crying out

Distinctions

tzaakah (צעקה) and zaakah (זעקה): one word

Rashi (to Iyov 6:17 and Sotah 36b), Ramban (to Iyov 40:17), the Zohar (Shemos 20a) and others hold the two wholly synonymous and interchangeable, since zayin and tzadi yield similar phonemes, both articulated at the teeth, and so substitute for one another. Rabbi Pappenheim likewise writes that there is no difference; he notes that tzaakah stands close to tzaar, pain, but concludes that both words denote an outward expression of a man's pain and suffering. This reading is what lets the Midrash tie Esav's great and bitter cry when the berachos were gone (Bereishis 27:34) to Mordechai's cry in Shushan (Esther 4:1): because Yaakov caused Esav to cry out, Yaakov's descendants were later punished with the threat of annihilation at the hand of Haman, a descendant of Esav, and Mordechai had in his turn to cry out to Hashem. On the synonymous reading the Midrash is entirely justified, since Tanach practically uses the same word for both, even though the Torah writes tzaakah there and Megillas Esther zaakah here.

tzaakah and zaakah: the minority who separate them

Rabbi Elazar Rokeach of Worms, the late twelfth century Ashkenazic scholar, holds they are not synonyms: zaakah is a cry that lodges a complaint, and tzaakah is not; and zaakah implies multiple people crying, tzaakah does not. On his reading the Midrash's link between Esav and Mordechai is somewhat difficult to justify, since Tanach uses two different words for the two occurrences.

Tehillim 107 is the test case, since all four of its rescued sufferers cry out: the traveler lost in the wilderness and the sailor in the storm with tzaakah, the prisoner and the deathly ill man with zaakah.

• Rabbi Emmanuel Chai Ricci: the tz is simply the longer sound. The prisoner and the sick man are pinned in place, so they get the shorter word; the other two, who still have somewhere to turn, get the longer.
• Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: the Midrash understands the four as the four kingdoms that would subjugate Yisrael, Bavel, Persia/Media, Greece and Rome, and asserts that the first and last of them, Bavel and Rome, were more detrimental to Yisrael than the middle two (the column adding, as its own guess, that this is probably because both destroyed the Beis HaMikdash and exiled the Jews from Yerushalayim). From this Rabbi Wertheimer deduces that tzaakah denotes the more intense crying out, indicating a more serious distress.
• Malbim (to Tehillim 107:6) says the same directly: the wayfarer and the sailor are in greater danger than the prisoner and the sick man, so the pasuk gives them tzaakah. Tosafos (to Berachos 54b) read the four as listed in order of danger instead, which cuts against that.

shaavah (שועה)

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter, Rav Hirsch's great-uncle: zaakah and tzaakah may be directed at a fellow man, but shaavah applies only to one who pleads with Hashem. Rabbi Pappenheim ties it to yeshuah, on the shared root ש-ו-ע: it is a call made in the expectation that it will bring the caller's rescue. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg accepts that all three are cries made in hope of deliverance and puts the difference in what is actually said: with zaakah and tzaakah the sufferer puts his suffering into words but does not ask (a poor man calling out that he has not eaten in days), while with shaavah he says plainly what he wants (the same man saying, give me something to eat). The Zohar agrees that tzaakah and zaakah are the less explicit, but frames it differently: they are the silent cry of pain and shaavah is spoken tefillah, and one view there makes the wordless cry of the heart the greater plea of the two.

Rendering guidance

• Tzaakah and zaakah: "cry out," "cried out," "an outcry." Use the same English for both unless the passage is arguing from the difference.
• Shaavah: "cried out for help," or "plea." "Cry" alone loses the request, which is the whole of Rabbi Mecklenburg's distinction.
• Tehillim 107, where all four cries appear: keep one English verb across the four unless you are following Malbim or Rabbi Wertheimer, in which case mark the two tzaakah verses ("cried out in anguish") and leave the zaakah verses plain, with a note saying what you did and why.
• Trap: English "cry out" will absorb all three, and "cry" alone will also pull in weeping, which none of these words means. None of the three is bechi.
• Second trap: when a Midrash links two pesukim across the tzaakah/zaakah line (Esav and Mordechai), an English translation that renders them identically makes the derashah look trivial, and one that renders them differently makes it look impossible. Translate both "cried out" and put the two Hebrew words in a note.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "For Crying Out Loud," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 Adar II 5778 (2018-02-24): sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7655-for-crying-out-loud.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 27:34; Esther 4:1; Tehillim 107 (verses 6, 13, 19, 28) with Malbim at 107:6; Iyov 6:17 with Rashi and Iyov 40:17 with Ramban; Sotah 36b with Rashi; Berachos 54b with Tosafos; Zohar, Shemos 20a; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim on ש-ו-ע and צ-ע-ק. The article does not give the locus of the Midrash linking Esav's cry to Mordechai's, and it is not supplied here.