שָׁזִיף

The plum arrived in our region during the Roman period, and a specific variety that was common in those days was the Damascus plum, which the Romans called prunum damascenum (plum of Damascus), or in short damascenum. The sages of the Talmud adopted the name, and it appears in the Talmud in the form "dormeskin." However, the modern name "shazif" is not related to this Roman name, but to another name that appears in rabbinic sources - "shizaf." In the Talmud, "shzafin," meaning the fruit of the jujube tree, are mentioned several times. On one of those occasions (Yoma 81a), Rashi interpreted them with the Old French word "prunes," meaning plum. In the 1780s, when Mendel Lefin translated the medical book "Medicine of the People" by Samuel-Auguste Tissot into Hebrew, he needed a Hebrew word for plum. Instead of using the Talmudic word "dormeskin," he decided to follow Rashi's interpretation and called the fruit "shazaf." Lefin was not sure about the exact vocalization, so in different places in his book he wrote the name of the fruit sometimes as "shazif" and sometimes as "shazuf." Both forms competed with each other during the 19th century, but eventually "shazif" is the one that became established in modern Hebrew.