society
public
At a glance
In short
B'rabim is in front of many, the plain word for a public setting. Tzibbur is the community as a body, one that can own property and appoint its servants. Parhessya is openly, in the eyes of the community, and its foil is b'tzina, in private. Pirsum means the same, Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur explains, but names the act, publicizing. B'pumbi is a public spectacle, an affair made deliberately conspicuous.
Distinctions
In Parashas Chukas the Torah records a very public affair: Moshe spoke and/or acted improperly at the Waters of Merivah, and Hashem said, "Because you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me in the eyes of the Children of Israel, therefore you will not bring this congregation to the land that I have given them" (Bamidbar 20:12).
Rabim (רבים)
The Mishnah's word for the public in the plainest sense. One who shames another b'rabim forfeits his portion in the World to Come (Avos 3:11). Elsewhere in the Mishnah rabim is typically what belongs to the public at large, often standing against yachid, the individual owner (Peah 2:1, Kilayim 4:7, Bechoros 1:1, Eruvin 5:6, Megillah 3:1, Parah 12:4), most familiarly in reshus harabim. In Tanach the word appears some two hundred times in its plain sense of "many," and the step to "public" is short: "I will thank Hashem greatly with my mouth, and in the midst of the rabim I will praise Him" (Tehillim 109:30). The Mishnah's yadua l'rabim, a vow known to the masses (Gittin 4:7), is the same usage.
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (Cheshek Shlomo) traces rabim to the biliteral ר-ב, which he defines as quantitative increase: rav/harbeh (many), arbeh (grasshoppers, since locusts tend to swarm in multitudes), arubah (a sunroof or skylight, letting in much light), rahav (haughtiness, more self-pride than is normal), and ribo (a myriad, an inflated number that sometimes equals ten thousand). Rabbi Aharon Marcus adds riv (quarrel), from which the place name Waters of Merivah derives, as denoting the plethora of conflicting opinions on a given matter.
Tzibbur (ציבור)
A mass of individuals treated as one body. In the Mishnah the tzibbur is generally the public as a legal entity that owns property and appoints its servants: the korbanos of the tzibbur, paid for by Klal Yisrael as a whole (Pesachim 6:5, 7:4, Shekalim 4:1, Yoma 2:7, Sukkah 5:7, Zevachim 5:5, Menachos 2:2, Temurah 1:6, Kerisus 1:6, and more), and the shliach tzibbur who leads the tefillos and discharges the many of their obligation (Berachos 5:5, Rosh Hashanah 4:9).
The word itself is not in Tanach, but its root is: צ-ב-ר occurs seven times (Bereishis 41:35, 41:49, Shemos 8:10, Chavakuk 1:10, Zecharyah 9:3, Tehillim 39:7, Iyov 27:16), always of gathering or heaping up a collection. A tzibbur is an amassing of people.
Parhessya (פרהסיא) and pirsum (פרסום)
Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi): the two mean the same thing, but parhessya is a noun used for "publicity," while pirsum is a verb naming the act of publicizing something or someone. Neither appears in Tanach or in the Mishnah; both are common in the Bavli, while parhessya appears in only one teaching in the Yerushalmi (Peah 1:1, Sanhedrin 10:1).
The consensus of philologists, linguists, historians and other scholars is that parhessya is a loanword from the Greek parrhesia, "open," "frank speech," "outspokenness." That Greek word has been parsed as a shortened form of panresia, from the prefix pan-, total or all-encompassing, and retos, speech, related to rhetoric; so parrhesia is being able to speak one's mind, which might entail saying any and all sorts of things. The Greek term has a history of its own: in Hellenistic culture it meant freedom of speech, and more deeply a moral obligation to speak the truth when it matters for the greater good, whatever the risk. It was fundamental to Greek society in philosophy and politics and influences Western culture still. One of the most famous examples is Socrates, said by Plato to have engaged in dialogues that questioned the status quo and often challenged the moral foundations of Athenian society, an unwavering commitment to speaking the truth that led to his trial and execution; he essentially gave up his life for the right to say what he held to be true. The same Greco-Roman idea appears in early Christian texts about the apostles who preached boldly despite persecution.
