In I got It!
A jumbled pickle of errors
The word used in Ivrit to denote ‘jelly or ‘confiture’ is ‘ribah’, the use of which originates with ben Yehuda the heretic. The source he cites for its usage is in fact completely erroneous, revealing his stupidity. A further error to add to his litany of mistakes is the myth as to the source of his original error, which is different from that which is widely accepted.
Eliezer ben Yehudah (5618-5672, 1858-1922ce), crowned by the Zionists as the ‘resuscitator of the Hebrew language’ was the author of the ‘Ben Yehudah dictionary’ which listed all his modern Hebrew terms, which he had dreamed up according to his own understanding. This reliance on his own judgement led to many errors, including this error on the matter of jelly. Ben Yehudah called the word ribah ‘a new word which is also old’, relying on the phrase ‘tofini ribah’ which is found in Chazal, in the Talmud Yerushalmi, maseches Shekalim, perek 7 halocha 3: “Rabbi said; ‘tofini ribah’, Rabbi Dosa said ‘tofini noi’,” – “Rabbi said ‘a large amount of fruit preserves’, Rabbi Dosa said ‘nice preserves’.” Ben Yehudah relied on this phrase, surmising that the word ‘ribah’ was derived from the Hebrew root ‘meruvav’, which means ‘a mixture’, here, of fruits. Others argue even that the correct version of the text should rather read ‘tofini rakah’, ‘soft fruit preserves’, in which case ben Yehudah is even further off the mark. But the general consensus is that the word is in fact ‘ribah’ from the Hebrew root ‘ribui’ or ‘many’. Ben Yehudah rejected this explanation and insisted that the root was rather ‘ravav’.
In addition, ben Yehudah completely misunderstood another phrase of Chazal, where it states; ‘mai ribah? ribah mamtakim (merkachas shel peiros)’ – ‘why the elaboration? on the matter of the preserves…’ – but ben Yehudah erred and assumed that the Torah was asking instead ‘what is ‘ribah’……a mixture of fruit preserves….’
Ben Yehudah admitted in the newspaper ‘HaTzvi’ which he edited that he had brought the word ‘ribah’ up to date; “it states in the Talmud Yerushalmi…..’tofini ribah’……and the commentators debate the meaning of the word ‘ribah’….but the truth is, that the real version should be…..that one should rather read ‘ribah’ and not ‘rabah’, from the root ‘ravav’, just as the word ‘sibah’ is from the root ‘savav’, and its meaning in the Hebrew language is ‘something that is fried in oil or cooked in sugar or honey, such as types of fruit cooked in sugar’ – only in Arabic, the word is used in the sense of ‘mixture’…so it emerges that we have merited to gain a word that is both new and old for this type of sweet food, a fruit cooked in sugar, in honey – and it is ‘ribah’…..”
This error of ben Yehudah caused many to scoff at him, even other writers who did not themselves hesitate to alter or ridicule the holy words of Chazal such as Shai Agnon, wrote; “this scholar, the author of the dictionary, who erred in a word and called a mixture of fruits ‘ribah’.”
So it emerges that the correct Hebrew term for jelly should in fact be ‘merkachas’.
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