פֶּטֶל (petel) — raspberry

Etymology

The story of פֶּטֶל is a winding one, even though the raspberry plant itself has always grown in the Land of Israel. The raspberry is in fact mentioned in the Torah — in the well-known burning bush episode — but not by this name. The biblical word סְנֶה (Exodus 3:2) is the raspberry of today, as confirmed by early translations: the Septuagint renders it with Greek bátos and the Vulgate with Latin rubus, both meaning bramble or raspberry. Rabbinic literature also uses the Aramaic form sanyā/sanyāh for a water-side thorny plant with dark berries, consistent with the Holy Bramble (Rubus sanguineus) native to Israel. The sixth-century physician Asaph the Doctor clinched the identification: "The seneh in the Greek tongue is called bátos and in the Roman tongue rubus."

Over centuries, as the Jewish community in the Land of Israel dwindled, the ancient name seneh for the plant was forgotten. Medieval European rabbis needed to discuss the fruit's legal status (which blessing to recite?) and used vernacular names — typically corruptions of German Brombeeren or Russian yagoda. An exception is Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel (c. 1300), who incidentally called the fruit "berries growing in a seneh" — using seneh for a thornbush in general, unaware of the word's original specific meaning.

The word פֶּטֶל itself likely began its life in Greek as pteléa, the ancient Greek name for the elm tree. The word was absorbed into the Syriac dialect of Aramaic as pəṭāl, but by the tenth century its meaning had shifted. Through a chain of lexicographic confusion — involving Bishop Isho bar Ali's dictionary, the Arabic ʿawsaj (which itself shifted meaning after Ibn Sina used it for raspberries in his Canon of Medicine, 1025) — the seventeenth-century English scholar Edmund Castell defined Syriac pəṭāl with Latin Rubus (raspberry/bramble). Subsequent Syriac dictionaries followed suit.

One such Syriac dictionary apparently led the lexicographer Kahana to interpret a murky Talmudic passage (Ta'anit 3:1) as referring to eating raspberries, and in his Russian-Hebrew dictionary he listed pəṭāl as the Hebrew translation of Russian malina (raspberry). The writer Uri Nissan Gnessin found the word there and planted it in his successful novel Beterem (1909), from which it spread through modern Hebrew. Pronunciation shifted from pəṭāl to petel following the general Mishnaic-era vowel pattern of segolate nouns. By the 1930s, raspberry concentrate became the Yishuv's favorite drink, cementing the word. Eventually petel came to denote any concentrated fruit syrup, regardless of flavor.

Key Quotes

"הסנה בלשון יון נקרא באטוס ובלשון רומיים רובו" — אסף הרופא, המאה ה-6

"תותים הגדלים בסנה" — רבי אשר בן יחיאל (הרא"ש), כ-1300

Timeline

• Antiquity: Raspberry called seneh in Biblical and early post-Biblical Hebrew
• 6th century CE: Physician Asaph identifies seneh as Greek bátos / Latin rubus
• ~1300: Rosh incidentally uses seneh for a thornbush, calls its berries tutim
• 10th century: Bishop Isho bar Ali defines Syriac pəṭāl using the Arabic ʿawsaj
• 1025: Ibn Sina uses ʿawsaj for raspberries in Canon of Medicine, shifting its meaning
• 17th century: Edmund Castell defines Syriac pəṭāl as Latin Rubus (raspberry)
• Early 20th century: Teacher Isser Yosef Einhorn coins tut seneh for raspberry
• 1909: Gnessin uses petel in the novel Beterem; word begins to spread
• 1929: Shaul Tchernichovsky uses tut seneh in a poem
• 1930s: Raspberry concentrate becomes iconic Yishuv drink under the name petel; tut seneh is displaced
• Modern Hebrew: petel extended colloquially to mean any fruit concentrate syrup

Related Words

• סְנֶה — biblical word for the raspberry/bramble plant (the burning bush)
• תּוּת סְנֶה — proposed early 20th-century compound meaning "bramble-berry," superseded by פֶּטֶל
• תּוּת — mulberry/strawberry; used by medieval rabbis for raspberry fruit
• מִיץ פֶּטֶל — raspberry juice/concentrate; colloquially any fruit concentrate