guest

Distinctions

oreach (אורח)

Four occurrences (Shoftim 19:17, Shmuel II 12:4, Yirmiyahu 9:1, 14:8). Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak trace it to א-ר-ח, whose commonest derivative is orach, a road or path (about sixty occurrences), and which also gives orchah, a caravan (Bereishis 37:25, Yeshayahu 21:13). Ibn Janach and Radak: an oreach is so called because he travels an orach and is put up along the way. Ibn Janach translates oreach outright into the rabbinic achsanai.

Aruchah, a meal (Yirmiyahu 40:3, 52:34, Mishlei 15:17, Melachim II 25:30), comes from the same string. Ibn Saruk (Machberes) files it as a separate sense of א-ר-ח; Radak says plainly that it belongs with orach and oreach without spelling out how. The column adds its own suggestion: perhaps aruchah originally meant the food provisions a sojourner took with him on his travels.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim assigns all four (oreach, orach, orchah, aruchah) to the biliteral ר-ח, "air, space," alongside revach (open space), ruach (wind), rei'ach (smell, which travels in air), yarei'ach (the moon, whose movements somehow govern the tides and winds), and memarei'ach (smoothing, which squeezes out air). An orach is a wide road with revach in it; an oreach travels it; an aruchah is the meal set out in an oreach's honor.

ushpiz (אושפיז)

Aramaic. In Talmudic Aramaic it typically means host: ushpiza is a male host (Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel to Bava Metzia 24a) and a hostess (Rashi to Shabbos 140b), but Rashi to Eruvin 53b takes it as guest. Rabbi Dr. Alexander Kohut, Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein, Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer and others read ushpizchan as the host (Rashi to Beitzah 4a) and ushpizi as the guest, though the column notes this does not always seem to hold. Rabbi Shmuel Krauss and Rabbi Yitzchak Avineri argue that ushpiz in the Gemara never means guest, though it could sometimes mean a guest's accommodations, and that the "guest" sense is a later development reflected in the Zohar's parlance. The column offers its own guess that all of this may come from non-expert copyists who introduced spelling errors into the Talmud that obscure which variation means what. In Zoharic Aramaic ushpiz usually means guest: most famously the seven Ushpizin who grace the sukkah (Zohar Emor 103b).

On etymology: Eruvin 53b, as Rashi explains it, plays on ushpiz as ish pi zo chai, "the man by whom this mouth lives"; Tosafos there, citing Rabbeinu Chananel, answer that the word is simply Aramaic and not built from that phrase. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi), who vocalizes it ashpaz, takes it from Latin hospes, the etymon of English hospitality, hospice, hospital and hospitaller; the column adds that modern linguists take that Latin word to derive apparently from proto-Italic hospitpotis, "the master of the guest," and to be related to Latin hostis, stranger or enemy, behind English hostile and hostage. Others, including Rabbi Shmuel Krauss, argue that ushpaz comes not from Latin but from Old Persian, where aspanj means "inn." Either way HaBachur notes the word covers both the lodging house and the guest who uses it. (In Modern Hebrew ishpuz means hospitalization.) Rabbi Yaakov Emden argues for a Hebrew reading, yesh po zin, "there is sustenance here," for ushpiz as host. Rabbi Shimon Yehuda Leib Goldblit parses ushpaz as ish paz, "a man of gold," and uses it to explain why the Zohar reaches for a non-Hebrew word for the seven tzaddikim rather than the plain orchim: ushpizin pays them a compliment that the seemingly neutral Hebrew does not. Ashpenaz of Daniel 1:3 seems to be a proper name, though Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, in their lexicon of biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, understand it rather as a title, something like "chief of the household" or "landlord"; either way it seems related to the later ushpiz, with an extra nun as often happens. By the Sefer Yuchasin's girsa of Taanis 24b (see Dikdukei Sofrim) Rav Nachman's mother was named Ushpiztai, likely from the same word.

achsanai (אכסנאי) and achsanyah (אכסניה)

