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survivor
At a glance
In short
The Targumim generally render klitah and pleitah alike, with the Aramaic word for salvation (shizba/shaziv), which suggests that in some ways the two are synonyms, both meaning "saving" in general. At the core, though, pleitah is rescue by expulsion: one is spit out of the danger, and so a palit is a refugee. Klitah is rescue by reception: one is taken in, as a miklat receives whoever flees to it, and so it means refuge, taking in. Malbim and Bedersi explain sarid as one who was caught in the middle, could not get out, and lived anyway: a survivor or remnant. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Shain notices another pattern: in Tanach the survivor of a war waged by non-Jews is generally a palit, and of one waged by Jews a sarid. He explains that the palit was totally surrounded and spit out, while the sarid was not necessarily totally enveloped. Sarid u'palit is a stock pair in Tanach and the Gemara.
Distinctions
Pleitah (פליטה)
Root פ-ל-ט. Pleitah typically refers to a survivor, remnant or refugee, as the palit who brings Avraham word that Lot was captured (Bereishis 14:13). A closer look at the root, though, shows that its core sense is spitting out, releasing, emitting. Targum to Yonah 2:11 uses its Aramaic cognate for the fish spitting Yonah out; the Gemara (Chullin 108b, 111a, 112b) uses polet for a vessel expunging absorbed taste. So in the context of rescue, pleitah is being spit out of harm's way, spared by being taken out of or excluded from a destructive fate. Modern Hebrew keeps the dichotomy with klitah in computer science, kelet for input and pelet for output, and in similar terms for neurological processes. In the Mishnah, the property of individual idolaters, who are stoned, is palat, spared their fate, unlike the property of the idolatrous city, whose people die by the lighter death of the sword (Sanhedrin 10:4); and the Sotah's remaining body is not palit from her fate (Sotah 1:7). Expulsion with nothing to do with saving: a woman who "emits" (poletet) semen within three days of intimacy is tamei (Berachos 3:6, Shabbos 9:3, Mikvaos 8:3). The expulsion can also be to one's detriment: the sinners in the wilderness were expelled from the Clouds of Glory and became easy prey for Amalek (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Seitzei §10; Targum pseudo-Yonasan and Rashi to Devarim 25:18), all of these sources using cognates of pleitah. Despite the possible negative connotation, various Biblical personal names derive from the root: Palti (Bamidbar 13:9; Shmuel I 25:44), Pilti (Nechemiah 12:17), Paltiel (Bamidbar 34:26; Shmuel II 3:15), Platyah (Nechemiah 10:23; Divrei HaYamim I 3:21, 4:42) and Platyahu (Yechezkel 11:1, 11:13); the post-Biblical name Paltoi, popular in Geonic and early Medieval times, is also seemingly from this root.
Sarid (שריד)
Root ש-ר-ד. The third Biblical term for a survivor of war or other calamity. Malbim and Bedersi separate it from palit by the absence of flight; the Gra implies a quantitative sense; Rabbi Shain ties it to wars in which the enemy was not surrounded. After Yehoshua 8:22, "sarid and palit" became a stock phrase in Tanach (Yirmiyahu 42:17) and the Gemara (Berachos 7a, Yoma 72b and 77a, Megillah 12b, Sanhedrin 44b, 95b, 105b, Avodah Zarah 4b). Sarid is also a place on the southern border of Zevulun's territory (Yehoshua 19:10, 19:12), and in recent times a popular Jewish name.
Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra to Bereishis 38:17): sarid is the source of Latin residuo, by metathesis.
Klitah (קליטה)
Root ק-ל-ט. The Masoretic siman at the end of Vayishlach gives klitah for the parashah's 154 pesukim. The word is neither in the parashah nor a Biblical name, but echoes Yaakov dividing his camp so that the rest would be "for survival" (Bereishis 32:8), and the Haftarah's Har Tziyon as a place "for survival" (Ovadiah 1:17); the word in both pesukim, though, is pleitah. Rabbi Klein corrects himself on the name: Rabbi Nosson Kamenetsky (1930 to 2019) points out that the name Klita appears three times in Tanach (Ezra 10:23; Nechemiah 8:7, 10:11), though spelled with a final aleph, not the final hei of the Masoretic word.
