[Mesorah] Is the Masoretic text the most authentic?

[David Cohen]

R' Seth Mandel wrote:
>> Once it was decided that we pasken like Aharon ben Asher and we have a
manuscript that he himself wrote, the story is finished.

But in reality, is it?  How many non-Yemenite sifrei Torah have you seen
that say "Vayihyu kol yemei Noach"?  (I realize that we don't actually have
the Aleppo Codex for this, but we have the Yellin/Kimchi Tanach -- see the
very first scanned page at https://archive.org/details/YellinTanakh, -- as
well as the other reliable Tiberian manuscripts -- and even if the relevant
page of the Aleppo Codex with were to be found tomorrow with "vayihyu," I
highly doubt that the common practice would change.)

To put it bluntly, we tend to be rather conservative when it comes to
change, and we like to avoid being "motzi laaz al harishonim" -- and these
tendencies are, broadly speaking, positive ones --  so rather than taking
the position that neither we nor our ancestors have ever heard a kosher
kerias haTorah in our lives, we prefer to find ways to justify the practice
of writing and reading "vayhi."  There's also the well-known opposition of
the Chazon Ish to changing received practice and returning to something
older and more authentic based on newly uncovered evidence.

For what it's worth, if I were ever to be zoche to do the mitzva of writing
my own sefer Torah, I would write "vayihyu."  But as a "limmud zechus" -- I
can understand why most of the world hasn't switched despite our being able
to say with confidence that "vayiyhu" is the correct Masoretic text.

A few other assorted points:

1.  I was about to write about the yeshiva in Maaleh Adumim, but the R'
Danny Levy beat me to it.  But I can corroborate the rumor -- I heard about
it from the father of the baal korei who read Parashat Noach there last
year.  They made an announcement about it beforehand so that people
following along in their (non-Breuer) chumashim wouldn't call out a
"correction" to "vayhi."

2.  There was a big dispute about 20 years ago following the publication of
R' Tshingel's tikkun for writing sifrei nevi'im according to the Keter.
The opposition -- which maintained that there was an different existing
tradition for writing sifrei nevi'im that shouldn't be changed -- was led
by R' Avraham Yitzchak Hoffman and detailed in a book called "Masortenu" by
R' Tzvi Goldberg.  The "defense" of going according to the Keter was led by
R' David Yitzchaki, in "Nevi'ei haEmet vaTzedek" and "Asherenu."  If I
recall correctly, the opposition argued that changing the "received
tradition" for nevi'im based on recent discoveries of the correct Masoretic
text would be a slippery slope toward doing the same in sifrei Torah, a
charge which R' Yitzchaki vehemently denied, saying that that sifrei Torah
were an entirely different story since we have a clear existing tradition,
as opposed to sifrei nevi'im where no such clear alternate tradition
actually exists.

-- D.C.
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