morning

Distinctions

boker (בוקר)

Root ב-ק-ר. Malbim and Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: boker runs from sunrise until four hours into the day, or until midday (see Berachos 27a); it is the whole morning, not a moment in it. Wertheimer himself pulls back somewhat, since Pesachim 4a praises Avraham's zeal at the Akeidah by noting that he rose before sunrise, while the pasuk (Bereishis 22:3) says he rose baboker.

Ibn Ezra and Radak (both to Bereishis 1:5, and Radak in Sefer HaShorashim): the root ב-ק-ר means to seek out, discern, investigate. Only by daylight can one tell one thing from another; at night everything runs together, which is why evening is erev, from eiruv, "mixture." Hence the family: bikores (inspection), bikkur cholim (finding out how the sick man is and what can be done for him), bakar (cattle, which need looking after), and boker in the sense of a herdsman seeking out pasture.

shachar (שחר)

Root ש-ח-ר. Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz: not a synonym for boker at all, but the first rays that break through the darkness of night, which is why English says daybreak. He reads Tehillim 22:1, ayeles hashachar, as a comparison to a doe that springs suddenly and without warning: dawn arrives all at once, whereas nightfall comes on gradually. (The morning star, Venus, is called ayeles hashachar because it shows before sunrise.)

Two further senses of the root:

1. Seeking. Rashi to Tehillim 22:1 gives "morning," then cites Rabbi Menachem ibn Saruk that the root's core sense is examining and discerning, as in shocher tov (Mishlei 11:27), one who seeks out good. Malbim: the searching of shachar is the persistent, consistent kind, like the sun coming up every single morning without fail. Ibn Ezra (Tehillim 63:2) says outright that shachar and boker both mean morning and both mean probing.
2. Blackness. Rabbi Wolf Heidenheim: shachar is a cognate of shachor, black, because the light of dawn drives out the night's blackness; Yoma 29a likewise treats shachar as the end of the night. Peirush HaRokeach: dawn is called shachar because the sky is still partly black, especially in the west. More esoteric sources, the column says, intimate a deeper explanation. The Zohar (Beshalach 46a) makes the darkness the point: just before dawn the pitch black of the night sky becomes especially overwhelming and the sun's light must penetrate that thick darkness. The column notes that the British writer Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) put the same idea into English: "It is always darkest just before the day dawneth." The Vilna Gaon writes that the darkest part of the night is right before the crack of dawn, just as the exile will be hardest immediately before the Final Redemption. On this account shachar is related to shachor because morning breaks through the blackest point of the night.

The column then asks how the Zohar's claim can be substantiated phenomenologically. Rabbi Moshe Shapiro answers that the first ray of morning light overshadows the smallest stars and the weaker sources of light, as though they were extinguished, while itself being too subtle to give any noticeable illumination of its own; so right at dawn the sky appears to grow darker, and paradoxically that added darkness is what heralds the morning's arrival. Others explain that the Zohar refers only to certain times of the month, when the moon sets in the early morning before sunrise.

Two side-forms of the root: shacharus (Koheles 11:10), one's youth, which Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) reads as the morning of a life and Rashi as the years when the hair is still black; and Yeshayahu 8:20, where what is inexplicable is what has no shachar, no light shed on it.

tzafra (צפרא) and kritzuta (קריצתא)

Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur: throughout Chumash, Onkelos renders both shachar and boker as tzafra; in Iyov, Mishlei and Tehillim (which share their own cantillation system) the Targum splits them, boker as tzafra and shachar as kritzuta. Tzafra is the standard Aramaic for morning in the Gemara; Rashi's greeting was tzafra d'mareh tav.

Tzafra and tzipor (bird) are clearly linked, but, as the column concludes, it is hard to say which came first. Ramban (Vayikra 14:4): tzipor comes from tzafra, since birds wake early and chirp. Rabbi Aharon Marcus: the reverse, tzafra from tzipor. Rabbi Yaakov Zev Lev (Me'at Tzari) notes that the Rokeach himself has it both ways: to Bereishis 1:5 he derives tzafra from tzipor (dawn is shachar, akin to shachor, and black suggests the blackbird; also birds are about early), and to Bereishis 1:20 he derives tzipor from tzafra (like Ramban), since birds fly up high before sunup.

Targum Yonasan (Bereishis 19:15 and 32:27) gives kritizin for shachar; Targum Neofiti simply Aramaicizes it to shachara. Rabbi Moshe Kosover of Beit Chilkiyah suggests that kritzuta/kritizin is related to kritzah, winking (Tehillim 35:19, Mishlei 6:13, Yoma 19b): a wink is a small sign of something larger, and dawn is the small sign that daylight is coming.

Rendering guidance

• Bereishis 32:27, כי עלה השחר: "for dawn has broken," not "for morning has come." The angel's release turns on first light, before sunrise.
• Shacharis stays Shacharis. Do not translate the tefillah's name as "morning prayers" in a context that is distinguishing shachar from boker.
• Boker in a halachic or narrative pasuk: "morning," and let it hold a span. If the passage is about how early someone rose, Wertheimer's own hesitation over Bereishis 22:3 is worth a note rather than a confident rendering.
• Trap: English "morning" absorbs both words. Keep "dawn" or "daybreak" for shachar and "morning" for boker; where they stand together, the ascending order is dawn, then morning.
• Second trap: the same two roots mean "seek out." Shocher tov is not about morning, and bikores is not about cattle. Let the context, not the root, choose; and where a derashah plays on both senses at once (Ibn Ezra to Tehillim 63:2), say so in a note rather than forcing one English word to do both jobs.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Good Morning Sunshine," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 Kislev 5780 (2019-12-14), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/good-morning-sunshine; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8518-good-morning-sunshine.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 32:27; Berachos 27a; Pesachim 4a; Bereishis 22:3; Tehillim 22:1 with Rashi; Mishlei 11:27; Bereishis 1:5 with Ibn Ezra, Radak and Peirush HaRokeach; Bereishis 1:20 (Rokeach); Tehillim 63:2 (Ibn Ezra); Koheles 11:10; Yeshayahu 8:20; Yoma 29a and 19b; Zohar, Beshalach 46a; Ramban to Vayikra 14:4; Bereishis 19:15 (Targum Yonasan); Tehillim 35:19; Mishlei 6:13; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim. On the tzipor side of the tzafra question see entries/bird-of-tzipor-kanaf.md.