advocate

Distinctions

Meilitz (מליץ), meilitz yosher (מליץ יושר)

Rashi (to Avos 4:11, Zevachim 7b, Bava Basra 10a), Machzor Vitri (Avos 4:11), and the Rambam (to Avos 4:11) define praklit as meilitz yosher or meilitz tov; Rashi (to Chagigah 13b) and Rabbeinu Chananel (to Rosh Hashanah 26a, Kiddushin 5a) define sanegor the same way, so meilitz yosher is the Hebrew term the others are explained by. Its plain sense in Bereishis 42:23 is an interpreter standing between two parties, and more broadly a middle-man. The full phrase comes from Iyov 33:23-24, where a single meilitz angel out of a thousand tells of a man's yashro, his straightness, and he is spared. Meilitz can be traced either to מ-ל-ץ or to ל-ו-ץ.

• Ibn Janach and Radak relate the first to מ-ר-ץ, meretz (fluency, persistence), by the interchange of lamed and reish, and on that reading the word seems to name the smoothness and consistency the advocate's speech requires; they also trace it to ל-ו-ץ (thinking, explaining), so that it names his reasoning.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes the core of ל-ץ as logical verbalization, usable for good (meilitz) or for ill (leitzanus, mockery); elsewhere he holds that in many three-letter roots a prefixed mem turns the meaning of the two-letter core into its exact opposite, the letters standing as they are, so leitz (scorn) becomes meilitz (justification, defense). Modern Hebrew's leitzan, a clown, comes from leitz but has lost the pejorative edge.

Praklit (פרקליט)

A loanword, not Hebrew. It appears in Targum as the Aramaic rendering of meilitz (Targum to Iyov 16:20 and 33:23), and Targum to Iyov 33:23 reads the pasuk as one praklit from among a thousand kategorin. Melechet Shlomo (to Avos 4:11) vowelizes it paraklet, and MS Kaufmann, the oldest vowelized manuscript of the Mishnah, parakilit; the Tiferet Yisrael (to Avos 4:11, Yachin 51) connects it to the Greek parakletos (paraclete in Latin). Parakletos is often understood as a Greek legal term meaning variously supporter, helper, sponsor, advocate and intercessor; the word breaks into para, outside or beside, and kalein, to call: one called in from outside to defend a man. Historians, rather than the traditional sources, explain what sort of defender he was: not a lawyer for hire but one's patron, who doubled as standing counsel and interceded in court when needed; some scholars argue he did not speak at all but helped by showing up and lending moral support, while others explain him as a character witness who attests to the defendant's virtue without arguing the case at hand. Rabbi Klein reads Shabbos 32a in that light, that a man led out to be sentenced is saved if he has great praklitin, and these are teshuvah and good deeds, and likewise Bava Basra 10a, that tzedakah and chessed are a man's praklitin: they testify to his character rather than argue his case. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Zevachim 7b, Tosefta Parah 1:1, Toras Kohanim to Vayikra 14:20): the chatas precedes the olah because the praklit enters first to appease, and only then is the gift accepted.

Sanegor (סניגור)

Also a loanword.

• Rabbi Klein notes that it might be more accurately spelled synagor, being made of the Greek syn (together, same), the element in English synonym, syntax, synagogue and synthesis, and agor (gathering place, assembly), which he says is possibly related to the Hebrew agur, gathering. The synegoros in Ancient Greece was a legal expert who argued before the assembly on a defendant's behalf.
• From an exegetical perspective many sources take it as a contraction of sani (to despise, hate) plus tigra (fighting, argument), the one who hates strife and quiets the prosecutor's accusations; this explanation is cited by Rashi (on Ein Yaakov, Chagigah 13b), Machzor Vitri (to Avos 4:11 and in the laws of Rosh Hashanah), Rabbeinu Elyakim (quoted in Imrei Noam to Vayikra 16:4), and Moshav Zekanim (to Vayikra 16:4).

