blemish

At a glance

מוםmum
blemish, defect
a "something" out of place, a lack or an excess (Pappenheim); the Torah's disqualifying defect
פגםpgam
nick, deficiency
a nick or groove taken out (Eliyahu HaBachur); by extension, loss of worth
סימפוןsimpon
cancelling condition
not a blemish; any condition that can void a deal (Rashi)

In short

All three are commonly taken to mean blemish, and all three mean something else at root. Mum is a something, from meumah: a small something present that should not be, or absent that should be, which is why it covers both a lack and an excess. Pgam is a nick or deficiency, a groove taken out of something, and by extension a loss of worth or standing. Simpon does not mean blemish at all; it is a cancelling condition, whatever can void an agreement, and a physical defect is only one instance of it. In Kesubos 57b simpon belongs to a rule about voidable kiddushin, not a rule about bodies.

Distinctions

Mum (מום), meumah (מאומה)

The Torah's word for the defect that disqualifies a kohen from serving or an animal from the mizbeach, with its two lists at Vayikra 21:16 to 23 and 22:17 to

  1. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740 to 1814): the source is the biliteral מ-ם, the

smallest quantity, which gives meumah, "something," usually in the negative, lo meumah, nothing at all (Bereishis 30:31, 39:23; Melachim I 10:21). A mum, then, is a "something" whose presence or absence leaves the thing short of perfect: either lacking what completes it or carrying an extra that puts it past complete, which is equally a defect.

  • Rabbi Ernest Klein: mum without an aleph likely comes from mum with one (Iyov 31:7; Daniel 1:4) or from meumah, a something or a point, first a speck on an otherwise clean surface and then any flaw. Rashi (to Bereishis 22:12) already links mum and meumah by derash.
  • Rav Hirsch reads meumah as the smallest possible scrap of existence, a something barely larger than nothing, from the root א-ם, which gives eim, mother, the source of existence, and im, "if," the precondition for anything existing at all.
  • The most popular etymology traces meumah instead to the biliteral מ-ה, whence mah, "what": Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Ohalei Yehudah) makes it a contraction of mah u'mah, "what and what," and Wilhelm Gesenius offers the same etymology; Rabbi Ernest Klein cites it but rejects it on technical grounds, while Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein treats meumah as relating back to mah.
  • Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra to Bereishis 22:12) connects me'umah with mum.

Beyond the physical, mum is used for a defect from sin (Devarim 32:5; Mishlei 9:7), and in the Gemara for what disqualifies a man from sitting as a dayan, where Rashi (to Sanhedrin 36b) explains it as a family pgam, a more abstract use than the biblical one.

Pgam (פגם)

  • Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur: the literal sense is a groove or crevice. So the pgam of the moon, the darkened part visible at certain points in its cycle (Rosh HaShanah 23b), and the nick in a knife that makes it unfit for shechitah (Chullin 10a, 17a). In that light, Rabbi Ernest Klein's contention that pgam is probably a cognate of the Arabic fajama, to break off a bit, makes good sense to Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein. (Neither word has anything to do with the English "pajama," which comes from the Persian pay, leg, and jameh, garment.)
  • Pappenheim traces it instead to the biliteral פ-ג, weakening: vayafag libo, Yaakov's heart went weak when told Yosef was alive (Bereishis 45:26), and pag, the unripe fig whose sweetness is still weak (Shir HaShirim 2:13); in modern Hebrew pag is a premature baby, and pag also gives the expiration date of, say, a coupon. On that reading every rabbinic use of pgam is a weakening of one kind or another, in taste, in a knife's blade, or in a girl's worth.

The rabbinic uses all sit on "lacking" rather than "blemish":

  1. Yoma 70a: the Kohen Gadol reads the second passage by heart rather than take out a second sefer Torah, lest people suspect the first had a pgam. Rashi: they would think it lacked what makes a sefer fit.
  2. Rashi (to Kesubos 84a): a family pgam is something shameful that detracts from a family's standing.
  3. Sanhedrin 73a: a certain category of rapist has caused the betrothed woman a pgam; Rashi, he has shamed her and cheapened her. The Mishnah (Kesubos 3:4) lists pgam among the payments due, and (3:7) fixes it by comparing a besulah's theoretical price on the slave market with a non-besulah's, the drop in value paid as damage.
  4. Pesachim 106a: a cup of wine that is less than full is pagum and unfit for kiddush.
  5. Kesubos 9:7 to 8 and Tosefta Shevuos 6:5: one who takes partial payment on a loan document is pogem it, reducing what it is worth.
  6. Avodah Zarah 67a: taam lifgam, a forbidden taste that detracts from the permitted food rather than improving it, does not prohibit it.

Simpon (סימפון)

The Mishnah (Kesubos 5:3) records that originally a woman betrothed to a kohen could eat terumah at once, and that later courts decreed she may not until the marriage is complete. The Gemara (Kesubos 57b) gives as one of the reasons for that decree the suspicion of a simpon that would void the kiddushin retroactively. From this comes the common misconception that simpon means blemish. It does not. The word carries three distinct senses, all from Greek, and Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (1606 to 1675) notes that Greek terms had entered Aramaic already in the days of Daniel, citing sumponia there (Daniel 3:5, 3:10, 3:15).

  1. A bronchial vessel branching from the lung (Mishnah Chullin 3:1), from siphon, a pipe.
  2. A musical instrument of some sort, possibly a bagpipe or a virginal (Daniel; Mishnah Keilim 11:6), from symphonia; the Sefer HeAruch describes it as a wind instrument built on a hollow pipe, which joins this sense to the first.
  3. Additional clauses appended to a legal document (Mishnah Bava Metzia 1:8), from symphoneo, agreement, and from there any stipulation, even one not written into the document, that can invalidate it.
  • Rashi (to Kiddushin 10b, Kesubos 57b, Bava Metzia 20a): simpon means to cancel, and covers any clause capable of cancelling a deal, express or implied.
  • The early commentary on Onkelos ascribed to Rabbi Yaakov Dienna (printed as Patshegen, Tzintzenes HaMan, and Sefer HaYair) offers a Semitic derivation instead, from ס-י-ם, erasing or destroying, with pon somehow pointing back to something from the past (Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein flags that step as unexplained), and reaches the same result as Rashi: retroactive cancellation.

On either account a physical defect in a kallah is one thing that can trigger a simpon, not what the word means.

Also discussed in

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Perfect Sacrifice," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 20 March 2021.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Blemished Imperfections," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 May 2020.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "An Article About Nothing (Part 2 of 2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 September 2023.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Blemished Imperfections," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Bereishis 22:12, 30:31, 39:23, 45:26; Vayikra 21:16 to 23, 22:17 to 25; Devarim 32:5; Melachim I 10:21; Mishlei 9:7; Iyov 31:7; Shir HaShirim 2:13; Daniel 1:4, 3:5, 3:10, 3:15; Rosh HaShanah 23b; Yoma 70a; Pesachim 106a; Kiddushin 10b; Kesubos 57b, 84a, and Mishnah Kesubos 3:4, 3:7, 5:3, 9:7 to 8; Sanhedrin 36b, 73a; Avodah Zarah 67a; Chullin 10a, 17a, and Mishnah Chullin 3:1; Mishnah Keilim 11:6; Mishnah Bava Metzia 1:8 and Bava Metzia 20a; Tosefta Shevuos 6:5; Sefer HeAruch; Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia; Patshegen of Rabbi Yaakov Dienna on Targum Onkelos; Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras, Ohalei Yehudah; Wilhelm Gesenius, lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic; Benamozegh, Eim LaMikra to Bereishis 22:12.