Essays here lean on classical rabbinic literature, comparative Semitic linguistics, genealogical history and the tools I use to keep my notes. This page defines the terms that come up most. Where the blog’s spelling varies (Shemos and Shemot, Halacha and Halakha), both forms are given.
| Term | Period & Region | Definition |
|---|
| Rashi | 1040–1105 (Troyes, France) | Acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki. His line-by-line commentary on Tanach and the Talmud is the standard starting point for traditional study. |
| Ibn Ezra | 1089–c. 1167 (Spain, later Italy, France and England) | Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra. Poet, grammarian, astronomer and commentator, known for close attention to Hebrew grammar and the plain sense of the text. |
| Rambam | 1138–1204 (Córdoba, later Fustat, Egypt) | Acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides). Philosopher, physician and codifier of Jewish law in the Mishneh Torah. |
| Radak | c. 1160–1235 (Narbonne, Provence) | Acronym for Rabbi David Kimchi. Grammarian, lexicographer and biblical commentator; his Sefer HaShorashim is a dictionary of Hebrew roots. |
| Ramban | 1194–1270 (Girona, Catalonia; later the Land of Israel) | Acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Nachmanides). Torah commentator, Talmudist and kabbalist who often argues with Rashi and Ibn Ezra, weighing the plain meaning (peshat) alongside kabbalistic readings. |
| Chavel | 1906–1982 (United States) | Rabbi Charles B. Chavel, editor of the standard Hebrew edition of the Ramban’s Torah commentary and its English translator. |
| Rishonim | c. 11th–15th century | The medieval rabbinic authorities before the Shulchan Aruch (1565). Literally “the first ones.” |
| Acharonim | 16th century–present | The rabbinic authorities after the Shulchan Aruch. Literally “the later ones.” |
| Chazal | c. 200 BCE–500 CE | Acronym for “our Sages, of blessed memory”: the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud. |
| Rosh Yeshiva | Academy head | The head and senior lecturer of a yeshiva, an academy for advanced Talmud study. |
| Rebbe | Hasidic leader; teacher | The leader of a Hasidic community. Also what a student calls his own Torah teacher, and, in the Talmud, the title of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi. |
| Mashgiach | Yeshiva supervisor | The yeshiva’s spiritual supervisor, responsible for the students’ character and growth in mussar. |
Texts, Interpretation and Jewish Life
| Term | Origin | Definition |
|---|
| Tanach | Hebrew acronym | The Hebrew Bible: Torah (the Five Books), Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings). |
| Chumash | Hebrew | The Five Books of Moses in printed book form, usually with commentaries. |
| Bereishis, Shemos, Vayikra, Bamidbar, Devarim | Hebrew | The Hebrew names of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (also spelled Bereshit, Shemot). |
| Tehillim | Hebrew | The book of Psalms. |
| Pasuk (pl. pesukim) | Hebrew | A verse of Tanach. |
| Parsha / Parashah | Hebrew | The weekly Torah portion read in synagogue. |
| Mishnah | Hebrew | The first written code of the Oral Torah, edited around 200 CE by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and arranged in tractates. |
| Talmud | Hebrew | The Mishnah together with the Gemara, the rabbis’ extended discussion of it. The Babylonian Talmud is the one usually meant. |
| Tractate (masechta) | Aramaic | One volume of the Mishnah or Talmud on a single subject, such as Berachos (blessings and prayer) or Menachos (grain offerings). |
| Perek | Hebrew | A chapter of the Mishnah, Talmud or Tanach. |
| Sugya | Aramaic | A self-contained passage or debate within the Talmud. |
| Peshat | Hebrew | The plain, contextual meaning of a text. |
| Drash / Derash | Hebrew | Interpretation beyond the plain meaning: homiletic, legal or allegorical. |
| Midrash | Hebrew | Rabbinic literature that interprets biblical texts through exposition, narrative and parable. |
| Zohar | Aramaic | The central work of Kabbalah, a mystical commentary on the Torah that surfaced in 13th-century Spain; its antiquity is disputed. |
| Shema | Hebrew | The declaration “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9), recited every morning and evening. |
