Your blog is fantastic. Would you mind telling me where you get your information, re: Klein, Steinberg, etc? Are there particular texts that you are using as resources? Are those the texts that you list in your links or are there others on which you're relying?
Thanks.
I am really gratified by Klein’s surprising, yet utterly credible, explanation of the name Masada as a hunting place. I, indeed, dimly recall having seen it mentioned in Josephus Flavius that this area was in ancient times infested with leopards and other evil beasts. I am also in agreement with the possible strong connection between צוד, ציד, צד so judiciously suggested by both Steinberg and Kaddari. Obviously a hunter deviously approaches the pray from its back side, צד, where it can not see.
I wish to venture and add a small thought of my own as to the connection between צד and צידה. It is common knowledge that provisions, צידה, is carried on the side, צד, as we carry now days a מזוודה or a tchimodan.
Billha Kushner-Melamed, a retired teacher
Simon -
Thanks for the nice words. As part of the redesigning of my site, I hope to make a section which clearly states which books I'm using. But in general, yes, the links are referring to the names there.
Billha -
I think that Klein was referring to fortresses in general, not specifically "Masada" as a hunting place. But maybe that's how it got known as THE מצדה.
"It is sometimes called tzaddik צדיק - this is due to the running together of tsade with the letter that follows it when reciting the alphabet - kuf."
I always thought tsade is Hebrew, and tsadek is Yiddish. Please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Yid...iddish_alphabet
Zvi
It's also possible that the change of the letter's name was inspired by the statement in the Gemara (Bavli Shabbos 104a, Yerushalmi Megillah 1:9) - charmingly, a "drashah" by some children who later grew up to be great scholars - that associates the letter Tsade with the word Tzaddik.
In Yiddish, yes, the letter is called Tsadik. While this is because of attachment to the following letter, it is surely also influenced by the fact that Tsadik is indeed a common word, while the name is otherwise unfamiliar.
I am not sure about your saying that the three sounds that derive to צ are "like ט," "like ע," etc. The letters are equivalent to Arabic ص (emphatic s), (emphatic z, but related maybe to tet), ض (emphatic d). As far as I understand the latter becomes ע in Aramaic., ظ
Sorry, the letters were (in order)
ص
ظ
ض
Joel, when you say that (the origin of the) ض becomes ע, I suppose that you refer to the more emphatic ghayin specifically? This was something that occurred to me a little while back when I was trying to understand the phonological relationship between Old Aramaic ק and Later Aramaic ע. It would seem to me that the etymologically original ´ayin lacks the same interplay with Hebrew צ.
No... (And hi Simon! Sorry I've not been keeping up with your blog lately...) The ghayin is غ. It translates to ע in Hebrew (there is a nice table in the Joan/Muraoka grammar). The emphatic d, if I recall correctly is the one that becomes צ in Heb. and ע in Aram. for instance ארץ/ארעא and many other examples that I'm not about to think of. It is a matter of a limited-size alphabet representing a language with more distinct phonemes, and where these are placed depends on the language, as well as sound change.
Joel - Not sure I entirely understand what you disagree with in Horowitz's approach. Could you explain a bit more?
"and one that sounds like the current tsade"
That part sounds very unlikely, as the pronunciation of sad as TS is a fairly recent phenomena. Even (some?)Ashkenazim used to pronounce sad like samekh, like all Europeans, having difficulty to pronounce this typically Semitic sound.
I think sad might have been transliterated as Z some times, as it is a strong S, and in a way so is Z. In Germany Z is pronounced TS...
I don't think I disagree with Horowitz. I disagree with how you have paraphased him. The three pronunciations are not as such "related to tet" or to ayin, etc., and that therefore they interchange. It is rather that the letter tsade in Hebrew has been used to represent what were once three distinct phonemes, which in other alphabets or languages (such as Aramaic) were assigned to different characters, such as ע. This does not mean that one of tsade's forms is related to ayin, but that there is a sound that has in some places been represented as צ and some places as ע.
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