In the haggadah, bne-Horin, literally “sons of freeborn, noblemen” (Nehemiah 2:16), are contrasted with avadim “slaves.” The mishnah recognizes cases of half-slave, half-freeman — for instances when a slave who had two masters is freed by one but not by the other (Gittin 4:5).
The root H-r-r “be/become/be born free” is well-known from Aramaic and Arabic as well.* Passover is known also as Hag ha-Herut, the “Liberation Holiday”; the Statue of Liberty is Pesel ha-Herut.** Israel’s Liberation (Independence) War in 1948 is known as milHemet ha-shiHrur.
*As with Hurr, meaning “free person, noble.” Hürriet (“freedom”), a loanword from Arabic, is the name of a famous Turkish daily and a magazine.
**The idiom bne-Horin appears in the Hebrew translation of Emma Lazarus’ poem the Big Colossus (engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty):
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
חורין כבני לנשום כמהים המונים של רב ערב
Yona Sabar is a professor of Hebrew and Aramaic in the department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA.
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