כְּרוּב (kruv) — cabbage; (biblical) cherub

Etymology

Wild cabbage (Brassica oleracea) grows on rocky sea cliffs of Europe and was domesticated in antiquity, giving rise to one of the most prolific cultivated plants in human history: all of the following — cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, broccoli, and kale — are domesticated varieties of the same ancestral plant. The earliest evidence for the cultivated plant comes from Greece of the 6th century BCE, where it was called krambe (κράμβη). The plant reached the Land of Israel later, in the Hellenistic or Roman period. Its earliest Hebrew attestation is in the Mishnah (Kilayim 1:3, c. 200 CE), where it is called כְּרוּב — a corruption of the Greek krambe, possibly via Aramaic. In the Mishnaic period the word was probably still pronounced in a way that distinguished it from the biblical כְּרוּב (cherub, Genesis 3:24); the two became homophones only as the pronunciation evolved over time.

The Mishnaic and Talmudic literature contains many mentions of כְּרוּב, ensuring that the word was known to Jewish scholars across the generations. But there was a gradual disconnect. Rabbinic commentators in the Arabic-speaking world — Saadia Gaon, Hai Gaon, Maimonides — glossed the word using the Arabic equivalent karnab. Their European counterparts, Rashi and Rabbi Nathan author of the Arukh, apparently felt no need to gloss it, presumably because they assumed it was a known word. But by the Middle Ages and early modern period, Ashkenazic Jews had lost track of the vegetable and were calling it by Yiddish/German words like kohl, kraut, kompusht, and shtronk. By the 19th century some Eastern European writers, including Mendele Moykher Sforim, were incorrectly using כְּרוּב as the name for beet (סֶלֶק).

In the Palestinian Yishuv, by contrast, כְּרוּב was used for the variety of brassica growing in the region — primarily what we now call cauliflower, the most common variety there. When Eliezer Ben-Yehuda wrote in his newspaper ha-Tzvi in 1886, he noted that "the cabbage of the Land of Israel is not like the cabbage of Moscow; the cabbage of the Land of Israel is what in Moscow they call 'flowering cabbage'" — and then described what is clearly a cauliflower, and also what sounds like brussels sprouts. A German agricultural book he was serializing simultaneously called cauliflower כְּרוּב and actual cabbage "the plain כְּרוּב."

Twelve years later, in 1898, Ben-Yehuda coined כְּרוּבִית as the name for cauliflower, based on the Arabic word for it: karnabīt. His colleague David Yudelevitch celebrated the new season's cauliflower harvest in Ben-Yehuda's paper, using the new word. A competing proposal came from Yaakov Goldman, a Jaffa resident who identified the Arabic karnabīt with a Mishnaic term: terovtor. That competition was settled in favor of כְּרוּבִית, which has remained the word for cauliflower to this day.

For kohlrabi, Yehiel Mikhl Pines translated the German name Kohlrabi ("kohl" = cabbage, "rabi" = turnip) as "לֶפֶת הַכְּרוּב" in 1886. The Language Committee in 1930 offered "כְּרוּב הַקֶּלַח" — קֶלַח being a Talmudic word for stalk (itself possibly from Greek kaulos, making it a distant etymological cousin of German Kohl and English kale). The public ignored both and kept using the foreign word, written variously "כלרבי" and "קולרבי" — the latter eventually prevailing. The committee's 1938 coinage כְּרוּב נִצָּנִים (literally "budding cabbage") for brussels sprouts was an immediate success and remains the standard. Broccoli arrived as a distinct vegetable only in 1966, introduced by the Volcani Institute's food technology department, and the Italian-origin name broccoli — from Latin broccus (sharp, pointed) → Italian brocco (young shoot) → broccolo (inflorescence) → plural broccoli — was adopted as-is. Kale became a health-food trend in California around 2010; when it arrived in Israel the same year, a headline in Ha'aretz coined the name "כְּרוּב-עַל" (super-cabbage) for it.

Key Quotes

"כרוב ארץ-ישראל איננו ככרוב מאסקויא... כרוב ארץ ישראל הוא הכרוב אשר במוסקויא יכנוהו בשם 'כרוב הפרחים'" — Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, ha-Tzvi, 1886

Timeline

• 6th c. BCE: Krambe attested in Greek for domesticated brassica
• Hellenistic–Roman period: Cultivated cabbage/brassica introduced to the Land of Israel
• c. 200 CE: כְּרוּב first attested in Mishnah (Kilayim 1:3)
• Medieval period: Ashkenazic Jews gradually lose track of the word; use Yiddish/German names
• 19th c.: Some Eastern European writers incorrectly use כְּרוּב for beet
• 1886: Ben-Yehuda describes both cauliflower and (apparently) brussels sprouts as כְּרוּב
• 1898: Ben-Yehuda coins כְּרוּבִית for cauliflower, from Arabic karnabīt
• 1886: Pines translates kohlrabi as "לֶפֶת הַכְּרוּב"
• 1930: Language Committee proposes "כְּרוּב הַקֶּלַח" for kohlrabi; public ignores it
• 1938: Language Committee coins כְּרוּב נִצָּנִים for brussels sprouts — immediately adopted
• 1966: Broccoli introduced to Israel by Volcani Institute; Italian name adopted
• 2010: Kale arrives in Israel; Ha'aretz headline coins כְּרוּב-עַל

Related Words

• כְּרוּבִית — cauliflower; coined 1898 by Ben-Yehuda from Arabic karnabīt
• כְּרוּב נִצָּנִים — brussels sprouts; coined 1938 by Language Committee
• קוֹלְרָבִּי — kohlrabi; from German Kohlrabi (kohl = cabbage, rabi = turnip)
• בְּרוֹקוֹלִי — broccoli; from Italian broccolo (plural broccoli)
• קֶיִּל — kale; from English kale ← German Kohl
• כְּרוּב-עַל — kale (informal); coined in Israeli media c. 2010
• כְּרוּב (biblical) — cherub; completely unrelated word, same spelling