גְּרוֹגֶרֶת דְּרַבִּי צָדוֹק

ביטוי (אנגלית)

A very lean person (Rabbi Zadok used to eat one dried fig in a week)/ skin and bones

הגדרה (אנגלית)

A nickname for a very lean and withered person (literally: the dried fig of Rabbi Zadok, based on the story told in Midrash Eicha Rabbah 1 about Rabbi Zadok who fasted forty years so that Jerusalem would not be destroyed).

(“Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai applied to her the verse (Deut. 28): ‘The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground’; some say: she ate the dried figs of Rabbi Tzadok.” — Tractate Gittin 56a; and likewise: “And I, the youngest in the yeshivah—am I not like a dried fig of Rabbi Tzadok before her, with my lean body and my pale, withered face?” — Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sefer HaBehemot; and likewise: “His appearance was skin and bones, tall and thin, his face shriveled like a dried fig of Rabbi Tzadok” — Sholem Aleichem, From the Army Examination; and likewise: “A young scholar… a frail and shriveled creature, skin and bones—behold this dried fig!” — Hayim Nahman Bialik, Me’achorei HaGader.)