Single Guys
The Talmud (Pesachim 113a) that each and every day, Hashem “announces” in the Heavens that He is impressed with three categories of people: poor people who exert themselves to help return lost objects to their rightful owners, rich people who take off tithes even when nobody is looking, and unmarried men who live in the city and do not sin. In that context, the word for “unmarried/single man” that the Talmud uses is ravak. Indeed, the temptations of the urban setting and availability of sinful outlets are such that it is quite laudable for a single man to live in such a milieu and still remain free from sin. Similarly, the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah §27:2) talks about the great reward that Hashem grants the ravak who lives in a community and contributes to the communal funds for child education — even though he himself does not have any children. The unmarried man’s temptation to avoid contributing to this cause makes sense from his perspective, but when such a person exerts special effort to pay his dues, he is lauded in the Heavens. In this article, we discuss three Hebrew terms for “unmarried/single man”: ravak, panui, and bachur. In doing so, we explore the respective etymologies of these different words and try to zone in on the nuances they express.
The word ravak does not appear in the Bible, but it does appear thrice in the Mishnah. The Mishnah (Kiddushin 4:13–14) cites the opinions of those rabbis who ruled that a ravak may not serve as a teacher for young children, a ravak may not work as a shepherd, and two ravakim may not sleep together under the same blanket. In the context of these restrictions, there is a dispute amongst the commentators as to what exactly the word ravak means. Rashi (to Kiddushin 82a) explains that ravak refers to any male singleton who is unmarried — whether or not he was previously married (and subsequently divorced or widowered). However, Tosafot (to Kiddushin 82a) and Maimonides (in his commentary to the Mishnah there) disagree with this assessment, and write that ravak refers specifically to a bachelor who was never married.
In a prophecy that foretells the future downfall of the Chaldeans who were destined to destroy the First Temple, Isaiah metaphorically refers to that nation as young and full of vigor: “and the young lads will become tired and they will be worn out, and the bachurim will surely stumble" (Isa. 40:30). On that verse, Targum translates bachur into Aramaic as ravak. The Tosafists and Maimonides cite this passage in Targum to support their view that ravak refers specifically to a man who was never married, but I do not understand how the Targum’s translation supports this view (for more on bachur, see below).
Ravak makes another appearance in some versions of Targum to Ps. 148:12, which translates the Hebrew bachur as ravak — although, in our versions of the Targum to Psalms use an Aramaic variant of elem there. Either way, it is interesting to note that Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (1469–1549), also known as Elias Levita, in his lexicon of Targumic Aramaic Meturgaman does not list the word ravak, despite the fact that ravak appears in Targum at least once. [For more about the word elem, see my earlier essays “Boys and Girls” (Part I and Part II).]
Another term for an unespoused man is panui (and penuiah for an unmarried woman). This word does not appear anywhere in the Bible nor in the Mishnah; but, it does, however, appear multiple times in the Talmud (for example, Yevamot 59b, 61b, 76a, Sanhedrin 51a, Temurah 29b–30a).
In a complicated case regarding the levirate marriage, the Mishnah (Yevamot 3:5) talks about three brothers, two of whom were married to two sisters with a third brother described as a mufneh. For the purposes of the Halacha taught in the Mishnah there, there is no difference as to whether the third brother was entirely unmarried or was married to a woman who was not a sister to the other two sisters/sisters-in-law. But either way, this Mishnaic term mufneh is actually a cognate of the word panui, as we will explain below.
HaBachur reveals the etymology of the word panui by tracing it to the Mishnaic Hebrew verb panah. That elastic term variously refers to “removing/clearing,” “cleaning,” “emptying,” “opening up,” “making available,” “bring free/at leisure.” For example, the Mishnah (Avot 2:4) states: “Do not say ‘when I will be available [k’she’efneh], I will study,’ for maybe you will never become available [lo tipaneh].” In the same way, an unmarried man is called panui because he is “available” and “open” to forging a matrimonial bond to the lucky woman (and an unmarried woman is likewise called a penuiah for the same reason). An unmarried man can also be called a mufneh for similar reasons. In Modern Hebrew, pinui refers to “cleaning up,” but also to “eviction,” “evacuation,” and other ways of “making room” for something else.
