praise

Distinctions

The column opens with an analogy. The Jewish-German linguist and anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) claimed that the Eskimos of Arctic North America have more than twenty-five words for ice, and the usual explanation is that a people picks up every nuance of what matters most to it and gives each one a name. So too, the column suggests, Hebrew carries a multitude of words for praise, precisely because praising Hashem is so central a part of Yiddishkeit.

lehodos (להודות), lehallel (להלל), leshabei'ach (לשבח)

Thanking is the admission that another did one a good turn and is owed gratitude. Praising is relaying another's virtue to a third party. Lauding is dwelling on another's good traits as such, apart from any dealing one had with him. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (1866-1935) notes that in general thanking Hashem stands before lauding Him, because one's personal responsibility to show gratitude comes before the general obligation to praise Him. Abudraham recognizes seven expressions only, since he also leaves out levarech and lekales.

lefa'er (לפאר) and lehader (להדר)

Rabbi Shimshon Pincus (1944-2001): to glorify is to fix on one specific praiseworthy aspect; to beautify is to stress the whole, the symmetrical and all-encompassing praiseworthiness in every aspect. Nusach Sefard, following the Arizal (1534-1572), places lenatzei'ach, to eternalize, right after lehader; Nusach Ashkenaz, following the Maharal of Prague (1525-1609), has no tenth term.

leromem (לרומם) and le'aleh (לעלה)

Rabbi Shimshon Pincus: both raise Hashem's standing, but in different ways, leromem being the admission that He is above us and le'aleh that He is above everything. (The article's gloss for le'aleh is "exult"; since that English word ordinarily means "rejoice," "raise high" or "elevate" says what Pincus means without ambiguity.)

levarech (לברך)

Calling it "blessing" is something of a misnomer: a mere mortal cannot bless the Creator as He blesses him. The accepted sense: to bless Hashem is to acknowledge Him as the source of all blessing, so "blessing" here means attributing all blessing to Him. Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner (1749-1821) elaborates on it in his magnum opus, Nefesh HaChaim, Shaar 2.

lekales (לקלס)

The disputed one, somewhat controversial. In Biblical Hebrew lekales means "to disparage"; in Rabbinic Hebrew "to exalt," and some authorities therefore recommend omitting it. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau, whose work is frequently cited by the more famous Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785-1865), reconciles the apparent contradiction: the praise called kilus carries a somewhat negative connotation, and he offers three ways of understanding that. It may be embellished, undeserved praise offered simply to inspire a person to keep up a slightly good behavior (a parent praising a child's poor handwriting so he keeps practicing); it may be a verbal insult meant as its opposite (calling a handsome child "ugly" so he does not grow arrogant); or it may be praise exaggerated in order to denigrate, magnifying a man's honor so that some disgraceful act of his stands out the more. The siddur's list is in Rabbinic Hebrew, where the verb means to exalt.

Rendering guidance

• The list as a unit: "to thank, to praise, to laud, to glorify, to extol, to beautify, to bless, to raise high, and to exalt" (Sefard adds "to eternalize" after "to beautify"). Nine or ten distinct English verbs; never merge two, and never reorder.
• הודאה standalone: "thanks," "acknowledgment"; the root also means "admission," and Wertheimer's ordering rests on that gratitude-as-admission sense.
• הלל standalone: "praise"; as the name of the psalms, keep Hallel.
• שבח standalone: "praise" is common, but where שבח and הלל stand together render שבח "laud" (or "lauding") so the pair is not one word twice.
• ברכה of Hashem: "bless" with the Nefesh HaChaim sense understood; do not paraphrase to "acknowledge" in the running text, since the pasuk and the siddur say "bless."
• קילוס: "exalt," "acclaim"; in a Tanach citation the same root is "mock," "disparage," so check which register the passage is in.
• Trap: English "praise" absorbs hallel, shevach, and, loosely, all ten. When the passage enumerates, hold the ten apart; when it uses one word in passing, "praise" is fine.
• Trap: "extol" and "exalt" and "raise high" are near-synonyms in English; the article assigns extol to leromem, exult to le'aleh and exalt to lekales, and this entry substitutes "raise high" for le'aleh for the reason given above. Keep whichever assignment you take fixed across a project.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Ten Expressions of Praise," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 14 Elul 5776 (2016-09-17): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/6934-ten-expressions-of-praise.md. Primary loci the article cites: the close of Pesukei DeZimrah (Shabbos and Yom Tov), the Haggadah, and the concluding berachah of Hallel; Arizal (Nusach Sefard) and Maharal (Nusach Ashkenaz) on lenatzei'ach; Abudraham's seven; Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, Nefesh HaChaim Shaar 2; Rabbi Shimshon Pincus on the four paired verbs; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim on lekales; Franz Boas for the opening analogy. The article names no work of Mecklenburg's here, and does not say that he cites Pappenheim on lekales in particular, only that he frequently cites Pappenheim's work; an earlier reference here to HaKsav VeHaKabbalah has been removed. The article itself counts the liturgical expressions as nine and then calls them ten once the Sefard lenatzei'ach is added; the entry keeps both counts as the article has them. Nothing the article cites is omitted.