[Avodah] Choshen

[T613K at aol.com]

From:  Yitzhak Grossman _celejar at gmail.com_ (mailto:celejar at gmail.com) 

> A Hebrew  word can't have come from Arabic.   It may be cognate to an
>  Arabic word, both deriving from a common ancestor.... [--RZS]

This  past Shabbas, my father happened to mention Rashi's comment on the
word  'yizah' (Shemos 28:28):

"lashon nituk, ve'lashon Arvi hu, ke'divrei  Dunash ben Labrat"



....I wondered: how
can Rashi claim that  this is an Arabic loan word, if Arabic was not yet
invented!  I  checked Dunash, and sure enough, that is *not* what he
actually  says:


....So he is merely saying that it is a cognate of the  similar Arabic 
form....




>>>>>
 
 
There are many places where Rashi seems to assume that not all the words in  
the Torah are Hebrew words, but that some are borrowed from other languages 
(or  are cognate to words in other languages).
 
Three examples of Rashi assuming certain words to have come from other  
languages (or to be cognate to words in other languages) come to  mind:
 
 
1. Bereishis 41:43   re Yosef, "Vayikra'u lefanav Avrech."   Rashi on the 
word "Avrech" quotes Targum, making it two words, Av Rech -- Father  (or Advisor) 
of the King.  Rashi goes on to say that in Aramaic (some texts  have 
"beloshon Romi" i.e., in Latin) the word "Rech" means king.  Cf the  word "Rex" which 
is "king" in Latin.
 
2. Devarim 6:8 "Vehayu letotafos bein einecha" -- Rashi says that they're  
called totafos because there are four parshios, and "Tat" beKaspi shetayim,  
"Pas" beAfriki shetayim -- i.e, Tat is "two" in the Caspian language and Pas is  
"two" in the African language, and two plus two makes four.
 
3. Devarim 3:9 (not as good an example, because here the pasuk itself  /says/ 
that it's not a Hebrew word): "Tzidonim yikra'u leChermon 'Sirion'  
veha'Emori yikra'u lo 'Senir' " where Rashi says that the Emori called Mt.  Chermon by 
the name "Senir" because it has snow on it and "Senir hu  sheleg beloshon 
Ashkenaz" i.e., Senir is snow in German.  (ArtScroll  has a note that in modern 
German the word for snow is "schnee" but that old  German may have had an "r" at 
the end of the word.)
 
Personally I don't find any of Rashi's etymologies convincing but what I do  
find fascinating is the fact that Rashi had this linguistic interest and  
curiosity, had at least a passing familiarity with a number of languages, that  he 
was intellectually curious enough to seek out the meanings of words in the  
Torah by reference to other languages, and that he was quite comfortable with  
the idea that some words in the Torah were foreign words and not Hebrew.   To 
add a little editorial of my own here, I will say that one of the  things that 
make Rashi so delightful is this intellectual  curiosity and the way he picks 
up facts and stories and bits of  information from here, there and everywhere 
and weaves them into his commentary  with this sort of fresh-eyed wonder and 
openness.
 

--Toby  Katz
==========

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