Recently my daughter gave birth to her fourth child and she and her husband gave him the name “Chaim Bentzion.” That second name was the name of my grandfather. (I am now going to abbreviate this name as “BZ.”)
There were several BZs at the bris (either as a first name or middle name), and several of them spoke to me and introduced me to an issue that arises in their world: how do you spell this name in Hebrew?
We all know there are several ways to spell BZ in English. My daughter and her husband chose the spelling I used above. But the purpose of this article is to discuss an issue in the Hebrew spelling: Does one spell it with a hyphen between the two words?
The day after the bris I was introduced to this issue when a gabbai in my shul gave me my printed “aliyah” card. Already on the card, typed in, was a BZ in Hebrew with a hyphen, listed as the name of my mother’s father. I had never chosen that spelling. I was advised that a knowledgeable individual from the shul had chosen the Hebrew spellings typed on the card. The gabbai asked me to add in, in hand, the name of my new grandchild in Hebrew. Having not yet sufficiently researched the issue, I wrote it in without a hyphen, but left space in case I decided to add it later.
————
From the names used in aliyot and in prayers for the sick, we have all heard the word “ben”=son, with a segol (=three dots), perhaps thousands of times.
But the basic word in biblical Hebrew for “son” is “bein” (with a tzeirei=two dots). See, for example, Gen. 1:4: “va-teiled bein,” and Gen. 49:22: “bein porat Yosef.”
It is only when the word is linked with a “makef” (a connection sign) to the following word that it is pronounced with three dots. Of course, this occurs dozens of times in Tanach. For example, when the names of the spies are listed in Shelach, each time the father’s name is given as well (e.g., Kalev ben Yefuneh). Every בן there has a makef following it, attaching it to the father’s name. This results in בן with a segol throughout.
These makefs, like the nekudot, are not in the Torah itself, but were added by the post-Talmudic Masoretes.
I learned this previously when I was studying the word את, as someone had asked me why some have a tzeirei and others have a segol. The explanation is that the word את fundamentally has a tzeirei, but when it is linked with the next word by a makef, it becomes a segol. Dozens of other words in Tanach follow this pattern.
The Masoretes added hundreds of makef symbols (the rough equivalent of our “hyphens”) to indicate which words they felt were significantly connected to the subsequent word. When one reads the two words in this manner, the emphasis is moved to the second word (and the trop is placed on the second word). This makes the reader read the first word faster and this is why the tzeirei changes to a segol. The segol is a faster read.
Now let us focus on ציון and the words that precede it in Tanach. The Hebrew “BZ” does not appear in Tanach. But the combination of בת + “zion” appears in Tanach over twenty times. Every time it appears the Masoretes put a makef between the two words to connect them. Almost certainly, they would have put a makef between בן and “zion.”
In fact the common pronunciation of the name BZ today begins with בן with a segol. (Does anyone named BZ pronounce the first word “Bein”? I have never met such a person!)
So how should parents naming their baby spell the name today? There are times in life (e.g., unsophisticated government computer equipment) where hyphens cannot be entered in a name. If the parents decide initially to spell the name with a hyphen, most likely the person will eventually have two different spellings of his name on documents. This can create many problems.
The simplest approach is for parents to leave out the hyphen. But when the child reaches the age of chinuch, they should advise him that he should have kavanah for a hyphen to be there, even though he is not actually writing it. It is this imaginary hyphen that is connecting the two words and causing the name to be pronounced with a segol.
Since the name BZ with a makef is not found in Tanach (since the name BZ is not there at all), we can be lenient on this issue and not require the hyphen.
(Of course a hyphen and a makef are not exact equivalents. The makef not only connects the two words but puts the emphasis on the second. But the hyphen and makef are similar enough.)
Of course I am just writing tongue in cheek in the above discussion. My statements should be taken seriously but not too seriously.
It is noteworthy that in 1882 in Jerusalem, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (the reviver of the Hebrew language) named his first child BZ (probably with a hyphen). He is a famous child in the history of Hebrew as his father isolated him from others in the first few years so he could speak “pure” Hebrew! (A few years later, after his mother’s death, the child’s name was changed to Itamar: island of dates. That is how he is known in history.)
————
Now for a profound insight into the word בן. Many scholars look at this word and think it is just a primary noun and not attached to any verb. But many other scholars see a relation to the root בנה, which means “to build.” When you have children, you are building your family. Key evidence for this approach are Sarah’s words to Avraham regarding Hagar at Gen. 16:2 “ulay אבנה mimenah” (=perhaps I will be built/have offspring through her). This strongly suggests that “ben” is related to בנה with its “build” meaning.” See similarly Gen. 30:3. See also Deut. 25:9.
Among traditional sources, both Radak in his Sefer HaShorashim and Rav S.R. Hirsch (comm. on Gen. 16:2) adopt this approach.
What about daughters? Are we building a family with them? Yes, we are! The trick is to realize that the word בת is a shortened form and there was a נ there initially. We see this from the plural בנות.
————
On a separate matter, the meaning of ציון in Tanach, I recommend the article by Rabbi Evan Hoffman, in his “Parashah Themes in Historical Perspective,” vol. 2, pp. 242-247.
————
About my grandfather, Rav Benzion Blech: He was born in 1901 in Buczacz in the Galicia region of Poland, which was then within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (It is now in the Ukraine.) In the 1930’s, he was a rabbi in Switzerland and also a shochet. As a shochet, he traveled frequently and this enabled him to make many shidduchim over the years. He came to Brooklyn in 1941. There he taught at Yeshiva Toras Emes and was a rabbi of a shul in Boro Park for about 40 years. The shul, Linas Ha-Tzedek, founded in 1927, has been designated as a NYC landmark in recent years. He was one of the 400 rabbis who marched on Washington in 1943.
In 1941 he was able to get his visa to come to the U.S. with his wife and three children because U.S. law made exceptions to the quota for individuals who had rabbinical job offers in the U.S. He had such an offer from the above shul.
Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. Without that leniency in the U.S. quota law, I would not be here today!