The noun klitah itself does not appear in Tanach; two forms of the root do. Miklat (its mem not part of the root), "place of receiving," appears twenty times, all in Bamidbar and Yehoshua except two in Divrei HaYamim I (6:42, 6:52), and always of the ir miklat, which receives the one who killed by mistake and protects him from his victim's avengers. In Modern Hebrew a miklat is a bomb shelter, and klitah is reception: of an idea, of a cell-phone signal, of immigrants. Kalut (Vayikra 22:23; Bechoros 6:7, 7:6) is an animal whose hooves are not split: what a shelter receives is protected by being closed in, and these hooves are likewise closed. The Mishnah's verb is plain reception: an object thrown through a public domain on Shabbos and caught (kalat) by a person or a dog (Shabbos 11:6); dye that, according to Beis Shammai, must take (kalat) to the cloth before Shabbos (Shabbos 1:6). The receiving sense is so central that it can even be reception to one's death, so that klitah means "saving" only incidentally, when the one receiving is a shelter: when David passed Shaul's family before the Aron to decide whom to put to death for the Givonim, those whom the Aron was kolet were killed (Yevamos 79a), which Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad (1832 to 1909, Benayahu there) explains as their being miraculously rendered immobile, held by a kind of force field from the Aron.
Where the authorities disagree
What separates sarid from palit.
- Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush Weiser, 1809 to 1879): a palit was in the trenches of war or another calamity and was able to flee, saving himself (in Rabbi Klein's terms, "spit out" of harm's way); a sarid was caught in the middle, unable to escape, and somehow survived anyway. Rabbi Avraham Bedersi (13th century) presents the same explanation in brief in Chosam Tochnis. So palit is "refugee," sarid more accurately "survivor" or "remnant."
- The Vilna Gaon (to Yeshayahu 1:9) implies that sarid has a quantitative aspect: a member of the exclusive few who survived when the vast majority did not.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Shain notices another pattern: in general, a survivor of a war waged by non-Jews is a palit in Tanach (e.g. Bereishis 14:13; Yechezkel 33:21-22), and of a war waged by Jews, a sarid (Bamidbar 21:35; Devarim 2:34, 3:3; Yehoshua 10:28, 10:30, 10:33, 10:37, 10:39, 10:40, 11:8; Melachim II 10:11). For him palit is one who was totally surrounded ("swallowed" or "absorbed") by enemies and "spit out" so that he escaped, while sarid is simply a survivor not necessarily totally enveloped by enemy troops. A Jewish army may not besiege a city or enemy on all four sides but must leave one side open for refugees (Sifrei to Matos §157; Rambam, Hilchos Melachim 6:7), so its enemies were never surrounded to be "spit out," and their survivors are generally called only sarid; non-Jewish armies typically attack from all sides, so their survivors are palit, not sarid. Where Tanach says there was neither sarid nor palit from Ai (Yehoshua 8:22), Rabbi Shain explains that the people of Ai used the humanitarian corridor to attack the Jewish army, so the army was allowed to surround them on all sides.
Where klitah and pleitah come from.
- Rabbi Yitzchak of Zeldin (Shoresh Yesha): ק-ל-ט is a metathesis of ל-ק-ט, "gathering" (leket, yalkut), since those sheltered together are as if gathered up into a safe spot.
- Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg of the Veromemanu Foundation takes a different approach: a metathesis of ק-ט-ל, "killing," since klitah often refers to those received by a sanctuary and so escaping death.
- Most philologists and lexicographers trace pleitah to the triliteral פ-ל-ט, as Rabbi Klein himself does, but some take the פ as not part of the core root: Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (1821 to 1898, Otzar Nirdafim §380) derives pleitah from the two-letter ל-ט, and Rabbi Steinberg, in an essay titled "Run, Lot Run," connects pleitah and many other words to that biliteral root; he even derives klitah from it, so that on his view the two words share an etymological source.
Bigdei srad (Shemos 31:10, 35:19, 39:1, 39:41).
