תיבת נח

[This is only a preliminary sketch- it stands to be corrected and developed.]

There’s an interesting aspect of the meaning and grammatical usage of ekev עקב which is that the terms which introduce causal, consequence or attributive clauses (like ekev and asher) are often one of two kinds, the first more often than the second:

1. actions of walking (forward)

• asher אשר from ashur אשור and hence ashrei אשרי and associations with wealth and increase;
• ekev עקב heel, footsteps as in ikvei moshiach עקבי מושח (beautifully drashed by the Alter Rebbe in Tanya ב as furthermost, outermost connections back to the source, describing how every Jew no matter how far “out” is still connected, still essential and “without which nothing”;
• le-maan למען to lead out, towards.

A good example of this is the opening verses of the first Psalm and its play on words of movement or absence thereof.

2. verbs of answering, responding, connecting from or towards in an abstract and metaphoric sense:

• hence yaan and maan מען יען

Also, close by are verbs of speaking, seeing and formation, successfulf accomplishment
al pi על פי and מעין השלוש
על כן from כנן

This week’s word is  HELLO  and its Hebrew source is ….   Answers next week.

Answers to last week’s quiz can be found here: Fruit פרי.

Felicitations to the two respondents who answered correctly.

Shabbat shalom!

The Biblical and modern Hebrew word for fruit is pri פרי (singular) and peroth פרות (plural).

For more, see Fruit פרי in the TeivathNoach Thesaurus.

UPDATE

R Meir Rabi points out that the word freedom or free makes it on to the remarkably fecund list of words associated with PRI.

Not only does the Hirsch etymologies affirm this sense under P/F-R-E פרא but it also brings home to me how even the sound of the word free should alert one to a deeper history than presented in standard dictionaries like the OED.

OED almost always stops (or begins) at Greek and Latin, with only an occasional glance at anything older.

I guess this is what it means by being a “dictionary of the English language on historical principles” - ie how English itself has been used historically. But I can’t help feeling a slight snub to the cosmopolitan non-Anglo-Saxon Jews ….