Curiously, HaBachur asserts that this usage of the root PEH-NUN-(HEY) in the sense of “cleared/open/available” does not occur in the Bible — except in an exegetical interpretation of the blessing, “And I [Hashem] will turn to you [paniti]…” (Lev. 26:9). Rashi (there) explains that passage as referring to Hashem “clearing” Himself of all other tasks (i.e., making Himself available) in order to pay the reward due to those who follow His words. Nonetheless, despite HaBachur’s assertion to the contrary, it seems that there are a few examples of this sort of usage in the Bible, for example when Bethuel invited Abraham’s servant into his home, he made sure to say “and I cleared [piniti] the house…” (Gen. 24:31).
All that said, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740–1814) bridges the gaps between the Biblical usage of this root and its later rabbinic forms by offering a detailed analysis of the biliteral root PEH-NUN, whose core meaning he identifies as “frontside/surface.” One important set of derivatives of this root are headlined by the words panim/pnei (“face”) and pnim (“inside/interior”), which denote the most important facets of a given thing. Moreover, the Biblical Hebrew verb panah (“turning/facing”) also relates to this root, because it is the action whereby one positions oneself in such a way that a different side is facing frontwards — the most prestigious of flanks.
Other related words that Rabbi Pappenheim discusses in the context of the PEH-NUN root include ophan ("wheel," a round tire used to turn a vehicle and change direction), pinah (“corner,” because when following the perimeter of a given area, one must turn at the corner to continue), and pen ("maybe," in reference to something of uncertain outcome, with multiple sides to the question of what might/will occur).
Interestingly, Rabbi Pappenheim also suggests that the word peninim (usually translated as “pearls,” but more accurately “precious stones”) refers to a multifaceted “gemstone” that has been polished in such a way that one looking at it can see its multiple faces and the “corners” (vertices) formed at the intersections of those planes. Alternatively, he explains that peninim refer to precious jewels that one would hide “inside” (penimah) and not leave out in the open. We may further suggest that pearls relate to the concept of “inside” because oyster pearls are concealed within the oyster shells before they are harvested.
Finally, the act of panah ("clearing/cleaning") relates to panim because it conveys the idea of removing peripheral or external matters to reveal the essential core. For example, when you sweep away the dirt and reveal the actual floor, this is a form of panah. In doing so, the act of panah is intended to wipe away all the riffraff and allow the panim itself to be visible. In the same way, somebody who is "idle" or "available" has cleared away all the other things he has to do to make time for something else. Pnai refers to the “leisure time” or “extra time” that one has available to devote to a given purpose. In Talmudic Biblical hermeneutics, the term mufnah refers to a word in Scripture whose presence is extraneous and therefore "open/available" for further exegesis. Rabbi Pappenheim explicitly explains that panui in the same of an "unmarried man" derives from this concept, as such an unyoked bachelor can be said to be "cleared" from the obligations that are incumbent on a family man.
In one place, Rashi (to Ex. 12:30) refers to singulate men with the phrase revakim penuiim — which uses both of these synonyms (ravak and panui) together. This possibly suggests that Rashi understood them to both mean the same thing. Indeed, Rashi (to Pesachim 113a) seems to equate the terms ravak and panui by using panui to define ravak. This equation seems to be a semantic equation. In other words, Rashi equates the meaning of the two terms. However, Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842–1894) infers from Rashi’s comment that there is also something of an etymological equation, in that the etymology of ravak is similar to that of panui, as both refer to something “empty.”
