pleasure

Distinctions

eden (עדן), ednah (עדנה), maadanim (מעדנים)

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1740-1814) holds that eden and oneg both name enjoyment, whether or not the enjoyment is ultimately good for a person, and that eden is primarily physical pleasure, that of the five senses: taste, hearing, smell, sight and touch. Its root is ע-ד-ן, which he traces to ע-ד, joining or connecting (as in ad, yaad, eidah, vaad, moed, eidus): physical pleasure forges a connection between the one enjoying and the object enjoyed. A careful look at usage in Tanach, the column adds, shows eden/ednah almost exclusively concerning taste and touch, which fits Pappenheim, since those are the two senses in which the object comes into direct contact with the organ. Maadanim are the delicacies of a king's table (Tehillim 36:9, Yirmiyahu 51:34, Eichah 4:5; Bereishis 49:20, Asher's maadanei melech). Sarah's עדנה (Bereishis 18:12): Onkelos renders youthfulness; Radak, the smooth skin of youth; Ibn Ezra, the pleasures or enjoyment of youth; Rabbi Yehuda Chalava, son of the thirteenth-century Maharam Chalava, conjugal pleasure specifically. The column raises the possibility that some of these sources are associating ednah with the Aramaic idna, time, and reading youth as a bygone time. Adin/adinah (Yeshayahu 47:8) is the delicate, dainty one, easily overwhelmed by sensation. (Adina is nowhere a proper name in Tanach or in Chazal, though it turns up twice in the quasi-midrashic Sefer HaYashar, as the names of Lavan's wife and of Levi's.) Pappenheim: eden stays "physical" even when the bodily pleasure also yields spiritual pleasure (a tasty medicine, Shabbos and Yom Tov food, marital intimacy as a mitzvah); Gan Eden thus names both the physical delights of that paradise and its intellectual bliss.

He works the interplay out in both directions. Some things the body enjoys and the soul does not: sleep, which restores the body but dulls the mind; drinking past the point of drunkenness; sin, which pays in tangible enjoyment and pains the soul. Some things the soul enjoys and the body does not: hard physical labor to build wealth, a needed medicine that tastes foul, mitzvos that bring spiritual ecstasy and no bodily comfort. And there the symmetry stops: a physical pleasure can carry a spiritual one with it, but there is no such thing as a spiritual pleasure that produces a physical one.

oneg (עונג)

Root ע-נ-ג. Pappenheim: pleasure of the soul, the abstract pleasures that only the soul enjoys: understanding, grasping a hard idea, wealth, honor, love, vengeance on enemies, peace, a friend's success. Oneg remains spiritual even when rooted in something physical: oneg Shabbos (Yeshayahu 58:13) is delight in Shabbos, which may come through good food; the pampered anug (Devarim 28:54) is one whose emotional well-being needs bodily coddling. And oneg also stands wholly apart from the body: delighting in peace (Tehillim 37:11), in love (Shir HaShirim 7:7), in honor (Yeshayahu 66:11), in Hashem Himself (Tehillim 37:4, Iyov 22:26), all of them purely abstract pursuits. Rav Hirsch (1808-1888) explains oneg differently: the state of being surrounded by favorable and pleasant conditions, which he compares to anak, a necklace, an object that surrounds the wearer's neck. Anak can also mean a grant, as in the master's charge to haanek taanik the departing Hebrew bondsman (Devarim 15:14); explaining that word, Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785-1865) writes that the kuf of anak interchanges with a gimmel to give oneg, the gift the freed bondsman gets to enjoy.

pinuk (פינוק)

Root פ-נ-ק. A hapax legomenon, once in Tanach: מפנק מנער עבדו (Mishlei 29:21), warning a master not to be mefanek his slave lest the slave come to rule over him, that is, not to overindulge him or flatter him too much for his efforts, since he will grow used to the treatment and come to expect it. Pappenheim claims that pinuk does not mean pleasure at all but playfulness and flattery. That fits the pasuk's context well, but it does not account for the Targumim, which consistently use pinuk words to render oneg and eden: anug becomes mefanak/mefunak, maadanei melech becomes tafnukei malkin; in Mah Yedidus, tafnukei maadanim is the same word twice, Aramaic and Hebrew, "delicacies." (The column once took the English finicky for a derivative of pinuk, and reports on looking into it that finicky comes from English fine instead. Go figure.)

Rendering guidance

• עונג שבת: "delight in Shabbos" or "Shabbos delight"; never "Shabbos pleasures" as if it named the food. The food is the vehicle (Pappenheim).
• מעדנים: "delicacies"; מעדני מלך: "royal delicacies."
• עדן / עדנה of a person: "sensual pleasure," "delight of the senses"; Bereishis 18:12 follows whichever commentator the passage follows (youth, smooth skin, conjugal pleasure). גן עדן stays Gan Eden.
• פינוק: "pampering," "indulgence"; מפנק as a verb, "to pamper," "to indulge." Mishlei 29:21 reads "who pampers his slave from youth."
• Together: תפנוקי מעדנים (Mah Yedidus): "delectable delicacies," one doubled idea in two languages, not two kinds of pleasure.
• Trap: English "pleasure" absorbs eden and oneg, and "delight" can do the same. When both appear, or when a passage argues body against soul, keep eden on the side of the senses and oneg on the side of the soul.
• Trap: adin (Yeshayahu 47:8) is "delicate, dainty," not "pleasant."

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Indulging in Pleasure," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 19 Sivan 5779 (2019-06-22): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8295-indulging-in-pleasure.md. Primary loci the article cites: Pappenheim's root analyses of ע-ד, ע-נ-ג and פ-נ-ק; Bereishis 18:12 with Targum Onkelos, Radak, Ibn Ezra, and Rabbi Yehuda Chalava; Bereishis 49:20; Tehillim 36:9, 37:4, 37:11; Yirmiyahu 51:34; Eichah 4:5; Yeshayahu 47:8, 58:13, 66:11; Devarim 15:14, 28:54; Iyov 22:26; Shir HaShirim 7:7; Mishlei 29:21; Rav Hirsch on oneg and anak; Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg to Devarim 15:14; the Targumim on anug and maadanei melech; Mah Yedidus for tafnukei maadanim; Sefer HaYashar for the name Adina. The column's own hedged suggestion linking ednah to the Aramaic idna, its note on Adina, and its retraction of the finicky etymology are reported here as the column's, not as any authority's. The article cites its Tehillim loci by the Hebrew versification (36:9, not the English 36:8), and the entry follows it. Nothing the article cites is omitted.