[Mesorah] "Teven" at the end of a pasuk

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Dec 26, 2021 at 04:10:00PM +0000, Mandel, Seth wrote:
> An example I like is the quite common phrase in Chazal יצא ידי חובתו.  Although the words would be familiar to someone from the time of Mattan Torah, they would mean to him "he left behind the hands/restrictions of the money he owed."...

I would have gone with: Left the control of his debt.

And the fact that a chiyuv is not really an obligation but a debt is
also very important. Not claiming I can say why -- just that it is part
of what makes Leshon haQodesh, welll... qodesh.

I added an element of Linguistic Relativity to my theory as well, though.
I suggested that LhQ is qodesh because it is particularly well suited for
imparting and thinking about Torah. This is something of a feedback loop;
a language well suited for studying and internalizing Torah will be shaped
by the Torah-observant community to evolve and grow with its chiddushim.

Which is how the language neviim thought in and spoke isn't only qadosh
because it "happened to be" how Devar Hashem was recieved, but that the
Sinai culture that made nevu'ah possible shaped LhQ.

And so, the language can evolve from Adam to Noach to the Avos through
Matan Torah, the Zegeinim Neviim, Anshei Kenesses haGedolah, Chazal,
etc... and still be lhQ because its evolution is directly tied to
the evolution of how we are thinking about and living Torah in each
generation.

Thinking about sason, simchah, gilah, ta'anug etc... and how previous
shomerei Torah umitzvos thought about the subjects of happiness, joy and
pleasure, how they separated the space of emotions into distinct labels
reflects their community of observance and shapes the next generations
of that community.

LhQ is part of the mimetic evolution of the Torah community, and the
substrate for the textual transmission of Torah, how it is understood,
and which ideas are easy to convery and include in our texts.

> As the Rambam and the Ramban both say (from different points of view), Hebrew is called L'shon haQodesh because it is the language that the Jews used to learn and speak Torah.  The Torah is the source of its holiness, not the sounds of Hebrew.

Side-note: There is a distinct difference. The Ramban places qedushah
in what the language offers, the Rambam places it in what pitfalls the
language doesn't offer.

And so the Ramban talks about the language used to relay Torah. The
Rambam -- the lack of nivul peh.

And I think this is leshitaso for the Ramban, part of the same machloqes
he has with Rashi about qedoshim tihyu. The Ramban considers it a duty to
reach beyond the black letter halakhah. To keep on growing spiritually.
Rashi says it's to not violate the just-listed issurim of arayos.

But that is a topic more for Avodah than for here.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   you are,  or what you are doing,  that makes you
Author: Widen Your Tent      happy or unhappy. It's what you think about.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Dale Carnegie