LIFT & WAVE
A few weeks ago, I received an inquiry from my friend and noted author Rabbi Shmuel Botnick. My esteemed interlocuter wanted to know about the difference between the words terumah and tenufah. Both of these terms are used in reference to the act of “waving” ritual sacrifices, but do these two words refer to the exact same act or is there some nuance between them that makes them not synonyms? This question and more will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
The Mishnah (Menachot 5:6) implies that of the two terms terumah and tenufah, one refers to a vertical movement (up-down) and one means horizontal movement (back-forth). Maimonides’ son Rabbi Avraham Maimuni writes in his commentary to the Torah (to Ex. 29:24) that tenufah itself means waving back-and-forth, as well as up-and-down. This seems to be based on the idea that in practice, whatever sacrifices require tenufah also require terumah, as mentioned above, so ultimately tenufah entails waving along both axes. However, this understanding does not really help us define the words tenufah and terumah vis-à-vis each other.
Rashi (to Ex. 29:26-27, Lev. 7:34, 10:15) writes that terumah refers to up-down waving, while tenufah means back-forth waving. Ibn Ezra (long commentary to Ex. 29:27) also seems to agree with this assessment. Rashi (to Ex. 29:24, following Menachot 62a) further elaborates on the meaning of these two acts of waving: the horizontal movement of tenufah in the various cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) alludes to the fact that all four directions of the world belong to Hashem, while the vertical movement of terumah alludes to the notion that Hashem’s sovereignty applies to the Heavens and the Earth. Rashi (there) also explains that tenufah wards off punishments and “bad winds” that move along the horizontal axis, while the vertical movement of terumah wards off “bad dew/rains” which descend from above.
Peirush HaRokeach and Baal HaTurim (to Lev. 7:30) find an allusion to this paradigm by noting that in the pericope concerning the peace-offering (Lev. 7:28–38), inflections of the word tenufah appear four times (technically, three times but the extraneous HEY on one those instances is counted as an extra appearance) and inflections of the word terumah appear twice. This hints to the idea that tenufah entails waving something in the four lateral directions, while terumah involves simply waving something in two directions (up and down).
Another approach may be gleaned from Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor (to Ex. 29:24), who writes that terumah and tenufah are synonyms, but that the Torah uses the two terms in tandem in order to avoid being repetitive. According to him, tenufah is said about the breast and terumah is said about the thigh as a mere matter of linguistic elegance, but that there is no real deeper significance in these word choices.
Rabbi Shmuel Botnick noted in his original question that Targum Onkelos (to Ex. 29:24) actually uses an Aramaic cognate of terumah when translating the Biblical Hebrew term tenufah said regarding the ram of the milluim. This would mean that tenufah means “elevating/lifting,” not “waving horizontally.” Yet, specifically regarding that passage, Rabbi Yaakov Zev Lev in Me’at Tzari (to Ex. 29:24) notes that Targum Onkelos disagrees with Rashi’s definition of tenufah as back-and-forth, instead defining tenufah as referring to up-and-down, just like he would define terumah. Although it might be tempting to say that Targum Onkelos simply follows Rabbi Yosef Bechor Shor in seeing tenufah and terumah as synonymous, the truth is that Rabbi Lev (to Ex. 29:27) points out that Onkelos translates the word terumah said about the millium ram’s thigh as meaning “separating,” not as “lifting.”
Terumah is also the name of a certain tithe given the Kohen. How much from one’s produce must one give for this tithe? The Mishnah (Terumot 4:3) states that the generous person will give one-fortieth, the average person will give one-fiftieth, and the stingy person will give one-sixtieth. In line with the average position on this sliding scale, the Zohar (Korach 179a), Maimonides (in his commentary to the Mishnah there), and Sefer HaChinuch (Mitzvah #507) explain that the very word terumah can be exegetically parsed as a portmanteau of the phrase trei mi'meah (literally, “two from one-hundred,” which equals one-fiftieth).
