[Avodah] Who First Said it?

[T613K at aol.com]

From: Joseph Kaplan _jkaplan at tenzerlunin.com_ 
(mailto:jkaplan at tenzerlunin.com) 


>> Re zeicher and zecher.  My brother-in-law, Prof. Jordan  Penkower of Bar 
Ilan University wrote an extensive article proving that the  correct 
pronunciation is zeicher.  .... So I asked him whether he  would read it only that 
way (zeicher) on Parshat Zachor.  "Of course not,"  he replied; "what do 
facts have to do with minhag Yisrael?"  And sure  enough, he read it both ways.

Joseph Kaplan
 
>>>>>
 
It's not much of a "minhag Yisrael" if you ask me.  I doubt if anyone  here 
older than fifty ever heard it read both ways in his youth.  
 
Of course I am defining "minhag" as "the way we've always done it" or "the  
way it's been done for a long, long time."  
 
A different way of defining minhag is "the way most people do it  now."  I 
guess in that sense, reading the pasuk twice is now minhag  Yisrael.  It 
shows how a practice adopted by a small group can spread  widely and be adopted 
by almost everyone within a fairly short time,  obliterating even the 
memory that there ever was a different practice within a  generation or two.  Not 
that it makes any difference to me if the baal  korei wants to read the 
pasuk twice.  BTW I don't remember them reading  pesukim from Megillas Esther 
twice either, when I was young, but wouldn't swear  to that.  Memory is so 
malleable!
 

--Toby  Katz
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