<html><div>RArie Folger writes:</div><div> </div><div>>RMB assumes the issue is whether we use pausal forms in prayer. Well, we<br>demonstrably do, with the pausal aaatah, but who says that's relevant? I<br>posit that there is no pause there, and that is why geshem is correct. I<br>would also say morid hatal with a patach.<</div><div> </div><div> That we demonstrably do, by saying "atah" with a kamatz, is relevant because saying it with a kamatz and not a patach is roughly coeval with saying gashem rather than geshem. Both were introduced in the eighteenth century -- the former by RZalman Henau in 1786, the latter by Yitzchak Satanov in 1725. Until then, all siddurim had a non-pausal form for both. </div><div> </div><div> Henau introduced many changes, among them replacing Mishnaic language with Biblical in many places in davening. RYaakov Emden wrote a sefer, Luach Eresh, attacking over 600 of his changes, and the Noda Bihudah also criticized him sharply. He was, however, an ehrlicher Yid and a baki b'dikduk. (I believe the notion of sh'va m'racheif/t'nua kala was his invention.) Satanov, on the other hand, was a closet maskil who was not above falsifying sources. </div><div> </div><div>EMT</div></html>