פוחלץ (pukhlats) — stuffed animal (taxidermy)

Etymology

The word פוחלץ has one of the most dramatic scholarly careers in modern Hebrew lexicography: it was attacked by major figures including the national poet Hayim Nahman Bialik, defended by archaeologists and manuscript scholars, and ultimately vindicated by a potsherd discovered near Rafah. The word appears once in the Mishnah, in Tractate Kelim (22:9): "Three kinds of baskets: a dung basket — impure with midras impurity; a straw basket — impure with corpse impurity; the pukhlats of camels — pure from everything." Medieval rabbinic commentators agreed it referred to a net-like basket used for carrying goods on camels: Rabbi Nathan of Rome (11th century) defined it as "a vessel into which dung is thrown"; Maimonides (12th century) said it appeared to be a rope-woven device for loading camels; Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro (15th century) called it a basket "made like a sieve of net-work." A dissenting view came from Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (17th century), who cited the Maharam of Rottenburg (13th century) as saying it was "a vessel made of camel leather holding forty se'ah, not designed for sitting."

The modern meaning — a taxidermy animal stuffed with straw — was introduced by Joseph Klausner (uncle of Amos Oz) in a dictionary he co-authored with Yehuda Grozovsky (later Gur), published in parts from 1900 to 1902. Klausner, who believed in pouring new meanings into dormant ancient words, likely seized on the Maharam's minority reading (camel leather) to justify defining פוחלץ as "the skin of an animal, beast, or bird, stuffed with straw inside." The word spread through subsequent dictionaries and by the 1920s appeared in newspapers and literature, including S.Y. Agnon's Tmol Shilshom (1945).

The controversy erupted in 1921 when Jacob Nahum Epstein published a critical edition of the Gaonic commentary on the Order of Purities and argued in a footnote that the Mishnaic text was corrupt: the word should be פוחלין (with a nun-yod ending), not פוחלץ — the final tsade being a scribal error caused by the nun and yod running together in a manuscript. Epstein based this on a manuscript of the Gaonic commentary and on other Talmudic passages using פחלין. He added that pukhal is Aramaic for testicles, and the vessel was named for the shape of two bags hanging on either side of the camel. Bialik warned in 1922 that the word was "corrupted from its very root." In 1933 Naphtali Herz Tur-Sinai (later first president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language) called it "ugly" and declared the true form was pukhal. In 1954 Yitzhak Avinery publicly reprimanded a translator for using the "corrupted" form.

However, from 1921 onward new manuscripts emerged that consistently showed פוחלץ — including Codex Kaufmann, the best manuscript of the Mishnah. The decisive proof came in 1985 when David Naveh published in the journal Leshonenu a pottery shard discovered apparently near Rafah, dated by its script to the late 4th or early 3rd century BCE, bearing the Aramaic word פחלצן — the plural of פוחלץ. The form was not corrupted at all; it was the original.

Key Quotes

"המלה ׳פוחלץ׳ היא משובשת, כמדומה, מעקרה, ומלון שמושי אין לו להכניס עצמו לספקות." — חיים נחמן ביאליק, 1922

"צורת המילה האמתית היא פוחל ולא המפלצת פוחלץ." — נפתלי הרץ טור-סיני, תרביץ, 1933

Timeline

• Mishnaic era: פוחלץ appears once in Mishnah Kelim 22:9
• 1901: Ben-Yehuda's first dictionary defines it as a net bag
• 1900–1902: Klausner-Gur dictionary introduces the meaning "stuffed animal skin"
• 1907: Abraham Kahana adopts Klausner's definition in his Russian-Hebrew dictionary
• 1920s: Word enters newspapers and Hebrew literature with the modern meaning
• 1921: Epstein publishes manuscript evidence claiming the correct form is פוחלין
• 1922: Bialik warns against using the "corrupted" word
• 1933: Tur-Sinai calls it "ugly" and wrong
• 1945: Agnon uses it in Tmol Shilshom
• 1985: Naveh publishes the Rafah potsherd bearing פחלצן (3rd–4th century BCE), vindicating the traditional form

Related Words

• פוחל — the Aramaic word for testicles that Epstein believed was the true root (now disputed)
• פוחלין — the erroneous corrected form proposed by Epstein