[Mesorah] malei de malei rule?

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

Rabosai! Let's all take a deep breath. I think this conversation is spinning out of control.

It began in Avodah, when R' David Bannett wrote:
> The word sh'meih appears seven times without a yud. It
> never appears with a yud. That proves something about
> the spelling of words in Aramaic.

My response was:
> Does it really prove something? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
> How do you spell "tzitzis"? What is its gematria?
> "Tzitzis" is found four times in Tanach (according to Mandelkern). Three times 
> in the Shma, and once in Yechezkel 8:3. All four have only one yod, the first one. Does 
> that prove anything?

I think that my point was misunderstood. The point I was trying to make was this:

*** You can't prove what the proper spelling of a word is, based merely on how it appears in Tanach. ***

Tanach in general, and Chumash in particular, have a rather unusual spelling style. Anyone who ever said that the Gematria of "tzitzis" is Taryag accepts that the "proper" slelling of Tzitzis is with two yuds. This is so, even though the Torah - which we accept as "perfect" - consistently uses one yud. The Torah's use of one yud does NOT make the two-yud spelling "wrong". Rather, we presume that the Torah has reasons for its spelling style, whether we understand it or not.

That's the point I had been trying to make then. Today I want to make a different point:

Namely: I think that the current attempt to discern a complete set of rules about the Torah's spelling style will be doomed to failure unless one is careful to follow this rule: It is important to look in an accurate source, as RMB pointed out how Mechon Mamre's on-line text often has the chaseiros filled in. But that is not sufficient. If one finds a word with a particular type of spelling ("chaseir-chaseir", for example), you can't automatically presume that this is a good example of the spelling style. First you have to look in the meforshim, and see if there was a REASON why the letter was deleted or included. Only if there is no reason at all for the spelling can it be attributed to "style".

And of course, never forget that the text have is "not boki on chaseir and malay" anyway, however you choose to understand that.

Akiva Miller


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