forgetting

Distinctions

shachach (שכח)

Root ש-כ-ח. The standard verb. Devarim uses it for forgetting Hashem (6:12, 8:11, 8:14, 8:19, 32:18), Sinai (4:9), the Torah (31:21), the covenant with the Avos (4:31) and with Yisrael (4:23), how the Jews angered Hashem in the wilderness (9:7), the halachos of maaser (26:13), and what Amalek did (25:19). Rav Hirsch (Bereishis 8:1): shachach is forgetting inadvertently; elsewhere (Devarim 4:9) he defines it as forgetting because one's attention went to something else. Malbim (Iyov 11:6): what is forgotten by shachach can be retrieved later.

By way of metathesis, some connect ש-כ-ח to כ-ח-ש, deny or weaken, which uses the same letters. Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Teitelbaum of Sighet (Yitav Lev to Shemos 10:1) is the column's example: forget Hashem and your obligations to Him, and you will end by denying His existence outright. On the same interchange, Robert Alter and the editors of Daas Mikra explain tishkach in Tehillim 137:5 ("let my right hand be forgotten") as tikchash, let it be weakened.

Rabbi Moshe Shapiro on the Aramaic shachiach, common or frequent, which shares the root: one would expect the frequent thing to be the best remembered. Rather, the mind files what recurs under "normal," and what is taken for granted is easily lost; Chullin 75b says that a bizarre matter is the thing people surely remember.

nashah (נשה)

The rare word. The unambiguous case is Yosef naming Menashe: ki nashani Elokim es kol amali ve'es kol beis avi (Bereishis 41:51). Rabbi Avraham Menachem Rappaport (Minchah Belulah) claimed that this is the only cognate in Tanach; the column answers that there seem to be a few more. Another possible case is Devarim 32:18, which pairs both words in one pasuk, tzur yeladcha teshi vatishkach Kel mecholelecha, where teshi is the same root with the nun dropped in favor of a tav (Rashi there). Further cases: Eichah 3:17; Yirmiyahu 23:39; Yeshayahu 44:21; Iyov 39:17 and 11:6. The gid hanasheh (Bereishis 32:33) is read by the Zohar (Bereishis 170b) as food for the yetzer hara that makes a man forget his duties to Hashem, so the name itself is from nashah. The Gemara's bei nasha for a married woman's family of origin was explained in the same sense, that on marrying she leaves the first household behind and joins her husband's: so Tosafos Chachmei Anglia to Kiddushin 24a first, then Rabbi Yehuda Chalava (a son of the Maharam Chalava) and his cousin Rabbeinu Bachya ibn Chalava (each to Bereishis 41:51), and later Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (Musaf HaAruch) and Rabbi Shmuel HaLevi (Nachalas Shivah).

On the root itself: Menachem Ibn Saruk reduces nashani and teshi to the single letter shin; Ibn Chayyuj, Ibn Janach and Radak give נ-ש-ה or נ-ש-ש. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Cheshek Shlomo) gives the biliteral נ-ש, moving something out of its natural condition, and forgetting is information moved out of its place in the mind; on that root he also puts gid hanasheh (the sinew that moves from its place), nosheh (a lender, who moves his money out of his hand), anush (a sickly man, whose health has been displaced) and enosh (mankind, weak beside higher beings). Elsewhere he derives teshi from ת-ש, weakening; Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi Ashkenazi (Hoil Moshe) makes weakening the primary sense of נ-ש itself.

The distinction, and the dissent

Malbim (Iyov 11:6): shachach is recoverable, nashah is irretrievable. Rav Hirsch (Bereishis 8:1): shachach is inadvertent, nashah is what happens to a man who treated the matter flippantly, so he bears more blame for having forgotten; and (Devarim 4:9) shachach is displacement by another focus while nashah is a weakened memory. Rabbi Eliyahu Katz, formerly Chief Rabbi of Slovakia and later of Be'er Sheva, disagrees with both: the Targumim tend to render shachach and its cognates with nashah-words, which he takes as evidence that nashah is simply the Aramaic way of saying shachach and that no distinction exists. The Bottom line follows Malbim and Rav Hirsch; Rabbi Katz's dissent stays live.

Rendering guidance

• Default: shachach = forget. Reserve the heavier English for nashah.
• Nashah standing alone (Bereishis 41:51): "Hashem has made me forget entirely," or "has put out of my mind." Menashe's name carries the finality; a bare "forget" loses why Yosef chose the rarer word.
• The two in one pasuk (Devarim 32:18): the Hebrew moves from teshi to vatishkach, so do not render both with the same English verb. "You grew unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and forgot the God Who brought you forth" keeps them distinct without importing a claim about order.
• Trap: English "forget" will absorb both words, and "neglect" will quietly smuggle in Rav Hirsch's moral reading where the source has not made it. Use "forget" for shachach; choose the nashah rendering by which authority the passage follows, and say so in a note.
• Do not render shachach as "lose" or "blank on"; the register is wrong in a sefer, and Devarim's warnings are commands about a state of mind, not lapses.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Forget About It," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 14 Elul 5779 (2019-09-14): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8389-forget-about-it.md. Primary loci cited: Devarim 4:9, 4:23, 4:31, 6:12, 8:11, 8:14, 8:19, 9:7, 25:19, 26:13, 31:21, 32:18; Bereishis 8:1, 32:33, 41:51; Eichah 3:17; Yirmiyahu 23:39; Yeshayahu 44:21; Iyov 11:6, 39:17; Tehillim 137:5; Zohar Bereishis 170b; Kiddushin 24a; Chullin 75b; Shemos 10:1 (Yitav Lev). Nothing the article carries is omitted here, including Robert Alter, whom it names alongside Daas Mikra on Tehillim 137:5.