[Mesorah] a kleinigkeit
Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon
jeremy.simon at nyu.edu
Sun Jan 28 12:32:18 PST 2018
I don't recall your comment on that pasuk from tehillim. Also, you did not
say that "some excellent manuscripts" have a patach. You said that "all" bA
mss., "without exception" have it. Had you said "some" I likely would not
have responded at all.
On Jan 28, 2018, at 3:19 PM, Mandel, Seth <mandels at ou.org> wrote:
1) and 2): I do not have them either.
3) See what I wrote on the hataph-segol in T;hillim 144:15. He most
certainly did change things to match what people expect. There are
numerous other exx. that he changed what was in the Aleppo or the Leningrad
Codex to match what people would expect according to most diqduq books.
4) Far be it from me to declare who is "right" and who is "wrong." I am not
even sure I know what those words mean regarding differences in Masorah. I
was just pointing out that some excellent mss. have patah with a ge‘aya,
and I believe that that is what was in the Aleppo Codex. The form with the
hataph, as far as I can see, are restricted to S'faradi mss., including the
Sasson.
I will also introduce one other piece of evidence: R. Benaya ha-Sofer also
has a full patah and a ge‘aya. Although we do not know exactly which mss.
he used, in most things he is pretty close to the Aleppo Codex, including
in his placement of ge‘ayot. One thing that we do know is that he did not
have the printed versions (his works are from the late 15th Century), and
he did not have Italian and Spanish mss.
Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union
Voice (212) 613-8330 Fax (212) 613-0718 e-mail mandels at ou.org
------------------------------
*From:* Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon <jeremy.simon at nyu.edu>
*Sent:* Sunday, January 28, 2018 2:51 PM
*To:* Mandel, Seth
*Subject:* Re: [Mesorah] a kleinigkeit
1) I do not currently have access to the book.
2) R. Breuer used several manuscripts, not just the two you mention. He
lists them in his books, but I don't know them off hand. For his final data
on this, the best source is the companion volume for the Keter Yerushalaim
-- "Nusach hamikra b'Keter Yerushalim...", where he will list all of the
manuscript sources for this work as he deviated from Leningrad.
Unfortunately, I don't have this either. I will try to get a scan of it.
3) It is my very firm belief (based on reading) that R. Bruer never
changed nikkud to match what people expected. (As opposed to adding
metagim, which he eventually distinguished in print). He only removed
chatafs so people would read correctly.
4) Regarding Prof. Cohen. So you think both he and R. Breuer deviated from
Leningrad for different reasons, but both got it wrong?
Jeremy
On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 2:10 PM, Mandel, Seth <mandels at ou.org> wrote:
I wish you would go to R. Breuer's book and see if he mentions this case.
Yes, I believe that he put in both a meteg and a hataph vowel was because
he felt too many people would be confused about the absence of a hataph. I
don't remember any cases at all of a hataph vowel having a meteg. Plain
sh'was do all the time, as do other vowels, but I do not believe there is
any other case of a hataph vowel having a meteg.
In two mss. that I have access to, one of which being the Leningrad, there
is no hataph, only a meteg. What mss. do you think R Breuer would be
relying on?
I think this is one example where R. Kohen's Bar Ilan reconstruction of the
Aleppo Codex has gone astray. Remember, he is not trying to represent the
majority of good mss. like R. Breuer was. He is trying to reconstruct the
Aleppo Codex, and one can always argue about attempted reconstructions, as
I am doing in this case. The same question I have asked before again
applies here: what mss. is R. Kohen relying on that contradicts the
Leningrad and the "B" ,ms. (British Museum Oriental 4445)?
Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
------------------------------
*From:* Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon <jeremy.simon at nyu.edu>
*Sent:* Sunday, January 28, 2018 1:49 PM
*To:* Mandel, Seth
*Cc:* mesorah at aishdas.org
*Subject:* Re: [Mesorah] a kleinigkeit
With all due respect, I think it is you who are misunderstanding, or at
least misapplying, R. Breuer's shittah. It is true that R. Breuer included
extra-masoretic metagim so as not to appear "odd" to those who were used to
them. But that is the only concession he made to simple expectations, and
is not, in any case, relevant here, where the meteg is masoretic (as can be
seen from its presence in the list, as well as, in the Keter Yerushalaim,
being a long meteg.
As for his approach to chataf vowels, the only ones he modified where
chataf vowels under non-guttural letters whose purpose was simply to
indicate a shva na. He did this because he felt strongly that such a chataf
should be pronounced as a shva, and not a short patach, and felt that
continuing to print the chataf was misleading to readers. If anything, this
is a case where he deviated from what readers would expect, in
contradistinction to his approach with metagim (albeit still with the
average reader in mind).
But this practice has no relevance to the case at hand. He did not change a
chataf under a non-guttural to a shva. He "changed" one under a guttural to
a full vowel. This is entirely different, and, as far as I can tell from
what I remember of what R. Breuer wrote (and I have read much of it,
including the relevant sections of the book on the Aleppo codex), he would
not have deviated from Aleppo in this if he did not have significant
textual support from other manuscripts. The fact that Bar Ilan, which does
not share R. Breuer's methodology for meteg or for chataf (Prof. Cohen kept
all the chatafs R. Breuer changed) arrived at the same conclusion furhter
supports that this decision is well supported generally and not a feature
of a quirk of R. Breuer's methodology.
