A.
כי יקח איש אשה ובעלה והי' אם לא תמצא חן בעיניו כי מצא בה ערות דבר וכתב לה ספר כריתת ונתן בידה ושלחה מביתו: (“For a man will take a woman and marry her, and it will be if she does not find favor in his eyes, for he has found in her an immodest thing, he shall write her a bill of divorcement [séfer kërithuth] and place it in her hand and send her from his house”; XXIV, 1).
The common term for a séfer kërithuth, found throughout the Oral Torah, is gét. Unlike the Biblical term séfer kërithuth, whose meaning is quite plain on its face (the root meaning of kërithuth being “cut off, divide, separate,” (indeed, the Yërushalmi even finds this allusion in the word séfer (“book, document”): מה ספר שהוא בתלוש אף כל דבר שהוא בתלוש (“Just as a séfer is something torn off, so anything which is torn off”; [ירושלמי גיטין פ"ב ה"ג]), the origins of the word gét are very mysterious, in that no other Hebrew word, verb or noun, appears to be derived from its root, gimmel-(yud)-téth. What does the word really mean, and how did it come to signify “divorce”?
B.
Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shëlomo Zalman Kraemer, better known to most people as the Vilner Ga’on in Yiddish or the Gr”a in Hebrew, asked our question and noted the unique, stand-alone status of the word. He concluded that since the letters gimmel and téth never occur together in any other word in the Hebrew or Aramaic languages, and that, moreover, gimmel is pronounced at the back of the throat whilst téth is pronounced with the tongue just behind the palatal ridge, they are not even close to one another within the mouth. Hence, he says, the two letters represent the essence of alienation and separation, and therefore signify divorce.
The Gr”a’s great student, Rabbi Tzëvi Hirsch (known as the Vilner Maggid), cites his rebbe’s opinion in his Margaliyoth ha-Torah, and elaborates on it.
First, he notes that in Ya‘aqov avinu’s death-bed instructions to his sons (Genesis XLIX, 29-32), every single letter of the Hebrew alphabet occurs, save the two letters gimmel and téth. So long as Ya‘aqov remained with them, alive, in their Egyptian exile, he was a unifying force, holding the bënei Yisra’él together and counteracting the tendencies toward division and dissolution which had been so evident beforehand. However, the very next verse reads: ויכל יעקב לצות את בניו ויאסף רגליו אל המטה ויגוע ויאסף אל עמיו (“And Ya‘aqov ceased commanding his sons, and gathered his feet to the bed [raglav el ha-mitta] and perished, and was gathered to his peoples”). In the phrase raglav el ha-mitta, the fateful letters gimmel and téth make their appearance. Shortly after the death of their father, the brothers began again to drift apart, a tendency which led ultimately to the shi‘bud Mitzrayim, the Egyptian enslavement, from which Moshe rescued them.
R’ Tzëvi Hirsch finds a similar development in Numbers XXVIII, 1-8, where the qorban tamid is discussed, the sacrifice offered twice daily on the altar. This passage again contains every letter in the alphabet save the fatal gimmel and téth. He finds in this an allusion to the Talmudic statement: כל המגרש אשתו ראשונה אפילו המזבח מוריד עליו דמעות (“Anyone who divorces his first wife, even the altar sheds tears for him”; גיטין צ:), since, again, it does not contain those two letters.
‘Ad kan Rabbi Tzëvi Hirsch. In my humble opinion, it also highlights the role which the Béyth ha-Miqdash plays in unifying Këlal Yisra’él, a rôle which even Yarov‘am ben Nëvat acknowledged, when he built two alternate temples in the northern kingdom of Israel to forestall his subjects from going to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice (cf. I Kings XII, 26-33), and once again desiring to unite with Yëhuda.
C.
Near the end of our parasha, the Torah commands us: זכור את אשר עשה לך עמלק בדרך בצאתכם ממצרים: (“Remember what ‘Amaléq did to you on the way, when you left Egypt”; XXV, 17). This, of course, refers to the two attacks on Israel perpetrated by ‘Amaléq, the first of which is detailed in Exodus XVII, 8-16. The sharp-eyed reader with a living sense of the Hebrew language will already have noticed the discrepancy between the first, singular second person pronoun (lëcha, “to you”) and the second, plural pronoun in bë-tzéthchem, “when you left.”
