laughter

Distinctions

tzchok (צחוק) and s'chok (שחוק): one word

Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach and Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim all hold that s'chok and tzchok mean exactly the same thing. Sin and tzadi are interchangeable, being formed at the same place in the mouth (see also HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Shemos 25:29). The Yerushalmi (Berachos 1:6) assumes as much: Yitzchak's name, alone among the Avos, was never changed, because Hashem Himself gave it, which takes Yischak and Yitzchak as one name.

the core sense

Pappenheim: the root is laughter as an involuntary response to something from outside, whether a physical tickle or something funny. Both words carry the favorable senses (laughing, playing, enjoying) and the unfavorable ones (deriding, mocking). Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 21:6) shows the two as one idea: mockery is the use of sarcasm and irony to make someone laugh at a person or a thing. See also Malbim to Shoftim 16:25, where Shimshon is brought out to "play."

Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 17:17; the article prints 17:7) further ties tzchok and s'chok to tzaakah and zaakah, crying out, on the interchange of ches and ayin. All four, he says, are man's reaction to a gap between what he sees and what he expected: a child in an adult's wig makes us laugh, an old man in a diaper makes us weep, and both are the same reflex reconciling sight with expectation. Pappenheim makes a similar point, but without comparing the etymologies of the words involved.

the sense at Yitzchak's birth

When Avraham laughs at the news (Bereishis 17:17) and Sarah after him (Bereishis 18:12), and when Sarah says tzchok asah li Elokim, kol hashomea yitzchak li (Bereishis 21:6), Onkelos and Rashi take the laughter as an outward expression of joy, not derision. Hence the name Yitzchak, "he will laugh" (Bereishis 17:19).

Yischak (ישחק): four places, and what is made of them

The name Yitzchak appears 108 times in Tanach; four times he is called Yischak: Yirmiyahu 33:26 (the seed of Avraham, Yischak and Yaakov); Amos 7:9 (the high places of Yischak) and 7:16 (the house of Yischak); Tehillim 105:9 (Hashem's oath to Yischak). That last is customarily said at a bris, while its parallel, Divrei HaYamim I 16:16, said in the daily tefillos, reads Yitzchak. Since the words are one word, the column turns to more esoteric readings of the two spellings:

Rabbeinu Bachaya (to Bereishis 17:19, Bamidbar 32:3): the name is really Yitzchak, and the nevi'im sometimes wrote it with a sin to hint that Yitzchak embodies din, likened to a raging fire, aish. The column then adds on its own account that Pappenheim derives aish from the monoliteral shin, which it takes as solidifying the connection. Rabbi Shmuel Feivish Kahane, a seventeenth century sage, in Leket Shmuel, holds precisely the reverse: the name should have been Yischak, but a sin would have pointed at a raging judgment from which there would be no recovery, so the Torah writes a tzadi.

A further approach has it that the name, or at least its spelling, changed or will change. Rabbi Yehuda Moscato (1530 to 1593): in the future the name will change from Yitzchak to Yischak, since sin stands for sasson and simchah, and it appears only four times in Tanach as a hint that it comes into its own only once the four exiles are complete. Rabbi Shmuel Borenstein (1855 to 1926) uses a variation of that to settle an apparent contradiction: Berachos 61b and Sefer Yetzirah ch. 5 imply that the spleen answers to s'chok, while Tikkunei HaZohar (tikkun 84) associates the spleen with sadness. There are two laughters, he answers, the legitimate and holy against the illegitimate and impure; the holy is reserved for the future, az yimalei s'chok pinu (Tehillim 126:2), while until then most laughter is an illusion masking sadness and despondency, and it is that laughter of this world, itself a cover for sadness, that the spleen answers to. He concludes that in the future, when s'chok will mean laughter in its legitimate sense, the name will change from Yitzchak, tied to the holy laughter alone, to Yischak, drawn from the form of laughter that had been the unholy one. The Arizal (Shaar HaPesukim to Yeshayahu 52:3) also offers an explanation of the switch.

In other sources it seems that the original name was Yischak and was later changed to Yitzchak: when Yisrael cried out in Mitzrayim, Hashem asked the Avos which of them would give up the numerical value of his name to save them, and Yitzchak stepped forward and gave up the sin (300) for a tzadi (90), a difference of 210, which is why they were redeemed after an exile of 210 years (cited in numerous works, among them Imrei Noam to Shemos 6:2, which the article notes is called the Rosh to Shemos 6:1; Siddur Rokeach; Be'er Mayim Chaim to Bereishis 15:13; Leket Shmuel to Bereishis 25:19). The Vilna Gaon (to Sifra d'Tzniusa, end of ch. 3) writes that each of the three Avos had a lower name and a higher name; the column applies this to Yitzchak, alongside Avram and Avraham and Yaakov and Yisrael or Yeshurun, giving him two names, or at least two spellings of the one name, Yitzchak (lower) and Yischak (higher). Sefer HaShem, ascribed to the Rokeach, notes that Avraham, Yischak and Yeshurun together total 2448, the year of Matan Torah, taking final mem as 600 and final nun as 700.

Rendering guidance

• Default rendering for both spellings: "laughter," "laugh." Where the context is derision (metzachek of Yishmael, Shimshon made to perform), render "mock," "make sport," "make sport of," and note the root is the same word as the laughter of joy. Rav Hirsch's point is that Hebrew does not have two words here, and an English rendering that supplies two must say so.
• Trap: English "laugh" and "mock" will pull apart what Hebrew holds together, and conversely a reader shown "laugh" twice will miss that Sarah's laughter (Bereishis 18:12) and her tzchok at the birth (21:6) are differently read by the mefarshim. Take Onkelos and Rashi at 21:6 as joy expressed outwardly.
• The names stay as they are printed: Yitzchak where the text has a tzadi, Yischak where it has a sin. Never normalize one to the other, and never translate the difference; the four Yischak pesukim are the whole basis of every derashah above.
• S'chok in Tehillim 126:2 is "laughter" and belongs to the future; in mussar prose s'chok often means frivolity, and "levity" serves better there than "laughter."

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "A Laughing Matter," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2020-10-31): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8903-a-laughing-matter.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 15:13, 17:17, 17:19, 18:12, 21:6, 25:19; Shemos 6:2, 25:29; Bamidbar 32:3; Shoftim 16:25; Yeshayahu 52:3; Yirmiyahu 33:26; Amos 7:9, 7:16; Tehillim 105:9, 126:2; Divrei HaYamim I 16:16; Yerushalmi Berachos 1:6; Berachos 61b; Sefer Yetzirah ch. 5; Tikkunei HaZohar tikkun 84; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 17:17 (printed 17:7 in the article) and 21:6; Malbim to Shoftim 16:25; HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Shemos 25:29; Rabbeinu Bachaya to Bereishis 17:19 and Bamidbar 32:3; Leket Shmuel; the Vilna Gaon to Sifra d'Tzniusa ch. 3; Arizal, Shaar HaPesukim; Sefer HaShem.