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<DIV>At the beginning of the ArtScroll Chumash with Rashi, there is
a Publisher's Preface which contains one paragraph about Rashi's
French:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>--quote--</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Another often neglected area is the "lo'ez" in which Rashi uses an Old
French word or phrase to translate the Torah text. A dearth of knowledge
of Old French has led many educators to dismiss these comments with, "Well,
Rashi is just giving the French translation," as a result of which Rashi's
intended nuance is often lost....For this edition, every foreign word used by
Rashi has been thoroughly researched. To assist the reader, the modern
French and English equivalents are given....</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>--end quote--</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>First of all, I would like to say that I appreciate (and am amazed by!)
the astounding scholarship and research that had to have gone into this
endeavor. I wonder how on earth R' Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg (the
main translator) and his collaborators went about doing this?!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Second of all, it has long struck me that Jews are expected to know other
languages and that the knowledge of other languages besides Hebrew enriches
one's understanding of Loshon Hakodesh and of Torah. This goes
all the way back to Yosef, who knew many languages, and to Moshe, likewise, and
to the pillars that were erected (on the banks of the Jordan River?) which
were engraved or painted with the text of the Torah in 70 languages, and to
Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonasan and so on and on. I note this as an
interesting fact, without comment.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Third of all, what is this "lo'ez"? I typed the word exactly as it
appears in the preface to the A/S Chumash. However, in the actual text of
Rashi, the Hebrew word is vowelized "la'az" -- not "lo'ez." It is spelled
lamed, ayin, zayin, with a shmitchik between the last two letters -- indicating
that the word is not a word, but an abbreviation.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>OK, now look at the Silbermann Chumash with Rashi for a moment.
In his appendix, R' A. M. Silbermann has a note on the word "la'az":</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>--quote--</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>By this Rashi means French. This differed from modern French as the
English of the present day differs from that of the 11th Century. The
root [lamed-ayin-zayin] [written in Hebrew there] is found in Psalm CXIV.1
as describing a foreign language. The word is not formed of the initial letters
of the phrases loshon am zu or loshon am zar; this is a popular etymology, but
is incorrect.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>--end quote--</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Since he holds that the word is not an abbreviation, you would expect the
Silbermann Chumash to print the word "la'az" without the shmitchik, but in fact,
the word is spelled /with/ the shmitchik between the ayin and the zayin, just as
if he'd never written that note.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The pasuk in Tehillim cited by R' Silbermann is the famous "Betzeis Yisrael
miMitzrayim, Bais Yakov me'am LO'EZ" where the ArtScroll translates "lo'ez" as
"of alien tongue."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It would appear that the author of the [unsigned] Publisher's Preface
of the ArtScroll Chumash, like R' Silbermann, regards the word
Lamed-Ayin-Zayin as a word and not an abbreviation, since he transliterates
it "lo'ez" and not "la'az."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But both Chumashim consistently vowelize the word as "la'az" and keep
the shmitchik.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What do you make of this?
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><B>--Toby
Katz<BR>==========<BR><BR><BR><BR>_____________________</B></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>