Avodah Mailing List

Volume 43: Number 65

Tue, 28 Oct 2025

• 1. Names in Aramaic and other languages (Akiva Miller)
• 2. mugmar bkeilim (Joel Rich)
• 3. ben sorer et al (Joel Rich)
• 4. Re: Names in Aramaic and other languages (Akiva Miller)
• 5. Par He'elem Davar - Poetic Justics (Micha Berger)
• 6. 1960 de Sola Pool Edition of the RCA Shabbat and Yom Tov Siddur (Aryeh Frimer)
• 7. Trick or treat? (Joel Rich)
• 8. simchat torah (Joel Rich)
• 9. Re: 1960 de Sola Pool Edition of the RCA Shabbat and Yom Tov Siddur (Saul Guberman)

.
[My questions here are more linguistic, and less Torah, so I considered
posting this to Areivim. But I'm hoping for responses that are based on
Onkelos' translation style, so that's why I'm sending it to Avodah.]

In my learning of Onkelos, I have noticed that it is not unusual for a
place to have one name in Hebrew, and a seemingly unrelated name in
Aramaic. The most common example, I think, is Kadesh, which is consistently
translated as R'kam (Bereshis 16:14, Bamidbar 20:1, and elsewhere). But
there are many other examples, like Ar, which is translated into Aramaic as
L'chayas (Bamidbar 21:15, Devarim 2:9, and elsewhere).

This did not really surprise me. This phenomenon is not exclusive to
Hebrew/Aramaic. After all, Germany, Allemagne, Deutschland, N?metorsz?g and
Ashkenaz all refer to the same place, but they don't have any connection
which is obvious to this layman.

I began to wonder if this also happens with names of *people*. Is there any
person in the Torah whose name is vastly different in Onkelos?

I do not recall seeing any examples of such people. But then I realized
that this too is universal. The world accepts the idea of different names
for places, but people don't seem to accept anything beyond minor
pronunciation adaptations. Moshe/Moses, Carlos/Charles, and Ya'akov/Yankef
are all seen as variants of the same name, *not* as translations. Does
anyone know of exceptions to this rule? Can anyone give me examples (in
Hebrew, Aramaic, or any other language) of translated names which are
totally unrelated?

I asked this of my local AI, and the best it offered was Christopher
Columbus / Crist?bal Col?n, which seem too closely related in my opinion.
At first, I thought that Jacob/Santiago might be what I'm looking for, but
a bit of research revealed that Santiago is a shortening of the Latin
"Sanctus Iacobus". Yaakov/James are also related, once I remembered how the
Y and J sounds are often exchanged, as well as B and M.

Akiva Miller

Postscript:

All the above has been on my mind for a few years, but yesterday I came
across an anomaly which might count as "the exception that proves the
rule." Bereshis 10:6 reads: "Uvnay Cham - Kush, UMitzrayim, UFut,
UCh'naan." Onkelos copies it exactly, not changing even one vowel.
ArtScroll translates it to English as, "The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim,
Put, and Canaan." Most of my other English translations were similar, the
only differences being transliteration style (Mizraim/Mitzrayim, Ham/Cham)
and editorial style (sons/descendants; leave out all those vavs, or render
as "and"). The anomaly I found was in the "Michaan Edition" of the Chumash,
published by Chabad/Kehot, which gives this pasuk as: "The sons of Ham were
Kush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan."

I was stunned. Egypt is the translation of the *place* Mitzrayim, but is it
a legitimate translation of the person's name? It turns out that Michaan is
not the only translation to make this choice. BibleHub is a very convenient
website to see a variety of English translations (almost all non-Jewish)
for a single pasuk. https://biblehub.com/genesis/10-6.htm gives 26
translators who chose "Mizraim" (or some other transliteration), and a
surprising 6 who chose to translate this man's name as "Egypt".

Quite a few of Noach's descendants had names which are recognizable to us
as countries: Cush, Canaan, Ashur, Aram, and others. But it seems that only
the land of Mitzrayim (and possibly Ashkenaz?) has different names in other
languages. It's entirely possible that there are others, but I don't see
them because I know very little beyond English and Hebrew. If anyone can
give other examples, I'd like to hear about it.
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Does anybody know historically when mugmar was used to perfume clothes, was
it a one time thing for when they were sold or was it an ongoing thing done
every so often for people to  perfume their clothes?
KT
Joel Rich
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Has anyone heard a good explanation as to why the gemara sanhedrin does not
say that the argument is resolved by the fact that there is testimony that
each case (ben sorer, bayit hamenuga) did actually occur?
kt
joel rich
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.
This is a follow-up to my post of about 7 hours ago.

