BONE-jour, Rashi!

Jeremiah 50:17:

“Israel is a scattered sheep, the lions have driven him away; first the king of Assyria hath devoured him, and last this Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.”

The translation here is according to JPS. The Hebrew word for “hath broken his bones” is עִצְּמוֹ (itzemo). It is important to point out that this translation is a rather loose one.

The word עִצְּמוֹ is based on the root עצמ, which spells the word etzem, meaning “bone.” The ו (“o”) ending means “him,” and the vowels indicate the verb form meaning “he performed this verb.” All together, עִצְּמוֹ means, literally, “he boned him.” What does “bone” mean as a verb?

In English, to bone is sometimes expressed as to “de-bone,” as in, to remove the bone from the flesh. It does NOT mean to break the bones.

Indeed this is exactly how Rashi defines this term: “He stripped his bones bare.” Then Rashi offers this French translation: דישושא”ר.

Guessing at a transliteration, I punched a few tries into Google Translate, eventually trying “desoser.” Google Translate suggested “désosser.” I tried that and found that it is a verb meaning to “bone,” defined as to “remove the bones from (meat or fish).”

Accordingly, we should adjust the translation of the verse as follows:

“Israel is a scattered sheep, the lions have driven him away; first the king of Assyria hath devoured him, and last this Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath stripped bare his bones.”

Peripherally, according to my theory that Rashi offers foreign translations not for the sake of translation but to show a linguistic link to the Hebrew, how is this the case here?

Turns out the French root of désosser is “os,” meaning bone. As such, it appears it derives from the Hebrew root עצמ meaning bone. The Hebrew letter ע (ayin) is the equivalent of the Latin letter O — it shares the same place in the alphabet (preceding P or פ — peh), and acts like a vowel. The second root letter, צ (tzadi), while pronounced by Ashkenazic Jews like the Z sound in “pizza,” is pronounced in other communities (such as Sephardic Jews) as an S sound. Hence, the “os” root is itself rooted in the Hebrew root for bone. (Even the last letter of the Hebrew root, מ, is an extremely flexible letter in Hebrew and is often dropped from the final form of a word.)

Bone-appetit! Hope you found this post to be OS’M.

A Forque in the Road

Jeremiah 50:2:

“Declare ye among the nations and announce, and set up a standard…”

The translation is from JPS.

The Hebrew word for “standard” here is נס (nes).

The English word “standard” is being used here in a manner that is not up to date with today’s spoken American English, so some definition is in order. (You might say it’s a “non-standard” usage. See what I did there?)

Here, “standard” means “an object that is supported in an upright position, in particular: a military or ceremonial flag carried on a pole or hoisted on a rope” (Google).

Rashi translates nes as פורק”א, and describes it as “a sign for gathering.” What is this word?

Guessing “forque” as a transliteration, I searched that in Google and found, according to Wiktionary, that “forque” was indeed an Old Northern French word derived from the Latin “furca” meaning “gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke.” It could also mean “pitchfork” or “forked stake,” and is the origin of the English “fork.”

Does God Eat?

Just as the soul of man remains connected to his body through eating and drinking, without which [the soul] would disengage and depart from the body, so too, God decreed that the connection of His Essence to the universe… in order to establish and uphold it, would depend upon the involvement of the Treasured Nation (Israel) in Torah study, the performance of the commandments, and their service in prayer. Without this, God would disengage His essence from the universe, and at once it would revert completely to absolute nothingness…

-Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, Nefesh haChayim, Gate II, Ch. 6

“Respect” for Rashi

We just finished commemorating Tishah b’Av, when the Holy Temple was destroyed.

The stories in the Talmud relating the events surrounding the destruction (Gitin 55-57) are a popular choice of study on this day.

The Talmud says: “Because of shaka d’rispak, Beitar was destroyed.” What is “shaka d’rispak”? Rashi defines shaka as a “side” (דופן) and rispak as a “women’s chariot” (Heb. מרכבת נשים), so collectively shaka d’rispak means the side of a women’s chariot. Rashi also offers a translation of rispak as ריטוג”א in German. Phonetically, this would appear to be “rituga,” but there is no German word resembling that that I could immediately discover.

So I went to Google translate and tried translating “chariot” into German. I got “Streitwagen.” That didn’t seem right, but then I looked closer and realized that if the “St” part was eliminated, the word would be “reitwagen,” and would actually be quite close to Rashi’s word. The “Reit” part is ריט, and the “wagen” part is “וגא,” leaving only the “n” sound missing. But is a “reitwagen” a thing? As it turns out, yes! It means “riding-wagon” in Middle High German, the language spoken in Germany during (and after) Rashi’s lifetime.

The etymology for “wagen,” incidentally, is derived from “vega,” meaning “way.”

The next part of the mystery is why this is a “women’s chariot” specifically. So I investigated ancient modes of transportation for women and found that there was a type of carriage called a “litter” or “basternum” in which wealthy women were carried by human servants or on the backs of animals (like the mule). The context of the Talmudic passage concerns the daughter of a Roman official, so this would make sense.

