[Mesorah] kodashim

[Mike Stein]

Funny -- I believe I wrote to Rav Breuer in the mid-1990's about this
very point, and he advised that the meteg in "kadashim" clinched the
case for the vowel being long in the first syllable.  I don't think it
will be easy to locate his hand-written reply at this point.

More certain is the fact that an excellent (American now Israeli)
ba'al k'ria I know who spent a number of years at Gush (and leyened
there as well), who always consulted Rav Breuer about such issues
definitely pronounced this word kadashim when he leyened.

Mike Stein


On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 09:03:31PM +0200, David Cohen wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 8:26 PM, Michael Hamm <msh210 at math.wustl.edu> wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> However, I noticed that someone who is usually very medakdek (and uses
> Israeli pronunciation, which distinguishes between the two) was pronouncing
> the second case as "kodashim."  I asked him about it, and he told me that
> his great uncle, R' Mordechai Breuer z"l, taught him that whenever the
> underlying word has a cholam that it turns into a kamatz upon being
> pluralized (such as kodesh or ohel), that kamatz should be pronounced as a
> kamatz katan, even if there is a meteg on the syllable.  He doesn't know
> offhand if R' Breuer ever wrote about this, he just has the "family
> mesorah."  Does anybody else know what R' Breuer's basis for this was?
> 
> --D.C.