Ben Zug

I started a conversational ulpan today as a way of improving my Hebrew-speaking skills. Don't ask me why, but one of the words which we started discussing is the Hebrew word for husband - ba'al. As it turns out, ba'al also means owner in Hebrew, and this dual meaning does not make for the most politically correct of terms.

Of course, as a friend pointed out, "husband" is also a word which does not have the greatest of connotations. Husbandry is a term used for someone who takes care of a farm or animals (now I'm not sure which is worse, husband or ba'al!) But the difference, it seems to me, is that the word husband is not used so frequently for animal husbandry (at least not in my circles). When one says husband, whatever its original meaning, we think husband and wife. Ba'al however, easily can mean husband or owner in modern Hebrew. (And if you are a student of the ancient Near East you might also associate the word ba'al with that ancient Near Eastern storm god, ba'al).

It turns out, my ulpan teacher told us, that there is some movement within the young Israeli community, to put an end to calling one's husband ba'al, and to replace it with the phrase ben-zug for husband, and bat-zug for wife. Ben or bat zug means partner or spouse, and although I have never heard anyone actually use this term, I think it has quite a nice ring to it.

Comments

[shanna]

The ba'al/isha thing (what? I'm his "woman"?) has always bothered me, and I'm happy to hear there's a movement to change it in everyday Hebrew parlance. I think I'm going to start using "ben-zug sheli" (is that the proper construct?) in birkat hamazon. (I also try to use "spouse" or "partner" interchangeably with husband/wife in English, in part because of the etymology of the words, and in part because of the heterosexual bias of the gendered terms.

[LC]

While I've never heard anyone say "bas zug" (not that I can claim to speak Hebrew or anything), bas zugo is one of the standard things on the Hebrew side of a wedding invitation, between HIS name and HERS.

[S.]

I'm afraid I don't understand having beef with etymology. The word "baal" means husband when it relates to men and women who are married and nothing else, certainly not owner--certainly not today.

I happen to think that Ben and bat zug sounds pretty, actually, and if it wins in the court of public opinion that's great. New words can and should be coined and adopted all the time.

[asher]

I guess political correctness can be extended to words too. The term Ba'al means the possessor of. See Ba'al Gaivah, a person who is very nervy...the possessor of gaul.

Chasema Tova to you all and an easy fast.

[Drew Kaplan]

Shanna,
Although you've pointed out that there seems to be a heteronormative (or heterosexual, for that matter) bias in the use of the gendered terms, then, again, so is Judaism (or at least Biblical and Talmudical Judaism). However, what you may be pointing out to be problematic (I could be wrong, I'm just guessing) is the masculine hegemony expressed in the Hebrew language. That's going to be a bit difficult. Nevertheless, I guess it's one step at a time.
Another perspective may be that it may be easier for people who understand the language with its nuances, especially in Israel, but also in the Diaspora, but for those, mainly in the Diaspora, where בעל's translation is husband and there is no internalization of masculine hegemony at work, then what gain is there for them?
גמר חתימה טובה

[Viva]

As far as I could tell when I was living in Israel, 'ben/bat zug' is used in much the same way we use partner--sort of a technical term, or the word you might choose when you aren't sure if a couple are married or not. When I made a reservation for my husband and I at a B&B, the owner asked for the name of my 'ben zug.'

[Rahel]

I believe that "ba'al" may also mean "one who has sexual rights," in this case over a particular woman. The Hebrew word "be'ilah" means "sexual relations," and "be'ulah" means (if I remember correctly) a woman who has had relations and is therefore no longer a virgin.

Some women I know say "ben zugi" in order to refer to their husbands, while others say "ishi" (following the sentence in Navi that says something like "You shall not call me 'ba'ali' any longer, but rather 'ishi'").

[Yisrael Medad]

Among the religious in Israel, the word "ish", (man) is in use. My husband translates as "ishi". It's more Biblical than ben-zug and more "politicially correct" than ba'al.

[Treifalicious]

Actually, Ben- and Bat Zug is also very much in line with other semitic languages. In Arabic, the word Zawajah (root: ZWJ), which is the analog to Zug in Hebrew, is the word used for marriage and wife/spouse. Therefore an excellent case can me made for using words related to Zug for marriage and spouse in Hebrew.

It is certainly better than what they told me in ulpan, to say "Chaver Sheli l'chaim" ("My life partner") which is very cumbersome (and probably a direct translation of something some Israeli heard in San Francisco).

[Soferet]

BS"D
I'm SO GLAD this is being discussed!
I noticed that in Torah, "husband" is "ish" & "wife" is "isha", as in "a man & his woman" or "a woman & her man", which is used all over the place. But once we get into the Prophets, we start seeing not "ish" & "isha", but "ba'al" & "isha".
So what's the question?
Apparently G@d used more equitable terms for each member of a couple than his prophets. Why did the prophets find it necessary to use language which indicated such a power imbalance? Had Israelite society changed in such a way that women were enjoyed equality closer to that of men during the times we read of in Torah, than in our later writings?
& I agree: the whole sexual ownership thing is...well, it's shudderingly repulsive. "I own this thing because I can do that to it" is pretty nasty, even a few thousand years ago.

[Steg (dos iz nit der šteg)]

Hoshea‘ 2:18
http://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1302.htm#18

"And it will be on that day -- the word of God -- you [=Israel] will call me [=God] Ishi, and you will no longer call me Ba‘ali."

Of course there are also idolatrous connotations to the word Ba‘al...

[Drew Kaplan]

Jen (Soferet),
It was clearly a different society/culture, and calling a husband a "ba'al", a master, or perhaps very literally, something which is not appropriate, was probably not [widely (or at all)] seen as nasty or what-have-you. Although it is possible to see from texts that women had more equality in the time of the Torah rather than in the prophets, I doubt how much we can know about this subject from the language of these texts. On the one hand, there is definitely a possibility to this, but on the other hand, it could have just been the way they used these terms - interchangeably, and without much thought to it. (The problem still exists as to how "ba'al" seeped in to mean husband-owner and its relation to idolatry.)

[Sara]

What? We use that expression all the time, especially in medicine. Often they use it as "Ben/bat zug" when you need to fill out a form or something and you want either a man or a woman to be able to fill it out, and it means "spouse". (Yerushalayim)