B"H

October 2, 2024 @ 2:15 pm · Filed by under Idioms, Language and religion

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I received a communication with that at the top.  I had never seen it before and had no idea what it meant.  So I looked it up, and this is what I found on Wiktionary:

Phrase

B"H

    1. (Judaism) b'ezrat hashem (Transliterated form of ב״ה, written at the top of documents).

“With the Help of God.” A common phrase used by Jews and non-Jews when hoping for good fortune and God’s support for a better tomorrow.

    1. (Judaism) baruch Hashem

As the name of a constituent college of the City University of New York system and the financier-statesman whom it honors, "baruch" is fairly well known in English, though not many non-Jews would realize that it means "blessed".  "B'ezrat" is not so well known in English; it means "help".

Hashem (Hebrew: הַשֵּׁם⁩‎ haššēm, literally "the name"; often abbreviated to ה׳‎ [h′]) is a title used in Judaism to refer to God.  (Wikipedia)

With conflict in the Middle East intensifying, I can understand why people might be prompted to use this expression, B"H, now.

Having determined that B"H means "with the help of God", I immediately thought of Arabic "Inshallah" (and many variant forms), which means "if God wills" or "God willing".  I know many non-Arabs and non-Muslims who use this expression, some of them aware of what it means.

"Deo volente" was also in my mind.

 

Selected readings

There are half a dozen other Language Log posts on "under god", for fairly obvious reasons.

October 2, 2024 @ 2:15 pm · Filed by under Idioms, Language and religion


16 Comments

  1. Philip Tt said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 2:30 pm

    Whenever expressing a hope or aspiration for the future in writing, I append (D.v./ insha'Allah).

  2. Rory said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 3:42 pm

    I know many people who put B"H or BS"D (same deal but in Aramaic) on top of emails, but none of them have just started and it's not political based. It's entirely religious-based.

  3. Roscoe said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 4:41 pm

    On Saturday Night Live, Rep. George Santos (as portrayed by Bowen Yang) bragged that he "graduated on a volleyball scholarship from Baruch Atah Adonai University." ("Four years of mishegas!")

  4. DaveK said,

    October 2, 2024 @ 4:49 pm

    And then there’s the jocular American version “Lord willing and the crick don’t rise.”

  5. Martin Schwartz said,

    October 3, 2024 @ 2:22 am

    If fact the precise Hebrew equivalent of Arabic inša'allāh is
    im yirtseh) Ha-(Š)Šem = if God will (it). In my mother's Yiddish dialect it was elided to mirtšm. Heb. bè-6ezrat(h) H' 'with the help of God';
    'help' is 6ezrā(h); my 6 = the phrayngeal 6ayin.
    Some Greeks say Theoû thélontos 'Gof willing' = Deo volente.
    Pious Jews, when asked how they are, say bārūkh (baruch)
    Ha-(Š)Šem, as pious Muslims say (al)h:amdu li-LLāh "god be praised'.
    My He.b transcription is sort of based on ancient Hebrew; modern pronunciatio depends of the lingusitic background of the speaker.
    One can go on…

  6. David said,

    October 3, 2024 @ 8:29 am

    >"B'ezrat" is not so well known in English; it means "help".
    It's got the preposition b- "in" and the final -t of the construct state tacked on. The root word "ezra" is the source of the common English name.

    There is a parallel Muslim custom to write the phrase "bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi" (In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) at the beginning of documents.

  7. Coby said,

    October 3, 2024 @ 8:53 am

    The double apostrophe " is normally used to mark multiliteral abbreviations (and numerals) in Hebrew, placed between the last and the penultimate letter, so that for example Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki) is written רש"י. A single apostrophe is used for uniliteral ones, so R (for Rabbi) is written 'ר.

  8. stephen said,

    October 3, 2024 @ 2:53 pm

    Hashem

    Could there possibly be any etymological connection with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan?

