[Mesorah] us'ara / us'arahh
Elazar M. Teitz
remt at juno.com
Wed Apr 25 08:46:21 PDT 2012
RDavid Bannett writes:
>Last Shabbat morning my neighbor on the left asked how to
understand the word us'arah in its two appearances in
parashat Sh'mini. in 13:4 "us'ara lo hafakh lavan" and in
13:20 "us'arahh hafakh lavan" and why the chumash notes that
the first one does not have a mappik in the hei.
He was not satisfied by the obvious answer that the absence
of the mappik is the tradition and isn't meant to change the
meaning, i.e., a sofer found it that way and copied it and,
after many copiers and copies it became tradition. So I
thought for a moment and supplied a replacement.<
I think he was right in being dissatisfied with the obvious answer. Onkelos
translates the one without the mappik as sin-ayin-reish-alef, which means either "a
hair" or "the hair, but definitely not "its hair." The one with the
mappik is translated sin-ayin-reish-mapipik hei, "its hair."
>But first an additional comment,
Later in the day I happened to see a copy in shul of
Tidbits, the weekly in English by R' Phil Chernofsky of the
OU. He asked the same question and mentioned that it could
be an omission that became a tradition. He then, as a good
American, brought Art Scroll who translates the mappikless
one as "the hair" and the mappiked one as "its hair". My
day was made, Art Scroll did it again.
>I pointed out to left hand neighbor, who BTW, is a ra"m in
the local yeshiva, that the word se'ar is a shem kibbutzi.
It is in the singular and means the entire group of hairs,
the same as in English it means, for example, a head of
hair. The word s'ara means a single hair, one of the group
known as hair. (I checked later in Even Shoshan who brings
this meaning of s'ara from Tanakh. Mishna and Gemara.)
>The s'arahh with mappik, thus means "its hair", the hair on
the nega' turned white, as, the Americans will point out to
me, is proved by Art Scroll. The mappikless s'ara means
that not a single hair, of the group of hairs on the nega',
had turned white.
>But Art Scroll's "the hair" doesn't necessitate that not
even a single hair had turned white. But that isn't what
made my day. To me, s'ara means "a single hair" not "the
hair" with the definite article.
>I'd appreciate it if someone checks with a knowledgeable
kohen if the halakha requires that every single hair has not
turned.<
The halacha is that no two hairs have turned -- one white hair does not make the
person a tzarua, but two do. Likewise, with nega hanesek described in 13:30-31,
"uvo seiar tzahov" means two gold-colored hairs, and seiar shachor ein bo"
means that it has no more than one black hair.
EMT
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