Isn’t it odd how
wine - an intoxicating beverage that was traditionally
made by people crushing grapes with their feet
- became Judaism’s tool for marking the sanctification
of Shabbat? Or for ushering in the new year, as
we do on Rosh Ha-Shana?
Well, this tradition is not anchored in sanctity.
Wine had no sacred attributes in the early days
of the Second Temple (6th century BCE), when it
was first used for Friday night Kiddush. The reason
for using wine was simply that every festive meal
at that time began with a cup of wine. With time,
wine became associated with the occasions that
it was used to mark: Shabbat, holidays, circumcision
ceremonies and weddings. In other words, it became
associated with the function for which it was
ceremoniously used. It went through a historical
process of sanctification.
Kiddush (sanctification) comes from the familiar
root k.d.sh., which gave us many words that denote
sanctity and holiness. Something that is holy
is kadosh. We all know the Jewish liturgy’s holy-trinity
“kadosh, kadosh, kadosh,” which we recite in the
morning prayer while lifting our heels. It is
taken from Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 1 (“Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.”) Obviously,
we all know the Kaddish (holy in Aramaic), perhaps
the best known Jewish prayer, a mixture of Hebrew
and Aramaic, used to mourn the dead.
And what is more holy than the mikdash or beit
ha-mikdash (the holy Temple in Jerusalem)? But
there is more: kidushin is (holy) matrimony. When
the groom slides the wedding band on his bride’s
finger, he says “harei at mekudeshet li” (“behold
you are sanctified, to me,” meaning: “you are
betrothed to me.”)
What happened to k.d.sh. in modern Hebrew is
emblematic of the revival of Hebrew, the biblical
language that has been dormant for two thousand
of years and often referred to as the Sleeping
Beauty. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his Zionist friends,
the princes who gave leshon ha-kodesh (the holy
language) a wake up kiss, after so many years
of being used only in liturgy, didn’t take the
sleeping beauty to a castle to live happily ever
after. Instead, they put it to work as a very
secular everyday-language. They turned Sleeping
Beauty into Cinderella, if you will. Hebrew was
secularized and so was its holiest root, k.d.sh.
The word hakdashah was coined to denote a dedication
(of a book, or other objects, to someone), and
the verb kidesh (Kiddush is its infinitive) was
used also to denote justifying (as in “the end
justifies the means”).
There are other examples of secularization in
modern Hebrew. Perhaps the most distinctive is
the word heikhal, which in biblical Hebrew was
another word used for the Temple in Jerusalem.
In modern Hebrew it is used to denote any big
hall or fancy edifice. Tel-Aviv’s big indoor stadium
is heikhal ha-sport, a large bridal beauty-salon
is heikhal ha-kalah, and a wine-tasting hall at
a kibbutz near Jerusalem is heikhal ha-yayin.
Cheers, Lehayim!
December
2005: The Root N.U.R. (click for Hebrew)
American Jews light menorahs on Hanukkah. Israeli
Jews don’t. They light hanukkiyot (plural of hanukkiya).
On both sides of the Atlantic we use the same
nine (eight plus shamash) branchedd candelabras.
But there is a linguistic difference. And always
with Hebrew, it goes back to biblical times. The
biblical menorah was the seven-branched candelabrum
that was used in the Temple and became the symbol
of Judaism and the Jewish state. This was the
same light- fixture that by virtue of the Hanukkah
miracle was lit with a little bit of oil for eight
whole days. But because Jewish law forbids making
replicas of the original holy menorah, the one
used for Hanukkah was made with eight branches.
More than a hundred years ago, the pioneers of
modern Hebrew sought a way to distinguish between
the Temple menorah and the one used for Hanukkah.
Curiously, it wasn’t the famous reviver of the
Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who came
up with Hanukkah’s hanukkiyah, but his wife, Hemda.
Menorah didn’t just stay as a memento from the
ruined Temple. It is used in modern Hebrew not
just to denote the biblical fixture, but to denote
any light fixture, whether it works on oil, gas
or electricity.
