platform

Distinctions

kan (כן, sometimes kein)

The base, foundation, stand or pedestal on which something rests. It is the word for the base of the kiyor in the Mishkan (Shemos 30:18, 30:28, 31:9, 35:16, 38:8, 39:39, 40:11; Vayikra 8:11, which the article prints as 8:111), and it serves abstractly for a man's position: Yosef told the butler he would be restored al kanecha, to your post (Bereishis 40:13, fulfilled at 41:13). In this sense the word appears seventeen times in Tanach, on Even Shoshan's concordance. In the Mishnah it is the golden kan on which the Kohen Gadol set the vessel of blood on Yom Kippur (Yoma 5:3-4). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Cheshek Shlomo) traces it to the two-letter root כ-נ, base or basis, physical or abstract, and gathers under it kein (yes) and nachon (correct), which affirm that a thing has a valid footing, and tochnis (plan) and hachanah (preparation), the footing of any serious undertaking. He derives kohen from the same root, the one charged with seeing that the preparations for the avodah are in order, and kavanah, the mental preparation before a task.

duchan (דוכן)

Not in Tanach. In the Mishnah it is three times the platform the Leviim stood on for the shirah: six Leviim at least on the duchan (Arachin 2:6); its location on the cubit-high step between the Ezras Kohanim and the Ezras Yisrael, itself three steps of half a cubit each (Middos 2:6); an ancestor who stood on the duchan as proof of unblemished lineage (Kiddushin 4:5). The Gemara keeps that sense (Taanis 29a and Arachin 11b, where the Leviim were still singing on the duchan when the Babylonians broke in; also Yoma 15b, Sukkah 51a, Megillah 24b, Sotah 48a, Arachin 11a) and adds a second: the platform the Kohanim stand on for Birkas Kohanim, even outside the Mikdash (Shabbos 118b, Rosh Hashanah 28b and 31b, Sotah 38b and 40a, Menachos 44a, Kiddushin 71a). Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi) already had to say that duchan is a noun and not a verb. Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Ezer Ohr, his glosses to Sefer HaTishbi): duchan is a cognate of the Aramaic duchta, place, a designated place for Kohanim and Leviim to stand. Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber (Kerem Tzvi to Bamidbar 6:23) gives two other readings: a portmanteau of the Greek prefix du-, double, with the Biblical Hebrew kan, base, since an elevated platform might be twice the width of the stairs that lead up to it, so that it literally means "double base"; or from the root ד-ו-כ, to smash or flatten, since the duchan was typically a small area and those standing on it might have to squeeze together. The column extends that second reading on its own: the Proto-Indo-European root plat-, originally "to spread" or "to flatten," yielded a whole family of words for a flat surface, English flat, place (through the Greek platus), platy, plaza, plate, plateau, and also the Rabbinic Hebrew platya, street or highway, and the Modern Hebrew plata, the flat surface for warming food. The same development could be true in Hebrew, a name for a flat surface growing out of the verb for flattening, and the column notes that Rabbi Ernest Klein makes a similar point. In Modern Hebrew a duchan is a booth or stand from which a person peddles his wares; Klein connects that too to the Arabic dukkan, bench or shop. Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein (Degel HaTorah §11; see also Mekor Baruch vol. 3 p. 1442) writes that in Talmudic times a Rosh Yeshiva was sometimes known as a Reish Duchana, on account of his standing as a public lecturer who spoke from a special lectern or platform; Rabbi Menachem Kasher (Torah Shleimah vol. 26 p. 289) points out that this is not entirely accurate, since at the one place the term appears (Bava Basra 21) Rashi explains it as a low-level teacher's assistant paid to drill the children in what the main teacher had taught.

bimah (בימה)

Not in Tanach either. The Mishnah has it twice: the bimah built for the king to read from at Hakhel (Sotah 7:8), and the ruling that a Jew may not build a bimah for idolaters (Avodah Zarah 1:7). It is the colloquial word for the table or surface in the middle of the shul on which the Torah is read, and in Modern Hebrew a theatre director is a bamai, one who directs what happens on the stage. Rashi (Sukkah 51b, Avodah Zarah 16a, Sotah 41a) glosses it into Old French as almemar (or almemor), the form German (Yekkish) Jewry still uses; that term, the column notes, itself derives from the Arabic al-minbar, the pulpit or seat, on the Ethiopic minbar, seat (see also Rambam's commentary to Keilim 2:3). How an Arabic term reached the medieval French Jewish vernacular has hexed linguists and historians like Max Weinreich for generations.

