vegetable

Distinctions

yerek (ירק) and yarok (ירוק)

Eleven occurrences of yerek and yarak 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), and constantly in the Mishnah, as in the berachah of borei pri ha'adamah on vegetables (Berachos 6:1) and in the Mah Nishtanah's "other yerakos" (Pesachim 10:4), where marror is one subset of yerakos and the first dipping is another.

Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, and Radak take the root as י-ר-ק, yielding three families: vegetable, a green gem, and the color green. Ibn Janach and Radak add spitting and spittle to the same root; Ibn Saruk keeps those under a separate biliteral ר-ק. Rabbi Avraham Bedersi (Chosam Tochnis): vegetables are called yerakos because they are ordinarily green. On the range of yarok in Rabbinic Hebrew, from yellow to green to blue, see HaMadrich HaMaspik, Teshuvos Maharam MeRothenberg 631, Beiur HaGra to Tikkunei Zohar 21.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes yarok itself to the biliteral ר-ק, emptying out. A plant's inner liquids give taste and scent, those pushed outward give it its look and color; so the green of a living plant is the emptying out of its liquid, and the yellowing of a plant past freshness is the same word in a borrowed sense. Spitting belongs here too, emptying the mouth. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Aholei Yehudah) likewise ties yerek to rok, spit, since vegetables come up faster than fruit and the ground seems to spit them out; alternatively to reik, empty, since the halachic yerek is a plant whose stem does not renew itself yearly, so all its nourishment is emptied into the vegetable itself, unlike a fruit, which must keep a tree alive.

karpas (כרפס), the plant

Karpas appears in the Mishnah (Shevi'is 9:1, cited Sukkah 39b) among wild plants nobody cultivates and which are therefore presumed ownerless; the Yerushalmi there identifies it with petrozilia, parsley. Its Aramaic form karpasa appears in Kesubos 61a: a nursing woman who eats it regularly will have a child who is zivsani, radiant and distinguished. Rabbeinu Manoach (to Hilchos Chametz U'Matzah 8:2) links that to the Seder's karpas.

karpas (כרפס), the word in Esther

At Achashverosh's banquet the hangings are chur, karpas, u'secheiles (Esther 1:6), white and something and blue, so the context wants a fabric or a color. Rabbi Saadia Gaon (Tafsir, cited by Ibn Parchon): silk. Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) cites and rejects that and reads karpas as a color; Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi take it the same way. Radak specifies green (so too Midrash Lekach Tov, Ralbag, Ibn Yachya, Rabbi Yosef Nechmias), which puts the Biblical karpas in exactly the relation to vegetables that yarok has to yerek: the hue, not the plant. Targum Rishon and Targum Sheini associate it with karti, leek. Chazal parse the word into parts, a four-letter root being rare: Megillah 12a reads karim (spreads) and pasim (silk), as Rabbi Baruch Epstein (Toseses Berachah to Esther 1:6) notes explicitly.

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. Rashi (to Pesachim 114a) explains the first dipping as done with yerakos, plain vegetables. The shift came through the Seder-order piyut "Kadesh, Urchatz, Karpas, Yachatz," ascribed to Rabbi Shmuel of Falaise, a twelfth-century French Tosafist. He appears to have taken the Aramaic karpasa from an earlier piyut, Elokei HaRuchos of Rabbi Yosef Tuv-Elem (Bonfils), which lists vegetables fit for the first dipping including karpasa and kusbarta (coriander); Ashkenazim say that piyut on Shabbos HaGadol, and Rabbi Shmuel of Falaise wrote a commentary on it (in Ohr Zarua, Hilchos Pesachim 256). Machzor Vitri, quoting Rashi's Seder HaPesach, has karpasa in such a list too, and Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Stahl's manuscript work finds versions saying yerek or pri ha'adamah. So karpas was one item on a list, not a category.

Derashos on the word: Maharil (Sefer Maharil) and others read karpas as perech metathesized plus a samech worth sixty, sixty myriads of Jews 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, Tzav 1:32).

Rendering guidance

• Yerek / yerakos: "vegetable(s)." Not "greens," which narrows it, and not "herb," which is a different plant class.
• Yarok: "green" ordinarily, but in a halachic passage about colors (blood, esrog, techeiles) say "yarok" and gloss the range, since the Rabbinic word reaches yellow and blue and English "green" does not.
• Karpas stays transliterated in a Seder context; gloss it "the vegetable for the first dipping," not "parsley," since no halachah requires parsley and communities use potato, onion, cucumber, and more (Chasam Sofer, Orach Chaim 132; Aruch HaShulchan 473:10; Piskei Teshuvos to 473).
• Trap: English "greens" will absorb yerek, yarok, and karpas at once. In Esther 1:6 karpas must not become a vegetable; render it with the fabric or color the commentator you are following holds, and note the dispute.
• Where a text pairs yerek with marror, keep the genus/species relation visible: "bitter herbs and other vegetables," not two coordinate items.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Metzorah/Shabbos HaGadol: Veggies for the Dipping," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 12 Nissan 5784 (2024-04-20): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11353-metzorahshabbos-hagadol-veggies-for-the-dipping.md. Primary loci cited: 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; Esther 1:6 with Targum Rishon, Targum Sheini, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Ralbag, and Midrash Lekach Tov; 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; Tur and Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 473; Ohr Zarua, Hilchos Pesachim 256; Machzor Vitri.

Omitted under house rule 9: the derivations of karpas from Persian, Old Indian, and Greek in Rabbi Ernest Klein's dictionary, Alexander Kohut on Arabic karfs ("celery"), and Rabbi Alan Yuter's proposal that karpas is the Greek karpos, which the article itself rejects, since the Rabbinic sources use it for one species and not for produce in general. One comparison here is itself rabbinic and may be used: Esther Rabbah to Esther 1:6 cites Aquilas' rendering karpasinon, fine flax, which supports the fabric reading.