[Avodah] Rameses or Raamses?

[Akiva Miller]

Since beginning Shnayim Mikra V'Echad Targum this past June, I've written a
few times about how it has given me insights into Aramaic and Hebrew. But I
must also stress how much Chumash I've learned! Forcing myself to enunciate
every single word has made me notice things that I never noticed when
simply "reading" (or even studying) the parsha.

Today's word (it's actually a place name) is spelled Resh Ayin Mem Samech
Samech.

When finishing up the parsha before minyan this morning, I noticed in
Bereshis 47:11 that both the Ayin and Mem were spelled with a Sh'va. My
Simanim Tanach confirmed my guess that the Mem was a Sh'va Na, so the name
should be read Ra-m'-ses.

This surprised me. I'm used to a different pronunciation. The Haggada
quotes Shemos 1:11, where the same five letters appear with a Patach under
the Ayin: Ra-am-ses.

I was surprised to find that these are two distinct places, at least
according to Ibn Ezra on Shmos 1:11, who points out the spelling difference
and adds, "ainenu makom Yisrael - it's not the place of Israel," which I
take to mean that this storage city was a different place than where Yaakov
and his family lived. This is supported by the fact that this place name
occurs in exactly three other places in Tanach: In Parshas Bo (12:37) and
in Parshas Mas'ay (33:3, 33:5), all of which are vowelled like in Vayigash.
Note the context: Those last three pesukim all mention our starting point
when we left Mitzrayim, so it makes perfect sense that it is the same place
as where Yaakov and the family lived. The storage city of Parshas Shemos
happens to have the same five consonants, but there's no need for it to be
the same place.

Sifsei Chachamim in Parshas Bo explicitly says that the Ram'ses in Bo is
the same place as the Ram'ses in Vayigash (though I admit that he does not
say that the Raamses of Parshas Shmos is elsewhere).

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's view on this (in The Living Torah) is unclear to me.
In Parshas Shemos he says that the same area had a different name in
Parshas Vayigash. But his notes in both places try to inform us of where it
is located, with different suggestions in each place. And in Parshas Bo, he
says that the Rameses of Bo is distinct from the Ra'amses in Parshas Shmos.
(In Parshas Mas'ay he uses two different spellings which were probably
intended to be the same as in Parshas Bo.)

Frankly, all of the above is probably old news (a/k/a not news at all) to
most of you. The translators have known all this all along, and I simply
didn't notice. "Raamses" appears in Parshas Shemos, and "Rameses" in all
four other pesukim, as translated by:
JPS 1917 version (in the Hertz Chumash)
and RSR Hirsch (in Isaac Levy's English version)
and Judaica Press (at Chabad.org)
and  ArtScroll (in their Tanach)
(and, lehavdil, the King James Version).

The translations of Isaac Leeser and the Koren Tanach are slightly
different than the above, but (like everyone above) they use one spelling
in Parshas Shemos, and a different spelling for the other four.

Akiva Miller
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