In my last (real) post, I discussed the origin of the word soda, and its derivative sodium. Well, have you ever noticed that the chemical symbol for sodium is Na (as in NaCl - sodium chloride)? Clearly Na is not an abbreviation for "sodium", so where did it come from?Let's discuss the development of the symbol. It might not surprise you to see that there's a connection to Hebrew here as well...We b...

When I started this site over two years ago, I often wrote a post daily. Since then, my knowledge in the field has increased, and with that has come exposure to more and more resources, both online (websites, Google Books, JSTOR) and offline (I have no room in my house for any more dictionaries!). Additionally, I've met a great number of very knowledgeable people through this site, many of whom I l...

We're now at the last of the posts on the PaRDeS words, and we'll be discussing the word sod סוד. Unlike remez which doesn't appear in the Tanach at all, and derash which has many possible meanings in Biblical Hebrew, sod has two usages. Even Shoshan's concordance lists 16 verses where the word means "assembly" and five where it means "secret" - the more common meaning today. The development bet...

The next word in our series of PaRDeS words is derash דרש -'interpretation" or "exegesis". The root דרש is unlike the previous word, remez. First of all, רמז does not appear at all in the Tanach, where as דרש appears well over 100 times. And the meaning of remez is fairly simple - "hint", but darash has many definitions, of which none can explain all of the occurrences. Sometimes when a...

Back in December, I started a series of words, but never finished them. Do you remember the series? I'll give you a hint...I was discussing the words that make up the acronym PaRDeS, and I had already reviewed the word peshat. Today we'll look at the word remez רמז, meaning "hint".Klein says the verb רמז means "to wink, beckon, hint, allude, make signs", and is related to the Arabic ramaza -...