[Mesorah] kodashim

[Seth Mandel]

I hesitate to write the following, since it is quite politically incorrect among many pious Jews.
However, I was taught that the first responsibility of a talmid chachomim was the truth, even if it may damage your reputation.  That was one of the lessons from R. Chaim Brisker that R. Yoshe Ber, his grandson, never tired of repeating.  So forgive me, because I do not wish to insult any of you.
But the truth is fairly well known: that there were at least 4 different systems of representing vowels, t'amim, and other non-consonantal information that developed around the same time.  Some represented different geographic areas which had different systems of reading Hebrew, but we do not have much more than scholarly guesses where the different pronunciations began and ended and what other differnces are represented or non-represented at all in the systems of "niqqud."
The system used today became dominant in most Jewish communities during the medieval period, apparently due to the prestige attached to the ba'alei Masorah of the Tiberian school, who used this system.  IOW, since, as the Rambam notes, in areas of the consonantal text and parashot we pasken like Ben Asher, it became standardized to use his system of vocalization.
However, the Tiberian vocalization, with its system of basically 7 vowels, augmented with signs such as the ge'aya (meteg) and hataf vowels, did not match any of the traditional pronunciations of the medieval Jewish communities.  The S'faradim and Ashk'nazim at that time used a system of 5 vowels, like the system of vocalization known as the "Palestinian."  The Yemenites had 6 vowels, like the system known as the "Babylonian."  This created a dilema in mapping a community's traditional pronunciation to the newly preferred Tiberian vocalization.  The great family of linguists from Spain, the Qimhi's, solved it by positing the existance of two variant of each vowel, the short and the long.  IOW, the sound pronounced /a/ would be represented by two separate digraphs, the "qomatz" and the "pasach," depending on whether grammatically the vowel was "short" or "long."  But, to the best of our knowledge, there were no oral pronunciation system that actually distinguished between short and long phonemes, although one phoneme might be realized as longer or shorter depending on its position in the syllable and other factors.
And so was born one of the most successful artificial constructs in linguistic history.  It allowed the S'faradim to continue with their traditional pronunciation, while at the same time believing that they were accurately reproducing the text.
The text, however, with its Tiberian vocalization, did not distinguish between a long and short qomatz.  There is no argument that the Tiberians pronounced "both" qomatzes identically, with perhaps some non-phonemic differences in length and stress.  The Ben Ashers' own writings indicate as much, even though we are far from understanding their terminology.
At least theoretically, then, the matter of whether a specific word is pronounced with an /o/ or an /a/ or some variant by S'faradim cannot be decided by the Tiberian vocalization, but rather by a vocalization system matching the S'faradi pronunciation.  There the evidence is not debatable: qodashim is pronounced with an /o/ vowel in the first syllable.
Mordechai Breuer z'l was well aware of these issues, but lived in a place where he had to support the practices of a community whose ideology he supported.  This community had adopted the pseudo-S'faradi pronunciation of Hebrew invented in Israel during the 30's, and had abandoned their ancestral traditions of pronunciation.  But R. Breuer z'l knew well the truth, and so it is not a surprise if he "waffled" sometimes in what advice he would give a member of his community in how to realize practically a certain feature of the Tiberian niqqud.  On the contrary, only one of lesser scholarship would have given the same answer at all periods in his life.  The Mordechai Breuer that I knew would have given different responses to different people.
As to what the ge'aya/meteg actually represents, R. Breuer z'l knew very well the compexity of the issues.  Please refer to his chapter 8 in Ta'amei HaMiqra where he demonstrates much of the complexity, and it will be clear that the use of a ge'aya is not to distinguish what the Qimhi's deemed a "long" vowel versus a short.
Given these complexities, we will probably never know why the ge'aya is employed in certain situations.  This is certainly true in sui generis cases, like the word qdshim, that follows a paradigm not evidenced in other words.
Having gotten that off my chest, I now can grin a little.  Since when has not knowing the true reason ever stopped Jews from speculating?  I am sure there are enterprising Mesorahniks who can give a d'rasha why a ge'aya is appropriate -- and I mean a d'rasha, nothing to do with real linguistics, such as those that various people gave as to what the non-linguistic significance is of the ta'am called the mar'id/AKA shalshelet.  And those of the Qabbalistic persuasion can surely give a reason 'al pi Qabbala, since the Ari considered the shapes of the vocalization signs to be significant.
Seth Mandel> From: remt at juno.com> Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:08:37 +0000> To: mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> Subject: Re: [Mesorah] kodashim> > <<A baal k'ria recently told me that kadashim/kodashim has a kamatz gadol> (rachav) at its start, but hakodashim has a kamatz katan. Is this> correct? I always thought each had a kamatz katan. (And why would the> prefixed he make a difference?)>>> > <In the expression "kodesh hakodashim," the kuf has no meteg, and the vowel under it is a chataf kamatz, which, if I'm not mistaken, is always pronounced (by those who distinguish between them) as a kamatz katan.> > In the expression "kodesh kadashim," the kuf has a regular kamatz under it, meaning that since it's an open syllable, one would expect it to be a kamatz gadol. In addition, there is a meteg on that syllable, which ought to clinch the kamatz gadol. This is, in fact, how it appears in the "Simanim" tikkun.>> > Although the above explanation, given by RDCohen, is undoubtedly correct, it begs the question: why is it that with the hei hay'diah there is a chataf and no meseg, while "kodesh kadashim" has a meseg but no chataf? > > Incidentally, if I am not mistaken, strictly speaking it is not a chataf kamatz under the kuf. The chataf-kamatz symbol appears with a non-guttural consonant not because it is chatuf, but to indicate that despite its not fitting the paradigm for a kamatz kattan (closed, unaccented syllable), it is nonetheless kattan.> > EMT > > > > _____________________________________________________________> Stuck in a dead end job?? Click to start living your dreams by earning an online degree.> http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2121/fc/Ioyw6i3nNfaRECsTQiEAXxKjtG6kkxm3vhMmvIpusOEbByEpoNuYqx/> > > _______________________________________________> Mesorah mailing list> Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/mesorah-aishdas.org
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