Twice in the Mishnah (Demai 3:1, Chullin 8:2), once in Targum (to Iyov 31:32), and throughout Shas and Midrash. HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi): the guest lodging temporarily is the achsanai, and the inn or host itself the achsanyah, though here too the two get swapped. In Meturgaman he renders achsanyah by the German and Yiddish gast; related, the column notes, are the Jewish surname Gastwirth, innkeeper, and German Gasthaus, guest house. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein claims achsanyah derives from Greek xenos, stranger or foreigner, with the prosthetic alef common in Greek words taken into Hebrew, the same Greek word behind English xenial, xenophobia, xenogenous, xenogamy and the element xenon. Rabbi Avi Kobernick offers a Hebrew derivation from כ-ס-ן, read against its metatheses כ-נ-ס (gathering in), ס-כ-ן (storing) and נ-כ-ס (property): an achsanyah gathers wayfarers in and gives them property in which to be housed. Rashi to Berachos 63b supports the direction, glossing achsanyah with machnisei orchim.

Two loci fix the usage. Arachin 16b, from Rashi to Bereishis 13:3 on Avraham stopping at the same lodgings coming back from Mitzrayim as he had on the way down: one should not change his achsanyah between journeys, where the word is the host, ostensibly so as not to insult the original hosts by taking another next time. Berachos 63b: pos'chin bichvod achsanyah, a guest called on to speak opens by honoring his hosts. And Rashi to Bamidbar 20:17 uses both words in one comment, teaching an achsanai (guest) to buy provisions from his ushpiz (host) even when he has enough of his own (see also Bamidbar Rabbah 19:15 and Midrash Tanchuma, Chukas 12).

The column closes on a parallel in English itself: host is understood to be a cognate of guest, both ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ghostis, guest or stranger, which is said in turn to come from ghos, to eat. Words with an h-sound in one Indo-European language often carry a c, k or g sound in another (cap and head, cent and hundred), so Latin hostis, which became host, is itself related to Germanic gast, which became guest. That is the same kind of ambiguity that lets ushpiz and achsanyah point now to the guest and now to the host.

Rendering guidance

• Hachnasas orchim stays transliterated with a gloss at first occurrence; a bare "hospitality" loses the "bringing in" that is the whole mitzvah.
• Trap: English "host" and "guest" are the very pair the Hebrew blurs. Do not render ushpiz or achsanyah from a glossary. In a Gemara sugya read it as host by default and check Rashi; in the Zohar or in Sukkos usage read it as guest.
• Ushpizin of Sukkos stays transliterated, not "guests," since Rabbi Shimon Yehuda Leib Goldblit's point is that the Zohar deliberately declined the ordinary Hebrew word.
• Where achsanai and ushpiz fall in one sentence, as in Rashi to Bamidbar 20:17, translate them as an explicit pair, "guest" and "host," so the reader sees which is which; do not leave both transliterated there.
• Oreach against achsanai: both are "guest," but if a passage sets a biblical oreach beside a rabbinic achsanai, "wayfarer" for the first keeps the road sense that its root carries.
• Aruchah is "meal," not "way." The shared root is an etymology, not a translation.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Be My Guest," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 18 Cheshvan 5783 (2022-11-12): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10698-be-my-guest.md. Primary loci cited: Shoftim 19:17, Shmuel II 12:4, Yirmiyahu 9:1 and 14:8; Bereishis 37:25; Radak and Ibn Janach, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. ארח; Ibn Saruk, Machberes; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim on biliteral ר-ח; Zohar Emor 103b; Bava Metzia 24a with Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel; Shabbos 140b; Eruvin 53b with Rashi and Tosafos; Beitzah 4a; Taanis 24b with Dikdukei Sofrim; Daniel 1:3; Mishnah Demai 3:1 and Chullin 8:2; Targum to Iyov 31:32; Arachin 16b with Rashi to Bereishis 13:3; Berachos 63b with Rashi; Rashi to Bamidbar 20:17, Bamidbar Rabbah 19:15, Midrash Tanchuma, Chukas 12; Sefer HaTishbi and Meturgaman; Rabbi Dr. Alexander Kohut, Rabbi Shmuel Krauss, and Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner's lexicon of biblical Hebrew and Aramaic on Ashpenaz.