[Avodah] How Bitter Can A Month Be? Bittersweet.

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 03:39:13PM -0400, R Wolberg wrote:
: The month of Cheshvan is also referred to as "Mar-Cheshvan."...

The original name of the month is Marcheshvan, give or take some vowels
-- probably Merachshevan. Akkadian roots differ from Hebrew in that the
roles of /n/ and the semivowels /v/ and /y/ switch. So, merach would
be yareiach in Hebrew, and shevan would be shemini -- IOW, it's simply
"eight month", October.

Mar+cheshvan is a medieval midrashic folk-etymology, and not what the
Babylonians meant.

: The bitterness of Cheshvan is like the bitter wood of Moshe's tree and it
: will make the seemingly impossible, possible, the undoable, doable, and the
: non-functional, functional.

Nice vort, though.

Tishrei is Yerach ha'Eisanim, but the month of religious giants is
followed by the only month entirely of regular days. There's a lesson
there, I'm not sure what yet.

Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A wise man is careful during the Purim banquet
micha at aishdas.org        about things most people don't watch even on
http://www.aishdas.org   Yom Kippur.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rabbi Israel Salanter