jumping

Distinctions

dilug (דילוג)

Root ד-ל-ג. On the Vilna Gaon's reading of Yerushalmi Beitzah 5:2, dilug is the skip taken with one foot still on the ground while the other springs the body forward; Rambam and the Rosh cite the same in their commentaries to Mishnah Ohalos 8:5. Wertheimer suggests measuring it by height rather than form: in Shir HaShirim 2:8 midaleg is over mountains and mikapetz over hills, so dilug is the higher of the two. The column then posits, in its own voice, that the controlling sense is what is skipped, and that dilug is therefore better rendered "skipping" and kefitzah "jumping": English "skip" carries both the gait and the evasion ("he skipped the boring parts"), and the two are in truth conceptually one, since a skipping step is exactly a way of not treading on what lies underfoot, and the Hebrew verb covers both. Part 2 works from that same distinction throughout. Rabbi Yaakov Lorberbaum of Lisa allows that dilug may in fact be the faster motion, but holds that its focus is still on what is skipped and not on the speed.

kefitzah (קפיצה)

Root ק-פ-ץ. The Vilna Gaon: both feet leave the ground. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: covering the distance of several steps in one, sometimes off the ground and sometimes not, the whole point being to arrive faster. One who is kofetz is not avoiding anything underneath him; he is shortening the trip. Hence kefitzas haderech, the miraculous shortening of a journey, and hence the idiomatic use for anything done in haste and without proper thought, as when the Gemara says of a man who swore on the spot that he "jumped and swore."

the subject-based reading, and its rejection

Rabbi Shimshon of Shantz (to Ohalos 8:5): the difference is not the manner of the jump but who is jumping, dilug for an animal and kofetz for a person. Bartenura cites both views and openly accepts Rambam's; Rabbi Yisrael Lipschitz takes issue with the Rash. Bartenura's counter-cases, which he says seem to contradict the Rash: a goat that jumps off a roof is kofetz (Bava Kama 2:3), and so is the marten that jumps from the ladder to the dovecote (Bava Basra 2:4), while a man permitted to jump over graves to greet a king is midaleg (Berachos 19b). These suggest that doleg is not confined to animals nor kofetz to people, and the column adds that Shir HaShirim 2:8 proves it, since one subject takes both verbs.

pesach (פסח)

Root פ-ס-ח. Rashi (Shemos 12:11 and 12:13, Yeshayahu 31:5): an expression of dilug and kefitzah both. The korban carries the name because it commemorates Hashem's passing over the Jewish houses at makkas bechoros, and the Yom Tov is named after the korban. Rabbi Avigdor Nevenzahl, Chief Rabbi Emeritus of the Old City of Yerushalayim, supplies the dilug: Hashem has no body and did not literally jump; the Torah speaks from the vantage of the aftermath, in which the Egyptian firstborn died and the Jewish ones did not, so that in hindsight it seemed as if He jumped over them. What was skipped was the general requirement, that a man first perform some act of commitment sealing his bond with Hashem before Hashem lets him come close; at the Exodus, though they had not yet shown that desire, He did miracles for them and took them out anyway. Rabbi Nachshon Schiller supplies the kefitzah: kabbalistic sources assert that Klal Yisrael had fallen to the forty-ninth level of tumah, and another moment in Egypt would have brought them to the fiftieth, from which there is no recovering, so the redemption had to be immediate, and the Korban Pesach is eaten b'chipazon (Shemos 12:11) in imitation of that haste.

The same root gives piseach, the lame or immobile man. The column closes with this as an insight of its own: two conceptually opposite meanings sharing one spelling is a common phenomenon in Lashon HaKodesh, and it illustrates that Hebrew words are not the product of human whim but carry inherent meaning, on a Divine intuition not found in other languages.

Rendering guidance

• Shir HaShirim 2:8, מדלג על ההרים מקפץ על הגבעות: "leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills." Two English verbs, and keep the taller obstacle with midaleg.
• Pesach and pasach: "pass over," in the makkah, the korban, and the name of the Yom Tov alike. "Jump over" loses the skipping sense and imports a body.
• Kefitzah in an idiom of haste ("kafatz v'nishba"): "he blurted out an oath," not "he jumped." The word has gone over to speed and rashness.
• Kefitzas haderech stays transliterated with a gloss; "shortening of the way" is the sense, but the phrase is a fixed term.
• Trap: English "jump" will swallow dilug, kefitzah and pesach together. Assign "skip" to dilug, "leap" or "bound" to kefitzah, and "pass over" to pesach, then hold the assignment across the passage.
• Trap: in a derashah on Rashi's comment, both components have to survive into English, or the whole point (that Pesach is the two at once) collapses.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Jumping for Passover: Part 1," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 5 Nissan 5777 (2017-04-01), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/jumping-for-passover-part-1, and "Part 2," 12 Nissan 5777 (2017-04-08), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/jumping-for-passover-part-2; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7204-jumping-for-passover-part-1.md and sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7218-jumping-for-passover-part-2.md. Primary loci: Rashi to Shemos 12:11, 12:13 and Yeshayahu 31:5; Shir HaShirim 2:8; Yerushalmi Beitzah 5:2; Mishnah Ohalos 8:5 with Rambam, the Rosh, the Rash of Shantz, Bartenura and Tiferes Yisrael; Mishnah Bava Kama 2:3; Mishnah Bava Basra 2:4; Berachos 19b.