I looked up “rispak” in Jastrow’s Dictionary of the Talmud, and he references to another word, “dispak,” which he defines as “litter,” as above.

I’m not sure why Jastrow changes rispak to dispak, but I’m gonna hazard my own guess as to its etymology. Bear with me.

Rispak is very similar to the English word “respect.” I researched the etymology of this word and found that it derives from the Latin verb “respicere” meaning to regard or “look back” at. “Re” means “again” and the SPC root means to look, as in “spectacle,” “spectator,” etc. Hence to “respect” means to look at something with particular regard. Since these vehicles were designed to carry wealthy individuals, to whom others were meant to look with regard, they may have gotten their name from this verb.

If “dispak” is the correct version, this may be a combination of the same SPC verb with the prefix “de” or “dis,” meaning to undo or reverse something. So then this would mean a vehicle designed to obscure the rider from the observer, as these carriages would often have curtains or be closed off to prevent the eyes of commoners from seeing the occupant.

Incidentally, I have a theory that Rashi offers foreign language equivalents of certain words in the text when he wishes to show a linguistic connection or origin, not just a translation. Here, ריטוג”א as the German counterpart for “rispak” works as follows: ריט derives from ריס, as the “t” and “s” sounds interchange, the ו (“v” sound) interchanges with the פ (“p” or “f” sound) and the ג (“g” sound) interchanges with the ק (“k” sound). Hence ריספק to ריטוג”א.

The context of the story in the Talmud is as follows: The Caesar’s daughter was passing the city of Beitar in a rispak, when the “shaka” of the rispak broke. The people of Beitar had a custom to plant certain trees when a boy or girl was born, then, when a boy and girl grew up and married, they used the wood from their respective trees to build their chupah. When the shaka broke, the servants of The Caesar’s daughter cut down one of these trees to use its wood for the carriage. The people of Beitar became incensed and attacked the Caesar’s daughter and their attendants. The Emperor avenged himself upon the city of Beitar, massacring its inhabitants.

From the story, and based upon our exploration above, it would seem that the “shaka,” or “side” of the rispak, may have been one of the poles used to carry it.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

Prayer shouldn’t be a shopping list

After explaining that the ultimate intent of tefillah (prayer) is to cause the Almighty’s divine light to shine upon the earth and thereby repair it in through the establishment of His Kingship (see this post), Nefesh haChayim (Gate II, Ch. 11) goes on to explain what prayer ought not to be:

Though the Talmud (Sandhedrin 8A) teaches that an individual may insert their own words into their prayer concerning their personal needs and troubles, within the blessing related to that particular matter, even in doing so, one’s ultimate intent should not be to address one’s own trouble [rather to increase the glory of the Almighty by removing this evil], and this is not the proper path for those who are upright in their hearts.

Porcelain Gods

In Yesterday’s post I shared from Nefesh haChayim the reason our bodies produce physical waste, that is, that most foods have a component that nourishes the spirit, and elements that do not. The body absorbs that which nourishes and excretes the rest. As a result, the generation that ate manna in the desert did not “go to the bathroom” since the manna from heaven was all nourishing.

Nefesh haChayim goes on to explain the connection between this concept and the worship of the idol known as Baal Peor. According to our traditional sources, Baal Peor was worship by performing one’s bathroom functions onto the idol. What is the reason for this bizarre (and disgusting) practice? How could this be a form of worship?

According to the above, however, the answer is understandable. The physical waste of the body represents everything that is completely of this physical world with no spiritual connection, no connection to the soul. Those who worshipped Baal Peor engaged in the most extreme form of hedonism, indulging the body only, with no limitations of the soul, no connection to God, no obeisance to a Higher Power. That is why those who worshipped Baal Peor (the daughters of Midyan) engaged in immoral sexuality and seduced the Israelites to do the same. They worshipped only the physical, with no spiritual component. So their form of worship involved the act revolving around that substance that has no spiritual component — excrement.

Bathrooms in the Desert?

Nefesh haChayim, by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin זצ”ל, the principle disciple of the Vilna Gaon זצ”ל, states as follows:

Food for the body, if it is not good, and not acceptable to the body, does not sustain the body, but rather becomes waste and filth and excrement inside the body, and also weakens and tires the entire body, for because of this bad food, the energy of the spirit does not spread through the body properly, and sometimes the body becomes ill as a result. So too the actions that are not good or desirable, God forbid, become like the waste and filth of the spiritual worlds, strengthening the impure forces and kelipoth (‘coverings,’ like darkness shrouding spiritual light and goodness) — may the Merciful One save us from this.

Footnote 27 of the edition published by Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rubin ז”ל (the footnotes were written by him) adds:

Everything a man eats contains sustenance from above… Once the body is sustained by the life-giving elements of the food, the remainder which contains no sustenance at all is purged from the body. Therefore, the Generation of the Desert, who ate the manna, did not excrete any waste, for the manna could be completely metabolized with no leftover waste. But other foods, after the life-giving part is separated out to sustain the man, the waste is excreted devoid of any sustenance.