inheritance

Distinctions

nachalah (נחלה)

Root נ-ח-ל. Malbim offers two ways of separating nachalah from yerushah. First: nachalah is specifically transgenerational, the transfer of property along the continuum from parent to child. Second: nachalah is specifically what the bequeather willingly passes on. Shadal proposes a different distinction: a nachalah is what one receives as his share in the dividing up of a single estate, alongside others who take their portions in tandem; he even contends that nachalah is related to chelek ("portion"), both containing the ches-lamed combination. His two examples: the bechor's double share against his younger brothers' single shares is called nachalah (Devarim 21:16), and the seventy nations each received a nachalah when the world was divided among them (Devarim 32:8). Rav Hirsch: nachalah is the preferred, more conservative of the two models of how a younger generation relates to an older one. It is cognate with nachal, a river; the estate flows on seamlessly and naturally, because the young see themselves as the continuation of the old and not as its replacement, and there is no repudiation on either side.

yerushah (ירושה)

Root י-ר-ש. Malbim: yerushah is related to reshus, "domain" or "charge," and denotes nothing more than property crossing from one party's domain into another's, sanctioned by the deceased or not. Shadal: yerushah is the winner-takes-all case, one heir with no rivals to split with; hence Avraham Avinu, childless, complained that his household steward was seemingly destined to inherit everything, and the word he used was yoresh (Bereishis 15:3) and not nochel. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim and Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: the root is reish-shin, allied to rosh, since the heir becomes the head of the estate he takes over. The column adds that the English inherit comes from the Latin inhereditare, "to be appointed as heir," on which reckoning too the one who inherits assumes the deceased's position of power. Rav Hirsch, in what the column calls an almost-prophetic reading of current events: yerushah belongs with geirush ("chasing away") and with Koresh, the Persian king who conquered the whole civilized world for himself, and who by some legends came to the throne by killing his own grandfather; it is the model in which the young generation treats itself as primary, rejects its connection to the past, and, bereft of its elders, is free to enjoy the fruits of what they built.

An unnamed view in the column narrows both differently: nachalah is strictly father-to-son, while yerushah covers inheritance between relatives generally, even outside the direct line.

achuzah (אחוזה)

Root א-ח-ז, "to hold." Malbim: achuzah is inherited property of which the heir has already taken possession and now holds (ocheiz). Property not yet taken in hand, because it lies far off or is still disputed, is called nachalah or yerushah without the achuzah modifier. This is why the two combine in the construct achuzas nachalah.

Rendering guidance

• אחוזת נחלה: "an ancestral holding," or "a patrimony taken in possession" where the possession is the point. Do not render it "inheritance of inheritance."
• Standalone נחלה of Eretz Yisrael or of a shevet: "portion" or "inheritance," but keep the sense of a share within a division; Shadal's whole point is that the others are taking theirs at the same time.
• ירושה in a legal or halachic passage: "inheritance." יורש: "heir."
• Trap: "inheritance" will happily cover nachalah and yerushah both. When they stand in one passage (as in the parashah of Bnos Tzelafchad, Bamidbar 27:1-11, where both appear), differentiate: yerushah for the transfer, nachalah for the portion that comes down.
• Grammar trap worth guarding: in Hebrew a man is yoresh the deceased person; in English he inherits the deceased's property. "He inherited his father" is not English, and "he was the yoresh of the estate" is not the Hebrew idiom.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Heritage of Inheritance," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 24 Tammuz 5778 (2018-07-07), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/a-heritage-of-inheritance; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7839-a-heritage-of-inheritance.md. Primary loci the article cites: Bamidbar 27:1-11 (the laws of inheritance, where both words appear); Devarim 21:16 (the firstborn's double portion); Devarim 32:8 (the nations' portions); Bereishis 15:3 (Avraham's steward as yoresh). The article's Latin etymology of English "inherit" is carried in the yerushah section, as the article gives it.