Saturday, November 01, 2008

"PIZZAZZ" IN THE TALMUD? Alas, Philologos thinks not:
As for the Talmud, I would imagine that the passage Mr. Fletcher has in mind is a well-known story occurring in slightly different versions in the tractates of Shabbat and Ketubot. In both, a gentile scolds a rabbi for acting impetuously and says to him: “You Jews are a hasty people! You once put your mouth before your ears and you are still as impulsive today.” The Aramaic for “hasty people” is ama peziza, and the gentile is referring to the response of the Children of Israel to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, about which, in Exodus, 24:7, we read: “And he [Moses] took the book of the covenant to read to the people, and they said, ‘All that the Lord hath said we will do and listen to’.” A people that promises first to do and then to listen to what it is that it is supposed to do is indeed impetuous.

It seems safe to say that, even had Diana Vreeland been a Talmud scholar on the side, peziza would not have led her to pizzazz. Being hasty or impulsive is not quite the same as having (to quote one dictionary’s definition of pizzazz) “an attractive and exciting vitality….combined with style and glamour.” Many things can be said of the Israelites at Sinai, but not that they were stylish or glamorous.
Philologos suggests that pizzazz may be one of the "non-onomatopoeic words that are formed on the analogy of onomatopoeic ones."