- Rashi and his grandson Rashbam (to Shemos 31:10): not the bigdei kehunah, which are listed separately, but the cloth covers put over the Mishkan's vessels for travel (Bamidbar 4:1-15). Rashi cites Targum Onkelos for srad here as "service," but admits that ש-ר-ד is not used that way elsewhere.
- Ibn Ezra and Chizkuni (to Shemos 31:10) read srad as a cognate of sarid: the covers were made from the cloth left over after the donated materials were used for the other cloth parts of the Mishkan, so srad and sarid share the theme of remnants, survivors, leftovers.
- Ramban (to Shemos 31:10) takes them to be the bigdei kehunah, and so does the Gemara (Yoma 72a-b): were it not for the bigdei kehunah, through whose service Yisrael's sins are atoned, no sarid or palit of the nation would remain.
Also discussed in
- Murderקטל / ketilah (ק-ט-ל)
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
פ-ל-ט
Rescue and escape: to get away and to deliver, the פָּלִיט being one who got away; and in another sense close to it, a casting out, as of the unborn child at birth.
Escape, and the one who escaped
וּפָֽלְטוּ פְּלִיטֵיהֶם (Yechezkel 7:16), and their escaped ones shall get away; as an adjective, וַיָּבֹא הַפָּלִיט (Bereishis 14:13), and the one who escaped came, and וְזָֽכְרוּ פְלִֽיטֵיכֶם (Yechezkel 6:9), and your escaped ones shall remember. בָּנָיו פְּלֵיטִם (Bamidbar 21:29), his sons as escapees, means that they were fleeing to escape if they could. The whole of it, he says, is rescue and escape. וְיַפְלִיט וְאֵין מַצִּֽיל (Yeshayahu 5:29), and he carries it off and none rescues, he explains as taking spoil and plunder, with none to rescue from his hand.
פליטי אפרים, the lesser men
כִּי אָמְרוּ פְּלִיטֵי אֶפְרַיִם (Shoftim 12:4), for the lesser men of Ephraim said, as he explains it: the lesser men of Ephraim used to say, you Gilead, what are you reckoned among Ephraim and among Menasheh? The lesser are called פלטים because they are like the escaped leavings of the great and the honoured. In his own view פְּלִיטֵי הַגּוֹיִם (Yeshayahu 45:20) likewise means the lesser of the nations.
Rescue, in Tehillim
פַּלְּטָה נַפְשִׁי מֵרָשָׁע חַרְבֶּֽךָ (Tehillim 17:13), deliver my soul from the wicked, Your sword, and תְּפַלְּטֵנִי מֵרִיבֵי עָם (Tehillim 18:44), You deliver me from the strivings of the people. רָנֵּי פַלֵּט תְּסוֹבְבֵנִי סֶֽלָה (Tehillim 32:7), You surround me with songs of rescue, Selah, he explains as praise and thanks for the rescue: when I am saved from the enemy I will sing and give thanks to You.
Close to it, casting out
In another sense close to it, וְלֹא תַפְלִיט וַֽאֲשֶׁר תְּפַלֵּט לַחֶרֶב אֶתֵּֽן (Michah 6:14), you will not cast forth, and what you cast forth I will give to the sword, is the casting out of the unborn child at birth; and so עַל־אָוֶן פַּלֶּט ־לָמוֹ (Tehillim 56:8), for iniquity cast them out, that is, a casting away and a putting far from them. Like it are Chazal's words (Berachos 3:6), נדה שפלטה שכבת זרע, a niddah who cast out seed; and the Targum of וַיָּקֵא אֶת־יוֹנָה (Yonah 2:11), and it spewed out Yonah, is וּפְלֵט יַת יוֹנָה, and it cast out Yonah.
Which reading Radak holds right
For עַל־אָוֶן פַּלֶּט ־לָמוֹ, though, Radak holds the right reading to be from the first sense, escape, with the pasuk put as a question of wonder: for iniquity shall they escape?
