Joel M. Hoffman, PhD

This weekend, we will bake hamentaschen, dress up in costume, and read the Book of Esther (“The Megillah”) to celebrate the joyous holiday of Purim. According to verse 9:26 of that very book, we get the name “Purim” from the pur that was cast: “Therefore, they called these days `Purim’ after `pur.’” But while purim is the Hebrew plural of pur, pur itself is not a Hebrew word. For this reason, twice before in Esther, when pur is mentioned, we are told, “…pur, that is, the goral.” So a pur is a goral, but what is a goral?

In all likelihood, goral originally referred to a bunch of small pebbles or similar objects used to make decisions by chance: they would be cast down on the ground or put in a vessel of some sort, from which one would be drawn at random. (A similar practice, in which stones were placed in a helmet, is clearly documented from Homeric Greece. The Greek verb for casting these objects was ballo, from which we get our English word “ballot.”)

For example, in Leviticus 16, Aaron takes “two goats,” “a goral for God” and a “goral for Azazel.” Then the goat that God’s goral lands on is God’s goat, and the goat that Azazel’s goral lands on is Azazel’s goat; this latter goat is sent “to Azazel” in atonement. (Based on an ancient misunderstanding of the Hebrew “to Azazel,” a 1530 translation reads “to scape” instead of “to Azazel,” giving us the English phrase “scapegoat.”)

Other examples include Nehemiah (10:35): “we have cast the gorals to see who shall bring the wood offering.” In Psalms (22:17), the Psalmist laments that “they divvy up my clothes, casting a goral for my garments.” In Numbers 26, God tells Moses to divide up the land by goral. Joshua, too, draws a goral and uses it to apportion the land among the Israelites.

Goral later progressed to mean not only the item which was cast, but also that to which the victor was due. (And because real-estate was so often allocated by goral, goral also meant “real-estate” in particular.) In the meantime, presumably on the assumption that destiny or fate had something to do with who won, goral began to mean “destiny,” as well.

The English word “lot” followed exactly the same path, meaning at first a small (usually wooden) object used to make random decisions (as in “draw lots”) and then both what one received (for example, a “lot of land”) and what one is destined to receive (as in one’s “lot in life.”)

Up to this point in the story, a Hebrew goral is exactly an English “lot.”

But the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls frequently mention goral, using it to mean “group of people” or “followers.”

In “The Rule of the Community,” a document (technically referred to as “1QS”) that describes all aspects of life in the Qumran sect, God has a goral and Belial (God’s Qumranic foe) has a goral. The priests bless those in God’s goral with a version of the priestly benediction, whereas the Levites curse those in Belial’s goral (1QS 2:2-5).

The War Scroll (“1QM”), which describes the final battle between the forces of good (“light”) and the forces of evil (“darkness”) before the “end of days,” begins with the prediction that the first attack by the sons of light will be against the goral of the sons of darkness.

If this usage of goral is akin to the English expression “to throw one’s lot in with,” God’s goral are the people who chose God, not the people that God chose.

As for pur, the word probably comes from Akkadian, which has a root pur that means “real-estate lot,” and a similar-sounding root meaning “vessel.” Perhaps Akkadian real-estate lots, too, were allocated by drawing lots. (Ibn Ezra thought the word might be Persian, but while Persian has a word pur, it means “son.”)

By curious chance, the word pur, if it were Hebrew, would have to have come from the Hebrew root p.r.r, which means “to break into crumbs.” And so in addition to reflecting our choice in God and our ancient good fortune, our early-spring holiday’s name indirectly reflects the hamentaschen we use to celebrate it.

Which in the case of Purim is just the way the cookie crumbles.

Happy Purim.

By way of Haaretz:

For more than 1,000 years, when Hebrew speakers looked at the sky, they saw five planets — Hama (Mercury), Noga (Venus), Maadim (Mars), Tsedek (Jupiter) and Shabtai (Saturn). The five planets closest to earth all have ancient Hebrew names, some of them dating back to the time of the Talmud.

On the other hand, the two planets that are further away — Uranus and Neptune — were not known in ancient times, and are therefore referred to by these names in Hebrew, too. Now the Hebrew Language Academy is inviting the public to help choose Hebrew names for the solar system’s farthest flung planets.

Read more….

[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]

Numbers pop up in the most amazing places. Today we’ll look at a few. And we’ll start with one of the Hebrew words for “few,” because almost paradoxically it’s the plural of the word for “one.” One way to say “a few words” is milim ahadot, literally, “words ones.” While in the singular, “one” means “one,” in the plural it means “some.” Leave it to Hebrew to have a plural for “one.”

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[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]

What do apples, oranges and tomatoes have in common in Hebrew, as opposed to mangoes, bananas and carrots? Let’s find out. (Here’s a hint that won’t surprise you: The difference between the two groups has nothing to do with the foods themselves; it’s a matter of grammar.)

To get started, we look at a construction called smichut in Hebrew – literally, “closeness” – translated as “the construct” in English (creating the unfortunately alliterative phrase “construct construction”).

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[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]

It is not unusual to hear Israelis yelling “die!” at each other. That’s because, in Hebrew, dai literally means “enough,” and it’s a common way of telling someone “that’s enough already; now please quit it.” (Two American parents took their children to Israel for the year. One day the five-year-old daughter came home from her new Israeli school and reported that she’d learned a Hebrew word: dai. She reported “it means ‘stop fighting.’”)….

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