Jericho

Where the authorities disagree

Why the vocalization changes. The kabbalist Rabbi Menachem Azaria of Fano: the Canaanites, who worshipped the moon and the other celestial bodies, called it Yereicho after the moon, and once the Jews conquered it and its dates received a special Divine blessing of strong fragrance it was renamed Yericho. Rabbi David Luria offers a similar explanation: the pagan Canaanites were evidently moon-worshippers, and because of the name's idolatrous associations the Jews changed it to Yericho, for the sweet-smelling balsam they found there. (The column notes that archaeologists have found evidence of an ancient Canaanite moon-god named Yarikh.) Both face the objection the article states plainly: Yirmiyahu, Ezra-Nechemiah, Divrei HaYamim and part of Melachim all post-date the conquest and still write Yereicho.

Rabbi Yedidya Tia Weil, son of Rabbi Nesanel Weil the famed author of Korban Netanel, answers without a chronology. He presumes that the two vocalizations track the two spellings, and at first considers that the extra yod is a tribute to Hashem, whose four-letter Name opens with a yod, hinting at the great miracle of the conquest and the city's consecration; but he concludes that the difference is more practical, that the city proper bore one name and the surrounding country, where the balsam and date trees grew, the other, and he works through every occurrence in Tanach to show it. Rabbi Shimon Schwab (Maayan Beis HaShoeivah) reached the same conclusion independently. The article's account of Weil is internally tangled: it pairs the yod-form with Yericho, then calls the yod "the additional YOD in Yereicho," and attaches reyach to Yereicho against the rule it had just quoted from the Oraysa editor. That rule, which the editor offers as something by which "perhaps" the variants can be accounted for, is: yod present, reyach; yod absent, yareyach.

Which sense the name carries. The earliest source the column brings for Jericho's palms and balsam trees is the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews IV:6 and XIV:4, War of the Jews I:6 and I:18); the connection is elaborated in Yossiphon, a Hebrew abridgement and adaptation of Josephus' writings, probably written in tenth-century Italy. Yossiphon gives both names: Ir HaReyach, the City of Scent, for the balsam trees that produced the sweet-smelling balsam oil, and Ir HaYareach, the City of the Moon, because the new moon was sighted at Jericho before anywhere else, so the most reliable witnesses before the Sanhedrin tended to come from there. (He also relates a legend that balsam would grow nowhere but around Jericho, withering when foreign kings tried to transplant it, apparently until the churban of the second Beis HaMikdash, after which it took root even in Egypt.) On both counts the column says only that it seems Yossiphon understood the place-name that way. Rashi (to Melachim II 20:13, Yeshayahu 39:2, Yechezkel 27:17, Berachos 43a) is read as taking Yossiphon for the scent, since he quotes him that Yereicho is so called for the sweet-smelling balsam; Rabbeinu Yoel and the Peirush HaRokeach likewise read the name, in the Yereicho form that stands in most of Tanach, from reyach, but attach it to the smell of the dates.

The column adds one observation of its own, and marks its own limits: the Mishnah (Tamid 3:8) says the sounds of the avodah, and the scent of the ketores, carried from Yerushalayim as far as Jericho, which implies some connection between Jericho and smells, but he writes that he has seen no source that explicitly ties this to the city's name.

Whether reyach and yareyach share a root. Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Radak keep them separate, ר-י-ח for scent and י-ר-ח for the moon. Pappenheim derives both from the biliteral ר-ח, air, whose commonest manifestation is ruach, wind: because air is light and all but imperceptible, ruach is also the soul and whatever else is spiritual and beyond the physical senses, and reyach is accordingly the perception no other sense can register, travelling within the ruach; the moon is called yareyach because its movements somehow control the ruach, the tides and winds.

Ir HaTmarim. Mishnah Yevamos 16:7 applies the title to Tzoar, as does Targum Yerushalmi to Devarim 34:3; the Rashash already notes that this stands against Devarim 34:3 itself, which calls Jericho Ir HaTmarim.