[Avodah] T'hay

Akiva Miller akivagmiller at gmail.com
Sat Nov 18 19:23:18 PST 2017


There is a word spelled tav-heh-aleph, pronounced "t'hay". Is this
word Hebrew or Aramaic?

>From context and sound, I have always presumed that it means something
very similar to "yihyeh". Is that correct?

If they are indeed similar in meaning, then I imgine that they is
still some slight shade of difference. If they meant the exact same
thing, wouldn't authors use the more common word (yihyeh) instead?
This would be the case even if t'hay is Hebrew, and it would certainly
be true if t'hay is Aramaic.

The reason I'm asking these questions is because I have found a
surprising number of paragraphs in my siddur, where all the words are
obviously Hebrew, except for this one word. Including a foreign word
in a text is not unheard of (there's a Latin word in Nachem, for
example), but this is generally done because there is no native word
with the precise meaning that the author is aiming for. And I can't
imagine why "yihyeh" doesn't work in these cases:

Hamapil: "us'hay mitasi shleima l'fanecha"

Birkas Hamazon, near the end: "zechus shet'hay l'mishmeres shalom"

Birkas Hamazon on Shabbos: "shelo t'hay tzara"

Birkas Hachodesh: "chayim shet'hay banu ahavas torah"

Avinu Malkenu: "t'hay hashaah hazos"

Yizkor: "bis'char zeh t'hay nafsho"

Yom Kippur Musaf, the Kohen Gadol's tefila: "shet'hay hashana hazos"

Kel Malay Rachamim: "b'gan eden t'hay menuchaso"

(I have omitted parts of the siddur that are taken from the Mishna
(such as Bameh Madlikin and Pitum Haketores) because it is the nature
of the Mishna to mix Hebrew and Aramaic, so use of the word "t'hay"
isn't a glaring exception the way it is in the rest of the siddur.
Also, I note that my examples were all taken from Nusach Ashkenaz;
other nuschaos may have more or fewer instances of this word.)

Thank you,
Akiva Miller


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