The secrets in the words

The popular saying goes that "curiosity killed the cat", but I always like to add "but he had a lot of fun in the meantime", because what is life if we renounce our curiosity, the spirit of inquiry, the yearn for knowledge? That would reduce us to just another species in the stem of the big apes, caring about how we are going to feed ourselves today and little more, certainly not thinking of remarkable undertakings with the potential to improve the life of those around us or even the whole world. That is why I spent any idle moment looking at my surroundings and questioning things, looking for the next occasion to learn or to just be in awe at the human ingenuity.

The latest instance of this kind of epiphany happened just a few days ago while trying to get acquainted with the new intranet that the institute has just put at our disposal. The truth is that the former one was still working and workable, but it had some intrinsic limitations due to its sheer age, including the fact that it was only accessible from within the institute (either connecting your computer physically to the wall with a cable or using a Virtual Private Network to locate yourself "virtually" inside) and that its static design was thought for desktop machines, but not particularly friendly for mobile devices (it did not have what we now call Responsive Web Design). After many weeks of setup, the computer center announced last week that the new intranet was ready and offered a couple of "crash courses" to help us to start using it with a solid footing (and, admittedly, to try to promote its use too, since it cost a lot of work to set up).

Photo: Jill Carlson

While the computer expert was explaining some of the features of the site, my eyes wondered around and landed on a word that piqued my curiosity: shibboleth. It caught my eye that, among a huge amount of English words, there would be one with the obvious aspect of being Hebrew, so I made myself a mental note to investigate it later and continued to pay attention (at least as much as I could) to the talk. Of course, once the demonstration finished I had work to do, so I never to go follow up on the word, but luckily it did not take me very long to actually need the intranet and the moment I logged myself in I was immediately reminded of my mental note.

It turns out that shibboleth is indeed a Hebrew word meaning "flood" or "torrent". And why did this Hebrew word show up in my browser? The story goes back to an episode in the Bible, in the Book of Judges, chapter 12, where it is told how a invading army crossed the Jordan river to take over the city of Gilead, but where sourly defeated. However, before the invading Ephraimites could withdraw, the defenders took over the fords on the Jordan river and challenged everyone trying to cross to pronounce the word shibboleth: in the Ephraimite dialect this was pronounced as sibboleth, what gave away the origin of the former intruder and gave the victorious army a chance to apprehend them. After that, the term shibboleth has come to signify a cultural device to tell the members of a group apart from the non-members.

As for the computer use, the Internet2 foundation developed, and later released under an Apache 2 license, a single sign-on system with this name that is now commonly used among federations of institutions, such as universities or public service organization, and that is how the word appeared on my screen. The path has been quite tortuous, but it was actually a lot of fun to trace it back. You never know when you are going to find the next surprise!

Being a profoundly democratic person, I have to make the caveat that I am not 100% comfortable with the original concept of shibboleth, since it can be understood as a tool of nationalism (in the end, it enforces ethnolinguistic divides), which is openly contrary to my belief in the equal dignity of all human beings. However, I have to admire the guile of the Gileadites to expunge their enemies and the knowledge of the traditions that the developers have demonstrated when picking the name. It is not like the episode should be hailed as a great human achievement, but the name is a perfect conversation starter and can give us a chance to think about history and even present day situations with similar circumstances. I wish you all a nice evening.