<html><br> <br><br> <br> The following is probably more for Areivim than for Avodah, since it relates to language rather than halacha or hashkafa, but it is in response to a comment made on Avodah.<br><br> RYaakov Shachter writes: <br><br><One does not properly speak of xalav `akum, or of xalav yisrael. It is xalev `akum (the milk of an idolater) and xalev yisrael (the milk of a Jew). "Xalav" means "milk"; "xalev" means "the milk of", as in, "lo thvashel gdi baxalev immo", do not cook a kid in the milk of his mother.<br><br><If a Jewish man says "xalav yisrael", it is not just a matter of his never having been taught to speak Hebrew properly. That is his parents' fault, not his. But the above-cited words appear three times in the Torah, in Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21. That means that a Jewish man, unless he converted to Judaism in adulthood, has read those words at least six times a year since he was 13 years old. If he can read those words six times a year since he was 13 years old, and still say, "xalav yisrael", it means he is a man who can read the Torah without paying attention to what he is reading."<br><br> I would agree with his point if the speaker were talking Hebrew, whether l'shon kodesh or its modern-day Israeli (distant) cousin (though I would say "chaleiv" rather than "chalev," since the word has a tzeire, not a segol). <br><br> However, when one is speaking English or Yiddish, the situation is different. The term, in those languages, may be _derived_ from the Hebrew, but its correct form in those languages is cholov, not chaleiv. <br><br> This is true of many terms which have worked their way from Hebrew to other languages. For instance, the plural of Shabbos, in Yiddish, is Shabbosim, not Shabbasos. The word for "holiday" is "yuntef," not "yom tov," (and its plural is yontoivim), which is why the greeting "Gut yontef" is not "good good day," but "good holiday." It is why it is not incorrect to speak about a "bal korey," and why it would be wrong to insist that it be "ba'al k'ria" (which, parenthetically, is only a few centuries old even in Hebrew, where the proper term, if one wishes to be pedantic, is "korei," since the use of "ba'al" as "one who performs" is a borrowing from its original "owner of" or "master of"). Does one correct an English speaker when he refers to someone as a behemoth, because in the Hebrew from which it was taken "behemoth" is plural?<br><br>He continues:<br><br>< . . . "xalev `akum" is not the correct term. It is an incorrect term, which appears in our texts because of non-Jewish censors. Our texts contain some disparaging statements about non-Jews. Because of those disparaging statements, non-Jewish censors forced us to change the word "nokhri" (Gentile) in our texts to the acronym "`akum" (literally, one who worships the stars and planets -- it is a legal term that denotes an idolater). In this way, the non-Jewish censors, who did not think of themselves as idolaters, satisfied themselves that none of the disparaging statements were<br>about them.<br><br>(snip)<br><br>< Therefore, the term "xalev `akum" is clearly wrong, and it is the worst kind of wrong, the kind of wrong that can lead people to making incorrect conclusions about halakha, and it must therefore be corrected, in public, whenever it is heard. The correct term is "xalev nokhri" (and, mutatis mutandis, path nokhri, gvinath nokhri).><br><br> The term "akum" for non-Jew has a hetteir meiah rabbanim -- many more than 100 g'dolei hapos'kim have referred, and continue to refer, to the non-Jew as "akum," in speech as well as in writing. It has been used for so long that I doubt there is anyone who considers the idolatrous connotation of the term when he uses it; when he wants to specify idoaters, he uses "ov'dei avoda zara," not "akum." I assume that the word "goy" for non-Jew is also not in the original, yet we continue to say "shelo asani goy," not "shelo asani nochri." There is thus nothing wrong in referring to chaleiv akum, or -- when not speaking Hebrew -- to chalav akum.<br><br> Speaking of censors and akum, there were censors who were very careful to replace "goy" by "akum." As a result, there was a siddur printed which read "Shomer akum echad, sh'mor sh'eiris akum echad, v'al yovad akum echad," and "umi k'amcha Yisraeil akum echad ba'aretz."<br><br>EMT<br><br><br> </html>
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