T

hrough all of the vicissitudes of a great derashah, our readers were still behooved to add an additional five. After all, the epitome of a great drashah is one which juxtaposes great Torah ideas with even greater vocabulary words. My list had some lacunas, so here are another five:

Myriad

When “thousands” doesn’t suffice, you can always count on this word. Nobody gets excited about “a lot” or “tons.” Such pedestrian words may be helpful when describing something mundane — like how much cholent you had. In a derashah, however, accept no substitutes — if it’s more than you can count, it’s got to be a myriad.

Extrapolate

Save inferring or deducing for your Constitutional Law class. In a real yeshivish derashah we prefer to extrapolate. It sounds like a fancy move a trapeze artist would do at the circus, the perfect cadence for a fancy derashah.

Dialectic

The struggle is real. And nothing conveys the realness of the struggle like some dialectic tension. Don’t be shy about using this word. It even works great outside of a derashah. Someone asks you whether you prefer potato or Yerushalmi kugel? Just respond, “It’s a dialectic.”

Manifestation

Buried inside of this word is another yeshivah favorite: fest. In fact, it’s a great way to remember this one. When you say “He was the physical manifestation of chesed,” just think, “He was mamish a festah baal chesed.”

Retroactive

Where would we be without the term retroactive? Your derashah would certainly be missing the lomdish flair that makes it so exciting. Let’s collectively resolve to be sure to include this word in all of our derashos, m’kan u’lhaba.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 697)