vegetable and green

Distinctions

Yerek (ירק) and yarok (ירוק)

Yerek and its close cognate yarak appear eleven times in Tanach (Bereishis 1:30, 9:3; Bamidbar 22:4; Devarim 11:10; Melachim I 21:2; Melachim II 19:26; Yeshayahu 15:6, 37:27; Tehillim 37:2; Mishlei 15:17). The word appears countless times in the Mishnah, as in the Mah Nishtanah's "other yerakos" for the first dipping (Pesachim 10:4), as against marror, a specific subset of yerakos, and in the ruling that one says borei pri ha'adamah on vegetables (Berachos 6:1).

The early lexicographers, Menachem Ibn Saruk, Yonah Ibn Janach, and Radak, take the root as י-ר-ק.

• As Ibn Saruk explains it, the root yields three related sets of words: vegetable, a greenish gem (perhaps emerald, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein suggests), and the color green.
• Ibn Janach and Radak add spitting and spittle to the same root; Ibn Saruk derives those from a separate biliteral ר-ק.
• Rabbi Avraham Bedersi (Chosam Tochnis): vegetables are called yerakos because they are typically green (yarok).

Technically, Rabbinic yarok covers a range from yellow to green to blue (see Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi's HaMadrich HaMaspik, Teshuvos Maharam MeRothenberg, Prague ed. §631, and Biur HaGra to Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 21).

• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes yarok itself to the biliteral ר-ק, emptying or depleting. A plant's solid parts form its structure; its liquids give sap, flavor, scent, and quality. The liquids remaining inside give taste and scent, those expelled outward give its look and color; so the green of a living plant is the emptying out of those inner liquids, and in a borrowed sense yarok is also the yellowish color of less fresh plants drying out. Spitting belongs here too, emptying the mouth.
• Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (an eighteenth-century grammarian and dayan, Aholei Yehudah) likewise ties yerek to rok, spit, since vegetables typically grow faster than fruit and the ground seems to spit them out; alternatively to reik, empty, since the halachic yerek is a plant whose stem or trunk is not perennial and must be replanted each year, so all its nutrients are concentrated in ("emptied out into") the vegetable itself, unlike a fruit, which spends some of its nutrients on a tree that lasts from year to year.

Karpas (כרפס), the plant

Karpas appears in the Mishnah (Shevi'is 9:1, cited Sukkah 39b) in a list of wild plants that people do not typically cultivate and which are therefore presumed ownerless; the Yerushalmi there explicitly identifies it with petrozilia (Greek petroselinon), parsley. Its Aramaic cognate karpasa appears in Kesubos 61a: a nursing woman who frequently eats it will have a child who is zivsani, shining, splendid, distinguished. Rabbeinu Manoach (to Hilchos Chametz U'Matzah 8:2) somehow connects that to the Seder's karpas. From all this, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein says, it would seem that karpas literally means parsley, "but the matter is far from settled."

For the vegetable, Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842 to 1894) derives karpas from the Arabic krafsa/karfs, which today means celery, though Rabbi Shaul Goldman points out that the vowels of the Hebrew and Aramaic words differ from the Arabic.

• Rabbi Alan Yuter argues that karpas is the Greek karpos, any fruit, vegetable, or produce.
• Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein rejects this: the sources above use karpas for a specific species, not for produce in general, so although colloquially the first dipping's karpas can be any vegetable, it is philologically difficult to tie the word to the Greek.

Karpas (כרפס), the word in Esther

At Achashverosh's banquet the decorations are chur, karpas, u'secheiles (Esther 1:6). In context, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein says, karpas fairly clearly refers to some sort of fabric, since chur and techeiles are white and bluish fabrics. What sort is disputed:

• Targum Rishon and Targum Sheini associate karpas with karti, leek, which seems to make it a different vegetable from the one first thought.
• Rabbi Saadia Gaon (Tafsir to Esther 1:6, also cited by Ibn Parchon): silk.
• Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) cites and rejects that and explains karpas as a color; Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi adopt the same explanation. Radak follows it and specifies green (see also Midrash Lekach Tov to Esther 1:6), as do Ralbag, Ibn Yachya, and Rabbi Yosef Nechemias. On this view, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein concludes, the Biblical karpas is the basic hue of vegetables rather than a vegetable, just as yarok is related to yerek.
• Rabbi Baruch Epstein (1860 to 1941, Toseses Berachah to Esther 1:6): since karpas seems to come from a four-letter root, which is rare in Hebrew, Chazal sought to parse it into smaller parts; hence Megillah 12a reads it as karim (pillows or blankets) of pasim (silk).
• Others presume that the four-letter word is foreign. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein (1899 to 1983), in his etymological dictionary of Hebrew, makes the Biblical karpas a loanword from Persian karpas, "fine linen," which he derives from Old Indian kaprasa, "cotton," and Greek karpasos, "fine flax"; this suits the fabric. The Midrash (Esther Rabbah to Esther 1:6) makes a similar point, citing Aquila's Greek translation as connecting karpas with the Greek karpasinon.