The rabbinic word, by contrast, stresses the visibility and communal aspect of an act rather than free speech, a similar but slightly different idea, and it works for good deeds and bad alike. The Gemara weighs a sin committed in private against one committed b'farhessya (Sanhedrin 74a-75a, Avodah Zarah 27b), the public sin being seen as graver because it sets an example for others, which is why there is more reason to give up one's life rather than transgress publicly. The converse: because Yehudah sanctified Hashem's name b'farhessya, admitting his fault in the episode with Tamar, his name carries all four letters of the Shem HaMeforash, while Yosef, who sanctified it b'tzina in refusing the wife of Potiphar, has only three (Sotah 10b, 36b). Tzina, a cognate of tzenius, often appears as the foil to parhessya in many Talmudic discussions (Eruvin 69a, Sukkah 49b, Beitzah 16a, Taanis 16b, Kesubos 103b, Gittin 38a, Bava Metzia 46b, Bava Basra 42a, Sanhedrin 26b, Avodah Zarah 36b, 54a, Zevachim 88b, Erchin 16a-16b).
Rabbi David Golumb (HaTorah VeHaTalmud vol. 1 p. 39) theorizes that the -hass element (ה-ס) of parhessya relates to the biblical verb has (Bamidbar 13:30, Shoftim 3:19, Amos 6:10, Chavakuk 2:20, Tzefaniah 1:7, Zecharyah 2:17), an onomatopoeic rendering of the sound of hushing others, since one who would proclaim something to the masses must first quiet them so that they let him speak.
- Pirsum too seems to derive from the Greek parrhesia, on HaBachur's assertion that the two words are related, though other theories have been suggested.
- Rabbi Ernest Klein, in his etymological dictionary of Hebrew, relates that some scholars trace pirsum to the Syriac/Aramaic root פ-ר-ס, opening or cutting open, or to the Hebrew root פ-שׂ-ה, expanding, spreading, opening.
- Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein says plainly that he was unable to locate the works of the philologists Rabbi Ernest Klein refers to, but found that Rav Hirsch (to Tehillim 80:14) sees pirsum as derived from פ-ר-ס with a radical mem appended at the end.
Pumbi (פומבי)
Also absent from Tanach and Mishnah, and rare in Shas: twice in the Bavli and twice in the Yerushalmi. Avodah Zarah 54b, as Sefer HeAruch reads it, speaks of wicked men who sin b'pumbi, in public affairs, through illicit relations that produce illegitimate children; the Gemara there laments that these evildoers also "trouble" Hashem by making Him grant souls to those children, so as not to deviate from the natural order by which women conceive and bear offspring that have souls. Bava Basra 145b, on shushbinin, the arrangement by which one man undertakes to defray the costs of another's wedding against the same in return: if the wedding one man paid toward was done b'pumbi, his fellow owes him only if his own wedding is likewise a public affair, and not if he chooses a tzanua one. The Yerushalmi (Yoma 4:1) explains that the lots on Yom Kippur could have been cast from a plain basket, and a special box was used to make the drawing more of a public affair; likewise (Yerushalmi Shekalim 1:1, on Mishnah Shekalim 3:1) the terumas halishkah was taken three times a year rather than once for the same reason. Midrash Tanchuma (Ki Sisa §31, Naso §17) draws the lesson the other way, teaching the virtue of doing things in a hushed, private way rather than an ostentatious public one: the first luchos were given in a very public spectacle, b'pumbi, and ended up destroyed; the implication is that the second set, given under humbler and more modest circumstances, were the likelier to last precisely because they were not presented in a showy way.
Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgeman) writes that pumbi, which appears twice in Targum (Tehillim 68:7, Iyov 5:23), means the same as pirsum. That may hold semantically, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein says, but etymologically pumbi is not the same as parhessya and pirsum: it comes from a different Greek word, pompe, the pomp ceremony of a public procession. Such ornate spectacles were held out in the open, so it is easy to see how the Late Hebrew pumbi came to mean things transpiring in the public eye. The English pomp, as in "pomp and circumstance," likewise derives from pompe, by way of the Latin pompa; and Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur in Sefer HaTishbi had already noted that pumbi is the same as the Latin pompa. The etymology rests on the interchangeability of the b-sound and the p-sound. Related English words include pompous, the sort of person who commands a stately air and makes his presence a spectacle to be beheld, and pump, a showy shoe worn by those trying to make a scene.
Also discussed in
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
פ-ר-ס
To break into pieces with the hands, as bread for the hungry; to spread the hands in mourning; the hoof, פַּרְסָה; and the פֶּרֶס, a large bird of the wilderness.
