Let's look at two Hebrew words for clown - לֵיצָן leitzan and מוּקְיוֹן mukion.

Leitzan is the more common of the two, so we'll start by examining it. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew, meaning "scorner, scoffer, mocker, jester." It is parallel to the biblical לֵץ letz, which is both a verb "to scorn, scoff" and also a substantive noun meaning " ( Read more... )