<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">>At the beginning of the ArtScroll Chumash with Rashi, there is a <br>
Publisher's Preface which contains one paragraph about Rashi's French:<br>
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"Another often neglected area is the "lo'ez" in which Rashi uses an Old <br>
French word or phrase to translate the Torah text. A dearth of knowledge of <br>
Old French has led many educators to dismiss these comments with, "Well, <br>
Rashi is just giving the French translation," as a result of which Rashi's <br>
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...."<br>
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>First of all, I would like to say that I appreciate (and am amazed by!) <br>
the astounding scholarship and research that had to have gone into this <br>
endeavor. I wonder how on earth R' Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg (the main <br>
translator) and his collaborators went about doing this?!<br>
<br>
Not to take away from their responsible decision not to neglect the lo'azim, very litttle astounding scholarship and research needed to take place, since the astounding research and scholarship has already taken place a century ago or more. R' Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg did not need to become experts in Medieval French. They needed to read books by experts in Medieval French. Notably, they almost certainly consulted books like Arsene Darmestere's "Les=2
0gloses françaises de Raschi dans la Bible" (1909) or David Blondheim's "Les gloses françaises dans les commentaires talmudiques de Raschi," 2 vols. (1929–37); or even more likely, the Hebrew versions of the researches in those volumes, such as the Otzar ha-Loazim by Moshe Catane. Interestingly enough, it was discovered (I believe this conclusion preceded them) that the lo'azim in Rashi are actually the chief extant source for Old French of the period he lived in. Our literature preserved that which there's didn't, perhaps something along the lines of how the originally Jewish apocryphal books were preserved by the Church (in translation) but not the Jews.<br>
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Furthermore, several of the Chumashim from the 19th century, and even earlier, include the modern equivalents of the lo'azim. Certainly the earlier editions of Rashi, including Silbermann, also took a crack at it. <br>
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So "has been thoroughly researched" most probably means "I sat in the [NYPL, JTS Library, JNUL, borrowed volumes] and learned what the words mean," as opposed to original research in the languages and medieval French texts. Not to take anything away from the Artscroll Rashi edition, which is one of their best products, for sure.<br>
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>Second of all, it has long struck me that Jews are expected to know other <br>
languages and that the knowledge of other languages besides Hebrew enriches <br>
one's understanding of Loshon Hakodesh and of Torah. <br>
<br>
No kidding! Although it seems to me that you can prove=2
0almost anything and its opposite from citing sundry Talmudic and rabbinic sources, the statement on the part of Rabbenu Hakadosh that in Eretz Yisrael one should speak either Greek or Hebrew, rather than Syriac, or the statement of Rav Yosef that in Bavel one ought to speak Hebrew or Persian, but not Aramaic (Sotah 49b and parallels) comes to mind. In fact, here I wonder what the Chasam Sofer, who explained the Yiddish language as arising via deliberate distortion of the German, because of a prohibition on speaking gentile languages that is found in the Yerushalmi, had to say about Sotah 49b.<br>
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In addition, the medakdekim indulge in quite a lot of comparative lingustics. And if all the Rabbis with names like "Merwan" don't seem reliable enough, consider that Rashi too resorts to Arabic to explain Hebrew.<br>
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>Third of all, what is this "lo'ez"? I typed the word exactly as it <br>
appears in the preface to the A/S Chumash. However, in the actual text of <br>
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.<br>
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>Since [Silbermann] 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 not
e.<br>
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>The pasuk in Tehillim cited by R' Silbermann is the famous "Betzeis Yisrael <br>
miMitzrayim, Bais Yakov me'am LO'EZ" where the ArtScroll translates <br>
"lo'ez" as "of alien tongue."<br>
<br>
>It would appear that the author of the [unsigned] Publisher's Preface of <br>
the ArtScroll Chumash, like R' Silbermann, regards the word Lamed-Ayin-Zayin <br>
as a word and not an abbreviation, since he transliterates it "lo'ez" and <br>
not "la'az."<br>
<br>
>But both Chumashim consistently vowelize the word as "la'az" and keep the <br>
shmitchik.<br>
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>What do you make of this? <br>
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The shmitchik doesn't indicate that the word, or all words, are abbreviations. The Hebrew marking we're calling shmitchik indicates any of many kinds of emphases, being that Hebrew doesn't have italics or bold or anything like that. A perusal of many old seforim and letters will easily show that the use of " to mark an abbreviation is only one of it's functions. As an example, the names of the letters of the Aleph Beis are spelled with the smitchik, e.g., Ale"f. While I'm sure homiletical reasons can be given for that (see Shabbos 104a), it seems pretty clear that the names of the Aleph Beis aren't abbreviations. La'az is a perfectly normal Hebrew word. However, many have thought that the word must be an abbreviation, and a fitting one has been found: "leshon ovdei avoda zara," although I'm not sure how this will work for the Tosaphists who didn't consider Christi
ans to be ovdei avoda zara.<br>
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KT,<br>
S.W.<br>
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