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<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=453371403-07092008>The changes
in the Hebrew of the Ashkenazic prayerbook to use phonological rules of Biblical
Hebrew took place in the 17th century when a movement among grammarians to
return to the 'purity' of Biblical Hebrew coincided with an increase in printed
prayerbooks over which they had influence. The change of geshem to gashem
and gefen to gafen were both part of that. In hammosi lehem min ha'ares,
the word lehem does not occur at the end of a clause and so it was not
changed to lahem.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=453371403-07092008>Sephardim
simply did not make those changes, retaining the prayerbook dialect, which is
closer to Mishnaic than Biblical Hebrew. </SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=453371403-07092008></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=453371403-07092008>(The article
is normally (as in haggefen) a pathah plus dagesh in the following
letter. The alef does not take a dagesh, so the pathah in
compensation is lengthened to a qames. Although ha'ares is unusual in
the seghol always changing to qames after the article, the vocalization
of the article is standard, and this has no bearing on the
issue.) </SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=453371403-07092008></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff><SPAN class=453371403-07092008>Hayyim</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> mesorah-bounces@lists.aishdas.org
[mailto:mesorah-bounces@lists.aishdas.org] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Joshua
Meisner<BR><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, September 06, 2008 10:28 PM<BR><B>To:</B>
mesorah@aishdas.org<BR><B>Subject:</B> [Mesorah] Sefardic nusach of
brachos<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>If I understand correctly, the nusach that Sefardim use for the
bracha rishona on wine is "Borei p'ri ha-gefen", rather than that used by
Ashkenazim of "Borei p'ri ha-gafen". At first glance, this seems to be
identical to the difference in "Mashiv ha-ru'ach u-morid ha-geshem/gashem",
which I had assumed was due to a difference in opinion over whether the latter
line is the end of a primary clause, and hence should have its accented vowel
lengthened from a segol into a kamatz, as is done in Tanach with words that have
an esnachta or a siluk. However, this reason would not apply for the
former case (when the question re-occurred to me over Shabbos dinner, I wondered
if the vowelization gefen was used only at night, but my Sefardic host assured
me that it was not). <BR><BR>Hence, what is the reason behind these
differences? And why would this reason not be similarly applicable to
"haMotzi lechem min ha-aretz"? (A desire to use the exact vowelization of
the passuk that serves as the source for the bracha seems to be an overly
simplistic answer)<BR><BR>Thanks,<BR><BR>Josh<BR><BR><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>