[Avodah] Changing Havarah

[Jonathan Baker]

From: "Michael Kopinsky" <mkopinsky at gmail.com>
 
>                                The South African community changed
> their havara to sefaradit (ie Israeli) I believe in the 1950s as a
> move of "solidarity" with Israel, who had made that same decision.
 
> As I was born in SA, I grew up speaking sefaradit, and recently
> switched to American ashkenazis, as I could not justify an active
> decision to change a minhag, with no halachic justification. 

I'm sorry, but I don't see your personal switch as any more justifiable
than the initial communal switch.  If it's not allowed to change one's
havarah, it's not allowed to change one's havarah, even if one believes
that the havarah which one learned as a child is by some criterion 
"wrong".  

I know how my grandfather spoke Hebrew - galitzianer-chasidish.  He
grew up in Berdichev before WWI - they came to the US, already married,
just at the beginning of WWI.  He would use it sometimes, in reading
from the Haggadah or something.  However, in the States they were totally
non-religious, to the point that my father had to teach himself Hebrew
as an adult.  And when he did, the contemporary books all used havarah
Sefaradit, and my grandparents had moved to Florida, so there was no
continuity of tradition.  "Booreech Ahtoo...Eloikaini Meilech HoOilum" 
That's how I should speak, if I really wanted the traditional pronun-
ciation of my ancestors.  Note how the segol sounds sometimes like a
tzere, sometimes like a segol - what are the rules for that?  But
nobody would understand me in the modern world, where even Chasidim
speak Sefaradit to communicate with the outside world, particularly
with Israelis.

Now, if you just fall into it, which I find happening to me, having
been taught Hebrew at a school (Ramaz) which uses sefaradit prounuciation,
but living among American Ashkenazim, most of whom speak Ashkenozis,
I don't know - am I obligated to resist the temptation to use the 
sov instead of tov, emphasize the penultimate syllable by default instead
of the ultimate, etc.?  The most difficult for me is, not having grown
up distinguishing between kamatz & patach, to know when to use one or
the other.  So by choice, I'd stick with what I learned, as that has the
most potential to be a consistent havarah.  But 25 years of exposure to
American Ashkenazim has a countervailing effect on 12 years of schooling.

If you "can't justify an active decision to change a minhag", your own
decision to change was just as active.  What's next - going to stop 
saying Kabbalat Shabbat?  stop eating turkey?  stop wearing Western garb?
The minhag may have been wrong to change initially, but once it's 
established, it's established, and you have no more right to change "back"
than they did to change "forward".

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