[Avodah] D'zabin vs. Diz'van

[Jonathan Baker]

From: Danny Schoemann <doniels at gmail.com>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 7:50 PM,  R' Simon Montagu mentioned
 
> > My family always sang "D'zabin abba bitrei zuzei, chad gadya-a-a-a,
> > chad gadya", but several haggadot today print it as "Diz'van abba".

> > Grammatically, "diz'van" is probably more correct, assuming that abba
> > bought the kid rather than selling it, and one of my haggadot brings a
> > text from a 13th-14th century manuscript (not part of a haggada) which
> > spells it that way. My question is, does anybody here have a masora to
> > pronounce it "diz'van", or is it a modern correction?
 
> "We" always pronounced it D'zabin - but the Rodelheim Haggada (over
> 100 years old) has it as Diz'van - as do the 3 Haggadot that "Sabba
> HaGadol" Rav MM Kasher zt"l published. (The Hagada-Sheleimah, The
> "Kasher" Hagada EretzYisrael, and the Leil Shimurim)
 
> All other Haggadot of various vintage that I checked had D'zabin
 
Sorry, I think you're checking haggadot that are too modern.  The German
grammarians in the 19th century, of whom R Wolf Heidenheim was one of the
more prominent, made a number of emendations to siddur texts to bring them
into line with their ideas of correct grammar.  So of course Rodelheim
haggadot would say Dizvan.  

I did a short survey of some early haggadot on Hebrewbooks.org, picking
1740 as a cutoff date (dates less than taf-kuf are easy to recognize in
a table of contents).

D'Zabin:

B'er Avraham (Avraham b"r Mendel Grati),                      Sulzbach,1708
Bircas Hamozon Haggadah Shel Pesach Keminhag Ashkenaz uPolin, FFd"M 1727
 -"-                                            -"-           Furth, 1780
Meorei Or with Jiddish-deutsch Translation (in Weber-teitch), Metz 1814
Zerah Yehudah by Yehudah Leib bar Shimon                      Offenbach, 1721
Maamar Mordechai, a peirush on Had Gadya (DZBYN)              Dyhrenfurth, 1719

Vs. 

Diz'van:

Roedelheim/Heidenheim       1822: Dizvan
Vilna with 10 Commentaries, 1873 with 10 commentaries: Dizvan

which bears out my hypothesis - it was D'zabin before Roedelheim, and
Dizvan afterwards, but it didn't catch on right away (viz the Metz 1814 
haggadah).

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com