In a time of tariffs and uncertainty, this is the Jewish word we need to soothe our minds and souls

By Aviya Kushner
April 3, 2025

As tariffs conquer the news and tank the stock market, and as many of us wonder what they will mean for our wallets, our world and our sanity, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the etymology of it all.

The noun tariff comes from the Italian tariffa and from the Arabic taʽrīf, which means “notification.”

That etymology — “notification” — says more than what Merriam-Webster has as the actual technical dictionary meaning: “A schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods.”

What these tariffs are doing is notifying the world that the United States has changed. In particular, the way the U.S. views the world has changed; it’s the ultimate taʽrīf.

Unsurprisingly, the business community has been the first to take notice of the dominance of this new word. Inc Magazine wasted no time in commenting that, while “polarization” was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year in 2024, “this year’s top contender might very well be ‘tariff.’”

Part of this was the size of the tariff, or perhaps, the decibel level of the notification.

“The tariffs Trump announced were higher than almost anyone expected,” economist and former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in his Substack newsletter. “This is a much bigger shock to the economy than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, especially when you bear in mind that international trade is about three times as important now as it was then.”

“America created the modern world trading system,” Krugman went on to say. “The rules governing tariffs and the negotiating that brought those tariffs down over time grew out of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, devised by FDR in 1934. The growth in international trade under that system had some negative aspects but was on balance very good for America and the world. It was, in fact, one of our greatest policy achievements.”

Things worked so well that for a while, most of us didn’t think about tariffs. The so-called “order” in the world deceived us into thinking that everything really was in order.

And, the word “tariff” — and the hostile attitude it contains — wasn’t part of the conversation at all.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “tariff” was a rarely used word — “about 0.3 occurrences per million words in modern written English.”

As I thought of how words, and perhaps, alliances and world orders, are like fast fashion — in and then cast-out — I looked at one of the Oxford’s most addictive features: nearby words.

It turns out that the word nearest to “tariff” is, incredibly enough, targum, which is a very important word in Jewish culture.

Targum means both “translation” and “commentary.” It refers to the translation-and-also-commentary by Onkelos, a first-century Roman convert to Judaism. The Talmud considers it authoritative.

Interestingly, the word targum enters the English language around the same time that tariff does.

Targum, an Aramaic word, appears in English in 1587, whereas tariff, with its Arabic origins, appears as a noun in 1592. Its verb form enters English in 1828.

And amazingly, targum has been used by English speakers more often than tariff is. According to the Oxford, targum has about 0.4 occurrences per million words in modern written English.

All of this made me wonder just how many varieties of translation and commentary — financial, political and spiritual — we will need in the coming weeks, months and years.

In addition to targum, the neighbors in the Oxford include targum as a verb, which entered in 1883; targumically, an adverb from 1883, targumist, a noun, in 1642, targumistic, an adjective, in 1890, and even targumize, in 1684.

It was a wonderful onslaught of targum-related words.

And it made me realize that what is stressful about this moment is that none of us knows what it means, and none of us knows what the related words are.

Sure, we are being notified, but notified of what? What is the end game?

Theories include the idea that President Trump is trying to tank the economy so he and his cronies can buy assets for pennies on the dollar. But as I listened to pundits talk, without translating much of anything, I kept thinking, what we crave now is the word right next to tariff. 

We crave that particularly Jewish blend of understanding a text — and by extension, the world. We need both translation and commentary right now.

We need a targum for our times. And a good targumist too.

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