וּפָֽלְטוּ פְּלִיטֵיהֶם (יחזקאל ז, טז). והתאר וַיָּבֹא הַפָּלִיט (בראשית יד, יג), פְּלִיטֵי הַגּוֹיִם (ישעיה מה, כ) וְזָֽכְרוּ פְלִֽיטֵיכֶם (יחזקאל ו, ט). כִּי אָמְרוּ פְּלִיטֵי אֶפְרַיִם (שופטים יב, ד), פירוש הפחותים שבאפרים היו אומרים אתם גלעד מה אתם חשובים בתוך אפרים ובתוך מנשה? ונקראו הפחותים פלטים כי הם כמו פליטי הגדולים והחשובים. וכן לפי דעתי פְּלִיטֵי הַגּוֹיִם הפחותים. לְהַכְרִית אֶת־פְּלִיטָיו (עבדיה יד') אלה בחרק. ובצרי וְשִׁלַּחְתִּי מֵהֶם פְּלֵיטִים (ישעיה סו, יט), בָּנָיו פְּלֵיטִם (במדבר כא, כט), פירוש שהיו בורחים להמלט אם יוכלו. והפעל הכבד [פִּעֵל] תְּפַלְּטֵנִי מֵרִיבֵי עָם (תהלים יח, מד), פַּלְּטָה נַפְשִׁי מֵרָשָׁע חַרְבֶּֽךָ (תהלים יז, יג). וּמְפַלְטִי לִי (תהלים קמד, ב), והוא קל. רָנֵּי פַלֵּט תְּסוֹבְבֵנִי סֶֽלָה (תהלים לב, ז). והשם וְהָיָה הַמַּֽחֲנֶה הַנִּשְׁאָר לִפְלֵיטָֽה (בראשית לב, ט). ופעל כבד אחר [הִפְעִיל] וְיַפְלִיט וְאֵין מַצִּֽיל (ישעיה ה, כט). הכל ענין הצלה והמלטה. ופירוש רני פלט שבח והודאת ההצלה, כלומר כשאנצל מן האויב ארנן ואודה לך. ופירוש וְיַפְלִיט וְאֵין מַצִּֽיל וישלול ויבוז ואין מציל מידו. וענין אחר קרוב לזה וְתַסֵּג וְלֹא תַפְלִיט וַֽאֲשֶׁר תְּפַלֵּט לַחֶרֶב אֶתֵּֽן (מיכה ו, יד), ענין השלכה העובר בלידה. וכן עַל־אָוֶן פַּלֶּט־לָמוֹ (תהלים נו, ח), כלומר השלכה והרחקה להם. ודומה לו בדברי רבותינו ז"ל (ברכות פרק שלישי משנה ו. דף כו, ע"א) נדה שפלטה שכבת זרע. ותרגום וַיָּקֵא אֶת־יוֹנָה (יונה ב, יא) וּפְלֵט יַת יוֹנָה. והנכון בעיני לפרש על און יפלט למו מהענין הראשון והוא בדרך התמיהה.
ק-ל-ט
Taking in and gathering: the cities of refuge took in those who fled there, a קָלוּט has a foot gathered in and narrow, and dye is taken in and gathered.
A hoof drawn together
שָׂרוּעַ וְקָלוּט (Vayikra 22:23), the limb overgrown and the limb drawn in: the קָלוּט is one whose foot is gathered in and narrow, and Chazal explained (Bechoros 40a) that its hooves are closed, like the feet of a horse or a donkey.
The cities that take a man in
עָרֵי מִקְלָט (Bamidbar 35:11), cities of refuge, which took in and gathered within them those who fled there.
Taking up dye
And in the Mishnah (Shabbos 1:6, Shabbos 17b), כדי שיקלוט את העין, so that it takes up the colour: that is, so that it takes the dye and gathers it in.
שָׂרוּעַ וְקָלוּט (ויקרא כב, כג), היא שרגלו אסופה וצרה. ורבותינו ז"ל פירשו (בכורות מ, ע"א) שפרסותיו קלוטות כרגלי הסוס או החמור. עָרֵי מִקְלָט (במדבר לה, יא), שהיו קולטות וקובצות בתוכן הנסים שם. ובמשנה (שבת פרק ראשון משנה ו, דף יז, ע"ב) כדי שיקלוט את העין, כלומר שיקח הצבע ויקבצנו.
