waking

Distinctions

yekitzah (יקיצה)

Ibn Chayyuj, Ibn Janach and Radak take it from the triliteral י-ק-צ, "wake up," and stop there. Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem) instead files it under the biliteral ק-צ, which also carries border, summer, pressure, revulsion, cutting and thorn; he does not say how these join, but the later commentators supply the link.

Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 9:24) ties yekitzah to kutz (harvest, cut off) and kayitz (summer): when fruit has ripened it disengages from its source and is ready to be taken off, and a man who has slept his fill wakes on his own the same way. To Bereishis 41:4 he adds the katz of revulsion: a man who has eaten his fill is sickened by more food, and a body that has slept its fill likewise rejects more sleep and wakes.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740 to 1814) takes the core of ק-צ as "end/edge," spatially (ketzeh, the edge of a field, Bereishis 23:9; Bamidbar 22:6; Melachim II 7:8) and temporally (keitz, the end of a span, Bereishis 6:13; Tehillim 119:96; Daniel 11:35, 12:13, and mikeitz from it). Kayitz is the last season before Rosh HaShanah. Ketzitzah (Shemos 39:3; Devarim 25:12) is chopping off an end in one stroke rather than the drawn-out work of sawing, and that is what makes yekitzah what it is: a sudden, total waking, asleep one moment and awake the next, with no half-and-half in between.

Rabbi Aharon Marcus (1843 to 1916) reaches the same place more simply: yekitzah is the keitz, the end, of one's sleep.

A usage point worth holding: nearly every cognate of yekitzah in Tanach is waking from a dream (Bereishis 28:16, 41:4, 41:7; Melachim I 3:15; Tehillim 73:20; Yeshayahu 29:8) or from drink (Bereishis 9:24; Mishlei 23:35; Tehillim 78:65; Yoel 1:5). It is the end of a false picture of reality, not merely the end of sleep.

oorah (עורה)

Root ע-ו-ר. Shoresh Yesha reads every derivative of ע-ו-ר as revealing and exposing: ohr (skin) is the part of the body left exposed, ervah is the uncovering of what should stay covered, and a sleeper, eyes shut, has nothing revealed to him, so waking is oorah, a whole world revealed at once. A blind man is an iver because he sleeps a permanent sleep, or (a second suggestion there) because a layer of skin sits over his eyes. Pappenheim works the same biliteral ע-ר and reaches "revealing" too, but applies it differently: the sleeper's powers are hidden, he lies inert and motionless, and waking reveals them; on that basis he explains noer, a lion's roar, as an outburst that reveals what was in him.

Pappenheim's contrast with yekitzah is the operative one. Oorah is the slow transition, the man in the intermediate stage of dozing. He grounds it in ani yesheinah v'libi er, "I am asleep but my heart is awake" (Shir HaShirim 5:2): a man can be in oorah while he is still, technically, asleep.

Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785 to 1865) explains the angels called irin from er, "awake," since they never sleep and are always aware of what a man does.

The Targumim always render yekitzah by cognates of oorah, so Aramaic collapses the pair; vayikatz becomes v'isar, the Aramaic TAV standing in for the Hebrew YOD as the reflexive. From that comes the Gemara's nim v'lo nim, tir v'lo tir, "asleep and not asleep, awake and not awake" (Pesachim 120b; Taanis 12b). Rashi (to Taanis 12b, and see Bava Kama 117b) takes tir from v'isar and reads it as a sleeper on the edge of waking; Tosafos (to Taanis 12b, and to Niddah 63a) read it the other way, a waking man on the edge of sleep.

the two together

Nishmas has HaMe'orer yesheinim v'haMeikitz nirdamim, and pairs two words for sleeping with the two for waking. Rabbi Yechezkel Pannet of Karlsburg (1783 to 1845) matches them: orer suits the deep sleeper (yesheinim), dreams and all, and yekitzah suits one who merely dozed off (nirdam) and never went under. Malbim reads the same phrase as two stages of one process: oorah first, coming to one's senses, then yekitzah, actually getting up and staying up. Malbim also reads Chavakuk 2:19 by the sentience of the object: the navi says hakitzah to a wooden idol and uri to a stone one, because on the scale of domem, tzomeach, chai and medaber, wood ranks above stone, and yekitzah is the more responsive wakefulness while oorah is the most basic.

Rendering guidance

• Default renderings: vayikatz "he awoke"; hekitz / meikitz "wakes," "rouses from sleep"; oorah / uri "awake!" or "rouse yourself"; me'orer "who rouses"; er "awake" as an adjective; hisorerus "arousal" or "stirring," never "wakefulness."
• Trap: English "awaken" will absorb both roots. Where they stand in one phrase (Nishmas; Chavakuk 2:19), split them, for example "who rouses the sleeping and wakes those who have dozed off." A single verb used twice destroys both Rabbi Pannet's reading and Malbim's.
• When yekitzah follows a dream or a drunken sleep (Bereishis 28:16, 41:4, 41:7; Bereishis 9:24; Yoel 1:5), "awoke" is enough; do not add "suddenly." Pappenheim's suddenness is in the word, and spelling it out in English overtranslates.
• In mussar and chassidus, hisorerus is a term of art for an inner stirring. Keep it transliterated and gloss it once; "awakening" reads as an event, and hisorerus is a process, which is exactly Pappenheim's point.
• The ק-צ family (keitz, ketzeh, kayitz, ketzitzah, kotz) is shared with the "corner" cluster; see corner-peah-keren-zavit-pinah.md, where Pappenheim runs the same root through katzeh.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Wake-up Time," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2021-12-04): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9473-wake-up-time.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 6:13, 9:24, 23:9, 28:16, 41:4, 41:7; Shemos 39:3; Bamidbar 22:6; Devarim 25:12; Melachim I 3:15; Melachim II 7:8; Yeshayahu 29:8; Yoel 1:5; Chavakuk 2:19; Tehillim 44:24, 73:20, 78:65, 119:96; Mishlei 23:35; Shir HaShirim 5:2; Daniel 11:35, 12:13; Pesachim 120b; Taanis 12b; Bava Kama 117b; Niddah 63a; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 9:24 and 41:4; Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo and Yerios Shlomo; Menachem Ibn Saruk, Machberes Menachem; Shoresh Yesha; Malbim to Chavakuk 2:19 and on Nishmas.