[Avodah] History of Havarah

[Michael Kopinsky]

Another issue is when a community decides, for reasons legitimate or
not, to change their havarah.  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.
Now while such a move is debatable in Israel, where there were at
least different cultures rapidly converging and at least superficially
it makes sense to make a "compromise" havara, in SA, with its mostly
litvish contingency, such a decision is much more difficult to
support.

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.  While I
don't see American ashkenazis either as being an accurate reflection
of the havara of my ancestors from Lita, it is at least a natural
development/evolution from the same, rather than an artificial attempt
at creating a new havara.

On 12/27/06, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 22:00:56 EST, RnTK <T613K at aol.com> wrote:
> > RMB:
> >>I'm not sure if it's possible for it  to be a physical speech
> >> defect. ... If  they really lacked the mobility ... they would have
> >> lost half the alphabet, not to mention having a hard time  drinking.
>
> > I don't know why you would say that a speech defect must be either learned
> > (like an accent) OR the result of a physical malformation....
>
> Since you're forcing me to look at my own position in more depth:
> I was arguing that it's either physical or habit, and if the habit is common
> in one population that habit must have been learned. For that matter, I
> would
> say that a habit that is learned through imitation /is/ an accent.
>
> Lisps and r/w switches are because those are hard articulations. Toddlers
> often
> get it wrong and since they are not motivated to fix it if they're
> understood,
> some of them won't unlearn it before it's well ingrained.
>
> BTW, the distinction between sounds is learned. Israelis really can't hear
> the
> /i/ /ee/ difference as readily as Americans, and some who never were exposed
> to
> another language until adultood never do. Similarly Japanese speakers and
> /l/
> vs /r/; Japanese has a single phoneme that makes two sounds similar to each
> (but
> more like things in between) depending on context, so they associate those
> sounds
> with a single meaning. They lose the ability to differentiate. Another
> example:
> Russians need to learn v vs w. Or when my Indian co workers try to show me
> some
> of the differences between their letters and I just can't hear it.
>
> On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 14:41:49 -0800 (PST), afolger at aishdas.org wrote:
> > RMB wrote: <<1- Sounds dropped because they do not exist in the local
> > language, or mutated to the nearest equivalent in the local language. The
> > American qamatz, cholamand reish leap to mind.>>
>
> > While the mechanism you propose is sound, I wonder, VOS IZ SCHLECHT MIT
> > DER AMERIKANISCHE OHSSPRACHE fin choilem in raish?! Actually, some argue
> > that they are superior. The American reish may be a reish refuya.
>
> ... which (to spell it out) is almost every reish in Tanakh. Only 14 have a
> dageish.
>
> I didn't mean to criticise the American /r/ sound, just to spell out its
> historical origin, or perhaps rebirth. The American chowlam, though, is a
> bit too round, it's a dipthong with a vuv at the end. For those of us who
> expect a cholam malei to have a different sound than a cholam chaseir, it's
> a likely candidate for the malei. With that one qualification (limiting to
> cholam malei) I happen to think both are superior to what my family left
> Europe using. ("Superior" being defined as closer to something at least some
> shevatim were using during Matan Torah, and hopefully even my own.)
>
> Tir'u baTov!
> -mi
>
> --
> Micha Berger             Nearly all men can stand adversity,
> micha at aishdas.org        but if you want to test a man's character,
> http://www.aishdas.org   give him power.
> Fax: (270) 514-1507                      -Abraham Lincoln
>
>
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