arami oved avi

The midrashic section of the Haggadah opens with a midrash on the verse (Devarim 26:5):

אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי, וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה, וַיָּגָר שָׁם בִּמְתֵי מְעָט; וַיְהִי-שָׁם, לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל עָצוּם וָרָב.

The Haggadah explains:

צא ולמד!

מה בקש לבן הארמי לעשות ליעקב אבינו, שפרעה הרשע לא גזר אלא על הזכרים ולבן בקש לעקור את הכל, שנאמר: "ארמי אובד אבי וירד מצרימה ויגר שם"

Go and learn what Lavan the Aramean wanted to do to our father Yaakov. For Pharoah had issued a decree only against the males, but Lavan wanted to uproot everyone, as it says "The Aramean sought to destroy my father; and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there.."

We see that the Haggadah translates the alliterative phrase arami oved avi as "An Aramean (Lavan) (wanted) to destroy my father". This explanation has ancient roots and is mirrored in other Midrashim, Targum Onkelos and the teamim. But the plain meaning of the text suggests a different translation:

"My father was a wandering Aramean".

The Rashbam says the verse refers to Avraham, whereas Ibn Ezra states that the "father" was Yaakov, and explains (translation from Nechama Leibowitz's Haggadah):

The verb "oved" אובד is an intransitive verb (does not take an object). If the verse were referring to Lavan, it would read "ma'avid" מאביד or "me'abed" מאבד ... But it is more logical that the Arami is Yaakov and the verse is saying that when my father was in Aram, he was poor.

The question then remains, why did the Haggadah (and others) feel the need to explain the verse contrary to its plain meaning?

Louis Finkelstein provided an interesting answer in his article The Oldest Midrash: Pre-Rabbinic Ideals and Teachings in the Passover Haggadah (see also this review of the article.) He claims that this midrash is very old, dating back to the Hellenistic rule of the Middle East, when after Alexander the Great's death, his kingdom was split up between the Seleucids in Syria and the Ptolemies in Egypt. He felt that the midrash (M) was trying to paint the Syrians (from Aram) in harsher light and soften the criticism of the Egyptians:

The daring perversion of the reading of the Scriptures can be explained only on one of two hypotheses. (A) It may have been an expression of Maccabean hostility toward Syria, which was identified with Aram. (B) It may be an effort, made while Palestine was under Egyptian suzerainty, to placate the Egyptian government, by denouncing its rival, Syria. It was particularly necessary to do this before telling the story of the Exodus, which recalled unpleasant relations between Egypt and Israel.

Of the two hypotheses, the second seems to me the more plausible, for several reasons which will soon become apparent. Of these, the most important is the fact that the Septuagint, which was composed by Jews under Egyptian rule, likewise perverts the meaning of the words 'arami 'obed 'abi. Its texts render the phrase as though it read 'aram y'obed (or ye'abed) 'abi, which is forced into the sense of "My father forsook Aram." Apparently the authors of the Septuagint, like the compiler of M, hesitated to identify the ancestor of the Jews as an Aramaean. The close relationship between the Septuagint translation and the interpretation put on the phrase 'arami 'obed 'abi in M is a definite indication that the two works were composed under similar circumstances, that is in the third century B.C., and under Egyptian control.

Finkelstein's theory is rejected by Goldschmidt in his Haggadah. He disagrees with Finkelstein's overall approach for reasons I won't go into here, but he writes that both explanations of the verse were known by the Rabbis - they both appear side by side in the Sifrei. However, it is not clear to me from Goldschmidt as to why this explanation was chosen for the Haggadah.

Perhaps Tigay's more modest explanation in JPS Devarim would be accepted. He points out that the Arameans of Damascus were hostile to the Israel already in the ninth century BCE, and therefore:

This interpretation, found in the Pesah Haggadah and reflected in the Septuagint and the targums, is due, perhaps, to a disbelief that the Bible would describe one of Israel's ancestors as an Aramean.

