[Avodah] Questions about mechiyas amalek

Micha Berger via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Wed Sep 6 07:45:15 PDT 2017


On Tue, Sep 05, 2017 at 11:43:20PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: They had no printed chumashim with nekudos, of course.  His rebbe
: taught him to read "macho timcheh es z'char amalek", instead of
: "zecher". Apparently he never had occasion to read this parsha in
: front of anyone else, so nobody ever corrected him, and he never
: knew about the correct pronunciation until he did this.   He was so
: angry he killed his rebbe for his malpractice.

BB 21b.

I think he concluded said rebbe (Yoav) did it as intentional ziyuf, not an
error.

R Mordechai Breuer <www.herzog.ac.il/tvunot/fulltext/mega10_broyer.pdf>
concludes that the semichut (i.e. the "X of Y" form of the word for X)
for "zakhar" could follow a variant conjugation and come out "zekher".
And while it's hard to picture confusing "z'khar" and "zeikher",
"zekher" and "zeikher" is much easier.

The "zekher" vs "zeikher" debate over what the Gra had for Parashas
Zakhor was over which means the Gra's intent was to tell us the word means
"reminder / memorial" rather than "memory". The mesorah is "zeikher".

But if zekher could mean both "males of" and "memory of", the mistake
is VERY easy. (Not that RMB would worry about the possibility of the
Gra disagreeing with the mesoretic niqud.)

But in any case, #6 on the Rambam's history of gedolei hador since Sinai
never learned the sugya with anyone in the beis medrash? It's strange.
In our culture, it would be the "hot topic" of study for the weeks leading
into the war...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You are not a human being in search
micha at aishdas.org        of a spiritual experience. You are a
http://www.aishdas.org   spiritual being immersed in a human
Fax: (270) 514-1507      experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin



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