סיגריה (sigariyah) — cigarette

Etymology

The word סיגריה entered Hebrew through Arabic, which borrowed it from Spanish. The etymology of the Spanish word itself is uncertain but traces to the New World. On the evening of August 3, 1492 — the same day the last Jews were expelled from Spain — Columbus's fleet set sail westward. Among the crew was a Jewish interpreter named Luis de Torres (likely born Yosef ben Halevi), hired to negotiate with the traders Columbus expected to find in Asia. After five weeks at sea the expedition reached the Bahamas. De Torres and sailor Rodrigo de Jerez were sent inland, where indigenous people introduced them to the practice of smoking tobacco — the first recorded encounter between the Old World and tobacco.

The name "tobacco" — tobaco in 16th-century Spanish — is of uncertain Taino origin, possibly meaning "rolled tobacco leaves" or the name of the pipe used for smoking. As for the word for the rolled tobacco product itself, it most likely derives from the Mayan word sikar, meaning the act of smoking tobacco leaves (their word for tobacco was sik). The Spanish first called rolled tobacco products sikar, but possibly influenced by the resemblance to cicadas — called sigarra in various South American dialects — the word evolved into cigarro. The Arabic form سيجار (sijar, cigar) and سيجارة (sijarah, cigarette — adding the feminine/diminutive suffix) followed, and Hebrew adopted the Arabic feminine form as סיגריה.

In Jewish sources, tobacco appears already in the 16th century. Jews participated actively in the tobacco trade, both wholesale (importing leaf from America) and retail. Halakhic questions about tobacco — whether to recite a blessing, whether it is permitted on fast days — are documented in rabbinic correspondence of the 17th and 18th centuries. In those texts, tobacco was usually called tuntun, the Turkish word for tobacco derived from the verb tut (to make smoke). The Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760) used snuff for ritual purposes; his disciples reported that when he "inhaled his tobacco" he ascended to higher worlds. By the late 18th century pipe smoking became common, and in the 19th century cigarettes began replacing the pipe, especially after American inventor James Albert Bonsack invented an industrial cigarette-rolling machine in 1880.

Key Quotes

"מי יתן ויתעוררו גם שאר אלופי הקהלות ממוקמות אחרים לבער את הרע הזה מבתי מדרשיהם" — Eliezer Lipman Silbermann, Ha-Maggid, 1859 (on smoking in study halls)

Timeline

• 1492: Luis de Torres and Rodrigo de Jerez become the first Europeans introduced to tobacco (Bahamas)
• 1530s: Tobacco trade and the name tobaco documented in Spanish sources
• 16th century: Tobacco appears in Jewish sources; called tuntun in rabbinic texts
• 1753: Carolus Linnaeus names the tobacco plant Nicotiana after Jean Nicot
• 1820: German scientists isolate nicotine from the tobacco plant
• 1698–1760: Baal Shem Tov uses snuff as part of mystical practice
• 1859: Hebrew press reports on a study hall banning smoking
• 1880: Bonsack's industrial cigarette-rolling machine accelerates cigarette smoking's spread
• Late 19th century: סיגריה adopted into Hebrew from Arabic

Related Words

• סיגר — cigar; the base word from which cigarette (diminutive) derives
• טבק — tobacco; the plant and substance, from Taino tobaco
• ניקוטין — nicotine; named after diplomat Jean Nicot