Ibn Ezra writes that â
gerâ is an expression of disconnection.
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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