famine

Distinctions

ra'av (רעב)

The ordinary Biblical word, used for each of the three famines that drove the Avos out of Eretz Yisrael (Bereishis 12:10, 26:1, 45:11). Ralbag (to Iyov 5:22): ra'av is famine from simple scarcity of food. The Vilna Gaon: ra'av is the external crisis, a lack of available quality produce. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: ra'av is the man actively suffering hunger pangs, whose body is empty and whose soul craves food.

kafan (כפן)

Root כ-פ-נ. Multiple commentators, the earliest of whom seems to be Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem), have noted that Targum's regular renderings of ra'av are k'fan, kafna, kfina, all from that same root, which would suggest that ra'av is Hebrew and kafan Aramaic, the two being not synonyms in the classical sense but one word in each of two languages. But kafan stands in Iyov, which is not clearly written in Aramaic, and there it appears alongside ra'av itself; this suggests that kafan is indeed a Hebrew word meaning something slightly different from ra'av, at least where it appears in Hebrew. The readings:

• Rabbi Yosef Kimchi (Sefer HaGalui, cited by his son Radak in Sefer HaShorashim): "deficiency, lack," the feeling of reaching into a pocket and finding nothing there. In his commentary to Iyov 5:22 he adds that ra'av and kafan are two kinds of famine, one where food is unavailable and one where food exists but is priced out of reach; a scribal error in the transmission leaves it unknown which word he assigned to which.
• Ralbag (to Iyov 5:22), whose explanation the Tashbetz (Ohev Mishpat there) cites, praises and concurs with, goes in a similar direction: kafan is famine caused by people hoarding food and driving prices up, ra'av famine caused simply by scarcity.
• Ibn Ezra (to Iyov 5:22) and Radak (to Yechezkel 17:7): "gathering." Radak, and an anonymous gloss printed inside Rashi there, read kafnah as a metathesis of the Talmudic kenufia, assembly (Rashi to Shabbos 73b, Pesachim 66b, Zevachim 117a). Rabbi Shmuel Masnuth (Maayan Ganim to Iyov 5:22) pushes this furthest: kafan is not famine at all but a massing of enemy troops.
• Rashi (to Yechezkel 17:7), where the vine kafnah, stretches to grow toward the eagle: he keeps the hunger sense and personifies the vine as hungry for more.
• Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Ohalei Yehuda): primarily the empty-stomach feeling that comes of hunger and thirst, tied to kefiyah, forcing; of all a man's essential activities (eating, drinking, bathing, dressing, sleeping, procreating) eating and drinking are the most important, so a dearth of food forces his hand. He notes as well that kafan can mean scattering or spreading out, possibly a metathesis of kanaf (wing), which a bird spreads to fly, and famine is what sends a man out of the stricken place, as it sent Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim offers a similar explanation: from the biliteral כ-פ, receptacle, which yields kaf (palm), kofef (bending, the act that turns a palm into a receptacle), akifah (enforcement, which compels others to bend to an authority), kippah (dome, a palm-like structure), kofeh (turning a vessel over, which creates a dome-like space), and kefiyah (subduing dissent, and so causing one to bend). Famine is the calamity that bends a man's stature, physically from malnutrition or figuratively in forcing him to submit to whatever terms will keep him alive.
• The Vilna Gaon: kafan is the internal difficulty, where enough food is at hand yet does not satisfy, the curse of "you shall eat and not be sated" (Vayikra 26:26), the reverse of "you shall eat your bread to satisfaction" (Vayikra 26:5), which Rashi explains as a small quantity blessed in the belly.
• Wertheimer: kafan is worse than ra'av, the man so far gone in malnourishment that he no longer feels hunger, having grown used to receiving less than he needs.
• Minority: Rabbi Dr. Moshe Zidel claims kafan is specifically thirst, lack of drink, against ra'av as hunger, lack of solid food. The column reports that it has found no other source indicating this distinction; treat it as an outlier.

batzores (בצורת)

The Biblical phrase shnas batzores (Yirmiyahu 17:8), which Rashi explains as a year of famine. Batzores in the famine sense also appears in the Mishnah (Taanis 3:1, Avos 5:8) and is the standard Talmudic term (Eiruvin 51b, Pesachim 56a, Yevamos 15b, Kesubos 10b and 106a, Gittin 12a, and elsewhere). Root ב-צ-ר, which elsewhere gives "stronghold, fortified" (mivtzar) and "grape harvest" (batzir); the famine sense seems to relate closest to the root's third meaning, withholding or subtracting. Rabbi Pappenheim reads ב-צ-ר in general as a portmanteau of ב-א (come) and צ-ר (narrow), though he does not himself apply it to famine; the column adds, with some creativity of its own, that a famine drives people into financial and economic straits where their range of choices stays narrow.

The Aramaic

Targum's usual word for ra'av is kafna. But Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgaman) notes that Targum to Iyov renders kafan itself as ultzan (5:22, 30:3), and Targum to Tehillim renders ra'av once as kafna (105:16) and twice as ultzana (33:19, 37:19); the Targum to Iyov, Mishlei, and Tehillim is written in a different style from the other Targumim, its language closer to the Syriac dialect of Aramaic, so a different Aramaic word for "famine" there is not surprising. As an aside, the column notes that ultzan/ultzana seem to derive from the Hebrew root א-ל-צ, the root of Biblical alatz.

Rendering guidance

• Default: ra'av "famine" (of a land) or "hunger" (of a person); batzores "famine," and in shnas batzores "a year of famine"; kafan per whichever reading the passage follows.
• Trap: English "famine" absorbs all three. Where a source is building on the ra'av/kafan contrast, split them in English: "famine and dearth," "scarcity and starvation," or spell the distinction out. In Iyov 5 the two stand in one passage (ra'av in 5:20, kafan in 5:22), and a single English word erases the point.
• Trap: batzores is not interchangeable with ra'av in a rabbinic text. When Chazal say shnas batzores they mean the crop failure; ra'av names what the people are suffering.
• Where the Vilna Gaon's reading is in play, kafan is not less food but food that does not satisfy; "famine" is then actively wrong. "Want" or "unsated hunger" carries it.
• Do not smooth kafnah in Yechezkel 17:7 to "gathered" without a note; Rashi and Radak read the same word in opposite directions there.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Famishing Famines," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 7 Teves 5783 (2022-12-31): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10761-famishing-famines.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 12:10, 26:1, 45:11; Vayikra 26:5, 26:26; Yirmiyahu 17:8; Yechezkel 17:7; Iyov 5:20, 5:22, 30:3; Tehillim 33:19, 37:19, 105:16; Taanis 3:1; Avos 5:8; Shabbos 73b; Pesachim 56a, 66b; Eiruvin 51b; Yevamos 15b; Kesubos 10b, 106a; Gittin 12a; Zevachim 117a; Machberes Menachem; Rabbi Yosef Kimchi, Sefer HaGalui and commentary to Iyov 5:22; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Maayan Ganim to Iyov 5:22; Tashbetz, Ohev Mishpat to Iyov 5:22; Ohalei Yehuda; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Meturgaman.