[Mesorah] Sefardic nusach of brachos

[Hayyim Obadyah]

The changes in the Hebrew of the Ashkenazic prayerbook to use phonological
rules of Biblical Hebrew took place in the 17th century when a movement
among grammarians to return to the 'purity' of Biblical Hebrew coincided
with an increase in printed prayerbooks over which they had influence.  The
change of geshem to gashem and gefen to gafen were both part of that.  In
hammosi lehem min ha'ares, the word lehem does not occur at the end of a
clause and so it was not changed to lahem.
Sephardim simply did not make those changes, retaining the prayerbook
dialect, which is closer to Mishnaic than Biblical Hebrew.  
 
(The article is normally (as in haggefen) a pathah plus dagesh in the
following letter.  The alef does not take a dagesh, so the pathah in
compensation is lengthened to a qames.  Although ha'ares is unusual in the
seghol always changing to qames after the article, the vocalization of the
article is standard, and this has no bearing on the issue.) 
 
Hayyim
  _____  

From: mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org
[mailto:mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org] On Behalf Of Joshua Meisner
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2008 10:28 PM
To: mesorah at aishdas.org
Subject: [Mesorah] Sefardic nusach of brachos


If I understand correctly, the nusach that Sefardim use for the bracha
rishona on wine is "Borei p'ri ha-gefen", rather than that used by
Ashkenazim of "Borei p'ri ha-gafen".  At first glance, this seems to be
identical to the difference in "Mashiv ha-ru'ach u-morid ha-geshem/gashem",
which I had assumed was due to a difference in opinion over whether the
latter line is the end of a primary clause, and hence should have its
accented vowel lengthened from a segol into a kamatz, as is done in Tanach
with words that have an esnachta or a siluk.  However, this reason would not
apply for the former case (when the question re-occurred to me over Shabbos
dinner, I wondered if the vowelization gefen was used only at night, but my
Sefardic host assured me that it was not).  

Hence, what is the reason behind these differences?  And why would this
reason not be similarly applicable to "haMotzi lechem min ha-aretz"?  (A
desire to use the exact vowelization of the passuk that serves as the source
for the bracha seems to be an overly simplistic answer)

Thanks,

Josh



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