[Avodah] Geshem or Gashem?!

[Mandel, Seth]

[Transliterations mine, but I tried to be more consistent with RSM's
already present transliterations. -micha]

From: Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2018 7:42 PM

> I believe Ashkenaz used to. Manuscript research is more RSM's thing

Since my name was mentioned, I think R. Micha was inviting me to add my
ha'penny's worth.

The Ashkenaz mss. all have gover. As due Yemenite mss. I do not remember
what most S'faradi mss. have.

One thing that people are only partially aware of, including many rabbonim
who decided to comment on grammatical matters without the necessary study,
is that L'shon Chazal is a different language than Biblical Hebrew,
but that Chazal grew up knowing T'NaKh by heart, and so sprinkled their
language with Biblical quotations, just as English writers leaven their
language with quotations from Shakespeare or the Bible. Those quotations
are in the archaic dialect of English that was spoken in the 16th-17th
Century when Shakespeare lived and the King James translation was
done. and do not represent the language spoken by a 21st Century writer.

Similarly the language of T'filla as composed by Chazal uses their spoken
Hebrew, which we call L'shon Chazal, but it is as full of quotations
from the T'NaKh as a raisin bun is of raisins. Which makes it often
difficult to distinguish what is L'shon Chazal from what is a quotation.

I am writing a treatise about this, which God willing I will publish
one of these days, which will contain proofs and various strategems to
distinguish what is what.

But if the language is found in a posuk, you can be sure it is a
quotation. And the phrase מצעדי גבר [mitz'adei gaver] appears twice,
once in T'hillim 37 and once in Mishlei 20, once at the beginng of a
phrase and once at the end.

It seem fair to me to assume that they used the form at the end of a
phrase to put in the b'rokho, and so I would argue that the b'rokho is
incorporating the language of

    מֵיְיָ מִצְעֲדֵי-גָבֶר,  וְאָדָם מַה-יָּבִין דַּרְכּוֹ
    [MeiYY mitz'adei-gover, ve'adam mah yovin darko.]

and so it would be "gover," as the mss. I saw have it.


Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel