nullify

Distinctions

Heini (הניא), yani (יניא)

Rabbi Wertheimer: heini removes something that may not yet have come into being. Tehillim 33:10 is his proof: Hashem heini the designs of the peoples (machshevos amim), and because those thoughts are merely abstract ideas representing only a potential for something to happen, their cancellation is heini.

The word's basic sense was already disputed among the early grammarians.

• Menachem Ibn Saruk: to break.
• Dunash Ibn Labrat, following Rav Saadia Gaon: to deny or withhold.
• Rashi (to Bamidbar 30:6) follows Dunash.
• Ibn Ezra (to Shemos 12:9, Bamidbar 14:34, Bamidbar 30:6, Tehillim 141:5) follows Menachem, though he also seems to treat heini as equivalent to heifer.
• Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg weighs the two at length, framing the question as whether heini is the removal of the will (Menachem) or the withholding of the will's fulfillment (Dunash).

A century after Menachem and Dunash the controversy was still raging. Rabbi Dr. Yosaif M. Dubovick, "'Oil, which shall not quit my head': Jewish-Christian Interaction in Eleventh-century Baghdad," Entangled Religions vol. 6 (2018), discusses yani in Tehillim 141:5 and the historical controversy the question generated.

Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 12:10-13) links heini to the similarly spelled na, raw, half-cooked, the common idea being interruption or stopping: cooking cut off partway, a vow's fulfillment hindered and impeded (so too Midrash Sechel Tov to Shemos 12:9). Rabbi Klein calls the association somewhat questionable all the same: heini and yani are generally spelled with an aleph, like na, but Tehillim 141:5 has yani without one.

Heifer (הפר), hafarah (הפרה)

Rabbi Wertheimer: heifer cancels something that has already come into being, and the word is kin to pur, a crumb, since hafarah breaks a standing thing into pieces and grinds it out of existence. So one who abrogates a mitzvah (Bamidbar 15:31) or a covenant (Yeshayahu 24:5) is like a man tearing up a binding contract.

On the two words in the parashah of nedarim, Rabbi Wertheimer explains that the father or husband accomplishes two things at once. He stops the woman from doing what she undertook to do, and he dissolves the legal standing of the vow. The Torah says heini of the first, since what she meant to do has not yet come about, and heifer of the second, since the vow's legal reality exists and can therefore be broken.

Malbim draws the same distinction, between undoing what exists and keeping something from coming to be, but applies it the other way round: heini refers to forcing something out of existence, while heifer refers to simply ensuring that something will not come to fruition, without necessarily using force.

Batel (בטל)

The standard Rabbinic verb for nullification: bitul Torah, idleness in place of learning; bitul chametz, declaring one's chametz void before Pesach; bitul b'rov, a forbidden food nullified in a majority. From the futility in batalah the word came to cover whatever seems purposeless. Its root appears to be of Aramaic origin: seven occurrences in Tanach (Koheles 12:3 and six times in Ezra 4-6), against more appearances in the Targumim. Rabbi Klein floats, as his own suggestion, a conceptual tie to tal, dew, which comes at dawn and is gone.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Null and Void," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 14 July 2018.

Cited in the essay: Bamidbar 30 (the parashah of hafaras nedarim, with Rashi and Ibn Ezra to 30:6), 14:34, 15:31; Shemos 12:9 with Ibn Ezra and Midrash Sechel Tov; Bereishis 12:10-13 with Rav Hirsch; Yeshayahu 24:5; Tehillim 33:10, 141:5; Koheles 12:3; Ezra chs. 4-6; Menachem Ibn Saruk; Dunash Ibn Labrat; Rav Saadia Gaon; Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, HaKsav VeHaKabbalah to Bamidbar 15:31 and 30:6; Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer, Beiurei Shemos Nirdafim s.v. הניא\הפר) מלבי"ם על הספרי (במדבר ל:ו; Malbim; Rabbi Dr. Yosaif M. Dubovick, Entangled Religions vol. 6 (2018).