How karpas became the Seder word

The Mishnah and Gemara never call the first dipping karpas; the Tur (Orach Chaim 473) still does not, and the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 473:4) already does. The source is Mishnah Pesachim 10:3, and Rashi (to Pesachim 114a) explains the first dipping as done with yerakos, plain vegetables. The popular use of karpas seems to have come from the Seder-order piyut "Kadesh, Urchatz, Karpas, Yachatz," ascribed to Rabbi Shmuel of Falaise, a twelfth-century French Tosafist, which uses karpas as a short-hand for what earlier sources called more generically a vegetable; once the poem spread, the word became the popular term for any vegetable used for the first dipping. The contemporary scholar Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Stahl (a Slonimer Chossid in Jerusalem), working from manuscripts of many times and places, finds that not all the Seder-order piyutim call it karpas; some use yerek or even pri (ha'adamah).

Where Rabbi Shmuel of Falaise got the word: some early Ashkenazi sources give lists of vegetables for the first dipping, often including karpasa. Machzor Vitri cites such a list in the name of Rashi's Seder HaPesach. In the generation before Rashi, Rabbi Yosef Tuv-Elem (Bonfils) wrote the piyut Elokei HaRuchos, the laws of Pesach in rhyme, whose list includes karpasa and kusbarta; Ashkenazim traditionally say it on Shabbos HaGadol, and Rabbi Shmuel of Falaise wrote a commentary on it (printed in Ohr Zarua, Hilchos Pesachim §256). It seems that he simply Hebraized the Aramaic karpasa of Elokei HaRuchos. So, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein concludes, karpas does not mean "vegetable"; it was one example of a specific vegetable for the first dipping, listed beside many alternatives.

Derashos on the word:

• Rabbi Yaakov Moelin (1365 to 1427) in Sefer Maharil, and others, read karpas as perech metathesized plus a samech worth sixty, sixty myriads of Jewish men at backbreaking labor.
• Others parse kar plus pas: kar as sale (Rosh HaShanah 26a) or rulership (Yeshayahu 16:1), pas as Yosef's kesones pasim (Bereishis 37:3), the coat that led to the sale that brought Yaakov's family down to Mitzrayim (Rabbeinu Manoach; Ibn Shuaib to Tzav; Ben Ish Chai, Year 1, Tzav §32).

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Metzorah/Shabbos HaGadol: Veggies for the Dipping," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 20 April 2024.

Cited in the essay: Bereishis 1:30, 9:3, 37:3; Bamidbar 22:4; Devarim 11:10; Melachim I 21:2; Melachim II 19:26; Yeshayahu 15:6, 16:1, 37:27; Tehillim 37:2; Mishlei 15:17; Esther 1:6 with Targum Rishon, Targum Sheini, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Ralbag, Ibn Yachya, Rabbi Yosef Nechemias, Midrash Lekach Tov, Esther Rabbah, and Rabbi Saadia Gaon's Tafsir (cited also by Ibn Parchon); Pesachim 10:3-4 with Rashi to Pesachim 114a; Berachos 6:1; Shevi'is 9:1 with Sukkah 39b and the Yerushalmi there; Kesubos 61a; Megillah 12a; Rosh HaShanah 26a; Menachem Ibn Saruk; Ibn Janach, Sefer HaShorashim; Rabbi Avraham Bedersi, Chosam Tochnis; Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi, HaMadrich HaMaspik; Teshuvos Maharam MeRothenberg, Prague ed. §631; Biur HaGra to Tikkunei Zohar 21; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras, Aholei Yehudah; Rabbeinu Manoach to Hilchos Chametz U'Matzah 8:2; Dr. Alexander Kohut; Rabbi Shaul Goldman; Rabbi Alan Yuter; Rabbi Baruch Epstein, Toseses Berachah to Esther 1:6; Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein's etymological dictionary of Hebrew; Aquila; Tur and Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 473; Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Stahl; Machzor Vitri; Rabbi Yosef Tuv-Elem, Elokei HaRuchos, with Rabbi Shmuel of Falaise's commentary in Ohr Zarua, Hilchos Pesachim §256; Sefer Maharil; Ibn Shuaib to Tzav; Ben Ish Chai, Year 1, Tzav §32; Chasam Sofer, Orach Chaim 132; Aruch HaShulchan, Orach Chaim 473:10; Piskei Teshuvos to Orach Chaim 473.