ש-ר-ד
Survivors, a sense he calls known; also the carpenter's marking thread, and בִּגְדֵי הַשְּׂרָד, cloths that covered the mizbeach, shulchan and menorah on the march.
Those left when the rest are gone
וְהַשְּׂרִידִים שָֽׂרְדוּ מֵהֶם (Yehoshua 10:20), the survivors who were left of them, פָּלִיט וְשָׂרִיד (Eichah 2:22), a fugitive or a survivor, and שְׂרִידֵי חָרֶב (Yirmiyahu 31:2), those left over from the sword. Radak says the sense is known and gives no gloss of his own.
The carpenter's marking line
In יְתָֽאֲרֵהוּ בַשֶּׂרֶד (Yeshayahu 44:13), he marks it out with the sered, the שרד is the coloured thread with which the carpenter marks what he wants to cut away from the wood.
בגדי השרד, coverings for travel
וְאֵת בִּגְדֵי הַשְּׂרָד (Shemos 31:10) are the garments of the service, and Radak says they are not priestly garments but cloths made to cover the mizbeach, the shulchan and the menorah when the camp travelled. Rashi wrote that they are called בגדי שרד because they are made like hangings, which the Targum renders סרדין.
וְהַשְּׂרִידִים שָֽׂרְדוּ מֵהֶם (יהושע י, כ), פָּלִיט וְשָׂרִיד (איכה ב, כב), שְׂרִידֵי חָרֶב (ירמיה לא, א), ידוע. יְתָֽאֲרֵהוּ בַשֶּׂרֶד (ישעיה מד, יג), בשש נקדות. הוא חוט הצבע שמסמן בו הנגר מה שרוצה לכרות מן העץ. וְאֵת בִּגְדֵי הַשְּׂרָד (שמות לא, י), בגדי העבודה, ואינם בגדי כהונה רק בגדים עשויים לכסות המזבח והשולחן והמנורה בנסוע המחנה. וכתב רבנו שלמה ז"ל כי לפיכך נקראו בגדי שרד שהם עשויים כמין קלעים דמתרגמינן סרדין.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayishlach: Saving Survivors," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 2 December 2023.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Saving Survivors," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).
Cited in the essay: Bereishis 14:13, 32:8; Shemos 31:10, 35:19, 39:1, 39:41; Vayikra 22:23; Bamidbar 4:1-15, 13:9, 21:35, 34:26; Devarim 2:34, 3:3, 25:18; Yehoshua 8:22, 10:28, 10:30, 10:33, 10:37, 10:39, 10:40, 11:8, 19:10, 19:12; Shmuel I 25:44; Shmuel II 3:15; Melachim II 10:11; Yeshayahu 1:9; Yirmiyahu 42:17; Yechezkel 11:1, 11:13, 33:21-22; Ovadiah 1:17; Yonah 2:11; Ezra 10:23; Nechemiah 8:7, 10:11, 10:23, 12:17; Divrei HaYamim I 3:21, 4:42, 6:42, 6:52; Mishnah Berachos 3:6, Shabbos 1:6, 9:3, 11:6, Sotah 1:7, Sanhedrin 10:4, Bechoros 6:7, 7:6, Mikvaos 8:3; Berachos 7a; Yoma 72a-b, 77a; Megillah 12b; Yevamos 79a; Sanhedrin 44b, 95b, 105b; Avodah Zarah 4b; Chullin 108b, 111a, 112b; Sifrei to Matos §157; Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Seitzei §10; Targum Onkelos to Shemos 31:10; Targum to Yonah 2:11; Targum pseudo-Yonasan and Rashi to Devarim 25:18; Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Chizkuni and Ramban to Shemos 31:10; Rambam, Hilchos Melachim 6:7; Malbim; Rabbi Avraham Bedersi, Chosam Tochnis; the Vilna Gaon to Yeshayahu 1:9; Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Shain; Rabbi Yitzchak of Zeldin, Shoresh Yesha; Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg, "Run, Lot Run"; Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi, Otzar Nirdafim §380; Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad, Benayahu to Yevamos 79a; Rabbi Nosson Kamenetsky; Benamozegh, Eim LaMikra to Bereishis 38:17.