miser

Distinctions

kilay (כילי)

Twice in Tanach, both in one perek (Yeshayahu 32:5, 32:7). Radak (there and in Sefer HaShorashim) reads it from the contrast with shoa and nadiv, the open-handed: the kilay is the opposite, careful to a fault about what he gives, laying out money or effort only by exact measure.

Roots. Radak and Ibn Janach in their respective Sifrei HaShorashim assign it to כ-י-ל, of which it is the sole derivative; Radak alternatively to כ-ו-ל, a measured quantity. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes the biliteral כ-ל, "all-encompassing," whence kele (jail, which detains the whole man), and reads kilay as one who jails his own money and goods so nobody else benefits. His other derivatives of כ-ל: kol, kallah (adorned with every sort of ornament), kalkalah (providing for all one's needs), makoles, keli (what surrounds its contents on all sides), heichal, kalos (finishing, coming to be or being destroyed entirely), and achilah.

Ibn Ezra (to Yeshayahu 32:5) writes that on an exegetical plane we may read kilay as a portmanteau of ki yomar sheli sheli, "when a man says, what is mine is mine," a veiled reference to the Mishnah in Avos 5:10, which lists four types of men: one who says what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours is either the average sort or of the sort of Sodom; what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine, an ignoramus; what is mine is yours and what is yours is yours, a chassid; what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine, a rasha (see Rabbeinu Yonah there).

Kilay in the sense of cheapskate is a rather obscure and archaic biblical word, the more so as it seems not to have been used in Mishnaic Hebrew, and even so it saw a resurgence in medieval Sephardic circles. In Ashkenazic circles it went largely unused, for an interesting reason: the Ashkenazic commentators read it not as a cheapskate but as a trickster, taking the biblical kilay as a derivative of נ-כ-ל, deceit. So Rashi, Mahari Kara and Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency in their commentaries to Yeshayahu, all of them influenced by Menachem Ibn Saruk's Machberes, which files kilay under the biliteral כ-ל but classes it with nochel (Malachi 1:14), nichleihem (Bamidbar 25:18) and vayisnaklu (Bereishis 37:18), all of treacherous plotting; on the triliteralists' account those words come from נ-כ-ל. Pappenheim connects נ-כ-ל back to כ-ל by explaining that treacherous plotting is the final decision after an entire process of planning and thinking has been completed. Rashi has a third gloss elsewhere (to Sotah 41b): a desirous man who always wants to drink wine.

Bereishis Rabbah 51:1 refers to an animal called a kilay, and there are several ways of identifying it. One is that it is a sort of snail, the understanding preferred by the Maskillic writer Shalom Yaakov Abramowitz (1836-1917), better known as Mendele Mocher Seforim, in his scientific encyclopedia Toldos HaTeva, and Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894) also seems to favor it. Some write that the kilay is a Schildkröte, the German for turtle. Either way both creatures carry a shell about with them, and on that basis Solomon Rabinowitz of New York (d. 1943) in his Sefer HaMishkalim draws the comparison to the cheapskate: as the cheapskate retreats into himself and is not generous with others, so the snail or turtle retreats into its shell rather than deal with the world, locking itself in and coming out only when the coast is clear. Rabinowitz conjectures from this that perhaps the Midrash's name for the creature was somehow influenced by the biblical kilay.

tzaykan (צייקן)

Mishnaic. Pesachim 7:8: disqualified Pesach meats that a man must burn with his own wood are brought by the tzaykanim to the Mikdash instead, so that the Mikdash's wood pays for the burning. That is the picture: the cheapskate who spends the community's money rather than his own. Rashi (Pesachim 81b) glosses them as ungenerous, using a cognate of atzar, stopping, for how they stop their money from reaching anyone else; so too Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel to Eruvin 49a.

Etymology is not readily obvious. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein (no relation to the columnist) theorizes that tzaykan derives from tzuk/tzok, a narrow strait or pressure, in the sense of the miser's narrow-mindedness about which causes deserve his money. Another possible etymology is mutzak, a hard metal, his hardness relating to the tzaykan's hard-headed stubbornness about parting with what is his; Pappenheim, as is his way, traces both words back to the biliteral צ-ק. The word is rare but not dead: Orchos Tzaddikim titles its chapter on frugality Shaar HaTzaykanus, where the trait is a virtue, not a vice.

kamtzan (קמצן)

Post-Mishnaic and the living word today. It appears already in some girsaos of the Tosefta (Sotah, in the story of the Kohen who took two portions of lechem hapanim and still got only a bean's worth; the article prints 13:58), and cognates appear in the Gemara mostly as verbs, where Rashi again reaches for atzar (Menachos 86a, Chullin 46a; Rashbam to Bava Basra 52b).

