body
throat
At a glance
In short
All three name the windpipe, and whether they are truly synonymous is disputed. For Rabbi Yaakov Emden, what Tanach calls garon the Mishnah calls gargeres and the Gemara kaneh: one organ, named in three stages of the language. Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi likewise calls gargeres and kaneh two words for one thing. For Rabbi Yaakov Weil, gargeres and kaneh are two parts of the windpipe, the ringed exterior and the inner membrane, and the difference has halachic weight. In Tanach gargeres seems to mean the visible throat or neck rather than the pipe inside it, and garon at times does too; Malbim takes garon as the windpipe first, Rabbi Pappenheim as the food pipe first. From the Mishnah on, gargeres and kaneh are technical terms, set against veshet, the food pipe.
Distinctions
Garon (גרון)
Eight appearances, distributed as above. The word covers speech, the ornamented neck, and once swallowing.
Gargeres (גרגרת)
Four appearances in Tanach, all in Mishlei (1:9, 3:3, 3:22, 6:21), all about adorning the outside of the neck, so that the Biblical word seems to mean the throat or neck in general; and all in the plural gargeros. Rashi (to Mishlei 1:9) explains the plural: the outside of the windpipe is made of a series of rings along the trachea, so the word for it is always plural. In the Mishnah the sense is more obviously the windpipe, since shechitah requires severing most of both pipes (most of one, in a bird), and the gargeres stands throughout against the veshet (Chullin 2:4, 3:1-4). The Mishnah also uses gargeres for the Adam's apple (Chullin 10:4, Negaim 10:9), which belongs to the windpipe.
Kaneh (קנה)
More than fifty appearances in Tanach, meaning a reed, stem, branch, or measuring stick, and never the windpipe; all are long pipe-like things, typically hollow, which is how rabbinic Hebrew came to use it for the trachea. Rabbi Klein adds that kinamon, cinnamon, which grows as pipe-like sticks, might belong with them. (Rabbi Pappenheim connects these words to the two-letter ק-ן in a different way.) The Mishnah (Tamid 4:3) has one Kohen bring the heart, lungs, and kaneh to the altar, where the company of heart and lungs settles the meaning. In the Bavli kaneh is the standard term, regularly paired with veshet in place of the Mishnaic gargeres (Chullin 18a-19a, 21a, 28a-29a, 30b, 32b, 40b, 45a, 50a, 54a, 57b, 85b). The fear of choking is put as not letting "the kaneh precede the veshet" (Pesachim 108a, Taanis 5b), which comes up over speaking while eating and over reclining leftward at the Seder.
Rabbi Immanuel Chai Ricci (Hon Ashir to Eduyos 1:1): the Rabbinic veses, a woman's set time, is related to veshet, samech and shin interchanging, because the curse of the monthly cycle came as punishment for Chavah's misuse of her veshet to eat from the Eitz HaDaas.
The homiletic reading
Rabbi Yosef de Bonne of Stadthagen, building on Rabbi Yaakov Weil: the gargeres, made of rings (taba'os, of a root with teva, nature), stands for the natural forces that pull a man toward worldly desire and can make a gargaran of him: his geography and the people around him, his temperament, his food and intake, his genetics. The kaneh, where those rings are joined into one pipe, stands for the supernal way of life, Torah and tefillah with the single goal of sanctifying Hashem's name.
The throat words of other languages
Rabbi Klein notes the uncanny resemblance of garon/gargeres to Old French gorge, throat, which may come from Latin gurges, whirlpool, the ancestor of English gorge, engorge, regurgitate, garget, gargle, gurgle, garrulous, gargoyle, gargantuan (from Spanish garganta, throat), gorget and gorgeous. Tempting as an etymological link is, he suggests onomatopoeia may be at play as well, the gimmel-reish sounds being the sound of gargling; Rabbi Mussafia's Mussaf HeAruch expressly links the Greek and Latin words for throat to gargeres. Latin gula, throat (whence gullet and gluttony), resembles them too, lamed interchanging with reish; and the Midrash reads gulas in "the gulas runs after gold" (Koheles 12:6) as the gargeres, by that same interchange, making the pasuk about appetite squandering money (Vayikra Rabbah 18:1, Koheles Rabbah 12:6).
Where the authorities disagree
Which sense of garon is primary.
