curtain

Distinctions

paroches (פרוכת)

Rashi (to Shemos 26:31): a paroches is the curtain separating a king from his people; in the Mishkan it divides the Kodesh from the Kodesh HaKodashim (Shemos 26:31-33). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim derives it from פ-ר-כ, a breaking off whose point is to begin something new. So avodas perech (Shemos 1:13) was torture because the Egyptians kept interrupting the Jews mid-task and pushing them onto something else, and a pircha in the language of the Gemara is the question that breaks the flow of a sugya and turns it elsewhere. On this reading a paroches is a partition that breaks off one area and announces the start of another: up to here the Kodesh, from here something new and holier. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim concludes that paroches does not inherently mean "curtain" at all, but any barrier that sets the border between two domains.

Shoresh Yesha reads paroches as glory, on two possible derivations: from pe'er ("glory"), or by taking the peh as interchangeable with beis and rearranging the letters to rechev ("vehicle"), so that the paroches is a feature of Hashem's glory as the merkavah and the keruvim are.

masach (מסך)

Rashi (to Shemos 26:36, and see Shemos 35:12): a masach is the curtain covering the entrance to a building or a room. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim derives it from ס-כ, "covering," the root behind sukkah (covered with sechach) and the Modern Hebrew maseichah ("mask," covering the face). A masach is thus a screen that keeps a thing from the eyes of onlookers, and more broadly any thick cloth used for protection, whether laid over something as a cover (Shmuel II 17:19, Tehillim 105:39) or hung down its side as a curtain. The column notes that in Modern Hebrew masach is any sort of "screen," a computer monitor included.

paroches hamasach (Shemos 35:12)

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reads the doubled name as carrying both senses at once: the curtain of the Kodesh HaKodashim is a paroches because it marks the line between Kodesh and Kodesh HaKodashim, and a masach because its heavy fabric shields the inner chamber from the dust raised by the kohanim working outside.

vilon (וילון)

Four times in the Mishnah (Keilim 20:6, 24:13, 27:9, and Negaim 11:11), and the name of the first of the seven heavens (Chagigah 12b), because it serves as the curtain over the entrance to the heavens. The origins of the word are neither Hebrew nor Aramaic: the column has it a loanword from the Greek velum, which is related to the English veil. Velum survives in English scientific terminology for a thin veil-like membrane, and the English reveal and unveil literally mean to undo a veiling.

pargod (פרגוד)

The Rabbinic word used where Tanach has paroches. Rabbi Nosson of Rome in Sefer HaAruch: a pargod is the curtain separating a chasan from everyone else, which matches the paroches separating a king from the people and the Kodesh HaKodashim from the Kodesh. Rav Hai Gaon, on the Mishnah's pargod (Keilim 29:1), glosses it simply as paroches. It carries the same heavenly weight as vilon: the Gemara (Chagigah 15a) relates that the apostate Elisha ben Avuyah claimed he heard from beyond the pargod a call for everyone else to return except him, and the Yom Kippur Mussaf piyut has Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha ascending and reporting what he heard from beyond the pargod about the decree of the Ten Martyrs. Rashi defines it in these contexts twice, at Bava Metzia 59a as the separation between Hashem and the malachim, and at Berachos 18b as the separation between Hashem and His Holy Presence. On etymology the column gives two lines. Rabbi Ernest Klein derives pargod from the Greek paragaudos/paragaudion and the Latin paragauda, a "laced garment" or "tunic," the lattice of a curtain somewhat resembling that weave. Others explain it from the Latin pergere ("come," "go forward"), which in turn might ultimately derive from the Akkadian paraku ("to go across"), naming the curtain's position at an entrance and the fact that one passes through it to enter. (Another derivative of pergere is the Latin pergola, a roof that protrudes from elsewhere, whence the English pergola.)

Rendering guidance

• פרוכת: "curtain" in the Mishkan and in a shul, but where Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim's sense is in play, "partition" or "dividing curtain," since his whole point is that the word names the division and not the cloth.
• מסך: "screen." Reserve it; do not let it become a second "curtain."
• וילון: "curtain," plain.
• פרגוד: "curtain" in a chuppah or Mishnah context; in the aggados of Chagigah 15a and the Mussaf piyut, keep it transliterated, "from behind the pargod," since no English word carries what Rashi loads onto it there.
• Trap: Shemos 35:12 puts paroches and masach in one construct phrase, paroches hamasach. "The curtain of the curtain" is nonsense; render "the partition screen" or "the dividing curtain that screens," and let Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim's two functions both survive.
• Trap: do not render masach "veil." It shields from view but is heavy cloth, not gauze; "veil" belongs closer to vilon.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Raise the Curtain," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 25 Adar I 5779 (2019-03-02): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8157-raise-the-curtain.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 1:13, 26:31, 26:31-33, 26:36, 35:12; Shmuel II 17:19; Tehillim 105:39; Keilim 20:6, 24:13, 27:9, 29:1; Negaim 11:11; Chagigah 12b and 15a; Bava Metzia 59a; Berachos 18b; Rashi to Shemos 26:31, 26:36 and 35:12; Sefer HaAruch s.v. pargod; Rav Hai Gaon to Keilim 29:1; Shoresh Yesha. The article's Greek etymology for vilon and its two etymologies for pargod (Rabbi Ernest Klein's Greek and Latin derivation, and the anonymous Latin and Akkadian alternative) are reported here as the column gives them.