[Avodah] Yir'ass HaShem

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, July 6, 2007 12:21 am, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: Very nice, except that these are two different roots, not the same
: root.
: The shoresh of yirah-fear is yud-resh-aleph and the shoresh of
: yirah-seeing is resh-aleph-heh.  The only way you could say they have
: the  "same" root is if you believe in the idea that there is an
: essential bi-literal  root embedded in every three-letter shoresh, and
: thus say that the real  root of both words is resh-aleph. But I don't
: think anyone accepts that  way of viewing shorashim anymore.

It's not the kind of machloqes rishonim that acharonim can pasqen on
and say "only this is correct".

But in any case, RSRH holds that phonetically related roots are
semantically related. Since these two roots only differ by the
placement of an easily-dropped letter, they may well qualify.

And besides, as I wrote earlier besheim RAEK, "Vayosha Hashem" shows
that re'iyah leads to yir'ah, and thus the two are tightly associated
regardless of phonetics.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter