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

[Mandel, Seth]

  *   I have not been able to participate in this discussion due to other exigencies.

But, in accordance with my agreement with R. David Bannet, I feel that I have to
put in my two, not cents but ha'pennies.
In my opinon, R Akiva is are correct.
We have a Masorah about how the Kitvei haQodesh are read.  We do NOT have any masorah about grammatical rules.  The "rules" are just descriptions of what is generally true.  Anyone who would read "toven" instead of "teven" violates our Masorah.
There used to be a Masorah about how to read Mishnayos as well, but it has long since disappeared.  The punctuation in the Mishna is no better than a guess and is not binding.
But once upon a time there was a tradition in Lshon Chazal, including the MIshnayos and the Siddur.  It may not have been binding as the Masrorah in the T'NaKh, but it was a tradition.  Printers and self-proclaimed experts changed what was in the Siddur.
RMF (and most rabbis of his time and before)  did not know the findings of linguistics.  He was expressing his opinion based on what he knew and understood.
If you want to know the tradition, in many cases the different commuities had different traditions.  But with the word "geshem" in "morid hageshem," all the old mss., whether from Ashkenaz or Sefarad or Teiman, all had "geshem."  Do not ask a linguist why, just ask him for the facts.
The masorah about how to pronounce Hebrew in the T'NaKh is clearly a masorah not of a spoken language, but a language used to chant, and so it includes not only vowels, but also trop.  Trop does not mean any specific musical rendition; different Jewish communities differ in their rendition of the trop.  BUT they all agree on the basic purpose of trop: to divide up the words into phrases and clauses, sentences and paragraphs.\
The Hebrew of Chazal, OTOH, was not a language that they chanted, but we have lots of information about what it was like.  And I am not referring to what the printed Mishnayot have, even the better of them.
If one wishes to know what Chazal Hebrew was like, one must go back to the different traditions of reading the Mishnah (e.g. the Teimani vs. the Sefaradi), and to old mss; before printing, since the printers made a lot of changes.
A couple of the most useful mss. of the Mishnah are in the Palatina Biblioteca in Parma, Italy, called De Rosi 138 and De Rosi 497,both apparently very early, from the 11th Century).  Here is a photo of de Rosi 138.

[cid:bc874a24-7749-47cf-b731-7a6b56071479]
But de Rosi 497 is even more useful because a) the scribe distinguishes carefully between a qamatz and patach (unlike de Rosi 138, obviously written by a scribe with the Sefaradi pronunciation, e.g in the word m'qabb'lehem in the second line has a qamatz); b) like many early mss. of the Mishna, it uses a simplified system of trop.  So in de Rosi 497, there is no question which words are at the end of a clause or sentence and which are not.
Dr. Professor Moshe Bar-Asher did a detailed analysis of pausal form in this mss. and some interesting facts emerge.
One is that pausal forms are quite common, something that we might have expected from the siddur (e.g.
לקל ברוך נעימות יתֵּנו, לְמלך קל חי וקיים זמירות יאמֵרו
).  An example from one of the many:
מֵי חַטָּאת שֶׁנִּפְסְלוּ לֹא יְגַבְּלֵם בְּטִיט, שֶׁלֹּא יַעֲשֵׂם תַּקָּלָה לַאֲחֵרִים. רַבִּי יְהוּדָה אוֹמֵר בָּטָלוּ
(Parah 9:5)
And there are some words which always occur in pausal form, e.g.
הַחֵמֶת שִׁעוּרָהּ בִּפְקָעִיּוֹת שֶׁל שֶׁתִי. אִם אֵינָהּ מְקַבֶּלֶת שֶׁל שֶׁתִי, אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁמְּקַבֶּלֶת שֶׁל עֵרֶב, טְמֵאָה.  (Kelim 17:2),
vs. other that have pausal forms only in pause (e.g.
הָיְתָה כְלִי וְחִבְּרָהּ בְּסִיד... הַמַּיִם שֶׁבְּתוֹכָהּ פְּסוּלִין, מִפְּנֵי שֶׁאֵינָן עֲגֻלִּים כֶּלִי (Parah 5:7)

My point is that both forms existed in the Hebrew of Chazal, but someone who is looking for hard and fast rules will have a very hard time.

R. Seth Mandel

________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Akiva Miller via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2021 10:02 P
To: mesorah at aishdas.org <mesorah at aishdas.org>
Subject: [Mesorah] "Teven" at the end of a pasuk

I was surprised to find that the word "teven" occurs at the end of several pesukim (Shmos 5:7, 5:10, 5:12, 5:13) *without* changing its pronunciation to "taven".

I was *going* to ask this learned chevra if there might be other such words which remain segol-segol even at the end of a pasuk, but I was surprised at how quickly the example of "melech" came to my mind. Bereshis 14:17 and 49:20, Esther 1:5 and 7:4, are just a few examples of "melech" at the end of a pasuk. Looking through my concordance, I was unable to find any cases where it changed to "malech".

So I'm not going to ask why "teven" and "melech" are exceptions to the rule. Rather, I am learning the lesson that Rabbi Mandel has told us so many times: There are no iron-clad rules, only *general* rules, which were born to have exceptions. And as such, the exceptions should not be so surprising. The same way that the sh'va of "shtayim" ("two") is a sh'va nach despite being on the first letter, so too do the segols of "melech" remain so despite being in the last word.

Why? Because that's how languages work, that's why.

To reiterate: I am not asking any questions here. I'm simply bringing it to the attention of the chevra in case anyone else didn't notice it, or wants to comment.

Good Shabbos to all
Akiva Miller


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