What They Served at the Banquet for the Wedding of Shim’on Nathan’s Daughter: Considerations on the Sense of Tsvi, in Sources From East and West

This article explores lexicological and anthropological aspects of a particular Hebrew zoonym: the various senses in which the word [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]--tsvi--was understood in Hebrew sources from recent centuries. In his Hebrew-language zoology of Mammals, under the entry for tsvi, Sholem Abramowitsch (aka Mendele Mokher Sforim) was clearly describing the roe-deer, and this is the sense in which it is used in a novel by SY. Agnon, set in Galicia. In current Israeli usage, however, the word conforms to the sense it had in the Hebrew Bible and also how the word was understood within Middle Eastern Jewish communities, namely, that [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]--tsvi--refers to the gazelle, and was described as such in a popular halakhic compendium. As recently as the first half of the 20th century, gazelles were raised by some Iraqi Jews, even in their urban homes, a circumstance that was described in a passage in that popular halakhic work. We take our cue for this discussion from an episode in Agnon's novel.