[Avodah] V'al HaPurkan

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha Berger wrote:

> The shoresh is found in Hebrew too. E.g. Bereishis 27:40, "ufaraqra
> ulo mei'al tzavarekha". Or Shemos 32:2 "Vayomer eilehem Aharon:
> pirqu nizmei hazahav...." (also pesuqim 3 and 24), and I'm sure
> your concordance shows more occurances of the shoresh.
>
> The binyan might be the same as "shulchan", I don't know. But the
> consonant clustering is shared.

Those examples all have the meaning of "perek", to divide, which is very different from "purkan"'s meaning of "yeshuah". But on the other hand, "shalach" and "shulchan" have pretty different meanings too.

Note the word "prook", in Daniel 4:24, which is an otherwise overwhelmingly (totally?) Aramaic sefer, translated by ArtScroll as "redeem". Perhaps the analogy to "shuchan" is misleading, and "purkan" really is Aramaic.

In any case, I do still have a response to R' Allan Engel, who opened the thread with:

> If so, what is it doing (twice) in the otherwise entirely Hebrew
> Al Hanissim?

If it turns out that "purkan" is indeed Aramaic, it would not be the only example of a foreign word appearing in the Shemoneh Esreh: Note the appearance of the Latin "legions" in Nachem for Tish'a B'Av.

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
53 Year Old Mom Looks 33
The Stunning Results of Her Wrinkle Trick Has Botox Doctors Worried
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/4ef9a73432e77eaf66cst04vuc