Photo Credit: Jewish Press<\/p>\n
Last week, we discussed two words for wall: chomah and kir. This week, we discuss four more: shur, cheil, chayitz, and kotel.<\/p>\n
Shur in the sense of wall only appears in a handful of places in the Bible (Genesis 49:22, II Samuel 22:30, Psalms 18:30, and possibly Jeremiah 5:10 and Job 24:11).<\/p>\n
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1740-1814) traces this word to the two-letter shin-reish, which means focal point. Thus shar\/sharer (umbilical cord), the focal point that connects a fetus to its mother; shor (ox) whose main strength lies in its torso, thus placing a focus on its navel area; shoresh (root), the focal point of a plants growth; yashar (straight), a straight line being the fastest and shortest way to reach a specific focal point; and shir (song), a poetic composition that centers around one specific point.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Pappenheim writes that shur in the sense of seeing (see Numbers 23:8 and Job 35:5) is also derived from the root shin-reish because, unlike the other senses, the sense of sight can focus on a specific point and is not forced to take in everything at once.<\/p>\n
Related words are teshurah (tribute), a special gift given to somebody who greets (i.e., sees) a dignitary, nesher (eagle), a bird that can see far distances, and sheirut (service), the duty of one who oversees his masters needs. (Alternatively, sheirut is called thus because a servant straightens out household affairs or remains straightforward and steadfast to his bosss wishes.)<\/p>\n
Rabbi Pappenheim suggests two ways of connecting shur in the sense of wall to the primary meaning of shin-reish:<\/p>\n
1) It is related to yashar and refers specifically to a straight wall (as opposed to a chomah, which encircles a city).<\/p>\n
2) It is related to shur (seeing) and refers to a tall wall that is used as a lookout post.<\/p>\n
Another word for wall is cheil. Rabbi Pappenheim writes that this word derives from the biliteral root chet-lammed, which denotes circular movement and the empty space within a circumscribed circle. Accordingly, he believes cheil means a short wall that surrounds a taller wall. The cheil thus creates an empty space between the two walls that serves as a sort of no-mans-land.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Pappenheim supports this explanation by citing the Mishnah (Middos 2:3), which refers to the space between the walls of the Temple Mount and the actual Temple building (i.e., the Womens Courtyard) as the cheil.<\/p>\n
The Talmud (Pesachim 86a) characterizes a chomah and a cheil as a shura and a barshura (a wall and the son of a wall), respectively. According to Rashi, a chomah is an exterior wall while a cheil is a shorter wall within the chomah (thus resembling a small son overshadowed by his bigger father).<\/p>\n
The Radak seems unsure whether a cheil is a wall outside a chomah or inside a chomah. He suggests that cheil perhaps doesnt mean wall altogether and denotes instead a moat on the outskirts of a chomah.<\/p>\n
Another word for wall, chayitz, is a hapax legomenon because it appears only once in the entire Bible (Ezekiel 13:10). Ibn Janach writes that the yud is in place of an additional tzadi, so its root is really chet-tzadi-tzadi, which means to partition. Rabbi Pappenheim understands chayitz to be an offshoot of the root chet-tzadi, which means dividing or splitting something into two parts.<\/p>\n
Other words derived from this root include chatzi (half), chazot (midday or midnight), chutz (outside\/exterior), and cheitz (arrow). Rabbi Pappenheim theorizes that chayitz specifically refers to a wall that divides one area\/domain into two and is thus synonymous with the Mishnaic mechitzah (see Bava Basra 1:1). However, Rabbi Moshe Zacuto (1625-1697) in Kol HaRamaz (to Sheviis 3:8) writes that chayitz specifically denotes a flimsy partition, while mechitzah can apply to any sort of partition or divider.<\/p>\n
Finally, we arrive at the word kotel. This word only appears three times in the Bible: once in Hebrew in Song of Songs (2:9) and twice as the Aramaic cognate ktal (Daniel 5:5 and Ezra 5:8). It more commonly appears in the Targumim as an Aramaic translation of kir (see, for example, the Targum to Leviticus 1:15 and Joshua 2:15).<\/p>\n
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Remembering The Wall (Part II) - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photo Credit: Jewish Press Last week, we discussed two words for wall: chomah and kir. This week, we discuss four more: shur, cheil, chayitz, and kotel. Shur in the sense of wall only appears in a handful of places in the Bible (Genesis 49:22, II Samuel 22:30, Psalms 18:30, and possibly Jeremiah 5:10 and Job 24:11). Continue reading