- Windpipe first. Of garon's eight appearances, five join it to speech, so that it is clearly the windpipe (Yeshayahu 58:1; Tehillim 5:10, 69:4, 115:7, 149:6), two mean the throat or neck in general (Yeshayahu 3:16; Yechezkel 16:11), and one is about eating and drinking, so it seems to be the food pipe (Yirmiyahu 2:25). Possibly on the basis of this breakdown, Rabbi Klein suggests, Malbim holds that garon means the windpipe inside the neck, then widens to the whole throat as an onlooker sees it, and from there even to the food pipe, which is in a way the opposite of its primary sense.
- Food pipe first. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: garon is the esophagus, and since the windpipe is attached to it the word spread to the windpipe and to the whole neck; gargeres, the place a necklace was worn, came to mean the windpipe because the Adam's apple on it is the neck's most prominent feature. This belongs to his treatment of the two-letter root ג-ר as dragging or temporary lodging, which yields ger (a sojourner), goren (the grain's temporary home), nigar (water gathered), gerem (the bone that houses marrow), and garger (the grape that houses its juice); on that account garon is where food temporarily lodges on the way to the stomach.
Rabbi Klein notes that Pappenheim's reading would dissolve the difficulty of the rabbinic gargaran and hana'as grono (below), but that the fact remains that in rabbinic literature gargeres always stands against the veshet, so there it must be the windpipe.
Are garon and gargeres different words at all? Both are built on ג-ר.
- Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem) does not seem to posit any difference, filing both under the seventh category of the two-letter ג-ר.
- Ibn Ezra (to Mishlei 1:9) and Rabbi Moshe Kimchi (to Iyov 40:16) say the gargeres surrounds the garon, without spelling out what that means. (Shimon Mayerfeld points out that the commentary to Mishlei usually ascribed to Ibn Ezra was in fact written by Rabbi Moshe Kimchi.)
Are gargeres and kaneh the same organ?
- Yes, in different dialects. Rabbi Yaakov Emden: what Tanach calls garon, the Mishnah calls gargeres and the Gemara calls kaneh. Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi, a thirteenth-century exegete in Eretz Yisrael, similarly writes that gargeres and kaneh are two words for one thing. On this account, as Rabbi Klein concludes, the three terms are synonymous but reflect different stages of the language.
- No, two parts of one organ. Rabbi Yaakov Weil, in his classic work on shechitah: gargeres is the ring-like exterior structure, kaneh the inner membrane. Rabbi Amitai Ben-David (Sichas Chullin to Chullin 18a, 44a, 45a) finds precedent in Rashi (to Chullin 18a), who seems to take kaneh as the inner membrane specifically. The distinction is practical: the Mishnah (Chullin 2:1) validates shechitah of the majority of the windpipe, and Rabbi Yaakov Weil holds that the majority is measured by the circumference of the inner kaneh alone, not the outer gargeres (see Shach, Yoreh Deah 21:1, and Pri Megadim, Siftei Daas, there).
Why a glutton is a gargaran. The word is clearly built from gargeres, the windpipe, yet gorging is done with the veshet (Taharos 7:9; Targum to Eichah 1:11; and in the extended sense of any indulger of appetites, Niddah 10:8). Four answers.
- Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (Tosafos Yom Tov to Taharos 7:9): he is so taken with his food that he wishes he could eat through his gargeres too.
- Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia: in his zeal he is liable to choke, sending food down the wrong pipe.
- Rabbi Klein's own suggestion: he works his food pipe as constantly as a man uses his windpipe to breathe.
- Rabbi Meir Batzri of Beitar Illit: while swallowing he cannot breathe, so he negates his gargeres; Rabbi Klein notes this may be alluded to in Rambam's commentary to the Mishnah there, which seemingly mentions the epiglottis (shipui kova, the tilted cap that covers the gargeres while one eats) together with the gargaran (see also Tosafos Yom Tov and Rabbi Yaakov Emden's Lechem Shamayim there).
The same difficulty attaches to hana'as grono, the benefit a man's garon takes from what he eats (Chullin 103b).
Radak on this root
Sefer HaShorashim
ג-ר-ן
The threshing floor; its sense, he says, is known, and he gives three pesukim for it and nothing more.