  9. martin schwartz said,

    October 4, 2024 @ 12:28 am

    @Stephen: No, the source is the name of Muhammad's great grandfather Hāšim; no possible connection with the Hebrew.
    @Coby: I'm for giving up the conventionally cozy but phonetically illogical Germanizing tz for [ts] in words from the Jewish sphere which come from Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic, or Germanic.
    Martin Schwarts

  10. Michael Carasik said,

    October 6, 2024 @ 6:03 am

    B"H and BS"D (and their native Hebrew equivalents) are not the same as "inshallah." That would be IY"H / אי׳׳ה .

    That stands for _im yirtzeh ha-shem_, "if the Name wills it," "the Name being a euphemism for the Tetragrammaton, understood to be God's personal name, which Jews decided a couple of thousand years ago should not be pronounced. "With Hashem's / Heaven's help" is used in just the way you saw it, at the top of written material.

  11. BZ said,

    October 7, 2024 @ 3:46 pm

    Apparently certain Jews who work closely with Arabs (and vice versa) in Israel often say "Im yirtzeh Hashem Inshallah" back-to-back" very frequently.

  12. Bloix said,

    October 7, 2024 @ 6:02 pm

    B'H, which as you note is an abbreviation for Baruch Ha'Shem, meaning Blessed is the Name, is used because observant Jews never pronounce the name of God, and never write it expect in texts where there can be the some assurance that the document will never be defiled. You will even see Jews writing G-D as a way of protecting the English word from being marked or erased disrespectfully.
    PS- It's not common for a Jew to use the B'H mark on correspondence to non-Jews. suspect that your correspondent, seeing the name Mair, mistaken assumed that you are also Jewish, and wanted to be a polite.

  13. Benjamin E. Orsatti said,

    October 8, 2024 @ 1:03 pm

    Bloix,

    I was going to ask you a question, but I decided to poke around chabad.org first. From the following quote, you can probably guess what the question was going to be:

    Regarding computer screens, however, most halachic authorities deem a computer screen and its contents—even names of G‑d or words of Torah—to have no sanctity. As opposed to handwriting or the printed word, which are intended to be permanent, there is no intention for words typed on a computer screen to be permanent; as soon as you finish your work you close the screen and everything there is “erased.” (The encrypted data on the hard drive has no halachic significance.) It’s not a medium intended to support anything of permanence, as the pixels which make up the letters on a computer screen are constantly being refreshed and are considered to be more virtual than they are real.

    Moreover, even as we type and move the cursor on a screen, the letters and their positions are constantly moving on the screen—erasing them from one area on the screen and recreating them elsewhere—making erasing a constant act.

    One can therefore erase the name of G‑d or words of Torah from a computer screen. It follows, therefore, that there’s also no need to type a hyphenated “G‑d.”

  14. Kaleberg said,

    October 8, 2024 @ 11:01 pm

    Wow, that brings back Hebrew school memories. We had to put beth-hay at the top of every page we wrote.

  15. Benjamin E. Orsatti said,

    October 9, 2024 @ 8:48 am

    Kaleberg,

    There's something about hallowing what ought to be preserved as "sanctified" that is important not to lose as a culture, isn't there? It seems we obscure the distinction between sacred and profane at our peril. Moishe Rabbeinu is Moishe Rabbeinu because he had the good sense to take his shoes off when the burning bush told him to.

    For example, our youngest runs cross-country for his school along with all the other Catholic schools in the East End, but also with Community Day, Hillel Academy, and the girls' and boys' Yeshivos. Invariably, the meets are _always_ on Sundays, never Saturdays. On Sundays, I prefer to spend the day at Mass and at home with family, away from "worldly" stuff, and when my son asked why the meets are always on Sundays, I told him, "Well, I guess the Yeshiva kids are just more pious than we are".

    tl;dr — There's a big difference between, /I'm well, thank you/ and /I'm wellbruchashem/.

  16. Victor Mair said,

    October 10, 2024 @ 4:35 pm

    New York's B&H camera shop mixes Yiddishkeit and hi-tech savvy
    It is a loud and frenetic scene that involves fast-moving lines of customers, all pushing and elbowing to reach the cash registers.

    https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-features/new-yorks-b-and-h-camera-shop-mixes-yiddishkeit-and-hi-tech-savvy

    The name of the New York institution B&H is said to stand for baruch Hashem:

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