I suddenly realized that there are *many* people who use different names
depending on the language, country, or culture they are in.

In Megilas Ester: Hebrew: Hadassah, Persian: Esther
In the gospels: Hebrew: Shaul, Latin: Paul
At this keyboard: Hebrew: Akiva, English: Kenneth

But my question still stands: Do we see this anywhere in Onkelos?

Akiva Miller

Moshe Rabenu had ten names, but I'm not sure that they were differentiated
by language; they might have been titles or nicknames, and not relevant to
this thread. That's certainly true of Hoshea/Yehoshua, Yaakov/Yisrael, and
probably many others.
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Sitting in on a Daf Yomi Shiur (Zevachim 41a) Shabbos afternoon it hit me:

The Par He'elem Davar was brought when the public followed a mistaken
ruling on a matter that deOraisa is not spelled out black-and-white
in the Torah. (If the Sanhedrin erred on an obvious point, they
shouldn't have been listened to. What this says about "al yemin shehu
semol" is left as an exercise for the reader. VeDo"Q)

There is poetic justice in the fact that the verse describing it boils
down to "ditto", leaving all the laws to be derived from other qorbanos.

"He shall do with this bull just as is done with the [kohein gadol's]
bull of a [qorban] chatas; he shall do the same with it; kohein shall
thus make a kapparah for them, and they shall be forgiven."
                - Vayiqra 4:20, translation mine


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   greater vanity in others; it makes us vain,
Author: Widen Your Tent      in fact, of our modesty.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF            -Louis Kronenberger, writer (1904-1980)

Mechubadai,
      Is there someone on this list who has access to the de Sola Pool
      Edition of the RCA Shabbat and Yom Tov Siddur. I am interested in
      verifying whether R. De Sola Pool indeed translated  "Bar E-lohin" in
      Berikh Shmei as "Angel" or "Son of God".	 I vaguely remember he did
      the latter, and Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik was extremely upset. [ In
      this regard, See the Mesorat HaRav Rosh Hashana Machzor p. 395 note
      1, and Introductory material,  Hanhagot haRav, no. 57. p. Lv ]
              Kol Tuv
                  Aryeh



--------------------------------------------------
Professor Emeritus Aryeh A. Frimer
37 Hanassi Harishon
Rehovot 7630306, ISRAEL
E-mail (Preferred): Aryeh.Fri...@biu.ac.il
Cellphone: 972-54-7540761
Tel: 972-8-9473819/9470834
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryeh_Frimer
E-mail (alternate): Frim...@zahav.net.il



________________________________
Fro
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Interesting in C?M 267 we see that originally a middling identification
mark was considered sufficient to return a lost object. However, when
tricksters became more numerous, the court determined that it would require
witnesses as well.

It makes me wonder what caused the increase in tricksters and how perceived
permanent had the increase to be in order to have required such an
enactment. What were the causes? Could the causes be cultural, economic,
God-fearingness levels, or something else altogether. What was the trigger
event or level that made the court determine that this was a permanent
change that needed a permanent enactment? I don?t think anybody knows the
answer but this is a subset of a more general question about courts and
subjectivity and when to intervene in the system which had existed from har
sinai.


KT
Joel Rich
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The rama in o?c 149:1 says it?s a mitzvah to accompany the sefer torah back
to the aron. What mitzvah is it? at the end of the sif it records a minhag
to bring children in to kiss the torah. How old should they be and did they
just bring them in for this (and not for davening?)
kt
joel rich
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On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 7:57PM Aryeh Frimer via Avodah wrote:
>       Is there someone on this list who has access to the de Sola Pool
> Edition of the RCA Shabbat and Yom Tov Siddur. I am interested in verifying
> whether R. De Sola Pool indeed translated  "Bar E-lohin" in Berikh Shmei as
> "Angel" or "Son of God".   I vaguely remember he did the latter, and Rav
> Yosef Dov Soloveitchik was extremely upset....

Page 242 "a created being"


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