Gershom

גֵּרְשֹׁם

• Gender: Male
• Origin: Biblical / Rabbinic Hebrew
• Meaning: stranger there

• Gershom was the firstborn son of Moses, named during the period of Moses's exile in Midian. The name means "stranger there," reflecting the experience of living in a land that is not your own, a feeling that echoes powerfully through centuries of Jewish history. Moses chose this name to mark his own displacement, turning a difficult reality into something his son would carry with meaning.

  Gershom Scholem, who founded the modern academic study of Kabbalah at Hebrew University, chose this name — meaning "a stranger there" — when he left Berlin for Jerusalem. Distinguished and professorial, Gershom is a name ripe for rediscovery. The great Talmudic scholar Gershom ben Judah, known as "the Light of the Exile," gave it towering intellectual prestige in Jewish history. It wears its meaning beautifully for families who understand the experience of being strangers in a new land — a name that turns diaspora into dignity.

• Potential Sibling Name:
  Avital
  ,
  Ruchama
  ,
  Shlomo
  ,
  Menashe