Go'al Nefesh- Biblically for Really Gross

From disappointing God to grossing out teenage girls, the phrase has endured.

'Go'el nefesh' Photo by Dreamstime

Hearing a teenage girl confronted with a cockroach or nose-picking sibling announce, with a look of revulsion on her face, that it’s mag’il (mahg-EEL) or go’al nefesh (GO-al NE-fesh, both meaning “repulsive,” “disgusting,” or “gross”), you might think you’ve stumbled upon modern slang. But, as with so many of the words in this revived language, the Bible — in this case, Leviticus and Jeremiah — got there first.

“And I will set my tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you [v’lo tig’al nafshi],” God says to the Jewish people in Leviticus 26:11.

In Jeremiah, the prophet is asking God if the divine soul, so to speak, has indeed come to abhor the Jewish people — if they have become go’al nefesh to him. “Has thou utterly rejected Judah?” Jeremiah asks. “Hath thy soul loathed Zion [im betzion ga’ala nafhsekha]? Why hast thou smitten us, and there is no healing for us?” (14:19).

Ga’al means “to loathe, abhor, reject, detest, abominate” and nefesh means “soul,” such that go’al nefesh literally means “abhorrence of the soul.” Something that’s mag’il is supposed to make one feel this deep-seated soul-abhorrence, though it’s often used for things that are just plain icky.

For instance, a Hebrew cooking article asks: “Hair in the food: just mag’il or also dangerous?” (The short answer, if you’re wondering: just gross, unless hair is the main ingredient.)

In a more serious vein, then-opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich wrote on her Facebook page in November that reports that popular Israeli singer Eyal Golan was being investigated on suspicion of having sex with underage girls made her feel go’al nefesh toward the singer and his hangers-on, who were also implicated in the scandal.

The go’al in this term is written with the letter ayin, but spell it differently in Hebrew, and it goes from being repulsive to being redemptive. Go’al with analeph (pronounced go-EL) means “redeemer,” which in a religious context is another way of referring to the messiah.

Though these words seem etymologically unrelated, there has actually been some overlap between the two kinds of go’al.

Hagalah (spelled with an ayin, like the repulsive kind of go’al) means rinsing vessels in boiling water to purify or cleanse them, as is done before Passover for those who want dishes used during the year to be kosher for Passover use as well. Andga’al with an aleph can mean “to defile or pollute” as well as “to redeem.” Both the purifying repulsion and the defiling redemption are probably related to the word spelled in the opposite way, according to Ernest Klein’s “Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language.”

As with the red heifer described in the Bible, whose ashes are deemed capable of both purifying and making impure, this ambiguity reminds us that — the claims of religious zealots notwithstanding — it’s not only erotic novels that come in shades of gray.