Breaking with the hands
הֲלוֹא פָרֹס לָֽרָעֵב לַחְמֶךָ (Yeshayahu 58:7), is it not to break your bread for the hungry; and so פֹּרֵשׂ אֵין לָהֶֽם (Eichah 4:4), none breaks bread for them, and וּפָֽרְשׂוּ כַּֽאֲשֶׁר בַּסִּיר (Michah 3:3), and they break them up as in the pot: though written with a sin, their sense is breaking into pieces with the hands. Like it in the words of Chazal (Demai 5:5) is הנותן פרוסה לעני, one who gives a broken piece to a poor man. The Mesorah counts every such word with a sin but for two written with a samech, הֲלוֹא פָרֹס לָֽרָעֵב לַחְמֶךָ and וְלֹא יִפְרְסוּ לָהֶם, they shall not spread out for them.
Hands spread out in mourning
The word is used too of spreading out the hands and the body in mourning out of great grief: תִּתְיַפֵּחַ תְּפָרֵשׂ כַּפֶּיהָ (Yirmiyahu 4:31), she gasps, she spreads out her hands, and פֵּרְשָׂה צִיּוֹן בְּיָדֶיהָ (Eichah 1:17), Tzion spread out her hands; these too are written with a sin.
None to comfort the mourner
וְלֹא יִפְרְסוּ לָהֶם עַל־אֵבֶל (Yirmiyahu 16:7), they shall not spread out for them in mourning, written with a samech, is this same spreading out in mourning: they will not spread out for them, nor come to comfort him over the dead, that is, none will lament the dead and none comfort the living. The commentators read it of the mourner's meal, where bread is broken and cut for him, and that is לנחמו על מת, to comfort him over the dead. His father reads פֵּרְשָׂה צִיּוֹן, Tzion broke bread, the same way: comforters break bread for a mourner, and she broke it with her own hands, having no comforter.
The cloven hoof
כֹּל מַפְרֶסֶת פַּרְסָה (Vayikra 11:3) is explained as one that has two hooves, and וְשֹׁסַעַת שֶׁסַע, and cleaves a cleft, is further explained as hooves split below as they are above; for there is an animal whose hooves are split above and joined below, like the camel, the bear, the dog and the cat. The noun comes also in the masculine, וּפַרְסֵיהֶן יְפָרֵק (Zecharyah 11:16), he will tear off their hooves.
The bird
וְאֶת־הַפֶּרֶס (Vayikra 11:13), and the peres, is a large bird that dwells in the wilderness, as Chazal say (Chullin 62a), the peres and the ozniah are not commonly found in settled places. Rabbi Yonah wrote that the Arabic name for it is עקא"ב.
הֲלוֹא פָרֹס לָֽרָעֵב לַחְמֶךָ (ישעיה נח, ו). וכן פֹּרֵשׂ אֵין לָהֶֽם (איכה ד, ד), וּפָֽרְשׂוּ כַּֽאֲשֶׁר בַּסִּיר (מיכה ג, ג), אף על פי שנכתבו בשֹי"ן ענינם ענין חתיכה בידים פציי"ר בלע"ז. ודומה לו בדברי רבותינו ז"ל (דמאי פ"ה משנה ה. דף טו, ע"ב) הנותן פרוסה לעני. וכן בא הלשון [במין הדגוש] עלׄ פריסת הידים והגוף באבל מרוב הצער תִּתְיַפֵּחַ תְּפָרֵשׂ כַּפֶּיהָ (ירמיה ד, לא), פֵּֽרְשָׂה צִיּוֹן בְּיָדֶיהָ (איכה א, יז), והן כתובין בשֹי"ן. ונכתב בסמ"ך וְלֹֽא־יִפְרְסוּ לָהֶם עַל־אֵבֶל (ירמיה טז, ז), והמסורת כל לשון פריסת כתוב בשִֹי"ן בר מן ב' כתיבין סמ"ך הֲלוֹא פָרֹס לָֽרָעֵב לַחְמֶךָ, ולא יִפְרְסוּ להם. ופירוש ולא יפרסו להם ולא יבואו לנחמו על מת (שם) כלומר לא יספדו על המתים ולא ינחמו החיים. והמפרשים פירשו ולא יפרסו להם לא יפרסו על אבל כמו שפורסים לאבל ובוצעין לו הלחם כשמברין אתו וזהו שאמר לנחמו עד מת. וכן פירש אדוני אבי ז"ל פֵּֽרְשָׂה צִיּוֹן ציון בידיה, כי המנהג של מנחמין פורשין לחם לאבל והיא בעצמה פרשה בידיה כי אין מנחם לה. וענין אחר כֹּל מַפְרֶסֶת פַּרְסָה (ויקרא יא, ג), שיש לה שתי פרסות. ופירשו עוד וְשֹׁסַעַת שֶׁסַע (שם), שפרסותיה סדוקות מלמטה כמו מלמעלה, כי יש בהמת שפרסותיה סדוקות מלמעלה ומלמטה דבוקות כמו שאמר יא, כו) לכל הבהמה אשׁר היא מַפְרֶסֶת פַּרְסָה וְשֶׁסַע אֵינֶנָּה שֹׁסַעַת כמו הגמל והדוב והכלב והחתול. ובא השם הזה בלשון זכרים וּפַרְסֵיהֶן יְפָרֵֽק (זכריה יא, טז). וְאֶת־הַפֶּרֶס (ויקרא יא, יג), בשש נקודות והוא עוף גדול שוכן במדבר, כדברי רבותינו ז"ל (חולין סב, ע"א) פרס ועזניה בישוב לא שכיחי. וכתב רבי יונה והוא שקורין לו בערבי עקא"ב.