The first Gerer rebbe, the Hiddushei ha-Ri”m, sees in the interplay between the pronouns an allusion to the change from former unity, implied by the singular pronoun lëcha, to the dissension implicit in the second, plural pronoun, in bë-tzéthchem. Rashi tells us that ‘Amaléq’s victims were חסרי כח מתחת חטאם שהי' הענן פולטן (“Those lacking strength because of their sin[s], for the Cloud[s of Glory] would eject them”). To protect the core of Israel, now united under the Torah, those who would not control themselves and accept its discipline were separated and scattered, and so rendered vulnerable to attack from outside.
The Këli Yaqar, for his part, notes that when the nation of Israel enjoys peace and unity, ‘Amaléq is unable to harm them. He focuses on the venue of the first attack, Rëfidim, and points out that the place name contains all the letters of the root פר"ד, which signifies “separate, spread, disperse”, and sees in it an allusion to the strife and dissension which filled the encampment there, and brought about their vulnerability to ‘Amaléq.
D.
Hazal tell us that the Torah is the blueprint of the universe: קוב"ה אסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא (“The Holy One, Blessed is He, looked into the Torah and created the universe”; זוה"ק ח"ב קס"א: וע"ע בראשית רבה פ"א סי' ב' ועוד). The universe of our perception is a four-dimensional hypersphere which is finite in all directions. Thus, one of the Divine Names is Shaddai, מי שאמר לעולמו די; “He Who said to His universe, Enough [Dai]!; זוה"ק ח"ג רנ"א:). The dimensional limits along the x, y, and z axes of perception are, of course, spatial; the dimensional limit along the t axis is temporal, and Hazal tell us what this temporal dimension is: שית אלפי שני הוי עלמא (“The universe exists for six thousand years”; ראש השנה ל"א. וע"ע עבודה זרה ט.).
Everything destined to occur over that span of time was created at the beginning, and is encoded, in some fashion, in the letters of the written Torah.
The Gr”a explained how the six thousand year span relates to the five books of the written Torah: The first millennium, he says, is encoded in the account of Creation, i.e. Genesis I-II; the second millennium is encoded in the rest of the Book of Genesis. The third is encoded in Exodus, the fourth in Leviticus, the fifth in Numbers, and the sixth – our present millennium – in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy can be said to have ten parashoth (if we consider Nitzavim/Va-Yélech, which are read together in most years, as one). Hence, each parasha represents a century of the present millennium.
The Gr”a spent most of his lifespan (1720-1797 in the secular calendar) in the sixth century of the sixth millennium (which began with Rosh ha-Shana in the secular year 1740). When he was asked where in the sixth parasha (our parasha) there was to be found an allusion to him, one of the leading lights of his day, he answered without hesitation that it was to be found in the words אבן שלמה in XXV, 15, which commands that Israel use only honest weights and measures, an even shëléma. The initial alef is his first initial; the next two letters spell ben, “son [of]”; and the word shëléma is spelt identically with Shëlomo, his father’s name.
Continuing the Gr”a’s analysis, we note that the run-up to Israel’s greatest national calamity since the Romans’ destruction of the Second Beyth ha-Miqdash nearly 2,000 years ago, the Hurban Eiropa called in English the “Holocaust” and in modern Hebrew the Sho’a, as well as the opening acts of the Nazi genocide, occurred within the seventh century, marked by next week’s parasha, Ki Thavo’. That parasha contains near its end the tochaha, the “rebuke,” describing a time in which so many of aheinu bënei Yisra’él would fall away from Israel’s faithful core, and would be dispersed and lost.
We may find consolation in the fact that the present century, which began when the Holocaust was at its height, is characterized by Nitzavim/Va-Yélech, a parasha which describes a period of intense tëshuva. If we look about us, we cannot help but notice the immense expansion of the Ashkënazi yëshiva world which has taken place, both in North America and in Eretz Yisra’él in the 65 years since the end of the Second World War. Add to this the thriving hasidic dynasties with their many thousands of adherents, and the very robust and dynamic Sëfardic world as well, and we see how the faithful core of Israel has expanded and grown from the tiny remnant left after that war.
As we are about to enter into the eighth decade of the seventh century of the sixth millennium, we must take seriously the lesson provided by the Margaliyoth ha-Torah concerning the consequences of alienation from Israel’s core, and the Torah which unites and preserves it; we must take seriously the likely consequences of strife and disunity, as noted by the Këli Yaqar and the Hiddushei ha-Ri”m, if we are to continue on the path of tëshuva and reconciliation on which we have begun.
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