Tigay also mentions that the phrase "arami oved" might mean "fugitive Aramean", based on Assyrian inscriptions which refer to "Arame ... munnabtu" - "fugitive Aramean". Shmuel and Zeev Safrai, in their Haggadat Chazal, quote Chaim Rabin as writing that from other ancient inscriptions the word Arami meant "merchant" - so maybe the verse meant "my father was a traveling salesman"?

Whether the root אבד means "to lose (or to be lost)" or "to destroy" has an interesting impact on our understanding of Megilat Esther as well. According to Rav David Moriah of Efrat (see this article) Rav Yaakov Medan says that when Haman presented his plan to Achashverosh, he only said that the Jews were a different people who kept their own laws, and (Esther 3:9) -

אִם-עַל-הַמֶּלֶךְ טוֹב, יִכָּתֵב לְאַבְּדָם

"If it pleases the king, let it be written that they be lost".

According to Medan, the verb אבד only meant to assimilate them, to remove their special rights, so they wouldn't be considered a separate people. But Haman's plan was to destroy and exterminate them (3:13) -

לְהַשְׁמִיד לַהֲרֹג וּלְאַבֵּד אֶת-כָּל-הַיְּהוּדִים

"To destroy, to kill and to 'lose' all the Jews".

This helps to explain a somewhat difficult passage in the story. When Esther pleads for the lives of the Jews before the king and Haman, she says (7:4) -

כִּי נִמְכַּרְנוּ אֲנִי וְעַמִּי, לְהַשְׁמִיד לַהֲרוֹג וּלְאַבֵּד; וְאִלּוּ לַעֲבָדִים וְלִשְׁפָחוֹת נִמְכַּרְנוּ, הֶחֱרַשְׁתִּי

"For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred and 'lost'. Had we only been sold as slaves, I would have kept silent"

In other words, had Haman's plan, as presented to the king, been carried out, she wouldn't have protested. But she could not remain silent when her people were to be killed!

And here, the king replies (7:5) -

מִי הוּא זֶה וְאֵי-זֶה הוּא, אֲשֶׁר-מְלָאוֹ לִבּוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹת כֵּן.

"Who is he and where is he who dared to do this?"

For the king had no idea of Haman's real plan. However, if we were to think that אבד meant "to kill" - then the king comes off as a real fool, for he was the one that made the agreement with Haman. But a proper understanding of אבד helps us understand the entire story.

seder

We're all familiar with the seder סדר on Pesach, but the word seder in regards to the Pesach meal only appears first in Rashi's Sefer HaOrah. We find seder - meaning "arrangement" - in the Mishna in a context that is not exactly kosher for Passover - in the description of the lechem hapanim (showbread) in Masechet Menachot, chapter 2.

In the Torah (Vayikra 24:6) where it discusses the lechem hapanim it uses the synonym maarechet מערכת - meaning "set, row". Onkelos translates maarechet into Aramaic as seder, and both verbs - ערך and סדר - have the same meaning - "to order, arrange".

Other meanings of seder and sidra סדרה in Rabbinic Hebrew relate to an order or set of items - the sidrot - weekly Torah portions, the six sedarim of the Mishna, and the seder hamazalot סדר המזלות - the constellations. We also find in Rabbinic Hebrew reference to seder hatefila סדר התפילה - the order of the prayers (Rosh Hashana 17b), but the more common word for the prayerbook, siddur סידור, does not appear until Medieval times.

The word seder only appears once in the Tanach - in Iyov 10:22 as סדרים sedarim. There are those that feel that the word seder entered Hebrew from Aramaic, and is also related to the Akkadian sadaru.

Another theory is that seder is related to the Hebrew word שדרה - sdera - also meaning "row" and in Melachim II 11:8 means "a row of soldiers". In modern Hebrew it also means "boulevard, avenue" and Sderot שדרות is a town in Southern Israel famous for being attacked by Kassam rockets. It got its name from the rows of trees planted there at the founding of the State.

