cheese

Distinctions

gvinah (גבינה)

Root ג-ב-ן. One occurrence in Tanach: "Did You not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?" (Iyov 10:10), which Ralbag and others read of Hashem taking the liquid matter of conception and setting it into a formed human being. From the Mishnah on it is simply the word for cheese (Berachos 6:3, Shabbos 17:2, Nedarim 6:5, Eduyos 5:2, Avodah Zarah 2:4-5, Chullin 8:1-3). The word was popular enough in the ancient world to be borrowed into Akkadian as gubnatu, though Assyriologists argue that gvinah is originally Aramaic and not Hebrew. The same root yields giben (Vayikra 21:20), a blemish disqualifying a kohen: some commentators, Rav Saadia Gaon, Radak (Sefer HaShorashim), and Abarbanel among them, say a hunchback, which is the sense Modern Hebrew took; the Mishnah (Bechoros 7:2) says one whose eyebrows are abnormally long. Some explain the Midrash on Har Gavnunim as teaching that even a blemish like giben was healed at Har Sinai.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reduces ג-ב-ן to the biliteral ג-ב, a bulge, something sticking out and plainly seen. Its plainest derivative is gav, the back or outside of a vessel or a hand, and also the eyebrow (Vayikra 14:9), conspicuous on the face. So giben is one whose gav (back) is humped or whose gav (brow) is misshapen; gavnunim are bulging mountains; gvinah is cheese because it too heaps up. Under the same biliteral he puts gavoah (high, visible from afar), negev (dry highland), geveh (surface pools, higher than an underground spring), govai (grasshoppers, which haunt the geveh), and yogvim (those who trap them).

Rabbi Aharon Marcus works the same biliteral ג-ב, which he argues comes in turn from the monoliteral ג, but defines it as height: gavoah; gibor, who rises above his enemies; gabachas (Vayikra 13:41-42), the bald patch at the top of the forehead; givah, a hill; elgavish (Yechezkel 13:11, 13:13, 38:22), hail, falling from on high. He also brings in the Arabic jabal, "mountain," from which the Hebrew gvul, "border," possibly derives, that too being a feature that runs upward. He adds ג-ב-ן here as a hump, without saying whether he means the cheese or the blemish. Alexander Kohut, in his Aruch HaShalem, suggests connecting gavnunim itself with jabal/gvul on the interchange of nun and lammed, so that gavnunim simply means mountainous or hilly. Rabbi Avi Kobernick reads ג-ב-ן against its metatheses ג-נ-ב (stealing) and נ-ג-ב (drying): in each, something integral is removed from where it belongs, the object from its owner, the moisture from the substance, liquid from curds.

Derashos, and the column's opening question, why dairy on Shavuos: Rabbi Shimshon of Ostropoli connects it to Har Gavnunim, an alternate name for Sinai (Tehillim 68:16-17), from gvinah. Shemos Rabbah 2:4, which the column reads as assuming the name relates somehow to gnivah and to cheese-making, expounds it on the model of cheese, which draws the purest curds off from the dross: of all the mountains Hashem chose the one clean and pure of avodah zarah, and Klal Yisrael stood there in their purest state, every dross-like blemish healed. Rabbi Yosef Nissim Ben-Adahan: gvinah has the gematria of seventy, for the seventy planes of interpretation in every part of Torah. The column adds two further answers in a postscript: David HaMelech died on Shavuos by tradition (Yerushalmi Chagigah 2:3, Rus Rabbah 3:2), and since most of Tanach's cheese occurs in his story, perhaps the custom marks him; or, since the heter of dairy is derived from a story about him, we honor his memory on the day of his petirah by eating milk foods.

charitz (חריץ)

Yishai sends David with ten charitzei hechalav to the officer (Shmuel I 17:18). Targum Yonasan, Rashi, and Machberes Menachem read cheese, and Bechoros 6b uses the pasuk as one of two proofs that milk and its products are permitted and are not eiver min hachai. On why the root ח-ר-צ should mean cheese: Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) and Rabbi Avraham ben Shlomo, pieces of fresh cheese, whose making somehow involves a shaking that resembles threshing, and threshing is charutz (Yeshayahu 10:22, 28:27); Rabbi Yosef Kara (to Shmuel I 17:18), cheese was often gathered in charitzim, ditches dug in the ground (Daniel 9:25; Eruvin 7:3; Bava Kamma 5:5; Mikvaos 5:6); Metzudas Tzion (there) suggests that perhaps cheese was cut to fixed measures while still being processed, and charitz is cutting (Iyov 14:5); Rabbi Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (Hoil Moshe to Shmuel II 17:29), charitz as sharp, a cheese of fermented milk with a tangy flavor.

