Vaera: The Vertically-Challenged
Imagine the scene of Moses and Aaron pleading before the most powerful sovereign in the entire world — the Pharaoh of Egypt — saying those fateful words, “Let My people go.” Now, after imagining that scene in your head, reimagine the event bearing in mind the assertion found in the Talmud (Moed Katan 18a) that the Pharaoh in the time of Moses was but one amah (“cubit”) tall. It certainly gives a different spin on the dynamic. In this essay, we explore four words in Hebrew that denote “shortness” of stature: gamad, namuch, gutz, and nanas. Each of these terms can be used to describe a “short person” or “dwarf” (note that the English word midget is no longer socially-acceptable), and this essay explores whether or not they are truly synonyms.
When the shofet Ehud gained an audience before the Moabite king Eglon in order to surreptitiously stab him, the Bible reports that he used a sword that was a gomed long (Jud. 3:16). This is one of only two instances of the Hebrew root GIMMEL-MEM-DALET in the Bible. Rashbam (to Bava Batra 100a) and Radak (to Jud. 3:16) explain that a gomed is the same unit of measurement as an amah, but Sefer HaAruch, Rashi, and Mahari Kara (there) explain that it refers to a truncated amah. In doing so, Rashi uses a cognate of the word gidem (“amputee,” “cut off”) to explain the notion that Ehud’s sword was less than an amah long. Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg of the Veromemanu Foundation infers from this that Rashi understood the word gomed as a metathesized form of the word gidem, with the consonants DALET and MEM switching positions.
The prophet Ezekiel tells of the international acclaim of the Tyrian kingdom, by noting, inter alia, that their watchtowers were manned by gamadim (Ezek. 27:11). This is the other instance of the root GIMMEL-MEM-DALET in the Bible. At first, Rashi and Mahari Kara (there) explain that gamadim refer to seamen who were adept at measuring the depths of the sea using ropes. This fits with Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein’s assertion that connects the Hebrew term gamad to the Ethiopic word gwend, which means "stick" (probably in reference to a sort of yardstick used to measure a gomed). However, subsequently, Rashi (as well as Radak there and in Sefer HaShorashim) explains that gamadim refer to short people, who are naught but an amah tall. Interestingly, although Targum Jonathan (there) translates gamadim as Cappadocians, Rabbi Eliyahu Bachur (1469–1549) in Sefer Tishbi merges Targum with Rashi’s second explanation to posit that the Cappadocians were a nation of dwarves [not unlike the Lilliputians, from Gulliver's Travels].
Either way, in Talmudic Hebrew, the root GIMMEL-MEM-DALET refers to "contracting/shrinking." For example, the Talmud (Gittin 57a) declares that the Holy Land has a supernatural property that when it is inhabited, it expands to accommodate all its inhabitants, and when it is left uninhabited, it is gamda, “contracted/shrunk” (for further examples, see Beitzah 15a, Pesachim 111a, Chullin 43a, Gittin 57a). Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein (no relation) connects this term to the Arabic jamada, which means "stiffening/congealing/hardening." Scientifically-speaking that refers to a physical process, by which the atoms within a liquid come closer to each other and therefore harden. In doing so, the matter in question typically becomes more compact and reduced in its physical dimensions. His point is seems to be that hardening and shrinking are often two sides of the same coin.
Interestingly, the name (or nickname) Gamda appears multiple times in the Talmud (specifically in characters like Rav Gamda, Rav Chiyya bar Gamda, Rabbi Yehudah ben Gamda, and the Gamda River). Nowadays, the word gamad is used in Modern Hebrew to refer to a “gnome” (like a garden gnome, which is typically short and stout).
The Hebrew word namuch (“short in height”) appears several times in the Mishnah (Kilayim 4:7, Eruvin 9:1, and Zevachim 1:2), although it never appears in the Bible. Like gamad, it does not refer exclusively to “short” people, but can be used to refer to anything that is short (e.g., a short fence).
Rabbi Dr. Ernest Kein, echoing Bachur’s Sefer Tishbi, explains that namuch is a secondary base form of the niphal of the Biblical Hebrew word mach (“poor,” “lowered”). The grammatical NUN added to the beginning of mach denotes “one who has become lowered.” In other words, rabbinic Hebrew adds an initial NUN to the word mach in reference to a person who is lowered in stature, and then the resulting word (which Bachur actually vocalizes as namoch) istreated as though the NUN was part of the root. The word mach itself can be traced to the root MEM-VAV-KAF (Ibn Janach and Radak), MEM-KAF-KAF (Ibn Chayyuj), MEM-KAF (Ibn Saruk), or just KAF (Rabbi Pappenheim). This is similar to the rabbinic word terumah (“tithe”), which is derived from the biblical root REISH-(VAV)-MEM (“raising/lifting”), and then treated as though the initial TAV was part of the root. [For more about the word mach, see “The Poor and Unfortunate” (May 2019).]
