[Mesorah] mis-accentuation

[Mandel, Seth]

As has been our arrangement for over a decade, I wait for R. David to
post, since what he says is almost always accurate and he says it better
than I, and then I add my ha'penny for those who like small coins.

Regarding the "m'tagim" (which I prefer to call ge'ayot, simply because
I am a reprobate and that is the name used in the Masorah), I would
definitely encourage those interested to use the Keter, either the
photos or the BarIlan edition. Ge'ayot are considered a significant
issue to the ba'alei Masorah, and most of the disagreements between
Ben Asher and Ben Naftali recorded in Kitaab al-khilaf (ספר החילופים)
concern either the presence or the absence of a גיעיה. Unless you rid
your mind of the meteg's that are in the printed edition, you will not
be able to appreciate the function of the ge'ayot, and you can see them
in their glory in the Aleppo Codex.

Indeed, a kleinigkeit, but most of the Masorah is concerned with what
people might call kleinigkeiten that actually loom very large for the
ba'alei Masorah.

Regarding the discussion about d'hiq, I think that I warned people
that those seeking certainly should drop this topic like a hot potato.
But for those stubborn people who are still interested, I am attaching
a couple of pages from Mahberet haTijaan, which is the Hebrew version of
an Arabic treatise on Hebrew and the Masorah, which is an ancient work,
probably going back to the 12th Century. It contains quotations from
ספר דקודי הטעמים, which Ben Asher himself wrote, and various things from
the time of the Geonim.

I copied 3 pages, the third is underneath the first. I have underlined
the relevant pasages. The author is talking about when B'GaD K'PaT have
a dagesh and when they are rafe, and says that with a m'sharet trop they
are rafe after a vowel, except for :Ogerah, P'siq, D'hiq, Ate Merahiq
and two similar letters.

I will comment some more later, b'n. But this is meant to show that
even hundreds of years ago they knew things that were going on, and had
different names for them.

R. Micha, your example is on of them called "ogerah.' And of course
R. Kohen put it in his reconstruction of the Keter.

What R. David calls the BI edition is actually the work of R. Menachem
Kohen there, one of the biggest experts on Masorah since the passing
of Mordechai Breuer and Yeivin, z'l. Although no reconstruction can
ever capture everything in the original, R. Kohen's is very, very
close. Remember, he uses the Masorah from the rest of the Keter, as well
as the Masoretic treatices.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union
Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org

                                
From: David and Esther Bannett via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2017 12:04 PM
To: mesorah
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] mis-accentuation

I noticed that some posters recommended the use of m'tagim to aid in
correct pronunciation. One should realize that the number m'tagim in the
chumashim and tanakhim have varied. The Mikraot G'dolot Venetzia, 1525
has many in the chumash and much less in different parts of na"kh. R'
Yekutiel Ha-kohen made rules about the m'tagim which resulted in a large
increase in m'tagim as the Torah was "modified" to meet the rules. R'
Shlomo Dubna removed some. Heidenheim followed R' Yekutiel, R' Mordekhai
Breuer removed some. The Bar-Ilan reconstituted Keter used a computer to
get statistics on m'tagim and removed some more. It also showed that R'
Shlomo Dubna had sometimes removed the wrong ones. Ohr Torah, R' Menahem
De Lonzano, wrote that the Ashkenazi Tanakhim had much too many g'ayot
and he was giving up on the enormous job their removal. He noted that
the Ashkenazim called them me'teg and he calls yjem, meteg l'chamor.

On m'tagim, I recommend using the photographed Keter at
http://www.aleppocodex.org/. As most of the chumash is missing from
the photographed Keter, for a complete Keter use the Bar-Ilan Keter
which can be found at http://www.mgketer.org/ דף הבית -- מקראות גדולות
הכתר<http://www.mgketer.org/> www.mgketer.org דף הבית של אתר מקראות
גדולות הכתר -- תנך מפרשים מסורה ותרגום.

Much has been posted about din d'chik and atei meirachik. It should
be noted that what some call d'chik others call atei meirachik and
vice versa.