Words derives from the selfsame triliteral root as kofer, including words for “redemption,” “atonement,” “covering,” “pitch,” “village,” “lion.” The ways that these various words connect to each other lie beyond the scope of this essay, but it is easy to see how when one “denies” something, one might “cover up” the facts by insisting on the veracity of something other than the truth. This seems to be the basis for the “denial” meaning of this root, and ultimately the term kofer in the context of one who denies certain theological or dogmatic truths.
Next up, we discuss the term meshumad. In the blessing that prays for the dissolution of heretics, we refer to those heretics as malshinim (“informers”). However, some argue that this is really just a censored version, while the original liturgy called those heretics meshumadim (and some have the custom to pray with the original version).
The simplest way of understanding the etymology of meshumad is seeing it was an inflection of the triliteral Hebrew root SHIN-MEM-DALET, which that refers to acts of “destroying.” According to Even Shoshan’s Biblical concordance, this root occurs ninety times in the Hebrew parts of the Bible and one time in the Aramaic parts of the Bible (Dan. 7:26). Interestingly, it also seems to appear in the personal name Shemed borne by a man from the Tribe of Benjamin (I Chron 8:12).
The word shmad is a noun form of this term which appears in the Talmud in the context of “destructive decrees” which the gentile authorities have imposed on the Jewish People from time to time (for example, see the uncensored version of Rosh Hashanah 19a). As Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur explains it in Sefer Tishbi, a meshumad refers to a Jew who converted to a different religion because most cases of that happening occur during times of shmad.
Rabbi Yair Chaim Bachrach (Mekor Chaim to Orach Chaim §118) offers a different way of connecting meshumad back to the three-letter root in question by explaining that meshumad refers to the fact that the apostate has been "cut off" and "destroyed" by detaching himself from the rest of the Jewish Nation.
For more about these different words and what exactly they mean, the reader is urged to visit us online at: https://ohr.edu/this_week/whats_in_a_word/ and access the full version of this essay for free.