Another word used in rabbinic literature to denote one who is “small of stature” is gutz. This term does not appear in the Bible or the Mishnah, but is used several times in the Talmud. Several examples: The Talmud (Yevamot 106b) discusses Halachic differences concerning the Chalitzah ceremony when either the man or the woman is of especially short stature (gutz in masculine form, gutza in feminine form). The Talmud (Bava Metzia 59a) cites a popular adage that says, “if your wife is short [gutza], then crouch down to listen to her.” Similarly, the Talmud rules that a corpse being merely tall or short (gutz) is not enough of a clue to positively confirm the deceased person's identity (Bava Metzia 27b). Rav Huna is described as a “short [gutza] man” (Megillah 27b). Finally, when Elkanah’s wife Hannah prayed for Hashem to grant her a son (i.e., Samuel), she asked that her son not be “too tall or too short (gutz), too skinny or too fat, too white or too reddish, too intelligent or too senseless” (Brachot 31b).
Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (1606-1675) in his work Mussaf HaAruch writes that the word gutz actually comes from Greek. However, Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842–1894) in his Aruch HaShaleim disagrees with that supposition, instead comparing the Hebrew/Aramaic gutz to the French court/curt and the Hungarian kisci ("small"). This may be due to the interchangeability of the sounds of GIMMEL and KUF, as well as moving around the consonants a bit. Kohut’s proposed etymology broadly follows his general observation of how many languages have similar-sounding or related terms for the same phenomenon. Kohut also notes that the French word curt actually derives from the Latin curtus, which would mean that it is also related to the English word short and the German/Yiddish kurtz. According to modern linguists, all of these words relate back to the Proto-Indo-European root sker- (“cutting”), which is the ultimate etymon of such English words as scissors, shear, scabbard, skirmish, scar, shard, sharp, scrape, shirt, skirt, and curt.
However, a more plausible etymology sees the word gutz as essentially Semitic: In general, the verb gutz in Aramaic means “gnawing,” “biting,” or “cutting off.” In the case of a short person, it seems as though that person’s height was “cut off” from what one might have otherwise expected, hence the term gutz as a noun or adjective is appropriate. Professor Michael Sokoloff in his A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods writes that the Aramaic root GIMMEL-VAV-TZADI from which gutz derives is actually a later form of the Biblical Hebrew root KUF-TZADI-TZADI (via the interchangeability of GIMMEL And TZADI), which also means "cut off." Again, this is because a “short” person can be viewed as if part of his stature has been "cut off" or "truncated."
Our final word used in reference to “short” people is nanas. When Rashi and Radak (to Ezek. 27:11) wrote that gamadim refer to short people, they actually used the word nanas. Similarly, the Talmud (Bechorot 45b) humorously suggests that an especially tall man should not marry an especially tall woman, lest their offspring be as tall as a ship’s mast; and an especially short man (nanas) should not marry an especially short woman (nanaset), lest their offspring be as short as a finger! Like some of the other terms we encountered above, nanas does not exclusively apply to people, as even short boards/walls are called nanasin (see Rashi to Yoma 16b, Pesachim 64a, and Rashi to Ezek. 40:43).
The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (whose army destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem) may have been a mighty conqueror, but he was physically short in height — like Pharaoh and Napoleon. In fact, Nebuchadnezzar is actually described as “the nanas of Babylonia” (Pesikta DeRav Kahane §13:5, see also Yalkut Shimoni to Dan. §1062).
Interestingly, some Tannaic sages mentioned in the Mishnah have nanas as part of their name (or perhaps it was more like a nickname), as in the sage Ben Nanas (Ketubot 10:5, Gittin 8:10, Bava Batra 7:3, 10:8, Shavuot 7:5), or Rabbi Shimon ben Nanas (Bikkurim 3:9, Shabbat 16:5, Eruvin 10:15, Bava Batra 10:8).
Bachur in Sefer Tishbi notes that while the native Hebrew term for a short person is gomed (as mentioned above), he equates the Rabbinic Hebrew term nanas with the Latin word nano and ninio (“baby” in Spanish). Those Latinate words are, in turn, derived from the Greek nanos (see Aruch HaShaleim), which English speakers might recognize from its place as a prefix in such English words as nanosecond, nanogram and nanotechnology. Before we conclude, it bears mention that this word nanas is totally unrelated to the Modern Hebrew word ananas ("pineapple"), which actually derives from the Peruvian word nanas (via Spanish).