The whole entry
גֹּרֶן וָיֶקֶב לֹא יִרְעֵם (Hoshea 9:2), threshing floor and winepress will not feed them; וּמָֽלְאוּ הַגֳּרָנוֹת בָּר (Yoel 2:24), the threshing floors will be full of grain; and מְדֻשָׁתִי וּבֶן־ גָּרְנִי (Yeshayahu 21:10), my threshed one and the son of my threshing floor. Of all of them he says only ידוע, it is known.
גֹּרֶן וָיֶקֶב לֹא יִרְעֵם (הושע ט, ב), וּמָֽלְאוּ הַגֳּרָנוֹת בָּר (יואל ב, כד), מְדֻשָׁתִי וּבֶן־גָּרְנִי (ישעיה כא, י), ידוע.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Rav Pappenheim on this root
Cheshek Shlomo
ג-ר
In English, our account of his entry
Dragging (גרירה): a thing drawn along from place to place, not rolled; of the living, one with no fixed home who moves from place to place, a גר, sojourner.
Flowing slowly
Of things without life, dragging is slow flowing: וכמים הנגרים (Shmuel II 14:14), "like water that runs off"; ויגר מזה (Tehillim 75:9), "and He poured out of this"; עיני נגרה (Eichah 3:49), "my eye runs". What moves slowly is נוזל, flowing; what comes down drop by drop is נוטף, dripping; and what comes down slowly, neither fast nor drop by drop, is said to יגר, run down. So פרץ נחל מעם גר (Iyov 28:4), "a torrent broke out from where it trickled": from a place where the water only ran gently, a rushing stream burst out.
גרם, the bone with marrow
With a mem added, a bone that holds marrow is גרם, named for the marrow and the fatty juice that runs into it; a bone with no marrow is עץ, wood, since it has dried out like wood, as he explains at the root עץ. יששכר חמר גרם (Bereishis 49:14), "Yissachar is a donkey of bone", is a donkey whose bones have marrow in them. The verb, ועצמתיהם יגרם (Bamidbar 24:8), "and their bones he will drain", is doing something to their bones so as to suck out the marrow in them; and ואת חרשיה תגרמי (Yechezkel 23:34), "and you will suck its shards dry", is sucking out the juice that has run into them. אל גרם המעלות (Melachim II 9:13), "onto the gerem of the steps": the gerem is, as it seems, a kind of gutter into which the water off the roof runs.
גרגר, a berry
So too the berry: שלשה גרגרים בראש אמיר (Yeshayahu 17:6), "three berries at the top of the bough". Each single berry of a fruit, into which the juice runs, is a גרגר.
Stones dragged about
כאבני גר מנפצות (Yeshayahu 27:9), "like stones of gir, smashed", are stones dragged about over the face of the field with no one to gather them. The verb is והגרתי לגי אבניה (Michah 1:6), "and I will drag her stones down into the valley"; and from the same sense, והגרם על ידי חרב (Yirmiyahu 18:21), "and drag them off by the power of the sword", and וכסאו לארץ מגרתה (Tehillim 89:45), "and his throne You dragged down to the ground", where מגרתה is like הגרת, You dragged, the mem standing in place of a heh.
גרון and גרגרת, the throat
גרון, the throat, is from dragging: קרא בגרון (Yeshayahu 58:1), "call out with the throat", so named because food and drink are dragged down from there into the belly. The windpipe, called גרגרת, bears the name too, because it is joined to the גרון: וענקים לגרגרתך (Mishlei 1:9), "and necklaces for your neck", since the גרגרת shows more on the outside than the גרון, which is the gullet.
גרה, the cud
The food dragged to the throat is גרה, the cud: מעלה גרה (Vayikra 11:4), "brings up the cud".
Small coins, גרה and אגורת
A small coin is also גרה: עשרים גרה השקל (Shemos 30:13), "the shekel is twenty gerah". It is named for dragging, because it is dragged constantly from hand to hand and never stays fixed in its place, unlike the heavy coins that are stored away in a treasury. The same is לאגורת כסף (Shmuel I 2:36), "for a piece of silver", a small coin of whatever kind.
אגרת, a letter
אגרת, as את אגרת הפורים (Esther 9:29), "this letter of Purim", is a writing passed through the whole country from man to man to make its matter known in public. In parentheses he adds צירקולער, a circular.