A common mistake in Hebrew is to pronounce שדרה as shdera and שדרות as Shderot (the latter has 12,000 hits on Google, with 300 on official government sites!) This is probably due to a confusion with the word שידרה shidra - "spinal column, backbone" - which also has a sense of something straight. However, according to Klein, shidra has a very different etymology: it is related to the word שזרה shizra (dalet and zayin can interchange), also meaning "backbone", which comes from the root שזר - "to interweave, intertwine, twist".

herut and uhura

Pesach is known as zman heruteinu זמן חרותינו - "the time of our freedom". Where does the word herut (cherut) חרות - freedom - come from?

It does not appear in Biblical sources, but shows up first in Rabbinic Hebrew. However, we do find chorim חורים - "nobles" in some of the later books of the Bible (e.g. Nechemia 2:16, Melachim I 21:8, Kohelet 10:17). The Daat Mikra on those verses says that the nobles were free from paying taxes. A different origin is provided by Ben Yehuda, who quotes Ibn Genach as saying that the word chorim derives from חור chur - meaning white (as in the white linen in Ester 1:6, and related to chiver חוור - "pale".) The idea here is that white was considered a color representing light and greatness. Jastrow makes a connection between white garments and (the garments of) freedom.

Whatever the origin, we are familiar with the Rabbinic phrase ben chorin בן-חורין from the Hagada as well - "a free man". Another verb taken from the same root in Rabbinic Hebrew is שחרר - "to liberate" (although we find the verb חרר as well).

Arabic has a cognate to herut: hurruyyah - also meaning "freedom, liberty". From Arabic, the word entered the Swahili language as uhuru - meaning "freedom". Uhuru was adopted by African Socialist movements in the 1960s, and this apparently caught the eye of Gene Roddenberry when he created the character Uhura in the original Star Trek series (and in one episode Spock says that Uhura means "freedom".)

hazeret

Last year we discussed maror; now let's talk about a vegetable that can be used for maror - חזרת hazeret (or chazeret).

The Mishna in Pesachim (2:6) lists a number of vegetables that can be used to fulfill one's obligation on the night of Pesach - and includes in the list hazeret. The gemara there (39a) translates hazeret from Hebrew into Aramaic - chasa חסא - lettuce. Rashi also identifies hazeret as lettuce - using the French word laitugue, which is related to the English word lettuce.

So how did hazeret come to be used for horseradish in Modern Hebrew? According to Dr. Yehuda Feliks here, when the Jews moved further East in Europe, lettuce was no longer available for Pesach. The Chacham Tzvi (1656-1718) wrote that the Jews of Ashkenaz and Poland would use tamcha תמכא for maror, because they couldn't find hazeret. Tamcha is one of the other vegetables listed in the mishna as acceptable, and the Tosfot Yom Tov (1579-1654) identifies it with horseradish (a relatively late identification- the Rambam identifies it with a type of chicory and Rashi translates it as Marrubium vulgare - horehound). Horseradish is known as chrain in Yiddish - the origin of the word is unknown, but it has many cognates in European languages. However, over time the word hazeret became associated with horseradish instead of tamcha. This entered Modern Hebrew as well, despite the availability of lettuce. However, lettuce seems like a better fit, because horseradish is not as bitter as it is sharp, and the Yerushalmi on Pesachim says that hazeret starts out sweet and ends bitter (like the Jews' experience in Egypt) - a much better description of lettuce than horseradish. For more about the development of the use of horseradish for maror, read this interesting article by Ari Zivitofsky (thanks to Parshablog for the link).

Interestingly, none of the sources I looked at - Jastrow, Ben Yehuda, Klein - offer an etymology for hazeret, despite the easily identifiable root of חזר (to return). I do suspect, however, that there are many drashot out there...

semolina

Well, I'm back from my trip, and it's almost Pesach, so time to get rid of the chametz.

