[Avodah] My Current Futile Life Project

[Jay F. Shachter]

>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> 
>>>>> (My current futile life project is no longer that, because I have
>>>>> changed it.  My current futile life project is to get people to say
>>>>> "sherut l'umit" since "sherut" is feminine.)
>>>>>
>>>> 
>>>> Why do you think sherut is feminine? The tav is a root letter, not a
>>>> suffix.
>>>>
>>> 
>>> Similarly, "Sheirut" is indeed a feminine noun, even though the vav-tav
>>> is not related to that fact. Probably because service is a "receive
>>> and further develop" type thing.
>>>
>> 
>> What is your evidence that Sherut is feminine? Ben Yehuda and Even Shoshan
>> both say it is masculine, but I only see one quotation in Ben Yehuda which
>> shows gender:  Yoma 58a "shene khelim besherut ehad"
>>
> 
> Actually, I could cite that very source, since the text actually has
> "achas".
> https://www.sefaria.org/Yoma.58a.8
> 
> But I just wrote that after glancing at an on-line dictionary. I didn't
> have a primary source.
> 
> (Actually, it's neither in Tanakh nor Mishnah, so we don't have a source
> old enough to rule out the likelihood of Aramaic borrowings. I don't
> know if Aramaic ever has a different gender for a word than Hebrew did.)
> 

If anyone wants to tear himself away from these two people and hear
from the person who started the discussion: Mr Montagu has convinced
me that I was wrong, and that "sherut" is masculine, not feminine.
I have, therefore, changed my futile life project, which formerly was
to get people to say "sherut l'umit", but no longer is, because I was
wrong (I know I just said that five seconds ago, but I'm practicing,
for when I get married again).  My current futile life project, which
I decided jointly with Mr Montagu following an e-mail conversation
with him, is to get people to say "peleg hamminxa", which is the
correct pronunciation of the term, see, inter alia,
https://beta.hebrewbooks.org/reader/reader.aspx?sfid=43082#p=14

I had considered taking on a different futile life project, to get
people (or, if not people in general, then at least the one who runs
the Avodah mailing list) to say "`Arokh HaShulxan".  In the end I
decided that that was too attainable to be a futile life project,
because one can persuasively point to the verse from which the title
is derived, and although it is empirically true that no Jew has ever
changed his behavior as a result of being persuasively shown a verse
in the Bible, still it seemed to be something that ought to be
possible in principle, and might even, some day, happen.  So "peleg
hamminxa" it is.

(As for whether an Aramaic word ever has a different gender than the
corresponding Hebrew word, that question is, in one of those dazzling
coincidences that logicians loathe and poets love, relevant to this
week's parasha, which contains the only verse in the Torah that has
feminine language that Onqelos completely removed in his Aramaic
translation, leaving only masculine language.  Look at the Targum
Onqelos on Bmidbar 11:12.)

I could say more, but I have to sign off now, because it is Friday
afternoon, and I still have a few more things that I want to do before
I start Shabbath, which I might want to do early today, as soon as it
is peleg hamminxa.

               Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
               6424 North Whipple Street
               Chicago IL  60645-4111
                       +1 773 7613784   landline
                       +1 410 9964737   GoogleVoice
                       jay at m5.chicago.il.us
                       http://m5.chicago.il.us

               When Martin Buber was a schoolboy, it must have been
               no fun at all playing tag with him during recess.