The saw and the carpenter
The saw is מגרה, as מגררות במגרה (Melachim I 7:9), "sawn with a saw", named for the way it is used: not lifted like other tools but dragged over the wood, which splits apart. After this tool the language of the Talmud calls the חרש, the craftsman, נגר: נגר ולא בר נגר (Avodah Zarah 50b), "a carpenter and not a carpenter's son", the craftsman who works with the saw. A craftsman is always called after the tool he does most of his work with: the tailor is חייט after the חוט, the thread he sews with, and the shoemaker רצען after the מרצע, the awl; so the חרש is נגר because most of his work is with the saw.
אגר, gathering
Also from גרר is the verb אגר, gathering: a gathering that comes by dragging, collecting different things from different places, a little at a time. אגרה בקציר מאכלה (Mishlei 6:8), "she gathers her food in the harvest"; אגר בקיץ (Mishlei 10:5), "he gathers in summer"; ויין לא תשתה ולא תאגר (Devarim 28:39), "and wine you shall neither drink nor gather". The noun is מגרה: נהרסו ממגרות (Yoel 1:17), "the granaries are torn down", and העוד הזרע במגורה (Chaggai 2:19), "is the seed still in the granary?", a store gathered by dragging. Sometimes the alef drops: יגרהו בחרמו (Chavakuk 1:15), "he gathers him in his net", that is, יאגרהו ויאספנו, he gathers and collects him; יגורו עלי עזים (Tehillim 59:4), "the mighty gather against me", gathered against me from every side; and על דגן ותירוש יתגוררו (Hoshea 7:14), "over grain and wine they gather". The noun from it is מגור, as מגור מסביב (Tehillim 31:14), "dread on every side", formed like מקום, place, and מרום, height.
גרן against מגורה
With a nun added, גרן, the threshing floor: גרן ויקב (Hoshea 9:2), "threshing floor and winepress"; כתבואת גרן (Bamidbar 18:30), "as the produce of the threshing floor". It is the place where grain not yet threshed is gathered. That is how it differs from the מגורה: the מגורה is the store of threshed grain, the גרן the store of unthreshed grain and of the sheaves.
גור, to fear
From גר in its sense of gathering, the verb גור was borrowed for fear and dread: ויגר מואב (Bamidbar 22:3), "and Moav was in dread"; לא תגורו מפני איש (Devarim 1:17), "do not fear any man". Either it is gathering in to oneself, for fear of being exposed and spreading outward; or it is the gathering and collecting of all one's thoughts so as not to come to harm, as with יראה and מורא, fear, which, as he will explain in their place, come from seeing and watching.
מורא against מגור
מורא applies when the one afraid knows the one way he could be harmed and need only watch that way alone. מגור applies when the ways of harm are many, and he must gather all his thoughts and consider every way harm could possibly reach him. How the words of fear, מורא, מגור, חיל, אימתה ופחד (fear, dread, trembling, terror and fright), differ from each other is left to their own places.
גרה, provoking; and חרחור
Also from dragging is the verb גרה, provoking and quarrel: אל תתגרו בם (Devarim 2:5), "do not provoke them"; ואל תתגר בם מלחמה (Devarim 2:9), "and do not provoke them to war"; מתגרת ידך (Tehillim 39:11), "by the strife of Your hand"; איש חמה יגרה מדון (Mishlei 15:18), "a hot-tempered man stirs up strife", an act that drags quarrel and strife after it. It is close to חרחור, as אל תתחר במרעים (Tehillim 37:1), "do not grow heated over evildoers". But חרחור is from חרון, burning anger: the intent to do something that brings on burning wrath. גירוי, provoking, is the intent to do things that will draw one's fellow into dispute, and so it is a cause that drags the quarrel after it as its result. In the language of the Talmud a cause is גורם: זה וזה גורם (Pesachim 26b), "this and that both cause it"; דבר הגורם לממון (Pesachim 5b), "a thing that brings about money".
גר against תושב and אזרח
Of the living, dragging gives the noun גר: כי גר יהיה זרעך (Bereishis 15:13), "your seed will be strangers"; גר ותושב (Bereishis 23:4), "a stranger and a settler"; האזרח והגר (Vayikra 16:29), "the native and the stranger". גר describes one who sojourns in a land not his own, the opposite of the אזרח, who was born in the land where he is. A תושב is one not born here who has taken up his dwelling like one of the land's native-born; a גר is one not born here who also has no fixed home to settle in for all the days of his life.
