[Avodah] shelo osani

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, May 16, 2007 10:55 am, R Aryeh Stein wrote to Areivim (in
reply to my post):
:> The Gra argued that the berakhah is "shelo asani nachri", and the
:> censor modified it.

RZBaer in his siddur Avodas Yisrael and R. Shlomo Kluger have "nachri".

BTW, the MB reads "shelo asani aku"m.

And another version of the Gra, the Beiur haGra, has him saying
"she'asani Yisrael", Rav Meir's original nusach (Menachos 43b). A
seifer I had never seen except in a secondary source on the siddur,
Tzelusah deAvraham, argues this "she'asani Yisrael" is certainly the
product of censorship of the gemara.

...
:> After all, in leshon Tanakh, Hashem made us members of a "goy
:> qadosh"; how can we say "shelo asani goy"?

Do you have a maqor for this idea? Because I don't know of a formal
rebuttal of the Gra's assertion on the grounds that "goy" stam means
only the non-qadosh ones. I may talk about my red block, but when I
talk about blocks with no specifier, I usually am including my red
one. Otherwise, wouldn't I say "other blocks" (shelo asani migoyei
ha'aratzos)?

The common objection is usually to the historical assumption. Finding
authoritative girsa'os of the Tosefta Berakhos 6:14, where it is
definitely written in the negative as we say it, and seeing which
actually is older.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
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