor).

Others, such as Kutscher, point out that turai was likely influenced by the Russian word for "private" (not surprising considering Jabotinsky's background.)

That Russian word is рядовой (ryadovoy), related to the word meaning "row." It also has the sense of "rank and file," which has a similar meaning in English:

1590s, in reference to the horizontal and vertical lines of soldiers marching in formation, from rank (n.) in the military sense of "number of soldiers drawn up in a line abreast" (1570s) + file (n.1). Thence generalized to "common soldiers" (1796) and "common people, general body" of any group (1860).

So based on the Hebrew tur טור - "row", Jabotinsky and Samuel came up with turai. Rosenthal adds that there was actually a suggestion to change it to shurai שוראי or shuran שורן, from the synonym for row in Hebrew, shura שורה, but that was never adopted.