אזרח, from rising
אזרח is from זריחה, rising. The verb זרח marks the first appearing of anything, as והצרעת זרחה במצחו (Divrei HaYamim II 26:19), "and the tzaraas broke out on his forehead"; so the sun's first appearing on the horizon is called מזרח, as מזרח השמש (Yehoshua 1:15), "the rising of the sun". זריחה is not said once the sun already shines on the land, only of its first coming out and appearing on the horizon. So one who lives in the land of his birth is called אזרח, one found in the place where he rose and first appeared in the world. ומתערה כאזרח רענן (Tehillim 37:35), "spreading out like a fresh native", means like the rising, the first appearing, of a fresh tree, which right from the start of its growth is thick and stout and full of branches; there אזרח is a word that describes, not a noun.
גור, to sojourn and to dwell
The verb from גר: ויגר אברהם (Bereishis 21:34), "and Avraham sojourned"; האחד בא לגור (Bereishis 19:9), "this one came to sojourn"; לגור בארץ באנו (Bereishis 47:4), "we have come to sojourn in the land"; ארץ מגריהם (Shemos 6:4), "the land of their sojournings". It means dwelling that is not fixed. Sometimes it is said of fixed dwelling as well: אגורה באהלך עולמים (Tehillim 61:5), "I will dwell in Your tent forever"; לא יוסיפו לגור (Eichah 4:15), "they will dwell there no more".
גור, a cub
From dwelling, the young of wild beasts is גור: גור אריה יהודה (Bereishis 49:9), "Yehudah is a lion's cub"; רבתה גוריה (Yechezkel 19:2), "she reared her cubs"; היניקו גוריהן (Eichah 4:3), "they suckled their young". It is called גור because it dwells in its den and its hole and does not yet go out to roam the land for prey, the grown beasts bringing it food. So ותעל אחד מגריה כפיר היה וילמד לטרף טרף (Yechezkel 19:3), "she brought up one of her cubs, he became a young lion and learned to tear prey": she brought one of her cubs up out of the hole, and it grew and became a כפיר, the lion that roams the villages, the כפרים, for food, and only afterwards learned to prey. Since the young lion preys more fiercely than the old, the tribes are likened, where preying is meant, to a lion's cub, a young lion, even though as long as it is a cub it does not prey.
Rav Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo (Shorashim), first printed from his manuscript by Moshe Tzuriel, Bnei Brak 5777. The English is our account of his entry.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Gorgeous Windpipe," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 25 June 2022.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Gorgeous Windpipe," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).
Cited in the essay: Yeshayahu 3:16, 58:1; Yirmiyahu 2:25; Yechezkel 16:11; Tehillim 5:10, 69:4, 115:7, 149:6; Mishlei 1:9, 3:3, 3:22, 6:21; Iyov 40:16; Eichah 1:11; Koheles 12:6; Mishnah Chullin 2:1, 2:4, 3:1-4, 10:4, Tamid 4:3, Negaim 10:9, Niddah 10:8, Taharos 7:9; Pesachim 108a; Taanis 5b; Chullin 18a-19a, 21a, 28a-29a, 30b, 32b, 40b, 44a, 45a, 50a, 54a, 57b, 85b, 103b; Vayikra Rabbah 18:1; Koheles Rabbah 12:6; Targum to Eichah 1:11; Menachem Ibn Saruk, Machberes Menachem; Ibn Ezra to Mishlei 1:9; Rabbi Moshe Kimchi to Iyov 40:16; Rashi to Mishlei 1:9 and Chullin 18a; Malbim, Sefer HaCarmel s.v. גרון; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Rambam, commentary to the Mishnah, Taharos 7:9; Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, Tosafos Yom Tov to Taharos 7:9; Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia, Mussaf HeAruch; Rabbi Yaakov Emden, Lechem Shamayim; Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi, HaMadrich HaMaspik s.v. גרגר; Rabbi Yaakov Weil; Rabbi Amitai Ben-David, Sichas Chullin to Chullin 18a, 44a, 45a; Shach, Yoreh Deah 21:1, with Pri Megadim, Siftei Daas; Rabbi Yosef de Bonne of Stadthagen; Rabbi Meir Batzri; Hon Ashir to Eduyos 1:1; Shimon Mayerfeld.