[Avodah] Kol Yisrael Areivim...

[Jonathan Baker]

From: Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org>
 
> On Areivim, someone wrote "Come on ...., haven't you ever heard
> expressions like ... 'kol yisrael areivim zeh lazeh'?"

that was me.
 
> To which someone else replied:
> : I can't speak for ..., but I've never heard the latter expression
> : except as a misquotation. It's "bazeh," not "lazeh."

I've also heard it as "...areivim zu bazu", but that may have been for
poetic license in a song made up for YU Sophomore Seminar, to rhyme with
"Jew."
 
> Actually, it's a girsaos issue.
 
> The Vilna Shas, Shavuos 39a, has "lazeh". Teimanim ad loc have "bazeh",
> and Mechon Mamre corrected accordingly. The same quote in Ein Yaaqov is
> "bazeh" However, Rashi in Vayiqra 26:37 has "lazeh". So, it might be
> that both girsaos are equally "right".

Huh.  Your selection of girsaos seems to indicate an Ashkenazi/Sefardi split
in girsa.  Vilna Shas, and almost everything else since the first Venice
edition of 1520-23, is based on an Ashkenazi Talmud text, presumably what
Rashi was also using.  The Ein Yaakov, as well as the Rif,  is based on a
Sefardi Talmud text, of which there has only been one full printing that I
know of, the Constantinople edition of 5344 (1584).
 
> There is "omerim zeh lazeh" at the top of 39b. That might explain where
> an error in girsa may have originated, OR it may indicate that "lazeh"
> was used since the gemara is more likely to use parallel language.

OR, as above, both might be ancient girsaos, without one necessarily being
erroneous.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com