The consensus of scholars, the column reports, is that bimah comes from the Greek bema, pacing, marching, stepping, step or platform, which in turn comes from the Greek bainein, going, apparently also the source of the Greek basis below. On that account bimah is not an original Hebrew word and does not even come from a Semitic language. Professor Edward Yechezkel Kutscher (Milim V'Toldoteihen) draws the consequence: bimah is not related at all to the Biblical Hebrew bamah, for all that a bamah is a high place used for sacrificial worship and so resembles what a bimah is. Bamah, he writes, is a native Hebrew word, appearing over a hundred times in Tanach and attested in other Semitic languages, Arabic buhma, Aramaic bamata, Moabite bamat, Akkadian bamtu, Ugaritic bmt.

basis (בסיס)

A loanword, in the Mishnah once, for the base of a candelabrum (Keilim 11:7). Its halachic career is larger: basis l'davar ha'assur, a permitted object serving as the base for a forbidden one and thereby becoming forbidden itself (Shabbos 47a, 117a, 120b, 125b, 142a; Pesachim 83a; Chullin 125). The loan is from the Latin and Greek basis, base, step, pedestal, foot, going, the forebear of English basis, base and basic, and, through the interchangeability of s and t, of diabetes and acrobat as well. The Modern Hebrew besisi, basic or fundamental, and basis in the sense of an army base come from the same word.

itztaba (אצטבא)

Four times in the Mishnah, three of them in the Mikdash: the two loaves set on the itztaba to mark the times for stopping and burning chametz on Erev Pesach (Pesachim 1:5); the parochet spread on the roof of the itztaba to dry after tevilah, so the people could see it (Shekalim 8:4); the lulavim placed on the roof of the itztaba before Shabbos (Sukkah 4:4). The fourth is the itztaba of a bathhouse (Niddah 9:3), which has nothing to do with the Mikdash. The term appears in several other places in the Gemara as well. Rashi (to Taanis 29a and Arachin 11b) defines duchan by itztaba, seemingly taking the two as synonymous or near-synonymous; Rabbi Ernest Klein, by contrast, gives it a wider range of five senses, colonnade, portico, balcony, shelf, or a bench fixed to a wall, and traces it to the Greek stoa, colonnade or column, which on Julius Pokorny's Proto-Indo-European dictionary goes back to the root sta-, to stand.

Rendering guidance

• Kan: base or stand for an object, post or position for a person. Bereishis 40:13 is "restore you to your post," not "to your base."
• Duchan: platform, or leave it transliterated where the Levi'im's duchan or Birkas Kohanim is the subject. Never render duchenen as "to duchan"; write to go up for Birkas Kohanim.
• Bimah: bimah in a shul, platform or dais in the Mishnah's Hakhel and avodah zarah cases.
• Basis: base, and in halachah leave basis l'davar ha'assur standing.
• Itztaba: platform in the Mikdash contexts; do not import "colonnade" unless the passage describes columns.
• Trap: English "platform" absorbs duchan, bimah and itztaba, and "base" absorbs kan and basis. Rashi's gloss of duchan as itztaba is a statement about two words, so keep both visible: "duchan, that is, an itztaba, a raised platform."
• Second trap: on Kutscher, bimah and bamah are not the same word and must not be rendered alike. A bamah is a high place of worship; a bimah is furniture.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Pinchas: Performance Platforms," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 21 Tammuz 5784 (2024-07-27): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/pinchas-performance-platforms, raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11462-pinchas-performance-platforms.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 30:18, 30:28, 31:9, 35:16, 38:8, 39:39, 40:11; Vayikra 8:11; Bereishis 40:13, 41:13; Mishnah Yoma 5:3-4, Arachin 2:6, Middos 2:6, Kiddushin 4:5, Sotah 7:8, Avodah Zarah 1:7, Keilim 11:7, Pesachim 1:5, Shekalim 8:4, Sukkah 4:4, Niddah 9:3; Taanis 29a; Arachin 11a-11b; Shabbos 118b; Rosh Hashanah 28b, 31b; Sotah 38b, 40a, 48a; Menachos 44a; Kiddushin 71a; Bava Basra 21 with Rashi; Rashi to Sukkah 51b, Avodah Zarah 16a, Sotah 41a; Rambam to Keilim 2:3; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Sefer Tishbi, with Rabbi Yaakov Emden's Ezer Ohr; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo; Kerem Tzvi to Bamidbar 6:23; Degel HaTorah §11 and Mekor Baruch vol. 3 p. 1442; Torah Shleimah vol. 26 p. 289; Even Shoshan's concordance for the count of seventeen; Rabbi Ernest Klein's etymological dictionary of Hebrew; Professor Edward Yechezkel Kutscher, Milim V'Toldoteihen; Julius Pokorny's Proto-Indo-European dictionary; Max Weinreich named for the unsolved almemar question. The article prints the kiyor verse as Lev. 8:111, a typo for Vayikra 8:11, and gives the Reish Duchana Rashi as Bava Batra 21 without an amud; both are reproduced here as the article has them, with the typo corrected. Nothing the article cites is omitted.