[Mesorah] Just a word before we go...

[Mandel, Seth]

This is not a comment on L'shon Chazal, but on something else that I think people are unaware of (or at least I was until I started looking into it).
When I first started davening in  Yemenite shul near me where I lived in EY a long, long time ago, I became aware of differences between some words they use and those Ashkenazim used. In the haggodo, the question they pose is שבכל הלילות אין אנו מטבלים אפילו פעם אחת, m'tabb'lin in the Pi‘‘el, not matbilin.  That is also the girsa in the Rambam's Perush haMishnayot, and also in the Kaufmann ms., which is claimed by many to be the most accurate.  The same form, m'tabbel, is found in all editions in the Mishna of Ma‘asrot 4:1.
Even more striking is that our standard editions of the G'moro all talk about טיבול ראשון וטיבול שני, and also about כל שטיבולו במשקה צריך נטילת ידים .  No one talks about "hatbala."
It appears from the appearances of these words in the Mishna and G'moro that we are talking about two different forms with two different meanings.
להטביל, which is also attested in the Mishna, means to cause kelim to be tovel, just as one might expect the Hif‘il of טבל to mean. The Pi‘‘el, on the other hand, is a little harder nut to crack. It appears that it can mean dip (not to be tovel). But it may have another meaning.  The Rambam in the Mishna says "מטבל ומטפל סוי, יעני ישתגל באכל אלכ'צ'ר." In English, that means. "m'tabbel and b'tappel are similar, meaning he is occupied with eating with the vegetable[s]."  In other words, he says that the tibbul rishon and sheni refer to the two times that one [dips] and eats the vegetables, at the karpas and the maror later. As you know, according to the Rambam one dips everything into the charoset, including the matza (and presumably the qorbon Pesah), so the tibbul sheni does not mean that  one dips only twice, just that one deals with dipping vegetables twice.

I grew up in a home where we spoke mostly English.  But when my father grew up, in his house they spoke only Yiddish and English on the street, so his speech at home when I grew up was sprinkled with Yiddish words.  We never used the German word "gezuntheit." By my father and zeidy, the first sneeze elicited "tzu gezunt,"  the second "tzum leben," and the third "tzu lange yohren." The point I am making is that I grew up knowing the the question was "in alle nekht fun a gantz yohr tunken mir ain afilu ein mohl nit," (you will please excuse my Litvishe Yiddish) from the Yiddish aintzutunken, to dip in. But when I grew up I saw that there are other possibilities, and that enriches our seder.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel


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