lottery

Distinctions

Goral (גורל)

The word for the lots that decided which sa'ir on Yom Kippur goes to Hashem and which to Azazel (Vayikra 16:8), and for the mechanism by which Eretz Yisrael was apportioned among the shevatim (Bamidbar 26:55). It carries the second sense of the portion itself, the share allotted to a man, often by way of a raffle or lottery. Goral is related to the Arabic jaral / jarwal, "stones" or "pebbles," the stones used for drawing lots, and the English lot and plot for a section of land are probably derived from "lottery." Rabbi Yaakov Lorberbaum of Lissa: goral has a positive connotation, a lottery held for a beneficial purpose, receiving a portion as at a raffle.

Pur (פור)

Esther 3:7: Haman "cast a pur, which is a goral."

• Four rishonim take the gloss at face value, that pur is a foreign word the Megillah renders into Hebrew: Rabbi Tuviah ben Eliezer (Midrash Lekach Tov to Esther 3:7), Rashbam (to Shemos 16:15), Ibn Ezra (to Esther 3:7), and Ramban (to Shemos 12:2).
• Rabbi Klein adds a query of his own, whether the word is Persian or Akkadian; some linguists derive pur, just as they derive goral, from a word for stone, in this case the Akkadian puru.
• Rabbi Yosef ben Yosef Ibn Nachmias adds why this one word out of the Megillah's many Persian words needed translating: the yom tov is named Purim after Haman's pur (Esther 9:26), so the word is too central to leave opaque.

Two dissenting lines.

• Rabbi Yaakov Lorberbaum of Lissa keeps both words Hebrew and makes them opposites: pur is a lottery cast with malicious intent, tied to por hisporerah ha'aretz (Yeshayahu 24:19), the land breaking apart. The Megillah calls Haman's act a pur for his malice and a goral because from his own side he stood to gain, the property of the Jews he meant to kill.
• Maharitatz (Rabbi Yom Tov Tzahalon) has Haman hold two separate lotteries, a goral for which day to approach Achashverosh and a pur for which day to carry out the decree, though he does not say why each got the name it did.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim mentions the authorities who call pur Persian and disagrees with them: pur is Hebrew, from the biliteral פ-ר, "breaking something down into smaller components": perurim (crumbs), eifer (ash), parur (a pot for crumbs and small grains), pri (fruit, a microcosm broken off the tree), pe'er and tiferes (an all-encompassing beauty that breaks down into aspects), hafarah (nullifying a vow), primah (tearing a garment into shreds), and tefirah (sewing, which repairs what primah did). On his reading a pur is the box shaped like a parur into which the wooden or stone lots were put; in Mishnaic Hebrew that box is the kalpi.

Payis (פייס)

The word the Mishnah and Gemara use for drawing lots, most prominently the lottery deciding which kohanim serve (Yoma 2:2-4).

• Some linguists argue that payis comes from the Persian pisa or the Greek psefos, "small rock," which would make it mean the same as goral and pur.
• Against that, Tosafos Yom Tov (Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, to Shabbos 23:2) argues the etymology is Hebrew, from piyus ("appeasement"): the randomness of a lottery appeases everyone, since all have an equal chance.
• The Meiri (Beis HaBechirah to Yoma 22a) proposed a similar understanding, and earlier than both Rabbi Nosson of Rome in Sefer HeAruch, that a payis is a lottery whose purpose is to appease the entrants.

In Modern Hebrew payis is the national lotto.

Cholesh (חולש)

Yeshayahu 14:12 says Nevuchadnetzar was cholesh over the nations; the Gemara (Shabbos 149b) explains that he drew lots each day to pick which nation's royalty to victimize.

• Rabbi Shlomo HaAdani, a sixteenth-century commentator to the Mishnah, writes in Meleches Shlomo (to Shabbos 23:2) that cholesh is related to lachash ("whisper"), because, he claims, lotteries are generally cast in the quiet.
• Alternatively, Rabbi Yosef Yishai Rain suggests it is related to its Hebrew homonym chalash ("weak"): winning something in a raffle or lottery is weak proof that one really deserved it.
• Kedushas Levi (Derushim LeChanukah): cholesh is a lottery in the sense of the uncertainty of leaving things to chance. The Gemara calls that unsettled uncertainty chalishus hada'as, weakness of mind, because a man unsure whether he will succeed is not at rest.

Kalpi (קלפי) and chevel (חבל)

Kalpi is the Mishnaic name for the box the lots are drawn from (Yoma 39a), a word derived from the Greek kalpe / kalpis, an urn used for drawing lots; in Modern Hebrew it is the ballot box at government elections. Chevel ("portion") is a synonym of goral; the Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, Shemos §265, and Pesikta d'Rav Kahana §3:1) counts four words for lots in Tanach, cholesh, pur, goral and chevel, and says all four will be used against the sons of Eisav: cholesh when Yehoshua weakened Amalek (vayachalosh, Shemos 17:13), pur and goral in the Purim victory, and in time to come a chevel, since the birthpangs of the Messianic arrival are called chevlei leidah (Hoshea 13:13). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes "rope" as the principal meaning of ח-ב-ל and derives its other senses from that: one of a rope's main uses is measuring, and a chevel was typically used to survey and measure a plot of land, hence chevel as a lot of land; and just as such a lot is a localized thing within a greater area, so chevel as pain is a localized pain, like chevlei leidah.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Playing the Lottery," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 March 2019.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Shelach: Learning the Ropes," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 10 June 2023.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Playing the Lottery," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Esther 3:7 and 9:26; Vayikra 16:8; Bamidbar 26:55; Shemos 12:2, 16:15, 17:13; Yeshayahu 14:12, 24:19; Hoshea 13:13; Yoma 2:2-4, 22a, 39a; Shabbos 23:2 and 149b; Yalkut Shimoni, Shemos §265; Pesikta d'Rav Kahana §3:1; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo s.v. פר; Tosafos Yom Tov; Kedushas Levi, Derushim LeChanukah.