Ibn Ezra writes that â
gerâ is an expression of disconnection.
Advertisement
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (to Genesis 12:14 and 23:4) notes that the root
gimmel-reish yields words with four distinct meanings: â
ger,â â
gurâ (fear), and â
megurahâ (storage container). The core meaning of all four, he writes, is detachment from oneâs roots:
A
ger has detached himself from his place of origin; a
gur is a newly-weaned lion cub detached from its mother which must now fend for itself;
gur is fear, as if the very ground on which you were standing was yanked out from underneath you; and â
megurahâ (or â
megirah,â closet/drawer in Modern Hebrew) is a silo used for storing harvested grain, i.e., grain that was detached from the ground.
gett in colloquial terms refers specifically to a bill of divorce (see Rashi to
Gittin 65b and Maimonides’ commentary to the Mishna
Gittin 2:5), as we shall see below. In Biblical Hebrew, by the way, a bill of divorce is called a
Sefer Kritut (Deut. 24:1-3, Isa. 50:1), literally “Scroll of Cutting.”
The Tosafists (
Gittin 2a) cite Rabbeinu Tam as explaining that a bill of divorce contains twelve lines of text because it is called a
gett (GIMMEL-TET), and the
gematria (numeric value) of the word
gett equals twelve. Some authorities understand the Tosafists to also be explaining why a bill of divorce is called a
The Torah forbids a Jew from performing any
melacha on Shabbat (Ex. 20:10; 32:14-15; 35:2; Lev. 23:3; Deut. 5:14). Similarly, the Torah reports that when G-d finished creating the world after six days, He rested on the seventh day from all forms of
melacha (Gen. 2:2-3). The word
melacha is typically translated as “work” or “labor,” but in the laws of Shabbat it takes on a more exact meaning that bans 39 specific categories of work, but does not forbid other laborious activities. In this essay we seek to clarify the exact meaning of the word
melacha by comparing it to its apparent synonym
avodah, and mapping the relationship between these two Hebrew words.