blemish

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-מ, the

smallest quantity, which gives meumah, "something," almost always 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-מ, which gives eim, mother, the source of existence, and im, "if," the precondition for anything existing at all.

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 Klein. (Neither word, he adds, 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. Kesubos 84a: a family pgam is something shameful that detracts from a family's standing.
3. Sanhedrin 73a: the 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 HaAruch 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-מ, erasing or destroying, with pon somehow pointing back to something from the past (the column 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.

Rendering guidance

• Default renderings: mum "blemish" (and "defect" for a kohen or an animal); pgam "flaw," "nick," "deficiency," or "loss of standing" by context; simpon "voiding condition," "cancellation," or the transliteration with a gloss.
• Trap: English "defect" will take mum and pgam both. Where a source glosses one by the other (Rashi to Sanhedrin 36b explaining mum as a family pgam), keep two English words and let the gloss do its work: "a mum, that is, a family flaw."
• Second trap, the important one: never render simpon "blemish." In Kesubos 57b the concern is a condition that unwinds the kiddushin retroactively. "A defect that would void the betrothal" is right; "a blemish" is not.
• Pagum of a cup is "used" or "diminished," not "blemished," and taam lifgam is "a taste that detracts," a settled halachic idiom worth keeping transliterated with that gloss.
• Meumah in a pasuk is "anything," almost always inside a negative: lo chasarta meumah, "you lacked nothing." Do not render it "a blemish" even where a derashah connects the words; give the derashah in a note.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Perfect Sacrifice," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2021-03-20), which is a rerun with edits of "Blemished Imperfections" (2020-05-09); raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9138-a-perfect-sacrifice.md and sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8696-blemished-imperfections.md. Primary loci: 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 HaAruch; Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia; Patshegen (Rabbi Yaakov Dienna) on Targum Onkelos. The two articles are substantially the same essay; where they differ, "A Perfect Sacrifice" has "a certain category of rapist" against the earlier "a rapist," and drops "virginal" from the earlier guess at the instrument, leaving only "bagpipe." The entry keeps both guesses.