money

Distinctions

mammon (ממון)

Absent from Tanach, frequent from the Mishnah on: loving Hashem "with all your mammon" (Berachos 9:5, on Devarim 6:5), a motive for kidnapping (Kesubos 2:9), the exemption of one liable to death from monetary payment (Kesubos 3:2), and Rabbi Yishmael's advice that one who wants to grow wise should occupy himself with dinei mammonos (Bava Basra 10:8). Rabbi Natan of Rome (Sefer HeAruch) and Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi, Meturgaman): mammon is Targum's standard Aramaic for the Biblical hon (wealth) and rechush (property). Etymologies: Bamidbar Rabbah 22:8 reads it as mah atah moneh, eino klum, what are you counting, it is nothing, an exegesis that partly suggests the root מ-נ-ה, counting. Rabbi Ernest Klein, in his etymological dictionaries of Hebrew and of English, writes that it most probably derives from ma'amon, a deposit or trust, from א-מ-נ, true or trustworthy, with the opening mem part of the root. The word also appears in the Christian Bible as a personification and deification of the greedy pursuit of wealth; and Rabbi Yitzchok Schmelkes of Lvov (1827-1905, responsa Beis Yitzchak, Yoreh Deah vol. 1 §152) explains that Mammon was originally the name of the pagan god of silver and money, and only afterward became an ordinary word for money. On a more esoteric plane, Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai, the Chida, notes that each letter of ממון is spelled with its own letter doubled, hinting at "one who loves money is never sated with money" (Koheles 5:9): having one mem he wants a second; compare Hafla'ah to Kesubos 66b.

damim (דמים)

Money in Rabbinic Hebrew, not in Tanach, and always plural. In the Mishnah: Maaser Sheini 1:5, Pesachim 7:3, Kiddushin 1:6, Bava Metzia 5:3, Bava Basra 2:7, Arachin 5:2, Temurah 5:5, with the construct demei in even more (Terumos 5:1, 6:3-4, 9:2-3; Maaser Sheini 1:4, 2:1; Pesachim 9:8; Kesubos 12:1-2; Nazir 4:4; Bava Kamma 5:4, 8:1-2, 9:1, 9:4, 10:4; Bava Metzia 3:5, 3:12; Zevachim 8:1-2; Bechoros 5:6; Arachin 5:2-3; Meilah 3:2; Kinnim 1:4). Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur notes that the sense of money never appears in the singular dam, which is what sometimes makes it hard for a novice to tell it from the damim that means blood, a word found in both Tanach and Mishnah; he also notes that damim is Targum's standard rendering of the Biblical mechir, usually "price" (II Shmuel 24:24; Yeshayahu 45:13) and mecher, sale price (Bamidbar 20:19). At Yeshayahu 55:1, where kesef and mechir stand together, Targum Yonasan renders kesef as damim and mechir as mammon. Offering translations into the European vernaculars, HaBachur writes in Sefer HaTishbi that damim is gelt in Yiddish and German and dinero in Spanish; the column notes that dinero takes its name from the medieval Spanish coin, itself modelled on the Arabic dinar and the Roman denarius, and that dinarim are mentioned many times by Chazal in the Mishnah. Two Biblical verses are disputed: at Shemos 22:1, a householder who kills a burglar in the tunnel has "no damim," which Rashi reads as blood (he is no murderer) and Rashbam as money (he owes no compensation); and at Tehillim 72:14 Ibn Ezra reads dam as blood while Ibn Janach and Radak (each in Sefer HaShorashim) read it as monetary worth. Etymology: Rabbi Ernest Klein writes that damim in the sense of money probably derives from ד-מ-ה, being like or equal to something else. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim builds that root out as "similarity, resemblance": domeh, demus, dimyon (imagination, which may resemble reality without truly reflecting it), adam (created in the image of Hashem, Bereishis 1:27, in that he resembles Him in some ways); and since to call two things merely similar already rules out their being exactly equal, similarity implies incongruity, whence dom/domeim (quiet, inactive, the incongruity between a mind that goes on working and an outward activity that has stopped) and adamah (ground, which stays passive while the plants in it grow). Pappenheim himself never ties any of this to damim as money, his work being confined to Biblical Hebrew; the step, that money likewise resembles commodities in that its value can stand in for the commodity itself, is the column's own. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Ehrenreich reads it instead from dom, silence: money given to the poor and to talmidei chachamim silences the prosecuting angel a sin acquires (Avos 4:11), and a Jew is better off silent about his wealth than flaunting it. Rabbi Chaim of Friedberg (Igeres HaTiyul) and Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Ezer Ohr) connect it to blood outright: a man lives off his money as his body lives off his blood, and a pauper is accounted as dead (Nedarim 64b), taking even a perutah from another is as if taking his soul (Bava Kamma 119a). Rabbi Chaim of Friedberg adds the mussar: as corrupted blood ruins the whole body, illicitly gained money brings total ruin, and as a man sometimes needs blood drawn for his health, he needs to give away money in tzedakah for his. Rabbi Azaria Figo (Binah L'Itim, derush 69) finds it implausible that Chazal named money for blood on the strength of how the ignorant value it.

