hamantashen

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:07 AM -0400 8/7/02, James A. Landau wrote:
>In a message dated 8/5/02 8:13:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>
>>  >I could not find "latkes" but I did find in [the Jewish Encyclopedia]
>volume IV
>>   >(1903) page 257 column
>>   >2 article "Cookery" the following: ["]The Haman Tash, a kind of a turnover
>>   >filled with honey and black poppy-seed, is eaton on the Feast of Purim,
>but
>>   >probably has no special meaning."
>>
>>   A spelling incorporating what I understand to be a folk etymology.
>>   If hamantashen really does come from "mohn" ('poppy seed') + "tashen"
>>   ('pockets'), Haman had nothing to with it, other than the convenience
>>   of being associated with the three-cornered hat that the triangular
>>   shape of the pastry is said to represent.
>
>If your etymology for "hamantashen" is correct, then why does _The Jewish
>Manual_ edited by "a Lady" (pseud. for Lady Judith Montefiorie)  London: T. &
>W. Boone, 1846 (reprinted by Nightingale Books, Cold Spring NY, 1983, ISBN
>0-911389-00-8) on page 123 have a dish called "Haman's fritters"?
>
I assume the folk-etymologizing adjustment would have taken place
before then, but I'm now beginning to wonder.  I've come across the
version I summarize above (incorporating the word for poppy seed and
only later reanalyzed as if it derived from Haman) in a few places,
most recently from an Israeli professor cited in a 1998 column by
Safire, excerpted below.  Can anyone else help pin down which of
these (montashen/hamantashen) is the real etymon and which the folk?
[I take the liberty here of de-Germanizing the -sh- transliteration
conventionally used for Yiddish.]

larry

P.S.  Do they still manufacture poppy-seed matzohs as "moon" matzohs
in this country?
==========================
The New York Times Magazine, p. 22
March 22, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
  HEADLINE: On Language; Retronym Watch

...Last week, observant Jews celebrated Purim, a minor festival
commemorating deliverance from the evildoer Haman (pronounced
HOM-on). Prof. Ranon Katzoff of Bar Ilan University in Israel informs
me that Queen Esther was presumed to have eaten "seeds," later
specified as poppy seeds, in King Ahasuerus's court.

  "Baked pockets of seeds filled with mon (Yiddish for 'poppy
seeds')," Professor Katzoff writes, "are mon-taschen, and by a small
punning step hamantaschen, 'Haman's pockets.' In their essence, they
are made with poppy seeds."

  Ah, but what about my favorite, prune hamantaschen? My local bakery
also features apricot filling and is thinking about chocolate. "These
are as off the mark as blintzes filled with blueberries," says the
professor, a purist. "If a bakery on Purim advertises poppy-seed
hamantaschen, that's a retronym just as much as legitimate theater,
analog watch and, I claim, cheese blintzes."