vessel

Where the authorities disagree

The root of pach, and what it means.

• The early lexicographers derive pach from mefakim, the flow of liquid (Yechezkel 47:2, Shekalim 6:3, Middos 2:6), the pach being what liquid flows or is poured from. The triliteralists take the root as פ-כ-ה (Radak, Sefer HaShorashim), the biliteralists as a two-letter פ-ך (Machberes Menachem, Rashi to Yechezkel 47:2).
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim also takes the root as פ-ך but gives it the sense of reversal, parent of hafuch: a flask with a narrow opening, which must be turned upside down to empty. He relates puch, eye makeup (II Melachim 9:30, Yirmiyahu 4:30), to it, since such kohl was typically stored in a pach, and says the gemstone names puch (Yeshayahu 54:11, Divrei HaYamim I 29:2) and nofech (Shemos 28:18, 39:11, Yechezkel 28:13) were borrowed from the cosmetic puch, the stones resembling its color.

The etymology of kankan. Dr. Alexander Kohut (Aruch HaShalem) claims that Mishnaic kankan is a loanword from Latin kanne/canna ("reed," "cane," "pipe," "tube," "small vessel"), probably by reduplication. The Oxford English Dictionary derives English can from the same Latin; other English words said to come from it are cane, canal, channel, kennel, canister, canon and canyon. The French cancan is unrelated (its etymology unclear, perhaps from canard, duck). Rabbi Simcha Wasserman (1900 to 1992), retelling the story of Chanukah, would use the English can for the container of oil. Modern Hebrew calls a soda can a pachit, which, Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein notes, is not related to pach: pachit is spelled with a ches and pach with a kaf. Rabbi Ernest David Klein (Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language) adds that the Latin itself derives from Semitic, that is, Hebrew, kaneh. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein draws the conclusion: kaneh's senses are pipe-like and typically hollow in the middle, so when Mishnaic Hebrew reborrowed the term from Latin as kankan, it makes sense that it named a vessel with a hollow receptacle, which fits its Hebrew etymon too.

Why Maoz Tzur says kankanim. The obvious answer is poetic license: kankanim rhymes with shoshanim, which ends the next line, and pachim does not. Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Shapiro of Dinov (1783 to 1841) rejects this, since shemanim would have rhymed too. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein still holds that poetic license is correct, and answers that the word had already ended the previous line ("they defiled all the shemanim") and rhyming a word with itself is tacky. He then adds that the interchangeability of the words also justifies the swap.

Whether the Menorah's branches may be hollow. Rambam (Beis HaBechirah 3:4) rules that a Menorah made chalulah is fit, and there are two ways to read him.

• Rabbi Yosef Karo (1488 to 1575): chalulah means not made from a single hunk of gold; optimally the Menorah is one hunk of gold, but where it is made of another metal it may be fashioned from scraps joined together. (Aruch HaShulchan HeAsid: such a Menorah is called chalulah because there will be gaps between the pieces.)
• The Mabit, Rabbi Moshe of Trani (1505 to 1585, Kiryas Sefer): the branches may be made hollow lechatchilah in all cases, even out of one hunk of gold.

Rabbi Massoud Chai Rokach (1690 to 1768) and Rabbi Avraham Dovber Kahane-Shapiro (1870 to 1943) explain that Rav Karo did not follow the Mabit because no source in Chazal says, explicitly or implicitly, that the branches may be hollow. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein answers for the Mabit: the Torah's word kaneh itself tells us the branches can (or perhaps even should) be hollow, and Rashbam and Ibn Ezra (to Shemos 25:32) write explicitly that the kanim ought to be hollow within; that is the simple meaning of the Chumash, so the Mabit needed no explicit source in Chazal.