mammon against damim

Rabbi Eliezer Herstik (Ragli Mevaser): damim is the value or price of a thing, mammon is any property or asset a man holds. Rabbi Yosef Teomim-Frankel (1727-1792), author of the Pri Megadim, writes in one of his letters that mammon is cash, mobilia, whose value is already known, and damim is moveable property whose value has still to be assessed before it can serve as currency; he also holds damim to be Hebrew (citing Rashbam at Shemos 22:1) against Aramaic mammon, and ties damim to dimyon/demus, since such property only resembles capital until it is appraised. Rabbi Shimon Yehuda Leib Goldblit (Leshon Chachamim) takes dimyon differently: a man imagines his money equals every commodity there is, "money answers everything" (Koheles 10:19).

maos (מעות) and zuz (זוז)

Maos is the plural of maah, a coin equal to the Biblical geirah (Targum to Shemos 30:13), widened into a general word for money, as in maos chitim, the pre-Pesach alms. Bamidbar Rabbah 22:8 reads maos as mah plus l'eis, what is it worth for a time, on wealth's impermanence; a talmid of the Ritva (in Midrash Shmuel to Avos 2:8) has the same Midrash tying it to ivus, crookedness, money corrupting a man so that he is taken from the world before his time; the Tosafists (Daas Zekeinim to Bamidbar 32:1) have a version in which money perverts justice. Zuz likewise began as a coin and widened; Bamidbar Rabbah 22:8: liquid assets move (zaz) out of one man's hand into another's quickly. A maneh, the mina, is a coin worth a hundred zuz, and ostensibly from the same root as moneh (counting, appointing), manah (portion, lot), minyan (number, quorum) and mammon itself; they also seem related, the column adds, to the name of the idolatrous deity Meni (Yeshayahu 65:11), who was said to allot a man his destiny.

kesef (כסף)

Silver the metal, which then became another word for money outright. Where kesef and mechir stand in one pasuk (Yeshayahu 55:1), Targum keeps them apart.

The column reports two of its own guesses about English, one abandoned and one not. It used to think English and German gold was related to Yiddish and German gelt, by Grimm's Law on the interchange of the d and t sounds, paralleling the way Hebrew's word for silver became its word for money; on further research it reports the consensus among linguists to be that gold goes back to the Proto-Indo-European ghelh, the more direct ancestor of English yellow and German gelb, while gelt goes back to the Proto-Indo-European gheldh, to pay or award, which is the ancestor of English yield. It likewise used to think English money came somehow from Mishnaic mammon, and a look at the Oxford English Dictionary gives instead that money and mint both come from the Latin moneta, the name of a Roman goddess in whose temple money was coined, often said to be no more than an epithet of the goddess Juno. But the original hunch, the column suggests, may not be so far off, since Professor Theo Vennemann Nierfeld proposes that Latin moneta is a cognate of the name of the god Meni, which would give English money and mint a Hebrew, or at least a Canaanite, Phoenician or Punic, origin.

Rendering guidance

• ממון: "money" generally, "funds" or "assets" where holdings are meant, "monetary" in dinei mammonos ("monetary law," not "civil law," which imports a foreign category).
• דמים in a Mishnaic or halachic context: "the price," "the value," or "the money." Do not render it "bloods."
• Trap: the same consonants are blood. When translating a Mishnah, ask what is being paid for; when translating a pasuk, assume blood unless a Rashbam is standing behind you. At Shemos 22:1 give Rashi's "there is no bloodguilt" in the body and Rashbam's monetary reading in a note, since they are the two readings of one word.
• Second trap: English "money" absorbs mammon, damim, maos, zuzim and kesef at once. Where two of them meet in a phrase, differentiate: mammon "money," damim "the price," maos "coin."
• כסף in a monetary clause: "money" (or "silver" where the metal is the point). In kiddushei kesef keep it kesef.
• Coin names (zuz, maah, maneh, dinar) stay transliterated; they are currency, not translations.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Bechukosai: All About Money," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 24 Iyar 5784 (2024-06-01), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/bechukosai-all-about-money; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11394-bechukosai-all-about-money.md. Primary loci cited: Devarim 6:5; Berachos 9:5; Kesubos 2:9, 3:2, 66b; Bava Basra 10:8; Bamidbar Rabbah 22:8; Koheles 5:9, 10:19; Shemos 22:1, 30:13; Tehillim 72:14; II Shmuel 24:24; Yeshayahu 45:13, 55:1; Bamidbar 20:19, 32:1; Bereishis 1:27; Nedarim 64b; Bava Kamma 119a; Avos 2:8, 4:11; Sefer HeAruch; Sefer HaTishbi and Meturgaman; Beis Yitzchak Yoreh Deah 1:152; Binah L'Itim derush 69; Ragli Mevaser; Leshon Chachamim; Daas Zekeinim to Bamidbar 32:1; Yeshayahu 65:11 (Meni); Iggeres HaTiyul; Ezer Ohr (glosses to Sefer HaTishbi); Midrash Shmuel to Avos 2:8; Hafla'ah to Kesubos 66b.