[Avodah] Choshen

[Yitzhak Grossman]

[bcc'ing several people who may be interested in / able to shed some
light on this.]

On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:11:14 -0500
Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:

> rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:
> > I had my student look into it:
> > 
> > the meaning is unknown. bdb speculates it is from Arabic "beautiful", "an 
> > ornament"
> 
> A Hebrew word can't have come from Arabic.   It may be cognate to an
> Arabic word, both deriving from a common ancestor, but Arabic isn't old
> enough to have influenced Biblical Hebrew, or even Mishnaic Hebrew.

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"

http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/olam_hatanah/mefaresh.asp?book=2&perek=28&mefaresh=rashi

Knowing that RZS is generally right about such things, 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:

"u'pisron lo yizah ha'hoshen lo yimad [yud mem ayin daled] ha'hoshen,
ke'mashma'o be'lashon ha'Arvis ..."

Sefer Teshuovs Dunash ben Labrat (London-Edinburgh 1855) pp. 60-61

So he is merely saying that it is a cognate of the similar Arabic form,
and Rashi's rephrasing seems quite misleading.

[Incidentally, it is interesting that Rashi's grandson Rabbeinu Tam, in
his "Hachra'ah" to the above passage, rejects the interpretation of his
grandfather and Dunash.]

Yitzhak
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