Let's look at semolina, the coarse flour used to make cream of wheat and couscous.

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following etymology:

alteration of It. semolino, dim. of semola "bran," from L. simila "the finest flour," probably from the same Semitic source as Gk. semidalis "the finest flour" (cf. Assyrian samidu, Syrian semida "fine meal")

We find reference to a fine flour called semida סמידא in the Talmud (Pesachim 74b, Shabbat 110b, Moed Katan 28a). Semida is the Targum Yonatan translation for solet סולת - also meaning "fine flour".

However, it should be noted that Steinsaltz, Ben-Yehuda and maybe even Jastrow say that the Aramaic derives from the Greek instead of the other way around.

tisa

No, I'm not talking about this week's parasha - Ki Tisa. I'm actually looking into the word tisa טיסה meaning flight.

The Rabbinic Hebrew verb טוס - "to fly" is preceded by the Biblical root טוש , also meaning to fly, appearing in Iyov 9:26. According to Klein, the sense of "to fly in an airplane" was suggested by Haim Nahman Bialik.

And despite the strange hints by Jastrow to the contrary, there does not seem to be any connection between the root טוס and the Hebrew root for peacock - טווס tavas. Again, from Klein:

From Greek taos (whence Aramaic טוסא, Arabic tawus), which probably comes ultimately from Tamil tokei, togei (whence also Hebrew תכי , "peacock").

In modern Hebrew tuki תוכי means "parrot", but the Biblical tuki (Melachim I 10:22, Divrei HaYamim II 9:21) apparently meant a peacock.

The English word peacock also ultimately derives from the same source:

The word peacock actually derives from Old English péa “peacock”, and the –cock (or –hen) was added during the Middle English period in order to distinguish between males and females, as mentioned above. The Old English form comes from Latin pavo “peacock”. The peacock was a native of India, but it was domesticated and then taken to the West by traders. The Romans probably took it to Britain, where their name for the bird was adopted and changed by the Anglo-Saxons. The Latin word is thought to come from Greek taos “peacock”.

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My mention of the word tisa was not purely academic (not that I'm particularly academic in any case.) This coming Sunday I'm flying to the US for work for a week. Last year I also traveled in March, but I had just started the site, and I only had a few books which I took with me. Now my library has grown quite a bit (see next paragraph) and I don't feel comfortable writing without all possible information. So expect new posts in about a week and a half.

In regards to my library, this past week it grew a lot. A reader gave me a tip about where to buy the Ben Yehuda dictionary - all 16 volumes, for a reasonable 500 shekels. I don't have any shelf space, but I couldn't pass it up. I hope that this great resource provides me with some good ideas for posts, and answers to your questions. In the meantime, I've started reading the first volume, which is an introduction to the project. The first section is autobiographical, which I find fascinating.

One thing I do hope to manage to do on my trip is to finally use that book / DVD that I bought a few months ago to learn to read Arabic. I'm a bit nervous, since unlike any other language I've learned before, all the letters in an Arabic word connect to one another, making it difficult for a new reader like me. If any of you have some additional tips on this, please let me know.

Finally, Purim is over, and Pesach is soon. I have a number of Pesach words up from last year, but if you have any suggestions for others, please let me know.


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Update: If anyone can recommend any good used bookstores in the NYC area that either specialize in Judaica / Hebrew or have a good collection of books with those topics, please let me know. Thanks...

dugma and dogma

Is there a connection between the English word dogma and the Hebrew word dugma דוגמה (earlier דוגמא)- "example, sample"?

Horowitz (page 267) thinks so. He writes about dugma:

דגמה - example, but in English "dogma" an example of faith

Klein however, gives them different etymologies.

Dugma: From Greek deigma (= sample, specimen), from the stem of deikuynai (= to show), which is cognate with Latin dicere ( = to say, tell)

Dogma: Latin dogma, from Greek dogma (= that which one thinks true, opinion, doctrine, decree), from dokein ( = to seem, have the appearance of, think, believe), whence also doxa (opinion, glory)

The English word paradigm is related to dugma as well.

