Meira P. answered • 11/13/20
Teaching Hebrew and Bat Mitzvah / Bar Mitzvah Preparation for 40 years
גרעין today is used primarily as "nuclear" such as nuclear bomb, nuclear war, nuclear enery, nuclear family.
It has a root of the three letters גרע. These three letters on their own oddly translate as "bloodletter".
Seed is actually translated as זֶרַע, which means seed as of the seed of plants, and sexually as well. The ancient Biblical Hebrew itself, Deut 30:19 uses זֶרַע to speak of seed as the root of the next generations, "Choose life that you may live, you and your seed!"
Back to גרעין.
In the Mishneh - the rabbis' interpretation of the Torah - גּוֹרְעִין is used to mean "degradation", "deficit".
In a discussion by Rashi, one of the most famous Rabbis and Torah interpreters of all time, stated that גרעין was simply misspelled and therefore mistranslated, and shoud be read and translatedas Gershon, an important name in Bibical Hebrew.
In Rambam's writings - another very popular historical writer, one of the first to discuss in writing the meaning of the original Biblical Hebrew, this word is used to identify forbidden seeds created by hybridization.
Please reach out to me of you have any other questions!
Me'ira