The root is ק-מ-צ, seven times in Tanach, six of them the kemitzah of a minchah (Vayikra 2:2, 5:12, 6:8, Bamidbar 5:26). Rashi (Vayikra 2:2, Kesubos 8b, Zevachim 64b, Menachos 11a): the kohen closes his three middle fingers over his palm to take the flour and wipes away the excess with thumb and pinky, so that not a grain more than those three fingers hold remains. Kemitzah is therefore both containment and holding the amount to its minimum, which is exactly the kamtzan: he stores his wealth and keeps to the least anyone can get from him. The seventh appearance, likematzim (Bereishis 41:47), describes Mitzrayim's yield in the years of plenty; Radak (there and in Sefer HaShorashim): from a minimal seeding the land gave three-finger loads of produce, again the sense of smallest measure.

The Aramaic kamtza seems to belong here too. Targum uses it for arbeh (Mishlei 30:27), yelek (Nachum 3:15) and chagav (Bamidbar 13:33, Yeshayahu 40:22), all grasshoppers, and this perhaps relates to kemitzah and kamtzan in that a single grasshopper out of a whole swarm is a small quantity from within a much larger pool. Hence the two readings of ein hakometz masbia es ha'ari (Berachos 3b, Sanhedrin 16a): that a kometz is a pithy sustenance, too small a quantity to provide the lion's share, or that kometz here means a grasshopper and one grasshopper will not satisfy a lion's hunger (Rashi to Sanhedrin 16a and to Ein Yaakov on Berachos 3b, and Hagahos HaBach there). Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, for whose sake the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed (Gittin 55b), are proper names of Jews at the close of the second Beis HaMikdash; but Rabbi Chaim of Friedberg, the Maharal's brother, in Sefer HaChaim offers a homiletical reading, that the dictum speaks of kamtzanus passed from one generation to the next, which cost the Jewish People their fear of Heaven and left them caring only for themselves. See also Maharal's Netzach Yisrael ch. 5 on the connection between kemitzah, Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, and grasshoppers.

Rendering guidance

• Yeshayahu 32:5-7: if following Radak, "miser" or "churl" against nadiv "noble" and shoa "man of means." If following Rashi and the Ashkenazic rishonim, "knave" or "schemer." Do not blend the two into "scoundrel," which hides the machlokes.
• Tzaykan: "skinflint" or "tightfisted." Keep the transliteration in a Mussar context, since Shaar HaTzaykanus names a virtue and "miserliness" would misrepresent the chapter's title.
• Kamtzan: "cheapskate" in speech, "miser" in prose.
• Kemitzah and kometz stay transliterated in any korbanos context; "handful" is wrong, because Rashi's whole point is that the excess is wiped away and it is not a handful but a measured three-finger amount.
• Trap: English "stingy" will absorb all three, and "miser" will absorb kilay and kamtzan. When two appear together, or when the point is which layer of Hebrew a word belongs to, keep the transliterations and gloss once.
• Ein hakometz masbia es ha'ari: render "a scant handful does not satisfy the lion" only if the first reading is intended; if the grasshopper reading is meant, kometz must stay transliterated with the gloss, since one English word cannot hold both.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On Misers and Cheapskates," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 19 Sivan 5782 (2022-06-18): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9734-on-misers-and-cheapskates.md. Primary loci: Yeshayahu 32:5, 32:7, 40:22; Bereishis 37:18, 41:47; Vayikra 2:2, 5:12, 6:8; Bamidbar 5:26, 13:33, 25:18; Malachi 1:14; Mishlei 30:27; Nachum 3:15; Avos 5:10; Pesachim 7:8 and 81b; Eruvin 49a; Berachos 3b; Sanhedrin 16a; Sotah 41b; Gittin 55b; Menachos 11a and 86a; Chullin 46a; Zevachim 64b; Kesubos 8b; Bereishis Rabbah 51:1; Radak and Ibn Janach, Sefer HaShorashim; Maharal, Netzach Yisrael ch. 5; Toldos HaTeva; Sefer HaMishkalim; Sefer HaChaim; Tosefta Sotah (the article prints 13:58).