[Avodah] Answering "Amen" To Various Brakhoth

[Chanoch (Ken) Bloom]

On Mon, 2009-01-12 at 05:29 -0600, Jay F Shachter wrote:
> > 
> > One Sunday morning an obviously Sefardi fellow whom I had never seen
> > before was davening for the Amud. After a moment or two Rav [Pinxas]
> > Teitz stopped him and said, "You can pronounce any word the way you
> > want except for HaShem's name.  You cannot say A--nai (that is,
> > pronouncing a kamatz as if it were a pasach as some Sefardim
> > do.). You must say A--noi (pronouncing the kamatz with an Ashkenaz
> > pronunciation.) Your pronunciation is Chol for us and we cannot
> > answer Amen.
> > 
> 
> (Parenthetically -- this is not the reason for my posting -- is there
> a reason, other than ignorance, why some people say "pasach", as was
> done by the poster quoted above?  I am looking for a way to be "dan
> l'khaf zkhuth" on those people, and so far have not found one.)
> 
> It is regrettable that R' Pinxas Teitz is no longer alive to defend
> himself; perhaps one of his living descendants will speak for him,
> because this psaq, assuming it is correctly reported, does not appear
> to be well thought-out.  A brakha can be recited in any language that
> you understand.  The shliax tzibbur could have recited the entire
> prayer service, except for birkath kohanim (which was probably not
> done in R' Teitz's synagog), in English. Now, if you can fulfill your
> obligation by listening to a brakha in English, assuming you
> understand English and understand what is being said, then surely that
> is no worse than listening to a brakha in bad Hebrew, assuming you
> understand what is being said.

I'm not sure where you get that it's OK to be shaliach tzibur if your
pronunciation is bad. After all SA OC 53:12 says not to appoint a
shaliach tzibbur who pronounces his alefs like they're ayins or
vice-versa. RDYosef confirms in Halacha Berurah 53:24 that this hakpada
is still relevant, unless there's nobody else qualified.

Furthermore regarding the permissability of having a shaliach tzibbur
daven in English, see Halacha Berura 101:17: Gedolei Yisrael in the
later generations warn forcefully not to change from what we are
accustomed to (ממה־שנהגו) in all kehillot of Israel to daven in lashon
hakodesh...

So I'd kinda like to see a source that you can even be yotzae a beracha
if the beracha is said in some language other than Hebrew rather than
take your word for it based on a clearly faulty line of reasoning.

--Ken

-- 
Ken (Chanoch) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/

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