A Secular Celebration
of the Torah
by
Howard
Richler
At sundown on October 21st
, observant Jews will celebrate Simchat Torah, “rejoicing in the
Torah,” as this marks the end of the
annual cycle of reading the Torah and hence the time to start anew. During this
holiday, the last section of Deuteronomy and the first section of Genesis are
read in succession after a festival parade of the Torah scrolls embellished
with singing and dancing. For secular Jews such as myself, or non-Jews, who
feel left out of this celebration, we can take solace that as English speakers
we're able to rejoice in the many words and phrases that the five books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) have contributed to the English
vernacular.
Mostly, these words and expressions found
their way into English through translations of the Torah, such as the King
James Bible (KJB).
Take the word “jubilee.” While a jubilee might be an occasion for an English queen to
be jubilant, as in the 2012 “Queen's Diamond Jubilee,” celebrating the 60th
anniversary of Elizabeth II ascension, the word bears no etymological ode to
joy. The first definition of this word in the OED is “A year of
emancipation and restoration, which according to Leviticus 25 was to be kept
every 50 years, and … proclaimed by the blast of trumpets.. ; during it the
fields were … left uncultivated, Hebrew slaves were …set free, and lands and
houses in the open country.. that had been sold were to revert to their former
owners or their heirs.” This august year takes its name from the Hebrew word yobhel,
“ram’s horn,” which was used to proclaim the advent of this event. The word
“jubilee” is first used in John Wycliffe’s 1382 translation of the Bible:
“Thow shalt halowe the fyftith yeer.. he is forsothe the iubilee.” Chaucer was
the first person to use the word without its religious context and by the late
16th century its secular sense became the dominant meaning.
“Scapegoat” is another word first found in Leviticus and once again its
progenitor is Wycliffe who renders Leviticus 16 as “And Aaron cast lottes ouer
the.. gootes: one lotte for the Lorde, and another for a scapegoote.” Most people think of a scapegoat as an
innocent person or group that bears the blame for others and suffers a
punishment in their stead. However, in the biblical ritual of the Day of
Atonement a scapegoat referred to one of
two goats that was sent alive into the wilderness. The sins of the people had
been symbolically laid upon this “escaped” goat, while the other goat was
sacrificed to God. So, I suppose, in the original sense, being a scapegoat was
better for your well-being than the alternative.
Also, our vocabulary has been enriched by several colourful
expressions found in the five Books of Moses. These include: “brother's
keeper,” (Genesis 4:9), “land of milk and honey”(Exodus 3:8), “an eye for an
eye” (Exodus 21:23-27), and “fat of the
land” (Genesis 45:18)
Actually, there are several words and phrases thought to
have a biblical provenance that, in fact, do not. Such is the case of
“helpmate.” We read in Genesis 2:18, in the KJB, “God, having created
man, observed, 'It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him an
help meet for him' ”, i.e, a “suitable help.” Hearing “help meet”
pronounced, by the end of the 17th
century churchgoers rendered the term as help-meet and by the 18th
century this hyphenated term transmogrified into “helpmate.” Another Genesis
term whose meaning has been misconstrued is “mark of Cain.” We think of this phrase to
signify a murderer just as the letter A denoted an adulterer in Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter. However, when God puts a “mark upon Cain” it is placed so
that Cain will be labelled so that others would know not be punish him further.
One of the best-known
supposedly biblical expressions is “forbidden fruit,” but in Genesis 2 and
Genesis 3 Adam and Eve are only instructed not to partake of the fruit of “the
tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
According to the OED, “forbidden fruit” is first used in Edward
Stillingfleet's 1662 Origines Sacræ: “He required from him the
observance..of not eating..the forbidden fruit.” Also, surprisingly, not found
in Scripture is the expression “promised land” as this phrase was first used in
Thomas Norton's translation of Calvin's Instutio Christianae Religionis written in 1561.
N.B.
This article is aimed for all readers; those who “walk with God” (Deuteronomy
10:12) or those who worship “the golden
calf” (Exodus 32:4)
Howard's latest book is Wordplay: Arranged &
DerangedWit.
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