[Avodah] The Tube of an Egg

[Poppers, Michael]

In Avodah V28n29, R'Micha noted:
> I got up to the mishnah "lo yiqov adam shefoferes shel /btzh/".
> Most people have the nusach that this last word is with a tzeirei --
"beitzah"....The Maharil gives the beis a chiriq -- "bitzah", meaning a breed of swamp reed....There is an online siddur (available in plain TXT and in PDF) prepared by R' Rallis Weisenthall with help from KAJ and from Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz, "Siddur Bnei Ashkenaz" (lezeikher the Bad Homburg Kehillah --
1335-1942)....Checking Siddur Bnei Ashkenaz, I see they have "beitzah", with a tzeirei.  Often the siddur comments when the nusach differs from the Maharil's, but not here. <
The siddur I used in KAJ; the "Siddur Avodas Yisrael" (Baer); and the new "Siddur T'filas Y'shurun" (Hoffmeister) that RBShH of MMA aided all have a tzeireh, and Baer's comment indicated he read the word as "beitzah."

Later in the same digest, R'Micha responded to RZS:
> R' Aqiva Eiger cites the end of the end of the Maharil, in the Liqutim. Trying to find it in <http://hebrewbooks.org/11762> hurt my eyes, so I don't have a sharable copy, but on the Bar Ilan web site edition I found it in liqut #57. Here's the text:
    Shefoferes shel bitzah:
    Amar shehu qaneh agam.
    "Bitzah" peirush brukhah shegedilin bo qanim.
RAE quotes that in full and adds a reference to Iyov 8:11, "haiv'eh gome
belo vitzhah." <
I wonder if MaHaRYL was forced into such a p'shat because a yud was missing from his /btzh/ -- in TaNaCH, a "bitzah" (a m'qom botz) never has a yud (and always has a dageish in the tzadi), while "beitzah" always has a yud -- and I'm not sure how one would understand the reisha of the mishna (e.g. "v'yit'nenah al pi haneir") if the object in question was a reed (re "v'yit'nena," it seems rather difficult to place a reed on, or even suspend it over, a lamp). 

All the best from 
-- Michael Poppers via BB pager