צ-ב-ר
To heap up, as silver like dust, or grain; and the noun, a heap. All of it, he says, is the sense of gathering.
Heaping up
אִם־יִצְבֹּר כֶּעָפָר כָּסֶף (Iyov 27:16), if he heaps up silver like dust; וַיִּצְבְּרוּ אֹתָם חֳמָרִם חֳמָרִם (Shemos 8:10), and they heaped them up in heaps upon heaps; and וְיִצְבְּרוּ־בָר (Bereishis 41:35), and let them heap up grain.
Heaping dust
וַיִּצְבֹּר עָפָר וַיִּלְכְּדָהּ (Chavakuk 1:10), and he heaps up dust and takes it: that is, the pouring out of a siege ramp, as he explains at the root סָלַל; or it means that he heaped up a people like dust and took it.
The noun
שִׂימוּ אֹתָם שְׁנֵי צִבֻּרִים (Melachim II 10:8), set them in two heaps. All of these, he says, are the sense of gathering.
אִם־יִצְבֹּר כֶּעָפָר כָּסֶף (איוב כז, טו), וַיִּצְבְּרוּ אֹתָם חֳמָרִם חֳמָרִם (שמות ח, י), וְיִצְבְּרוּ־בָר (בראשית מא, לה). וַיִּצְבֹּר עָפָר וַיִּלְכְּדָֽהּ (חבקוק א, י), פירוש שפיכת הסוללה, כמו שפירשנו בשרש סָלַל. או פירושו ויצבור עַם כעפר וילכדה. והשם צבור שִׂימוּ אֹתָם שְׁנֵי צִבֻּרִים (מלכים ב' י, ח), ענינם ענין הקבוץ.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Chukas: Out in Public," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 13 July 2024.
Cited in the essay: Bereishis 41:35, 41:49; Shemos 8:10; Bamidbar 13:30, 20:12; Shoftim 3:19; Amos 6:10; Chavakuk 1:10, 2:20; Tzefaniah 1:7; Zecharyah 2:17, 9:3; Tehillim 39:7, 68:7, 80:14, 109:30; Iyov 5:23, 27:16; Mishnah Avos 3:11, Peah 2:1, Kilayim 4:7, Eruvin 5:6, Megillah 3:1, Bechoros 1:1, Parah 12:4, Gittin 4:7, Berachos 5:5, Rosh Hashanah 4:9, Pesachim 6:5, 7:4, Shekalim 3:1, 4:1, Yoma 2:7, Sukkah 5:7, Zevachim 5:5, Menachos 2:2, Temurah 1:6, Kerisus 1:6; Eruvin 69a; Sukkah 49b; Beitzah 16a; Taanis 16b; Kesubos 103b; Gittin 38a; Sotah 10b, 36b; Bava Metzia 46b; Bava Basra 42a, 145b; Sanhedrin 26b, 74a-75a; Avodah Zarah 27b, 36b, 54a, 54b; Zevachim 88b; Erchin 16a-16b; Yerushalmi Peah 1:1, Sanhedrin 10:1, Yoma 4:1, Shekalim 1:1; Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Sisa §31 and Naso §17; Sefer HeAruch; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Sefer HaTishbi and Meturgeman; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo; Rabbi Aharon Marcus; Rabbi David Golumb, HaTorah VeHaTalmud vol. 1 p. 39; Rav Hirsch to Tehillim 80:14; Rabbi Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language.