The Many Names Of Moshe Rabbeinu
Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz (1902-1979) explains that each of Moses’ ten names reflects a different facet of his personality and teaches us something different about his greatness.
The Year of Seven (Part II)
Another word related to both sheviit and sheva is shavua, but this word bears two distinct meanings in both Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew.
Hebron: The City Of Four And More
Kiryat Arba is an older name for the city of Hebron (Josh. 14:15, Jud. 1:10). It means “City of Four” or “Tetrapolis.” But what does Hebron have to do with the number four?
Learning The Ropes
In this passage, three different words are used for “rope” or “string”: chevel, tikvah, and chut. This essay attempts to trace the etymology of those words, seeking to clarify exactly how they relate to one another.
Purim: Words For Wine (Part II)
Rabbi Avraham Bedersi in Chotam Tochnit points out that in rabbinic usage, the term shechar clearly refers to some drink other than wine.
Of Thorns and Thistles (Part I)
The famous Burning Bush where Hashem introduced Himself to Moses was called a sneh, and that word appears a total of six times in the Bible.
My Husband, My Man
The word baal not only means husband, but was the name of the chief deity of the Canaanite pantheon. Throughout the Bible, the Jews dallied with Baal-worship, and many of the prophets endeavored to break the Jews of that idolatrous habit.
Laws And Orders
Classical writing requires ink and paper, which are technically separable. In engraving, the material being engraved becomes the writing.
Jacob’s Three Names
How do we know that Yeshurun is Yaakov? One place where the equivalence is clear is a passage recited before the morning prayers.
Names For The Netherworld
Rabbi Pappenheim maintains that “hayaven” is derived from the root yud-nun, which means trickery or deception.
Calling The Defender
A meilitz yosher is a defender who emphasizes a person’s good and “straight” deeds, while a prosecutor emphasizes a person’s evil and criminal deeds.
The Many Shades Of Purple
Explaining argaman as red does not preclude explaining argaman as orange, for orange is a shade of red mixed with yellow.
Purim: Words For Wine (Part I)
Although some Bible scholars claim that tirosh is an archaic Hebrew word for wine that was later replaced with the more modern word yayin in the Bible, this explanation does not really account for the difference between the two terms and why the newer term did not just completely replace the older term.
A Shekel For A Sela
The Mishnah itself implies that the sela coin is what the Bible calls a shekel, because the Mishnah uses the word sela in the same contexts in which the Bible uses the word shekel.
Five Ways To Be Silent
A fourth word for quiet is “hass.” This verb means making others quiet (i.e., hushing them). The etymology of this word might be an onomatopoeic adaptation of the sound used to quiet others (like “shh…”).
The Year Of Slipping Away (Part I)
How does the literal meaning of “slipping away” relate back to laws of the sabbatical year?
Forms Of Forgiveness
“Selichah” also refers to a type of liturgical poem, or piyut, characterized by begging for forgiveness.
Bovine Words: Cows And Cowboys
In Hebrew, an egel is a male calf, while an eglah is a female calf. Calves are immature bovines that rely on their mother’s milk to survive and grow.
Karet And Ariri
The Torah refers to a punishment that seems identical, or similar to, karet with the word "ariri."
Big Fish, Little Fish, Boy Fish, Girl Fish
According to the explanation that dag means “male fish” while dagah means “female fish,” it is hard to understand why the Jews in Egypt would have specifically eaten female fish and why the Plague of Blood would have only killed female fish.
The Fourth Dimension
Some Jews have a custom to greet others on the first night of Rosh Hashanah with the words “Le’shanah tova tei’katev ve’tei’chatem le’alter le’chaim tovim u’le’shalom.
A Word By Any Other Name
Rabbi Shlomo Zalman of Hanau writes that the word teivah means "box, chest" and refers to the written word because books that contain written words are stored in a teivah.
Of Thorns And Thistles (Part II)
Now that we’ve seen the entire list, we can better appreciate a comment that Rashi made off the cuff.
The Beautiful Citron
In Modern Hebrew, the term hadar was redefined to refer to the entire citrus genus. This includes all sorts of citrus fruits, like oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, tangerines, pomelos, kumquats, mandarins, clementines, and more.
The Sickle And The Grim Reaper
Israeli archaeologist Dr. Shmuel Yeivin (1896-1982) writes that some scholars have proposed that “chermesh” is a “sickle” while “magal” is a larger “scythe.”
Is It A Book Or Is It A Scroll? (Part I)
We begin our discussion with an insightful analysis of the word sefer, the generic term applied to the 24 books of the Bible (although some books are described as a megillah).
My Dear Deer
The Land of Israel is often called the desired land: “eretz chefetz” (Malachi 3:12), “eretz chemdah” (Jeremiah 3:19, Zecharia 7:14, Psalms 106:24), and “eretz ha’tzvi” (Daniel 11:16, 11:41).
An Utter Embarrassment
According to Rabbi Bedersi, klimah is the most intense type of embarrassment: it results from somebody doing something that he was not supposed to do, or somebody being called out for his misdeeds.
The Shofar’s Horn
When monies are invested into a potential endeavor, the undertaking can go in one of two possible directions – the principal can be lost, or it can produce profit.
That’s A Flogging
He argues that "malkut" only denotes physical hitting while "makkot" denotes any sort of painful ordeal.