| Sefer | Hebrew | A book, especially a work of Torah literature. |
| Teshuva (responsum) | Hebrew | A rabbi’s written answer to a question of Jewish law; collections of them are responsa. |
| Dikduk | Hebrew | Hebrew grammar: vowels, verb patterns (binyanim) and roots. |
| Halacha / Halakha | Hebrew | Jewish law, derived from the Written and Oral Torah. |
| Kabbalah | Hebrew | The Jewish mystical tradition. |
| Hasidism (Chassidus) | Hebrew | The pietist movement founded in 18th-century Ukraine by the Baal Shem Tov, organized around dynasties of rebbes. |
| Hashem | Hebrew | Literally “the Name”: a reverent way of referring to God. |
| Shabbos / Shabbat | Hebrew | The Sabbath, from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall. |
| Daven / davening | Yiddish | To pray, especially the set daily prayers. |
| Shul | Yiddish | A synagogue. |
| Tefillin | Hebrew | Leather boxes holding Torah passages, worn on the arm and head during weekday morning prayers. |
| Mussar | Hebrew | Jewish ethical literature, and the practice of deliberately working on one’s character. |
| Teshuvah | Hebrew | Repentance; literally “return.” |
| Yeshiva | Hebrew | An academy for advanced Torah and Talmud study. |
| Kollel | Hebrew | A Talmud academy for married men, usually with a stipend. |
| Shiur | Hebrew | A Torah lecture or class. |
| Chavrusa | Aramaic | A study partner; Talmud is traditionally learned in pairs. |
| Bracha (pl. brachos) | Hebrew | A blessing, such as the one said before eating bread (hamotzi). |
| Elul | Hebrew | The month before Rosh Hashanah, set aside for introspection and repentance. |
| Yahrzeit | Yiddish | The anniversary of a death, kept on its Hebrew calendar date. |
The Mishkan and the Temple
| Term | Origin | Definition |
|---|
| Mishkan | Hebrew | The portable sanctuary the Israelites carried in the wilderness, forerunner of the Temple in Jerusalem. |
| Kohen (pl. kohanim) | Hebrew | A priest descended from Aharon, who served in the Mishkan and the Temple. |
| Mizbeach | Hebrew | The altar. |
| Korban (pl. korbanos) | Hebrew | An offering brought in the Mishkan or the Temple: animal, grain, wine or incense. |
| Korban shelamim | Hebrew | The peace offering. Its fats are burned on the altar, the kohen receives a portion, and the owners eat the rest. |
| Lechem hapanim | Hebrew | The showbread: twelve loaves set out each Shabbos on the golden table and replaced the following week. |
| Shtei halechem | Hebrew | The “two loaves”: leavened wheat loaves offered on Shavuos. |
| Shulchan | Hebrew | The golden table on which the showbread was arranged. |
| Challah (pl. challos) | Hebrew | A loaf; in the Temple context, the loaves of the showbread. Today, usually the braided Shabbos bread. |
| Man (manna) | Hebrew | The food that fell from heaven during the Israelites’ years in the wilderness (Exodus 16). |
Semitic Languages and Scripts
| Term | Domain | Definition |
|---|
| Semitic languages | Language family | The family that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic and Ge’ez, as well as ancient languages such as Akkadian, Ugaritic and Phoenician. |
| Proto-Semitic | Linguistics | The reconstructed common ancestor of the Semitic languages. It is not attested in writing. |
| Canaanite languages | Northwest Semitic | The branch that includes Hebrew, Phoenician and Moabite. |
| Canaanite shift | Historical phonology | The sound change by which an inherited long ā became ō in the Canaanite languages, as in Arabic salām and Hebrew shalom. |
| Mishnaic Hebrew | Hebrew | The Hebrew of the Mishnah and early rabbinic literature, distinct in vocabulary and grammar from Biblical Hebrew. |
| Aramaic | Northwest Semitic | A Northwest Semitic language on a separate branch from Hebrew (which is Canaanite), and the lingua franca of the region from the Persian period. Centuries of contact shaped Mishnaic and later Hebrew. Parts of Daniel and Ezra, and most of the Talmud, are in Aramaic. |
| Ugaritic | Northwest Semitic | An extinct language written in an alphabetic cuneiform on clay tablets from Ugarit (northern Syria, c. 14th–12th century BCE); important for comparing biblical Hebrew vocabulary. |
