[Mesorah] She'ata / Sha'ata

[David Cohen]

R' Akiva Miller expressed his "confusion and continued equivocation about
the concept of correctness."

I feel similarly, since I assume that the magihim "knew what they were
doing," meaning that:
  -- they were familiar with the grammar of Biblical Hebrew.
  -- they were familiar with the grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew.
  -- they were fully aware that the siddur traditionally followed the
latter.

Nonetheless, they felt that they siddur *ought to* follow the former, so
they emended accordingly.

In order to argue that they were "wrong," one needs to do *one* of two
things:

1.  Demonstrate that their premise is objectively wrong because the
existing tradition must, by definition, be "correct."  The debate about
this far predates R' Dr. Haym Solovetchik's article or the Gra's rulings
against traditional Ashkenazi practice, and goes at least as far back as
Rabbeinu Tam and Rabbeinu Meshullam, but an advocate of the mimetic
approach could always attempt to demonstrate why it is objectively the
correct approach, which would make the magihim objectively wrong.

2.  Demonstrate that the magihim made incorrect assumptions because they
did not have access to information that we do have.  The mere fact that
early manuscripts follow Rabbinic Hebrew vowelization almost certainly does
not meet this description, as the emenders were surely aware of what they
were emending.  If it could be demonstrated that the magihim thought that
they were restoring an authentic earlier version of a siddur that had
become "corrupted," whereas *we* know that there was *never* such an
earlier version that followed Biblical Hebrew grammar, then we could say
that they were wrong.  But do we really know that for a fact?  It's hard to
prove what was going on in the pre-nikkud era.

-- D.C.
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