What’s in a Word?

ritual

canopy

אפריון · חופה · סוכה · סכך

Bottom line

Succah is a booth, named for its sechach, and the word carries the sense of shelter, a covering that protects from what is above. Chuppah is a canopy, from chofeh, to cover; it says only that the thing is covered on top, with nothing about protection. Apiryon the column takes to be more than a canopy: the Mishnah suggests a mobile enclosure a woman travels inside, and on the reading of those who tie the word to the Sanskrit paryanka it is a palanquin, a covered litter carried on poles. The trap: on that reading, the mefarshim who gloss apiryon as a chuppah are stating its halachic function at Amram and Yocheved's remarriage, not equating the two words. The column's working premise throughout is that no two words in Hebrew mean exactly the same thing, so a difference must be found.

Distinctions

succah (סוכה)

Rashi (to Succah 2a): what defines a succah is its sechach, the covering above; a succah is a booth whose shade comes from what is overhead. Rabbi Tzvi Mordechai Libber of Milwaukee draws the distinction from a second Rashi (to Shemos 35:12), where sechach is a protective covering: succah names a structure whose purpose is to shield a man from what is above him.

chuppah (חופה)

From the verb chofeh or mechapeh, to cover, used both physically (a cloth covers a table) and figuratively (covering for a thief with an alibi). On Rabbi Libber's reading, chuppah records only that the thing is covered on top and carries no implication of shelter. A succah and a chuppah may be the same sort of structure; the words look at it differently, the one at its protection, the other at its being covered.

apiryon (אפריון)

A hapax in Tanach: apiryon asah lo hamelech Shlomo me'atzei haLevanon, with its pillars of silver, its covering of gold, its seat of purple, and its inside inlaid with love (Shir HaShirim 3:9 to 11), in a passage that closes on the day of his wedding. The Gemara (Sotah 12a; Bava Basra 120a) says of Amram remarrying Yocheved that he seated her in an apiryon. Rabbi Pheobus Meir Parenzo (1500 to 1575, in his glosses in the 1566 Venice Yalkut Shimoni, Shemos §165) and the Maharsha both gloss apiryon as a chuppah.

Against reading them as simple synonyms stands the Mishnah (Sotah 9:14): in the Hadrianic persecutions of the second century the Chachamim decreed that a kallah not travel through the city inside an apiryon, and later rescinded that ruling for reasons of tznius. This passage, the column says, suggests that an apiryon is not simply a canopy but a mobile enclosure a woman may travel in.

Some argue that apiryon is related to the Sanskrit paryanka, English palanquin or sedan chair: a covered litter for one passenger, a large box on two horizontal poles borne by four or six men, used by important persons in India and other Eastern cultures. On that reading the kallah of the Mishnah led her procession from inside such a celebratory box; the Chachamim first outlawed it because the excessive joy of her parade was out of place during the persecutions, and later lifted the prohibition for reasons of modesty. And on that reading, when Parenzo and the Maharsha wrote that an apiryon is a chuppah they did not mean that the words mean one thing, but that in the context of Yocheved's marriage to Amram the sedan chair she was seated in took on the halachic role a chuppah has at a wedding.

Rendering guidance

  • Default renderings: succah stays transliterated, glossed "booth" once; chuppah stays transliterated, glossed "wedding canopy" once; apiryon "canopied litter" or "palanquin" if you follow the paryanka reading, which also suits Shir HaShirim 3:9, where the pasuk goes on to list its seat. This last is our observation, not the column's.
  • Trap: "canopy" will take chuppah and apiryon both, and "covering" will take chuppah and sechach both. Where a source glosses one by the other (apiryon zu chuppah), render the gloss as a statement of function: "an apiryon, which served as a chuppah."
  • Sechach is never "roof." It is the covering, and Rashi's protective sense is the point wherever the halachos of Succos are being explained.
  • Where chofeh is figurative (covering for another's wrongdoing), do not carry the canopy image into the English; "shield" or "cover for" is right, "canopy" is not.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Panoply of Canopies," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2017-01-21): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7103-a-panoply-of-canopies.md. Primary loci: Shemos 2:1 to 10, 35:12; Shir HaShirim 3:9 to 11; Sotah 12a; Bava Basra 120a; Mishnah Sotah 9:14; Rashi to Succah 2a and to Shemos 35:12; Maharsha to Sotah 12a; Rabbi Pheobus Meir Parenzo's glosses to Yalkut Shimoni, Shemos §165 (Venice 1566); the anonymous "some" who tie apiryon to the Sanskrit paryanka.