I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m genetically programmed to be sensitive to words. After all, part of the Goldberg family lore is hearing the many colorful stories of my Grandpa Max, seated at the head of the dinner table, with a large leather bound Oxford dictionary. Words were his game. He would love to find neat sounding words and see what they mean, sharing them with the family and dinner guests.
That is how I got acquainted with the the word tintinnabulation in the sixth grade — by hearing one of these random Grandpa Max dinner dictionary vignettes from a friend of the family.
So last Shabbat when I turned to The Jewish Week and read about Maharat Sara Hurwitz, a woman with this new title conferred upon her by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, in place of calling her Rabbi, I was amused.
Now, regardless of where you stand on the religious spectrum, and regardless of what your opinion about this development is, you must admit: a maharat?!
What the heck is a maharat? Well, technically, it is an acronym for “Manhiga Hilchatit Ruchanit Toranit,” you know, a MAHARAT.
But oh, dear reader, a maharat could be so many other things!
I just love this invented word, or acronym, if you will.
First of all, doesn’t it ring like a Persian or Indian word? I imagine Maharat Sara Hurwitz standing tall wrapped by a turban around her head with a red dot stained between her thick eyebrows. Don’t you think?
And a maharat — it also echoes previous acronyms attributed to great rabbis like the Maharal mi-Prague and the Maharam mi-Rutenberg. Here you have it, now there is the Maharat mi-Riverdale!
Let’s see . . . a maharat, it could be a niggun, as in the “maharat niggun,” it could be a curse, as in “she is such a maharat!” a toast, like “l’chaim,” but instead, picture a crowd of cheerfully inebriated people clinking glasses to “l’maharat!” Or what about a suspicious or sketchy person, as in “I would watch out for him, he is a real maharat,” or how about maharat meaning inappropriate, as in “I wouldn’t take her seriously, she tends to be a bit of a maharat.”
Oh! I just love this word! It makes me chuckle.
Maharat can be anything you want it to be, really, a person, a place, a food. Perhaps even a verb.
I love inventing words, creating neologisms, that of course only I and a few close to me know about and catch the reference to and decipher. There are certain ideas, emotions, situations or experiences that you simply must make up a non-sense type of word for, to describe it your way. There are certain quirks and oddities that you just need to create that weird — just right — made-up word for.
Like “nishkit.” Nishkit is actually a hybrid based on the Yiddish nisht-gitt, meaning not-good. When it’s nisht-gitt, you can picture an Eastern European Bubbie clacking her tongue and nodding her head side to side in disapproval or worry. But a “nishkit” is a totally different thing. It’s a “nishkit.” Just a bad or weird feeling in your heart, maybe a sense of anxiety, so you just have a “nishkit.” It doesn’t describe a tragedy or something gone terribly awry. It’s just a nishkit.
A bad feeling, I guess.
Nishkit isn’t exactly the right example, though, because it was, after all, coined from a clear linguistic root and origin.
The really fun invented words that I won’t bore you with actually need to be totally made up, words created out of thin air, with no trace of logic whatsoever.
But this little verbal game is not about the rules of language, it is all about emotion, imagination and the expressive power of language. And certain words, simply, ought to be just that: words! At least, your words.
People have probably been making up words forever. I must say, to me, this new linguistic invention of Maharat definitely falls into the zone of language demarcated as word play.
What are your words?