Jeremy
On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 12:48 PM, Mandel, Seth <mandels at ou.org> wrote:
You misunderstand R. Breuer's shitta. As he explains, he mostly goes
according to the majority of the best kisvei yad. However, he does not
want it to appear too strange to regular Jews. As a consequence, he omits
all the many hataph vowels that Ben Asher put into the Codex, and puts in
the "metegs" that people are used to, even if they do not exist in any of
the best mss. He tries to distinguish the ge‘ayot that are in the mss. as
opposed to the others by having the printer use metegs of different
length. In this case, I am sure he did not want to depart from the
hataph-patah because that is what people are used to.
There are no mss. that have both a ge‘aya AND a hataph on this word to the
best of my knowledge.
You can go to R. Breuer's long book about how he decided questions without
having the Aleppo Codex available: he uses the majority of the good mss.,
since in almost all cases the majority agrees with the Codex. I am sure
that if he mentions this case there he will say that the mss. all have a
full patah.
Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
------------------------------
*From:* Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon <jeremy.simon at nyu.edu>
*Sent:* Sunday, January 28, 2018 12:05 PM
*To:* Mandel, Seth
*Subject:* Re: [Mesorah] a kleinigkeit
I was only addressing the patach, not the meteg. As for the list at the
back, that only represents one manuscript, in this case Leningrad, not "the
manuscripts". This list lets you see where his final decision deviated from
that of his primary manuscript, which, depending on the edition and the
section of Tanach, is either Leningrad or Aleppo. However, he deviated only
on the basis of textual evidence, at least in the vast majority of cases. I
would be extremely surprised to find that he changed the nikkud here
without strong manuscript evidence.
On Jan 28, 2018, at 11:54 AM, Mandel, Seth <mandels at ou.org> wrote:
Not true.
Breuer, following his own shitta, has both a hataph-patah AND a ge‘aya.
And in the index in the back of his editions of the T'NaKh, where he lists
the forms actually found in the mss, he has a full patah and a ge‘aya.
Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union
Voice (212) 613-8330 Fax (212) 613-0718 e-mail mandels at ou.org
------------------------------
*From:* Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon <jeremy.simon at nyu.edu>
*Sent:* Sunday, January 28, 2018 11:31 AM
*To:* Mandel, Seth
*Cc:* mesorah at aishdas.org
*Subject:* Re: [Mesorah] a kleinigkeit
Given that both R. Breuer and Bar Ilan have a chataf parachute, I find it
difficult to credit you claim that _all_ ben Asher manuscripts have a full
patach. Neither of them would have deviated from Leningrad, which indeed
has a full patach, without good support. And dikduk rules would not factor
significantly.
Jeremy
On Jan 28, 2018, at 11:11 AM, Mandel, Seth via Mesorah <
mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
I call it that because most people only care about masorah if it changes
the meaning or the pronunciation.
But the non-defenestrated denizens of the Mesorah group understand that the
masorah is much deeper than such things, and is important in light of the
number of rishonim who spent time on it.
So I am mentioning something that I shamefully admit that I was unaware of
all my years:
In the pasuq:
*יד:יא* וַיֹּאמְרוּ, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה הֲמִבְּלִי אֵיןקְבָרִים בְּמִצְרַיִם
לְקַחְתָּנוּ לָמוּת בַּמִּדְבָּר, מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ לָּנוּ לְהוֹצִיאָנוּ
מִמִּצְרָיִם.
regarding the word "hamibb'li," all printed Chumashim have the punctuation
as is above, with a hataph-patah under the he'.
However, that is not the puncuation in the kisvei yad that represent the
Ben-Asher masorah. Rather, all of them, without exception have a full
patah — WITH a ge‘aya/AKA meteg. As the meritorious members of this group
are aware, that means that the syllable "ha" is lengthened and has a
secondary stress.
The Minchas Shai already noticed this issue. He notes that R. Yonah had it
with a full patah, and it is the R'DaQ who says it should be a hataph-patah
based on S'faradi mss. He even goes on to say that there are some who
claim that the ms. on which R.Yonah was basing himself was the Aleppo
Codex. That means to me that the Minchas Shay, without being able to
decide the matter, attaches serious weight to the view of R. Yonah.
In any event, now we can be certain based on the better mss. that we have.
Prescriptive grammarians, who hold that the he' hash'elah should always
have a hataph-patah, of course will be disturbed. But as we know, the
Masorah did not believe in prescriptive grammar, only in descriptive.
Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union
Voice (212) 613-8330 Fax (212) 613-0718 e-mail mandels at ou.org
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--
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Associate Professor of Medicine at CUMC (Emergency Medicine)
Columbia University
Editor, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine
*https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138846791
<https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138846791>*
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