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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>CM: It has always been my understanding of the 8th
ikkar as a guarantee of siyata dishmaya throughout the generations that will
insure that rov of our seforim will be halachically valid copies of Toras Moshe,
thus if we follow the rov of our extant seforim we should not in general go
wrong. So this certainly allows for incorrect copies in our midst, but
guarantees the MESORAH long term. Thus even if in some circumstances of safek a
sofer will follow the "local" rov seforim available to him, he could still come
up with a resulting "incorrect" sefer (even though he did the best he could),
but the guarantee for the MESORAH is that in rov of these cases of doubt, the
"correct" sefer will result. This is my own understanding, I have no specific
source, so I am willing to back down if confronted with direct authoritative
contradiction, but I think this comports well in general. The machlokes
that RJA refers to, wrt molei and choser (see below), will thus result in two
variations of the above guarantee: 1) to the exact letter, 2) to within the
allowable variations for molei and choser, each according to his opinion of a
valid sefer within halacha.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>KT</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Chaim Manaster</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>RJA wrote: I think there may be a fundemental misunderstanding of the
Rambam here,<BR>which needs to be clarified. However you understand the
8th ikkar broadly,<BR>as being about general concepts, meaning,"semantics," in
RMB's words. It is<BR>also explicitly about syntax (and not just syntax,
but morphology as well,)<BR>The Rambam's formulation of the ikkarim is in his
first comment on the 10th<BR>chapter of Sanhedrin in his Mishnah after the
introduction. (The ani<BR>ma'amin which RTK so carefully parsed is a later
reformulation, not the<BR>Rambam's language at all.) In it he says
explictly (this is my translation<BR>of R. Kapach's translation of the original
Arabic, the emphasis), "EACH<BR>LETTER which is in it has wisdom and wonders
beyond words to whomsoever God<BR>gives understanding..." It is clear that
he means this to include spelling<BR>in the recieved Torah text, because he also
paskins this way in Mishnah<BR>Torah. In hilkhot Sefer Torah chapter 7
halakha 11 he specifically says<BR>that plene and defective spellings (Maleh and
Chaser) pasul a Sefer Torah.<BR>For the Rambam, the Torah text of the Ben Asher
Sefer Torah IS the EXACT<BR>Torah Moshe brought down from sinai, including
spellings, and all other<BR>versions are simply wrong, and are pasul for that
reason.<BR><BR>The truth is, this is a makhlokes Rishonim, which made it into
the Shulchan<BR>Arukh. The Rema mentioned earlier in the conversation
follows the standard<BR>Ashkenazi view that we don't know plene and defective
spellings, and so we<BR>do the best we can. The Mechaber, in the same
siman, follows the Rambam.<BR>I'm not really sure how to reconcile the Rambam
with the empirical evidence<BR>that mistakes have crept into the transmission of
the Torah text since<BR>Sinai, but I think it is clear that he believes that
they have not, or<BR>rather, that Ben Asher reflects an unmistaken text, even if
other texts do<BR>have mistakes.<BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>