[Avodah] Moda ani

[T613K at aol.com]

>> I think this topic is a great example of "lo ra'inu aino  raaya" 
(absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). If we can't find any  siddurim 
which include "modah", one could easily argue that this says nothing  about 
how the women davened, but that it shows *who* used the siddurim. In other  
words, one could argue that women have been saying "modah" for ages, but that 
it  was passed on orally; if women were less literate than men, why bother 
printing  it in the siddur? <<

Akiva Miller

 
>>>>>>
 
You think women in general knew Hebrew grammar?  Doubtful.  
 
I was taught to say "Modeh ani" long before I could read or learn from a  
siddur what to say, and the thought of saying "modah" never entered my mind  
until the subject showed up here on Avodah in its first incarnation a few 
years  ago.  My mother said "modeh," her mother said "modeh" and who knows how 
far  back it went?  
 
If there was a time in the past when women said "Modah" why would that ever 
 have changed?  Mothers are the ones who get their little ones up in the  
morning.  
 
(If BTW it's true that the Gra thought "modah" was right, that is  
absolutely zero proof that women ever did what the Gra thought they should do --  he 
might well have been innovating something new, something that made sense  
logically but was not up until then the common practice.) (And the Gra  was 
big but we are not big, so if we can rely on him, good -- we'll see if RMB  
can come up with that citation -- but if not, we should not be getting uppity 
 ideas about changing things ourselves on the basis of our own logic.)
 

--Toby Katz
==========



-------------------- 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20091115/90c62fdc/attachment-0002.htm>