The root n.u.r. is ubiquitous in Semitic languages
to denote “light” or “fire.” The word nur, in
Aramaic and ancient Hebrew, means fire. And zikukin
di-nur, an Aramaic phrase, is fireworks in modern
Hebrew. In Arabic, nur is light. You may remember
Jordan’s Queen Nur, or Nur al-Hussein, “the light
of Hussein,” the late Jordanian monarch.
This luminous root has given Hebrew several other
important words. What we screw on to the electrical
menorah are nurot (plural of nura), light bulbs.
Nurit is a tiny light bulb. It’s also a name of
a red flower (Ranunculus), which looks as if it’s
on fire. Nurit is a popular girls’ name in Israel.
The noun nur was invented in the IDF, one of the
most prolific workshops of modern Hebrew, to denote
a military flare.
And last but not least, the most recognizable
word derived from this root is what we all light
in our hanukkiyot: nerot (plural of ner), candles
of course.
When I was in the IDF, an urgent cable that one
military unit sent to another was called ner.
I kept wondering: what does an urgent message
have to do with a slow-burning candle? Nothing
was the answer. It turned out that these cables
were originally sent on forms believed to be left
over by the British mandate in Palestine, which
carried the English letters Nr (short for number).
That’s how number turned into ner. So what’s the
number of nerot in the Hanukkah menorah?
October
2005: B’khirot - Elections (click for Hebrew)
Politikids
by Avi Katz
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Elections in Hebrew are b’khirot. The word was
formed in a process typical to modern languages,
known as loan-translation or calque: the introduction
of a word or an expression into one language by
translating it from another. A classical example
is the controversial loan-translation of the German
Übermensch, Friedrich Nietzsche's term for
the ideal superior man, into Superman in English.
Most loan-translations in modern Hebrew are expressions
or idioms, such as iskat khavilah (package deal)
ktzar re’iyah (short sighted) milkhamah karah
(cold war) or sikat bitakhon (safety pin). Bkhirot
is a different kind of loan-translation. Here,
what Hebrew loaned from English is merely the
plural form.
The singular – b’khirah – was used in the Talmud
and in medieval Hebrew to denote a decision made
to pick or select something or someone for a certain
function. Now, in modern Hebrew, it is also used
to denote choice – the personal choices that people
make.
In religious texts the root b.kh.r. (bet, khet,
resh) is mostly associated with the choice made
not by man but by the Almighty: his choosing the
Chosen People (am ha-b’khirah). We acknowledge
that every Shabbat when we recite, in the Kiddush:
“ki vanu bakharta ve-otanu kidashta mi-kol ha’amim”
(“For you have chosen us and sanctified us out
of all the nations”).
In the Bible, the word bakhur is used to denote
a young man, usually one who was chosen or selected
for military service. King Saul, the bible tells
us, was “bakhur va-tov,” or a choice, good man
(Samuel II, ch. 9 v. 2). Later, bakhur was used
to denote any young man, and in modern Hebrew
bakhurah was derived from it to refer to a young
woman.
You probably know other modern Hebrew words that
are derived from this root. Such as Nivkheret,
a sports group of chosen athletes. The Israeli
national team (in soccer, basketball etc.) is
nivkheret le’umit. Or the adjective Muvkhar, selected,
as in: top quality or very best (pralinim muvkharim
are selected pralines). Or the noun Nivkhar, an
elected official. Beit ha-nivkharim is a parliament.
That is the term used to refer to the U.S. House
of Representatives.
So who runs for the Israeli parliament? Ask any
Israeli and the resentful reply would be: politika’im,
politicians. Oddly, there is no Hebrew word for
politics. We just say politikah. Policy is mediniyut,
and medina’i is a statesman. But how Israeli politicians
are considered to be statesmen by voters? Regrettably,
not even a select handful among the chosen ones.
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