Kategor (קטגור)

The accuser, and also from Greek: kata (down, reverse, against) plus agora (assembly), so one who speaks against another before an assembly. Encyclopedia Britannica explains that although kategoria originally meant an accusation, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) already used it in the philosophical sense of an assertion, and that the English category, a class or group into which one can assert that an item belongs, descends from it.

• Many commentators, among them Rabbeinu Chananel (Rosh Hashanah 26a, Kiddushin 5a), the Rambam, the Rashbatz, and Rabbi Yaakov bar Shimshon (the last three to Avos 4:11), understand kategor as a slanderer, one who informs to get a man into trouble; on that basis Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (1469-1549) in Sefer HaTishbi claims it is related to the Latin interrogator, which Rabbi Klein says does not quite pan out etymologically, interrogator being inter (between) plus rogare (to ask), which has nothing to do with the origins of kategor.
• Machzor Vitri reads it as a portmanteau of ketata (dispute) plus tigra (fighting); others as magur ketat, instigator of dispute (Sefer Kushyot 346, Moshav Zekanim to Vayikra 16:4), or kara tigra, calling for a fight.

The later Hebrew kitrug, accusation, seems to be a metathesis of kategor, the reish and gimmel switching places. The pair is load-bearing in halachah: a cow's horn is invalid for shofar, since the bovine recalls the Golden Calf, which draws Heavenly accusation, and likewise the Kohen Gadol's golden vestments are set aside for the Yom Kippur service, because "the kategor cannot become a sanegor" (the shofar in Rosh Hashanah 36a and Yerushalmi Rosh Hashanah 3:2, the vestments in Rosh Hashanah 36a and Yerushalmi Yoma 7:3).

Meltzar (מלצר)

Appears twice in Daniel (1:11, 1:16), where it means a guard or a waiter.

• Rabbi Klein suggests it might come from the same core root as meilitz, with a reish appended as a suffix doing the work of the English -er, forming an agent noun from a verb or another noun, as a baker is one who bakes and a butler one who deals with bottles. There is some precedent for that pattern in the Rashbatz, Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran (1361-1444), to Avos 4:11, who explains the appended reish in Rabbi Yochanan HaSandler as marking his trade of shoemaker (a sandal being a shoe in Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew alike), and who offers as a second example the Mishnaic palter, professional baker (Demai 5:4, Avodah Zarah 4:9), from the Greek plateia, open street, since such a baker would typically sell his goods on the street (plateia is the ancestor of English place and plaza). On that pattern the meltzar is one who does what a meilitz does, standing between kitchen and diners, or between his charge and those who would harm him.
• Rabbi Yaakov Yehuda Zilberberg (1914-2003) links it instead to sweetness of speech (Tehillim 119:103 with Rav Hirsch there): the meilitz makes his words tasty, the meltzar tastes the food.
• Dr. Chaim Tawil takes meltzar to be unrelated to meilitz altogether, a borrowing from the Akkadian massaru/mansaru, with the nun and lamed interchanging.

(The Ashkenazic surname Meltzer is unrelated to the Biblical meltzar: it comes from the German and English malt, for the maltster who prepares grain for brewing.)

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Calling the Defender - Vayelech / Yom Kippur," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 September 2021.

Cited in the essay: Avos 4:11 with Melechet Shlomo and MS Kaufmann; Bereishis 42:23; Iyov 33:23-24 and 16:20 with Targum; Shabbos 32a; Bava Basra 10a; Zevachim 7b with Tosefta Parah 1:1 and Toras Kohanim to Vayikra 14:20; Rosh Hashanah 36a and 26a, Yerushalmi Rosh Hashanah 3:2 and Yoma 7:3; Chagigah 13b; Kiddushin 5a; Daniel 1:11 and 1:16; Tehillim 119:103 with Rav Hirsch; Demai 5:4 and Avodah Zarah 4:9; Sefer Kushyot 346; Sefer HaTishbi; Encyclopedia Britannica; Dr. Chaim Tawil.