Even if Rashi does not actually make this point, Rabbi Yissachar Ber HaKohen Katz (also known as Rabbi Berman Ashkenazi), the 16th century author of Matnot Kehunah (to Vayikra Rabbah §27:2) does actually connect ravak to the Hebrew word reik (“empty”), in the sense that the unmarried man is “empty” of the obligations and responsibilities that are loaded on to married men. [For more about the word reik, as well as its cognates and synonyms, see next week’s essay.]
Nevertheless, Kohut himself disagrees with the explanation he saw in Rashi. Instead, he views the Mishnaic Hebrew word ravak as a loanword borrowed from Arabic. Indeed, the Aramaic word ravaka (probably originally pronounced something like rawaka) means "young man," and similar Arabic cognates rayq/rauq ("youth") bear comparable meanings.
While Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein (1899–1983) acknowledges that some scholars (like Kohut) see those Semitic cognates as the etymological bases for the Mishnaic Hebrew ravak, he disagrees with those scholars, writing "it is more probable that the original meaning of this word is 'empty', and that it derives from the base REISH-YOD-KUF. Accordingly, ravak would properly mean 'a man whose house is empty from wife and children'." So Rabbi Klein (no relation) goes back to the explanation that Kohut saw in Rashi and we saw in the Matnot Kehunah.
The Hebrew word bachur in appears close to fifty times in the Bible, but it never refers exclusively to an unpaired bachelor. Rather, it used in various context to refer to “young man,” especially one of military age, but there is no reason to think that bachur only refers to an unmarried man. Indeed, in its colloquial usage, bachur refers to a unmarried male (see Ketubot 10a and elsewhere which seems to support such usage), but can technically even refer to a married young man (see, for example, Sukkah 26b).
All that said, the one time that the word bachur appears in the Mishnah, it is clearly referring to unmarried singulate men. The Mishnah (Taanit 4:8) relates that on the fifteenth of Av (Tu B'Av) and on the tenth of Tishrei (Yom Kippur), the single girls of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards to try and attract a mate. They would say, "O bachur, lift up your eyes and see what [i.e., whom] it is that you choose."
Radak (1160–1235) in Sefer HaShorashim writes that the root of bachur is BET-CHET-REISH, which primarily refers to the act of “choosing.” He explains that this root relates to an unmarried lad, because such young men tend to be at the peak of their physical strength and are thus the choicest candidates for labor or the military (as opposed to older people who are less ideal for such tasks).
Similarly, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (an 18th century grammarian and dayan) writes in Ohalei Yehuda that the word bachur derives from the triliteral root BET-CHET-REISH (“choice”), because a mature young adult male is at the choicest stage of his life in terms of his vigor and aesthetic appeal, but does not yet have the responsibilities of a more mature adult, so his energies are not being sapped. Alternatively, he parses the word bachur as a fusion of the two words bo ("in him") and char ("heat"), noting that within a bachur burns a strong sort of desire or passion that may be likened to a raging fire.
By the way, that famous grammarian and writer Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur was known as a bachur because he only got married later on in life. Some have argued that he was called Bachur because he wrote a work on Hebrew grammar called Sefer HaBachur, but in truth he actually writes in his introduction to that work that the opposite is true; one of the reasons he titled his work Sefer HaBachur is squarely because he himself was given the appellation HaBachur as part of his name. Similarly, the appellation HaBachur was also applied to Rabbi Kalonymus HaBachur (see Shibbolei HaLeket §140), a Tosafist active in the German town of Mainz during the Crusades, in order to differentiate between him and his older contemporary Rabbi Kalonymus HaZaken of Speyer.
I used to think that the English word bachelor was somehow a corruption of the Hebrew term bachur, but then I realized that the Hebrew term itself does not exclusively refer to an unmarried boy (as explained above), nor does the English word derive from Hebrew, but from Latin. As Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language explains it, the English word bachelor ultimately derives (by way of the Middle English bachelere and the Old French bacheler) from the Latin term baccalarius, which means "young man" in addition to "owner of a small farm." Some trace this Latin word even further to the Latin word vacca ("cow"), but not all etymologists agree with that.