All other sources I've seen agree with Klein - so maybe Horowitz's dugmaot of Hebrew borrowing from Greek shouldn't be viewed as dogma...

zecher and zachar

This shabbat is Parshat Zachor, where we must remember (זכור) what Amalek did to us on our way out of Egypt. Is there any connection between zecher זכר - "remembrance, memory" and zachar זכר - "male"?

Klein says that some scholars make a connection. They claim that the root זכר originally meant "to pierce". From here we get the concept of memory - "to pierce" -> "to fix in one's mind" -> "to remember". Zachar as "male" is anatomically associated with piercing (think of the biological symbol for male), just as the word for "female", nekeva נקבה - is related to נקב - "to puncture, pierce".

Steinberg points out that the Aramaic for זכר is דכר, which is related to דקר - also "to pierce".

Until fairly recently I confused zachar and zachor: I mistakenly thought the Friday night gathering before a brit was a shalom zachor (connected to rememberance) and not shalom zachar (welcoming the male child).

From the gemara in Bava Batra 21b, we see that Yoav made a similar mistake. It says there that:

David sent his commander Yoav to fight Edom, and Yoav killed all the males. David asked why he did that, and Yoav answered because of the pasuk *Timche et Zachar Amalek (you shall wipe out all of the MALES of Amalek - Devarim [Deuteronomy] 25:19). David ... explained that it's Zecher Amalek (...the MEMORY of Amalek) , not Zachar.

Rav Mordechai Breuer here quotes Rav Meshulam Roth as saying that this story is hard to accept. How could Yoav have confused zachar and zecher? And here it was in the construct state (smichut) - so it would have been zchar amalek - even further away from zecher! But Rav Roth continues that there are some words where in the construct state they become like zecher - for example, ashan עָשָן becomes eshen עֶשֶן. So from here he learns that Yoav learned the word zecher with two segol marks. Had he learned it correctly, withe a tzerei instead of the first segol, he wouldn't have made the mistake. This is important, for there is a rabbinic disagreement as to whether the word zecher is with two segol marks, or one tzerei and one segol. Rav Breuer's article states that we must be faithful to the Masoretic text, which indicates the word should be marked with the tzerei - and reading the verse twice casts doubts on this text and should not be done!

Rav Breuer passed away this week. A number of bloggers have written about him: see here, here, here and here for example. During my time in Yeshivat HaKibbutz HaDati I merited hearing Rav Breuer speak on a number of occasions. I was always impressed with his sharp wit, his unbending passion for truth and his originality that was so convincing you couldn't believe you never thought of it before. I have since purchased his books Pirkei Moadot and Pirkei Bereshit, and have continued to learn much from them.

In 1998 the magazine Deot had an interview with him. To explain his method of study, he gave the following example:

There was a disagreement between the Sages as to whether the mezuza should be placed horizontally or vertically. As a compromise, it was placed on an angle.

The lesson to be learned from this, is that if one was to come and look at the mezuza without knowing the background, he would think that it was placed on an angle as the ideal state. But someone who knows the story, is aware that there is nothing ideal about the angle, but the significance lies in the disagreement between the horizontal and vertical positions.

This insight has much to do with what I'm trying to do with this site. Everyone can see the mezuza on an angle - I'm trying to see the back story, how it should be seen as both vertical and horizontal - concurrently! (This is why you should excuse any apparent contradictions in my writing...)

Rav Breuer's daughter, Elisheva was the ulpan teacher in the yeshiva, in my first year out of high school. My knowledge of Hebrew was practically zero. I don't remember particular lessons from her class, but I'm sure some of my passion for Hebrew comes from her. And her husband, Rav Avia Hacohen was my Torah and Tanach teacher - and again, much of my love of learning the Bible derives from his teaching.

May the memory of Rav Breuer be a blessing, and may his family be comforted in the building of Tzion.