[Avodah] yaroq

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 10:47:14AM +0200, Eli Turkel wrote:
: In modern Hebrew yaroq is Green. Does anyone have any sources that
: discuss what yaroq could have been in the gemara?

Well, looking at the origin of the word, before the time you're talking
about, yaroq is the color of yeraqos or yeraqos are those things you
are busy with that are the classical yaroq.

"Esrog... vehayaroq kekarti"... (mishnah on Sukkah 34b) So, a karti,
generally translated a leek, is something R' Yehudah considers too yaroq
to be a good color for an esrog, but R' Meir makhshir.

But if you're checking what yaroq means, why should we take the
translation of karti for granted? Kartin are discussed in kelaim
repeatedly (eg 28b, 30b), they are grown in vegetable patches. So,
yereq - yeraqos still holds.

R' Yehudah's reason (31b) is because "lo gamar peira", so yaroq is the
color of unripe fruit.

"Kekarti" is also a description of very yeroqah on Chullin 47b. It's
a possible color for lungs, albeit abnormal ones. However, it's also a
possible color for a sick baby that needs to wait longer to get dam beris.
And a sotah would turn yaroq (top of Sotah 9a), although that may depend
on just how lemaalah min hateva her punishment was.

So, it would seem to me that yaroq also means a pale sickly yellow-green.
At least, in the context of people.


I'm thinking your asking this question might be related to our discussion
on tekheiles. And if not, the juxtaposition caused me to think about
it, anyway.

This latter definition (the sickly yellow-green of a sick person)
describes the color of the liquid as it is first extracted from
the murex. Which MIGHT be what Rashi is talking about when he says
(Shemos 25:4) that techeiles is "tzemer tzavua bedam chilazon vetzi'o
yaroq". Saying the tzeva of the "dam" is yaroq, and not the final
dye. Seems like a stretch -- why describe the dam rather than the dye? --
but Rashi also says the dye is the color of the sky (Bamidbar 15:41)
-- which isn't the color of leeks or unripe esrogim. (Nor of too many
babies that would survive until their berisim in the days before CPR
and defibrillators.)

More to the point, the gemara doesn't say that tekheiles is sapphire
blue. It says that it's like the sea, which is like the sky, which is
like sapphire which is like the kissei hakavod. Aqua isn't impossible,
nor is blue -- depending upon whether we mean the yam at Tel Aviv or
closer to Chaifa. But Rashi ad loc (Chullin 89a "shehatekheiles domeh
layam") says "shehachilazon min hayam, umar'is damo domeh layam" --
explicitly speaking of dam chilazon, not tekheiles itself!

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
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