The Blogs: The Hidden Hebrew Root of Ramadan

Ramadan may have ended about a week ago—but it leaves behind a question that most Hebrew speakers would get wrong:

Does ‘Ramadan’ have a Hebrew root?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious: no. After all, it’s the 9th month of the Islamic Hijri calendar, and the sounds don’t align. Or so it seems.

To solve the mystery, we need to recover a root that is seldom used in modern Hebrew—but preserved in Arabic.

The Scorching Ground

In Arabic, the root is R-M-Ḍ, using the heavy, emphatic Ḍād letter (ر-م-ض), and it does not mean fasting. Rather, it means intense, scorching heat—the kind that bakes the earth under a relentless summer sun.

Before Islam, Arabs appear to have followed a lunar-solar calendar where months aligned with the seasons. Ramadan was likely named for the time it consistently fell in the blazing summer. Later, the calendar became purely lunar, and Ramadan began cycling through the seasons over a 33-year period.

The Hebrew Connection

The connection is hidden by the limitations of the English alphabet. While the Arabic letter Ḍād sounds like a ‘d’ to Western ears, it is the linguistic sibling of the Hebrew sound ‘ts’ – the letter צ. Swap that ‘d’ for a ‘ts,’ and the mystery is solved:

Ra-ma-ḍ becomes Re-me-ts or רֶמֶץ.

Look closely in the Mishnah and you’ll discover this very root, meaning hot embers or coals:

“נִכְוָה בְּגַחֶלֶת אוֹ בְּרֶמֶץ, כֹּל שֶׁהוּא מֵחֲמַת הָאֵשׁ, זוֹ הִיא מִכְוָה.”

“If a burn was caused by live coal, hot embers (remets), or anything heated by fire – this burn is a michvah [ritual skin disease]” (Negaim 9:1).

The “scorched ground” of Arabic and the “hot embers” of Hebrew are, in fact, the same root.

This linguistic bridge is yet another reminder of how deeply intertwined our languages and cultures are.

We are speaking variations of the same ancient language, carrying the same fire. We can use that fire to warm a future rooted in equal rights and human dignity, or we can follow the current destructive path of our leaders—fanning the flames of hatred and oppression as they consume both the oppressed and the oppressor.

The choice is ours.