coriander

Distinctions

gad (גד)

Targum Onkelos (to Shemos 16:31 and Bamidbar 11:7) leaves it untranslated, Aramaizing it as gada. Targum Yonasan (both places) renders kusbar, coriander. Menachem Ibn Saruk identifies gad as kusbaras, and Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) as what Chazal call kusbarta. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reads the two-letter root ג-ד as attachment or connection, and gathers under it gad (a spiritual force attached to a particular thing), gid (a sinew, which holds parts of the body together), gedud (a squad joined into one unit), and haggadah (setting new information into a larger narrative); on the same logic meged (Devarim 33:13-14), megadim (Shir HaShirim 4:13), and migdanos (Bereishis 24:53) are sweet foods, which the palate wants to attach itself to, and he suggests that perhaps the gad seed of the man is likewise a sort of sweet edible seed. Coriander seed is sometimes described as sweet.

As an aside, the column notes that coriander is known as goid in North African Punic, which led the German linguist Wilhelm Gesenius (1786-1842) to claim that goid derives from the Hebrew gadad, to cut, in allusion to the wrinkled and furrowed look of the seeds. Rabbi Golumb makes one further suggestion of his own: read gad backwards as dag, fish, so that the "fish seed" of the man is caviar, an especially notable and prominent food.

Against coriander, Rabbi Yehudah Ibn Balaam in the name of Rav Hai Gaon: zera gad is mustard seed. Ibn Ezra (both commentaries to Shemos 16:31, and to Bamidbar 11:7) brings this alongside coriander and says he does not know which is right. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Krinsky (Yahel Ohr) explains Ibn Ezra's reasoning: gad is akin to gedi, the smallest of the goats, so among seeds it would name the mustard seed, which Chazal use as the standard for the smallest seed.

On the color: Rashi (to Shemos 16:31), the Rashbam, and Radak all say the pasuk means the man was white and shaped like a gad seed, and state outright that gad seeds are not white. That fits coriander, yellowish brown, and mustard, gray brown. The Ralbag (to Shemos 16:14 and 16:31) holds the gad seed was itself white, which seems to identify it with something else again, though Ibn Balaam does hold that mustard seeds are white.

kusbar / kusbarta (כוסבר, כוסברתא)

The Mishnaic and Aramaic word for coriander: Sheviis 9:1, Kilayim 1:2 (cited in Pesachim 39a among the vegetables usable for maror), Maasros 3:9 and 4:5. The column reports that linguists recognize both kusbara and coriander as belonging to very ancient languages, tracing kusbara to the Sanskrit kustumbari/kustumburu and coriander to korijadana in the proto-Greek known as Linear B. That said, Rabbi Dovid Golumb (Targumna) parses kusbara from two Hebrew roots meaning cut up, chewed or masticated, כ-ו-ס (or perhaps כ-ס-ס) and ב-ר (see Yechezkel 23:47). The word carries a famous double sense in Avodah Zarah 10b: Antoninus sent Rebbi a coded question about his wayward daughter and Rebbi sent back kusbarta, read as kus (to chew or slaughter, as in the Syriac of Pesachim 63a) plus barta (daughter), that is, put her to death; when Antoninus objected that this would end his line, Rebbi urged mercy (Rabbeinu Chananel, Sefer HeAruch, and Rashi there). Others hold Antoninus misread it: kusbarta stood for kasah (cover up) plus barta, that he should cover her misdeeds and not punish her (Tosafos Rabbeinu Elchanan, Tosafos HaRosh, Nimukei Yosef).

gudgedaniyos (גודגדניות)

Rashi (to Eruvin 28a and Gittin 70a) defines this Talmudic food with the same Old French word he uses for coriander, which suggests he took it as connected to the Biblical gad. Jastrow vowelizes gadgadniyos and defines it as a clover or a cherry (see also Rashi to Berachos 57b and Sefer HaTishbi).

Rashi's two French words

Rashi renders gad in Chumash as coliander, an Old French word for coriander (the l-sound and the r-sound being interchangeable, as often happens), but the Aramaic kusbarta and gida in the Gemara (Shabbos 109a, Yoma 75a, Avodah Zarah 10b) as aillendre, possibly pronounced aliandre. The column consulted experts and reports that two possibilities seem to resolve the contradiction. First, in the Jewish dialects of Old French the opening consonant of coliander might have been dropped, giving aillendre, so that Rashi may have used both pronunciations interchangeably; but the column notes at once that this does not account for why the Chumash commentary should have the one and the Talmud commentary the other. Second, it has been pointed out that alternate manuscripts of the Chumash commentary read aillendre while alternate manuscripts of the Talmud commentary read coliander, which suggests that aillendre is a copyist's error of permutation, aleph and kuf being very similar in some scripts. The column thanks Dr. Ariel Shaveh of the Academy of the Hebrew Language and Rabbi Tzvi Mordechai Libber of Milwaukee for these suggestions.

Rendering guidance

• Zera gad in Shemos 16:31 and Bamidbar 11:7: "coriander seed," with a note for Rav Hai Gaon's mustard seed if the passage weighs the identification. Onkelos's refusal to render it is itself worth a note.
• Do not write "white coriander seed." Render "white, like coriander seed" or "white, and shaped like coriander seed," which is what Rashi, the Rashbam, and Radak insist the pasuk means.
• Trap: American English separates cilantro (from the Spanish for coriander), the leaves and stalks, from coriander, the seed; culantro, etymologically a synonym, in practice names a different plant native to the Americas. The pesukim speak of the seed, so "coriander" is the only right word there; "cilantro" would put the wrong part of the plant in the pasuk.
• Second trap: gad also names the tribe of Gad and, elsewhere in Tanach, fortune (and gid a sinew). Do not carry the plant sense into those, nor Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim's shared root into a translation; his connection is a derivation, not a gloss.
• Kusbarta in Avodah Zarah 10b: keep the Aramaic and translate the wordplay in a note. No English word can carry both "coriander" and the two readings of the message.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Coriander Conundrum," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 14 Sivan 5780 (2020-06-06): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/a-coriander-conundrum; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8735-a-coriander-conundrum.md. Primary loci: Shemos 16:14 and 16:31, Bamidbar 11:7, with Targum Onkelos, Targum Yonasan, Rashi, the Rashbam, Radak, Ibn Ezra, and the Ralbag; Machberes Menachem and Radak's Sefer HaShorashim s.v. גד; Mishnah Sheviis 9:1, Kilayim 1:2, Maasros 3:9 and 4:5; Pesachim 39a and 63a; Avodah Zarah 10b with Rabbeinu Chananel, Sefer HeAruch, Tosafos Rabbeinu Elchanan, Tosafos HaRosh, and Nimukei Yosef; Shabbos 109a; Yoma 75a; Eruvin 28a; Gittin 70a; Berachos 57b; Devarim 33:13-14; Shir HaShirim 4:13; Bereishis 24:53; Yechezkel 23:47. The article's Sanskrit and Linear B derivations, its citation of Wilhelm Gesenius on Punic goid, and its thanks to Dr. Ariel Shaveh and Rabbi Tzvi Mordechai Libber are reported above as the article reports them.