flour

Distinctions

kemach (קמח)

Fourteen appearances in Tanach. Donash Ibn Labrat, arguing against Menachem Ibn Saruk, took the cognate in Arabic to mean wheat; an anonymous student of Menachem answered that the Arabic word means wheat generally while the Hebrew means specifically wheat that has been ground, that is, flour. Donash's own student Ibn Sheshes conceded the point from the Sotah offering, where the Torah writes kemach se'orim, flour of barley, which cannot mean wheat at all. Rashi (Sotah 14a): everything is mixed into kemach. It can be finely ground and still be kemach, since husk and bran remain within the granules (Rashi to Kesubos 112b). Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: kemach is adulterated flour carrying subpar material. As a metaphor it is the lesser stock: "he does not care about his kemach" (Yevamos 42b, Pesachim 84a, Sukkah 54a) of one who speaks imprecisely, since he grinds kemach and not soles (Rashi there); and of Kimchis, the pious woman who merited that each of her seven sons serve as Kohen Gadol because she was careful always to cover her hair, even indoors, of whom Chazal said "all kemach yields kemach, but the kemach of Kimchis is soles" (Yerushalmi Yoma 1:1 and Bamidbar Rabbah 2:26; the story is at Yoma 47a). Just as wheat yields flour, so people yield offspring.

Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Ohalei Yehudah) reads kemach as a compound of ק-מ-ה, standing erect, and מ-ח-ה, erasing, since grinding takes the stalk that stood tall in the field and cuts it down; kamah is standing, uncut grain (Shemos 22:5; Peah 2:7, 4:7, 5:2; Menachos 10:9). Alternatively he derives it straight from י-מ-ח, erasure, on the interchange of kuf and yud. The Kimchi family name (Rabbi Yosef Kimchi and his sons Radak and Rabbi Moshe Kimchi) appears to come from this word; the article notes the proposed pronunciation Kamchi but keeps Kimchi, since Rabbi Immanuel Frances rhymes it with simchi.

soles (סולת)

Fifty-two appearances in Tanach, more than half of them in Bamidbar, mostly clustered in Nasso and Pinchas. Every menachah in the Torah is brought of soles except the Omer (Vayikra 23:10-11) and the Sotah offering (Bamidbar 5:15), both of which are barley and both of which the Torah calls kemach. On that basis Rashi (Vayikra 2:1) and Rashbam (Bereishis 18:6) hold that soles always means wheat flour. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim objects from Shemos 29:2, which says soles chittim, flour of wheat, implying that soles alone does not necessarily specify the species. The column adds that either way, since the Sotah offering is explicitly said to come from kemach, the word marks a different type or grade of flour rather than a different species of grain. Menachos 6:7 describes sifting the flour for menachos over and over to yield the finest soles (see Rashi to Menachos 76b); Rashi to Taanis 9b explains that the finer white flour passes the sifter first and the coarser after (see also Tosafos there), and Avos 5:15 uses the image: the sieve lets out the kemach and keeps the soles. Rashi (Bava Metzia 87a) states plainly that soles is better than kemach; Kiddushin 69b calls the Babylonian community pure soles against the mixed dough left in Eretz Yisrael.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces soles to the biliteral ס-ל, repeated action: mesilah is a road much trodden, misalsel (Rosh Hashanah 26b) is one who twists his hair over and over, and sal is the bread basket (Bereishis 40:16, Vayikra 8:2), in daily use. So soles is either the flour precious enough to be kept in a sal rather than dumped in a sack like kemach, or the flour named for the repeated pressing and grinding that produces it.

geres (גרש) and semida (סמידא)

Rashi (Menachos 27a): geres said of barley (Vayikra 2:14) is to barley what soles is to wheat. Ibn Janach defines geres with the word soles outright. Menachem, Ibn Janach and Radak all treat ג-ר-ש and ג-ר-ס as one root meaning breaking or grinding. The Aramaic semida Rashi glosses as soles (Shabbos 110b, Pesachim 74b, Taanis 24b, Gittin 56a), and Ibn Ezra (Vayikra 2:1) says soles is white flour, known in Arabic and Aramaic as semida. Note the counter-usage: the Targum to Bereishis 18:6 often attributed to Rabbi Yonasan ben Uziel renders kemach as semida and soles as solta. The column adds that this Aramaic and Arabic word is the etymological ancestor of the English semolina, by way of the Greek semidalis and the interchange of dalet and lammed.

Rendering guidance

• Default pair: kemach = flour (or "whole wheat flour" where the contrast is live), soles = fine flour. "Fine flour" is the safe rendering in a korbanos context and matches the sifting the Mishnah describes.
• Do not render soles as "semolina." The English word does descend from the Aramaic semida, as the article says; but (our point, not the article's) semolina in current English is a coarse durum meal, the opposite of what soles means.
• Trap: English "flour" alone will swallow both words. In any passage that grades them (Avos 5:15, Bava Metzia 87a, the Kimchis maamar) keep the two renderings visibly different, and in a metaphor render the sense, "coarse stock yields coarse stock, but Kimchis's yields the finest."
• The two together: Bereishis 18:6, kemach soles. Bava Metzia 87a reads the doubling as Avraham offering the better grade and Sarah the lesser, so a translation following the Gemara must keep both words distinct. Radak reads the phrase as one thing, kemach to be made into soles; on his reading render "flour for fine meal." Say which you follow.
• Where the Torah writes kemach se'orim (Bamidbar 5:15), render "barley flour" and let a note carry the point that the coarse word is deliberate.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Flour Power," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 23 Tammuz 5781 (2021-07-03): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9275-flour-power.md. Primary loci cited: Vayikra 2:1, 2:14, 8:2, 23:10-11; Bamidbar 5:15; Shemos 22:5, 29:2; Bereishis 18:6, 40:16; Menachos 6:7 and 10:9, with Rashi to Menachos 27a and 76b; Avos 5:15; Rosh Hashanah 26b; Taanis 9b with Tosafos, and 24b; Bava Metzia 87a; Yevamos 42b; Pesachim 84a and 74b; Sukkah 54a; Kiddushin 69b; Kesubos 112b; Sotah 14a; Yoma 47a with Yerushalmi Yoma 1:1 and Bamidbar Rabbah 2:26; Shabbos 110b; Gittin 56a; Peah 2:7, 4:7, 5:2. Nothing the article carries is omitted here, including its Arabic comparisons (Donash against Menachem, and Ibn Ezra on semida) and its derivation of English semolina through the Greek semidalis. The one claim that is ours and not the article's, marked as such in the rendering guidance, is what "semolina" denotes in current English.