In the present article, I analyse the word field of ‘emanation’ in the treatise Gates of Justice , written by the kabbalist Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla (1248– c. 1325). Gikatilla conceives of ‘emanation’ as the diffusion of the divine essence in the universe. This process is usually described with ‘water metaphors’ as the act of ‘pouring down’ the divine essence: ‘emanation’ is not compared to a process of ‘irradiation’, but rather to a process of ‘irrigating’ the lower world.

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The talmudic tractate Niddah mainly deals with menstruation, as well as with a number of collateral cases, such as a bnormal genital discharges, doubtful childbirths, and miscarriages. The assumption that underlies the connection between menstruation and miscarriage is that each of these issues can be formalized as a "discharge"-regardless of what is actually expelled from the woman's body.Among these collateral issues, the case of a foetus shaped like a "sandal" is particu larly interesting for the semantic difficulty it presents as well as for its juridical importance.1 Etymology and semantics of the term ‫ סנדל‬ / sandāl First of all, the Hebrew term ‫ סנדל‬ / sandāl is not difficult to interpret, for it is rather obvious. It is clearly modelled on the morphology and semantics of two almost homographic terms: the Greek term σάνδαλον / sandalon and the Persian term ‫سندل‬ / sandal (that is also reflected in the later Arabic ‫صندل‬ / ṣandal); accordingly, the Hebrew term ‫ / סנדל‬ sandāl designates a very common open type of footwear: a "sandal." 1 Yet the linguistic Sitz im Leben is actually more complex when examined accurately. It is mostly complicated by the unclear, complex transmission of several morphologically related terms-mostly from the Persian and Arabic milieus-that indeed exhibit a quite diverse semantics. Indeed, there are several linguistic formations deriving from a common root, *sandal, that are disseminated in several Eastern as well as Middle Eastern ancient languages: Sanskrit, Persian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic. These different lexemes appear to catalyze around a number of semantically discrete terms that are morphologically very close but that designate four different entities: a type of footwear, a plant, a boat, and a fish. * A first draft of this paper was delivered, in an abridged form, as a conference paper at the European Association for Jewish Studies congress in Paris in July 2014 and then, in a longer, more elaborated form, as a workshop paper at the "Contemporary Bioethics and the History of the Unborn in Islam" (COBHUNI) at the University of Hamburg in April 2016. I would like to thank Prof.

In the present paper, I will examine Yosef ben Abraham Giqatilla’s philosophical poems on the Hebrew vowels that are included in his three early works on “punctuation:” the third section from the larger Ginnat Egoz (“The Nut Garden”), the longer version of Sefer ha-Niqqud (“The Book of Punctuation”), and a short version of the latter. Scholarship on the chronology of these three texts has been inconclusive. I will argue that a textual comparison of Giqatilla’s philosophical poems and an analysis of their paratextual function allow for a solution, and therefore a possible chronology of their composition.