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approach
גישה · קירוב
Bottom line
Gishah is to approach in the strong sense: coming right up to something, and usually across a gap of standing or in awe of it. Kiruv is to draw near or bring closer, a step taken while still on the way, between parties on a level. So when Yehudah vayigash to the viceroy (Bereishis 44:18), the column's own conclusion, drawn twice and marked each time as what "it seems," is that he came up close and personal rather than merely nearer, and that he did so very deliberately, as a further step in his campaign for Binyamin's release; on the first of those readings, it says, he may even have come close in a threatening way, as certain midrashic sources imply. In Aramaic the distinction disappears: Targum renders both by kiruv cognates.
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| גישה | gishah | approach, come right up to | in awe, or across a gap in rank (Malbim); as close as one can get (Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim); of people only (Rav Hirsch) |
| קירוב | kiruv | draw near, bring closer | between equals, still on the way (Malbim); the closeness of mind, not of body (Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg) |
Where the authorities disagree
Three accounts of the same contrast, and they do not reduce to one.
- Awe and standing. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter (1743-1826), whom the article identifies as Rav Hirsch's great-uncle: gishah is approaching with trepidation, as one approaches a king or a dignitary. This explains why a litigant nigash before a judge (Devarim 25:1) while Hashem coming to judge us is kiruv (Malachi 3:5): He approaches without fear. Malbim says the same in other terms, that gishah fits where there is a gap in power between the two.
- How far along the approach is. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim and Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: kiruv is coming closer, gishah is arriving as close as possible. Rabbi Pappenheim's illustration is Vayikra 2:8, where the owner hikrivah the minchah to the kohen and the kohen higishah it to the mizbeiach: since the donor's goal is the mizbeiach, the first step brings it nearer the goal with a way still to go, and the second reaches it. Rabbi Wertheimer takes up the same approach and offers various proof-texts of his own from Tanach.
- Physical against abstract, and who can do it. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: gishah is bodily closeness and kiruv a meeting of minds, so a litigant "brought near" to the court (Shemos 22:7) is composing himself to stand there, and a korban brings a man's will into line with Hashem's, since no physical approach to Him is possible, since He is incorporeal. Rav Hirsch (to Vayikra 21:17) takes the opposite line: kiruv is absolute nearness, the antonym of richuk, absolute farness, so that karov names the mathematical difference between one location's coordinates and another's and kiruv is simply bridging that distance, which is why the verb is used of animals as well as people; gishah, by contrast, appears in Tanach only of human beings, because it is not merely closing a distance but a step forward toward a specific goal, which only a being able to think and decide for itself can take (see also Abarbanel to Moreh Nevuchim 1:18).
The Bottom line takes the first two together, which agree in practice, and keeps Rav Hirsch's point about purpose, because it is what explains Yehudah's vayigash. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg's abstract/physical axis runs against Rav Hirsch and should be cited, not merged.
Distinctions
gishah (גישה)
Root נ-ג-ש. Avraham vayigash to argue for Sedom (Bereishis 18:23); Yehudah vayigash to Yosef (Bereishis 44:18); the litigant approaching the court (Devarim 25:1). Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces it to the biliteral ג-ש, closeness so complete that the parties touch, as in nigsheshah, the blind man groping for what he cannot see (Yeshayahu 59:10). Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg follows this into contact: Targum Yerushalmi renders an ox goring as yigash (Shemos 21:25), and a boat scraping the seabed in shallow water is goshesh (Bava Kama 116b; Bava Metzia 79b). The same root gives gush, a compacted clod of earth (Iyov 7:5), which Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim suggests may lie behind the name Goshen, the one part of Egypt with packed soil rather than sand, and behind geshem: in medieval usage any solid whose particles are bound tight, hence gashmiyus, and in the sense of rain, the thick drops that fall from a dense cloud. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Ohalei Yehuda) ties geshem to gishah the other way: the drops never do approach one another as they fall.
kiruv (קירוב)
Root ק-ר-ב, with karov "near" and korban the offering. Its range in Tanach includes approaching food in order to eat it (Vayikra 22:3), approaching a person in order to harm him (Tehillim 32:9), and approaching a woman for intimacy (Bereishis 20:4), which Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg allows as kiruv standing in for the goal it aims at. Ramban (in his notes to the Rambam's Sefer HaMitzvos, lo saaseh 353) observes that both words are used of intimacy: kiruv at Devarim 22:14 and Yeshayahu 8:3, gishah at Shemos 19:15. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg reads the choice of kiruv in the arayos parashah (Vayikra 18:6) as load-bearing: the Torah forbids merely coming nearer, not only the closest approach, which is the Rambam's source that hugging and kissing are forbidden mid'oraisa.
Rendering guidance
- Default: גישה "approached," קרב "drew near" or "brought near." Where the two stand in one pasuk, as at Vayikra 2:8, the English must show two stages: "he brings it near to the kohen, and the kohen brings it up to the mizbeiach."
- Trap: English "approach" and "come close" will each cover both words. If a passage argues from the Torah's choice of one over the other (Devarim 25:1 against Malachi 3:5; Vayikra 18:6), the rendering has to keep them apart or the argument evaporates.
- ויגש in Bereishis 44:18 is "then Yehudah came right up to him," not "approached him," if the derashos on his boldness are in play.
- קרבן stays "korban" or "offering," never "sacrifice of drawing near"; the etymology belongs in a note.
- Do not import the contrast into Aramaic. Targum renders both by kiruv cognates (Bereishis 18:23, 33:6, 44:18 for gishah; Bereishis 20:4, Shemos 14:10, Vayikra 1:2 for kiruv), so a Targum-based argument cannot carry it.
- Modern kiruv, "outreach," is a borrowed use; keep it transliterated and do not read it back into a pasuk.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayigash: Coming Close," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 11 Teves 5781 (2020-12-26): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8980-vayigash-coming-close.md. The article cites the clod of earth as Iyov 7:50; Iyov 7 has no such pasuk, and the word is at Iyov 7:5. Primary loci: Bereishis 18:23, 20:4, 44:18; Shemos 19:15, 21:25, 22:7; Vayikra 1:2, 2:8, 18:6, 22:3; Devarim 22:14, 25:1; Yeshayahu 8:3, 59:10; Malachi 3:5; Tehillim 32:9; Iyov 7:5; Bava Kama 116b; Bava Metzia 79b; Rav Hirsch to Vayikra 21:17; Ramban to Sefer HaMitzvos, lo saaseh 353; Abarbanel to Moreh Nevuchim 1:18; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo; Ohalei Yehuda. The two readings of Yehudah's vayigash, that he came up close and personal and possibly in a threatening way, and that he acted deliberately as a further step in his campaign, are both the column's own inferences, marked in it as what "it seems," and are given as such above.