Against all of these, Midrash Shmuel 20:4 takes charitzei hechalav not as cheese but as young kids, either not yet weaned (Mahari Cohen, Eitz Yosef, Radal) or just weaned (Yefeh Nof), a delicacy. Both further derivations are put conditionally: Radal writes that if the phrase means animals still nursing, then charitz comes from charutz, diligent, someone quick to take them from their mothers while still young and tender; and Rabbi Shmuel Yaffe-Ashkenazi that if it means animals recently weaned, then charitz is cutting, their being cut off from their mother's milk. Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) entertains a third possibility, thick coagulated milk found in the animal's udder. Rabbi Avraham Maskileison uses these to explain why Bechoros 6b treats the pasuk as a possible and not a conclusive proof. Halachic aside: Rema (Yoreh Deah 89:4) records marking the dairy knife; Pri Megadim (Mishbetzos Zahav 89:7) finds the hint in charitz (a groove) beside chalav, that dairy utensils carry a notch.

shfot (שפות)

David in flight from Avshalom is brought shfot bakar (Shmuel II 17:29), which Targum Yonasan again renders guvnin d'chalav. Midrash Shocher Tov (to Tehillim 3): not ordinary cheese, but cow's cheese so slick flies slid off it; Rabbi Chaim Dov Rabinowitz (Daas Sofrim there) reads that as heavily preserved cheese fit for a long journey. Radak and Metzudas Tzion tie the word to ש-פ, rubbing and massaging (Iyov 33:21; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim). Rabbi Pappenheim defines the biliteral as movement by rubbing, shifting a thing without lifting it, and takes shfot bakar as soft, spreadable cheese. Rabbi Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (Hoil Moshe to Tehillim 127:5, Shmuel II 17:29, Yechezkel 40:43) ties it to the homonymous shfot, setting a pot by the fire (Melachim II 4:38), the shared sense being bringing things closer or joining them: pot to fire, the cheesy particles in the milk into one glob; he groups ashpah, the bin or container for arrows, and shifshuf with it, and alternatively makes shfot the wicker baskets used to filter fermenting milk, separating the curds from the whey. The column adds as an aside that Josephus mentions a place in Yerushalayim called the Tyropoeon, the Valley of the Cheesemakers, which some scholars have identified with Shaar HaAshpah, on the strength of that link between ashpah and shfot. Dissenting: Ibn Janach again offers milk in the udder; Radak the udders themselves; Rabbi Avraham ben Shlomo butter, which is hard, since chemah is already named in the pasuk. See Chasam Sofer 6:22 on why Bechoros 6b did not bring this pasuk as its proof.

Rendering guidance

• Render all three "cheese" where the Targum's reading is followed, and say which authority you follow when it matters.
• Trap: English "cheese" absorbs gvinah, charitz, and shfot. Where a source builds on the difference (Rabbi Pappenheim's spreadable shfot against heaped gvinah; Bechoros 6b's choice of proof text), keep the Hebrew.
• Charitzei hechalav: "rounds of cheese" reads well, but a footnote must carry the Midrash Shmuel reading, since "cheese" silently decides a machlokes.
• Giben is "hunchback" to some commentators and "one with overgrown eyebrows" on the Mishnah's reading; do not render it "deformed," which loses both.
• Gavnunim in Tehillim 68:16-17: "many-peaked mountain"; keep the gvinah wordplay for a note, not the rendering.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "More Cheese Please," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 5 Sivan 5782 (2022-06-04): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9723-more-cheese-please.md. Primary loci cited: Iyov 10:10, 14:5, 33:21; Shmuel I 17:18; Shmuel II 17:29; Tehillim 3, 68:16-17, 127:5; Vayikra 13:41-42, 14:9, 21:20; Yeshayahu 10:22, 28:27; Yechezkel 13:11, 13:13, 38:22, 40:43; Melachim II 4:38; Daniel 9:25; Bechoros 6b and Bechoros 7:2; Shemos Rabbah 2:4; Midrash Shmuel 20:4; Midrash Shocher Tov to Tehillim 3; Yerushalmi Chagigah 2:3 and Rus Rabbah 3:2 on David's petirah on Shavuos; Rema, Yoreh Deah 89:4 with Pri Megadim 89:7; Chasam Sofer 6:22; Alexander Kohut, Aruch HaShalem; Josephus on the Tyropoeon.