[Avodah] Mesorah

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 11:46:09AM -0600, Daniel Israel wrote:
: To take a (hopefully good) concrete example.  I heard somewhere 
: that R' Ya'akov Kamenetsky would use a thalet rather than a dalet 
: in the echad of shema...

I assume the intended sound is the /dh/ of "that" not the /th/ of
"thing". The latter would be a thav.

: OTOH, to the best of my knowledge, there is very little purely 
: halachic material on which one could decide to use a thalet.  It is 
: consistent with certain halachic sources, such as the SA's ruling 
: that it needs to be drawn out.  And it is consistent with Temani 
: pronunciation....


Doesn't the seifa answer the reisha? R' Acha bar Yaaqov, the SA and
beyond presume you're supposed to lengthen the dalet. And no one on
Berachos 13b argues with RABY; R' Ashi merely adds a warning not to
be so intent on the dhalet that one rushes the ches.

Some translations:
plosive: a sound made by suddenly allowing the outlet of air. E.g. the
bege"d kefe"t letters when degeishot, tes, and quph. You can't stretch
out these sounds because they are made at the moment the air goes from
stopped to moving.

aspirated: adding a strong burst of air to the sound. Like the /wh/
of "who" (which almost has an "h" going simultaneous with the "w" as
opposed to the /w/ of "win".

aspirated plosive: combine the above two. The vocal chord begin to vibrate
perceivably later than the release of the stop. This allows the listener
to hear that near-"h" sound.

It's impossible to lengthen a plosive very far, and there is only one
mesorah that has a non-plosive dalet.

I mention all this because in Bavli accent of the 20th cent, the bege"d
kefe"t refuyot are aspirated plosives. IOW, sound of the letter "bhet"
is like that of a "bet" but breathier. There is reason to believe this
is ancient, like the gemara's caution against stringing together "eisev
besadekha", which is a real issue with "eisebh besedekha", but not with a
"vet".

Which means that we need to understand R' Acha bar Yaaqov. It seems he
himself -- like nearly all of us (any Teimanim in the chevrah?) -- spoke
a Hebrew in which there was no dalet that can be stretched out. It would
therefore be easily arguable that he was saying that the dalet of echadh
was an exception even for those of us who do not normally use that sound.

But in any case, I fail to see how a gemara can be "very little purely
halachic material".

(That said, I don't.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Take time,
micha at aishdas.org        be exact,
http://www.aishdas.org   unclutter the mind.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, Alter of Kelm