[Mesorah] Is the Masoretic text the most authentic?

[Dov Bloom]

It seems surprising that an ostensibly knowledgeable person would try to
claim that the Massoretic text means nothing, and any other version is
equal to it, being 'eilu veeilu divrei elokim haim'.
Look at any of the hachamim of the Mesorah, how they struggle to establish
what the correct MT is, and never come up with a response 'who cares, eilu
veeilu...'.
Look at the Ramah (with a heh, not with an aleph; R Meir HaLevi Abulafia)
in Massoret Syag laTora, or the Minhat Shai, or the Keset Sofer (R Shlomo
Ganzfried, author of the Kitzur SA). They all toil to pinpoint the correct
Massoretic text. Using all the sources they have at hand, specifically:
1. good established texts,
2. Massoretic comments (masorah gedola/ktana/sofit/ochla ve'ochla)
3. other Massoretic Rishonim/Massoretic Acharonim
4. sometimes other sources:Gmara Midrash Rishonim

See for example the Massoretic scholars struggle with the spelling of the
word Mezuzot: the Minhat Shai on Shemot 12:7 (pages 172-174 in the
excellent Betzer edition of the Minhat Shai) and the Keset Sofer on Dvarim
6:9 (pages 117b to 118b in my edition, a facsimile version of the classic
mahadura tinyono with the haskama of the Hatam Sofer).

No one ever says "any version is equally fine, eilu veveilu.." They
struggle to establish the correct MT.

I am aware that sometimes  the poskim will conclude 'both are OK', like
when deciding about a sefer Torah that has different parshiot
petuchot/stumot, some poskim not being willing or able to decide between
the Rosh and Rambam. Some  poskim even saying any sefer you find with
different petuchot/stumot is kosher becaus it probably is based on some
rishon. But these statements are 1. often in cases of bedi-eved (bediavad)
2. don't reflect the enormous efforts of the chachmei haMassora in almost
all cases to establish THE correct version.
So to make these exceptional statements (eilu ve'eilu) the norm seems to me
to be incorrect.

N. B. WRT places where the Shas seems to  reflect a different text from the
Messora: there is a voluminous discusdion of this over hundreds of years
and it deserves its own thread, or really it's own book.
See for a teaser the in-passing comments of Eliyahu Levitas HaBachur in his
Sefer Massoret HaMassoret(1538, 5299), section Luchot Rishonot, subsection
Dibur shishi, where he mentions the phenomenon.

On Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 22:42 Danny Levy via Mesorah <
mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

> I recently had a fascinating discussion with Rabbi Yitzchak Goldstein,
> head of Machon Ott (see ott.co.il), who is very knowledgeable about
> differences in minhagim of writing Sifrei Torah among the various
> communities over hundreds of years.
>
> I mentioned to him that every year on Shabbat Noach I feel a twinge of
> sadness when I hear the Ba'al Kore lein "Vayhi kol y'mei Noach" (9:29),
> considering the work of R. Breuer and others who have proven conclusively
> that the text in Yemenite Sifrei Torah, "Vayihyu kol y'mei Noach", is that
> of the Ba'alei Hamesorah.  His response was "Eilu v'eilu divrei Elokim
> chaim" and our text is no less authentic than any other.  To illustrate his
> point he mentioned a number of places in the Gemara where it is evident
> that Chaza"l and the Rishonim had texts or spellings that were different
> from what we have today and different from the Masoretic text (R. Akiva
> Eiger gives a long list of examples in Gilyon Hashass on Shabbat 55b).  He
> also mentioned the fact that the Aleppo community preserved the Sephardic
> tradition of writing Sifrei Torah and did not correct them according the
> Aleppo Codex despite their tradition (now confirmed) that it was the Tanach
> that the Rambam relied on in his Hilchot Sefer Torah as being the most
> accurate.
>
> I would welcome input from group members on this interesting question: is
> the Masoretic text the closest we can get to the text of the Torah given to
> Moshe Rabbeinu or is it just one tradition, not necessarily preferable to
> others?
>
> Danny Levy
>
>
>
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