completeness

Distinctions

tam / tamim (תם, תמים)

Biliteral ת-ם. All three Avos are called complete with words from this root: Hashem told Avraham that with his milah he would become tamim, whole (Bereishis 17:1); Yitzchak is an olah temimah, an unblemished burnt-offering (Bereishis Rabbah 64:3); and Yaakov is an ish tam, a wholesome man (Bereishis 25:27). Rabbeinu Bachaya (Bereishis 17:1) gives two marks. First, no deficiency and no superfluity: the Torah is temimah (Tehillim 19:8) because nothing may be added to it or taken from it (Devarim 13:1). Second, the inside like the outside: what the tam believes in his heart is exactly what his mouth says. The upshot is equivalence, as in teomim, twins: the tam is precisely equal to what is asked of him, neither short of it nor beyond it. Malbim: completeness of intention, good deeds done with no ulterior motive (reward, fear of punishment), and full agreement among the parts of the psyche, so the whole man resolves on the good with no inner dissent to be appeased. Pappenheim: the word runs across the spiritual (a tzaddik), the physical (an unblemished animal, Vayikra 1:3, 22:21; the redness of the parah adumah, Bamidbar 19:2), and the quantitative (a full measure); it also names the innocent, "wholesome" man whose knowledge is complete to him and who seeks nothing beyond it, hence the tam of the Haggadah, the simpleton. (The column notes in passing the whole inside the English wholesome, a semantic affinity with tam.) The Zohar (Bamidbar 165b) ranks tam above tamim. On "be tamim with Hashem" (Devarim 18:13), coming after the ban on augury, divination, sorcery and necromancy: innocent and wholesome, not appealing to outside forms of wisdom such as the dark arts to know the future; the Kedushat Levi does not read tamim as "wholesome" here at all, but as completeness of trust in Hashem, seeing Him as the One who always supplies whatever is lacking. Onkelos there renders shelim, an Aramaic cognate of shalem, and Sefer HaBahir (137) uses that to prove that tamim means shalem, which the column takes to suggest that the two are synonymous, at least colloquially.

shalem (שלם)

Pappenheim traces it to the biliteral ש-ל, removed, cast away (shal your shoes, Shemos 3:5; sheol, shalal, shalvah, each a taking-away). Shalem is the completion reached when everything removed has been returned: right now, nothing is lacking. Shalom likewise: every factor needed for well-being present. Pappenheim allows that tam and shalem may colloquially mean the same thing, but proposes a fundamental distinction all the same: shalem is quantitative completeness, tam qualitative. Hence shalem for honest weights that are not short of their declared weight (Devarim 25:15), for the uncut stones of the mizbeach, unchipped and unnotched (Devarim 27:6; Yehoshua 8:31, which the article prints as 8:21), and for the quota of sin not yet full in Avraham's day (Bereishis 15:16, of the Emori; the article says the Canaanites). And shalem does not exclude excess: leshalem, to pay, still applies to one who paid more than the price, whereas tamim cannot apply without an exact match and fails the moment anything is missing or extra.

Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer takes a similar approach but differs: shalem is exclusively quantitative, while tam is qualitative completion that includes the quantitative. Rabbi Avraham Bedersi seems to understand both words as completion, but shalem as a neutral word carrying no value judgment and tam as a positive form of completion. And if the column has understood him correctly, Rabbi Shimon Dov Ber Analak of Siedlce holds that tam is completion in one particular aspect and not necessarily in all, while shalem implies a more overall completion, as Yaakov came to Shechem shalem (Bereishis 33:18) and Chazal expound it of body, Torah and wealth (Shabbos 33b; the article prints 33a); tam, by contrast, almost exclusively denotes completion in the spiritual realm, not the physical, intellectual or financial.

The commentators are bothered by vayitmu, "and the days of weeping in mourning for Moshe were finished" (Devarim 34:8; the article prints 33:8), which uses a cognate of tam for the closing of a fixed count of days, a quantitative measure. The article leaves two answers standing. One may accept Rabbi Wertheimer's supposition that tam covers quantitative completion as well as qualitative, while shalem covers only the quantitative. Or one may answer that the completion here is not of the days but of the quality of the mourning: Rabbi Moshe Sofer explains that the mourning for Moshe was completed when Yisrael compounded the loss of their leader with the realization that they could have become his talmidim as Yehoshua did, had they not been lazy.

Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg applies Pappenheim's distinction to sheva shabbasos temimos (Vayikra 23:15): Chazal teach that the weeks are temimos only when Yisrael act according to Hashem's will (Vayikra Rabbah 28:3), and Rabbi Mecklenburg sees them reading this out of temimos itself, which names qualitative completeness and so cannot be a mere count of the passage of time.

Rendering guidance

• Shleimus in a mussar text: "completeness" (the state of lacking nothing) or "wholeness." Reach for "perfection" only where the Hebrew itself names the ultimate degree and the context rules out further growth; by Pappenheim's definition the shalem may still gain, the "perfect" cannot.
• Tamim of a korban: "unblemished." Of a person: "wholehearted" (Malbim's undivided intention) or "whole"; "wholesome" or "simple" for the innocent sense (the Haggadah's tam, Yaakov the ish tam); of the Torah: "perfect."
• When the two stand together (Onkelos equates them, so a text may pair them): "whole" for tam, "complete" for shalem, and let the two English words do the work the Hebrew does.
• Trap: "complete" absorbs both, and "perfect" absorbs both while adding a ceiling neither word asserts. A derashah that turns on the choice of word (temimos of the Omer, vayitmu of the mourning) needs the quality-versus- quantity line visible in English.
• Shalem of a person is broad (health, learning, means; Shabbos 33b); do not narrow it to the moral sense that belongs to tam.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Seeking Completion," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 10 Cheshvan 5782 (2021-10-16): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9396-seeking-completion.md. Primary loci the article cites: Bereishis 17:1 with Rabbeinu Bachaya; Bereishis 25:27; Bereishis Rabbah 64:3; Tehillim 19:8; Devarim 13:1, 18:13 (with Onkelos and Sefer HaBahir 137), 25:15, 27:6, 34:8; Yehoshua 8:31; Shemos 3:5; Vayikra 1:3, 22:21, 23:15 with Vayikra Rabbah 28:3; Bamidbar 19:2; Bereishis 15:16 and 33:18 with Shabbos 33b; Zohar to Bamidbar 165b. Three of the article's loci are corrected here, with the article's form noted in the body: Devarim 34:8 (the article prints 33:8), Shabbos 33b (printed 33a), and Yehoshua 8:31 (printed 8:21).