| Safaitic | Ancient North Arabian | A script, and the early form of Arabic written in it, known from thousands of rock inscriptions left by nomads in the basalt desert of southern Syria, northeastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia (c. 1st century BCE–4th century CE). |
| Epigraphy | Archaeology | The study of inscriptions on durable surfaces such as stone, rock and clay. |
| Levantine Arabic (Shami) | Spoken Arabic | The spoken dialects of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. |
| Derja / Darija | Spoken Arabic | The spoken Arabic of the Maghreb, such as Tunisian Derja and Moroccan Darija, distinct from Modern Standard Arabic. |
| Judeo-Arabic | Dialect group | Arabic as spoken and written by Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa, traditionally in Hebrew script. |
| Ladino | Judeo-Spanish | The language of Sephardi Jews descended from those expelled from Spain, traditionally written in Hebrew script. |
| Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) | Formal Arabic | The Arabic of writing, news and speeches, shared across the Arab world but nobody’s native dialect. |
| Al-Andalus | Medieval Iberia | The Muslim-ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492), where many Jewish scholars wrote in Arabic or Judeo-Arabic. |
| Root (shoresh) | Semitic morphology | The consonantal core, usually three letters, from which related words are built: כתב, “write,” gives Hebrew mikhtav and Arabic maktab. |
| Cognate | Linguistics | A word descended from the same ancestral word as a word in another language, such as Hebrew leḥem and Arabic laḥm. Cognates can drift far apart in meaning. |
| Sound correspondence | Historical linguistics | A regular match between sounds in related languages, such as Arabic س and Hebrew שׁ. It describes shared history, not a rule for converting one language into the other. |
| False friend | Language learning | A word that looks familiar but means something different, such as Hebrew medina (state) and Arabic madīna (city). False friends may or may not be related. |
| False cognate | Linguistics | Words that look or sound alike but have no shared origin. |
History, Genealogy and Tools
| Term | Field | Definition |
|---|
| Pale of Settlement | Russian Empire (1791–1917) | The western region of the Russian Empire where Jews were, with limited exceptions, allowed to live permanently. |
| Shtetl | Eastern Europe | A small market town with a large Jewish population, before the Second World War. |
| Talne (Talnoye) | Ukraine | A town in central Ukraine, seat of the Talne Hasidic dynasty and the starting point of the Shore and Saranduk family research on this site. |
| Djerba | Tunisia | An island off southern Tunisia, home to one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in North Africa. |
| Yishuv | Land of Israel | The Jewish community in the Land of Israel before the founding of the state in 1948. |
| Ellis Island | New York (1892–1954) | The main U.S. immigration station for arrivals from Europe; its ship manifests are a core genealogy source. |
| Naturalization | Genealogy | The legal process by which an immigrant becomes a citizen. Its paperwork often records birth dates and hometowns. |
| Provenance | Historical method | The documented history of where a document, photograph or object came from and who has held it. |
| PKM | Notes and research | Personal knowledge management: methods for capturing, linking and finding your own notes and research. |
| Spaced repetition | Learning | Reviewing material at gradually increasing intervals, timed to come just before you would forget it. Anki is the best-known tool. |
| Local-first | Software | Software that keeps your data on your own devices and works offline, with syncing to other devices as an extra rather than a requirement. |
| Markdown | Software | A plain-text format that uses simple marks such as # and * for headings and emphasis. This site is written in it. |
| Obsidian | Software | A note-taking app that keeps notes as plain Markdown files on your own device. |
| Anki | Software | A free flashcard app that schedules reviews by spaced repetition. |
| Cloze | Learning | A fill-in-the-blank exercise: a word is hidden from a sentence and you supply it. |