Avodah Mailing List

Volume 37: Number 41

Wed, 22 May 2019

• 1. Re: The "Unknown Days" of the Jewish Calendar (elazar teitz)
• 2. Re: Shva Na's etc. (Zev Sero)
• 3. Re: Shva Na's etc. (Akiva Miller)
• 4. Re: Shva Na's etc. (Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer)
• 5. Re: Shva Na's etc. (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Shva Na's etc. (Zev Sero)
• 7. An Aleph with a Nekuda (Daas Books)
• 8. Re: Shva Na's etc. (Michael Poppers)
• 9. driverless cars in Halacha? (Rich, Joel)

RZSero writes, " I will not be so foolish as to claim there are no
communities where it has lately become the "established custom" not to fast
but still to say
Selichos; there are so many different customs that it's foolish to insist
that *anything* doesn't exist. So I will merely say that I have never heard
of such a thing."

It is surprising that RZS has never heard of such a thing, given that it is
-- and has been for decades -- the practice in virtually all Litvishe
yehivos, in the US and Israel, to do just that: say the slichos of BH"B,
but not fast.  I am virtually certain that such was the custom in Lita
itself. It is also the practice in the shuls of the Prushim in
Yerushalayim.  While doubtless the custom originated as a fast with
slichos, the fast was long ago abandoned, while slichos lo zazu mim'komon.

EMT
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On 17/5/19 11:29 am, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> And while the original Tehillas Hashem copied Seder haAvodah (1911,
> Vilna), the above could be why they chose a Razah-based pointing rather
> than copying another siddur. The project wasn't run by amei haarez,
> and they did give RYYS (L's Friardiker Rebbe) a voice in the result.

It was certainly not run by amei-haaretz -- it was run by the then-LR's 
son-in-law, later to become the LR.  But he himself said that it was 
prepared in haste and they didn't have time to get everything perfect. 
Given that L does not put any great emphasis on correct pronunciation of 
tefillah, making sure the stars were correct would have been quite a low 
priority.   They almost certainly chose that siddur to copy simply 
because it was available in a good clear print, so it would reproduce 
well.  (This was photo offset, so every generation of reproduction 
degraded the quality.)

-- 
Zev Sero            A prosperous and healthy 5779 to all
z...@sero.name       Seek Jerusalem's peace; may all who love you prosper

.
R' Micha Berger's post had some typos. With his permission, I'm putting the
original in parentheses and the corrections in brackets:

> I found it easier to remember sheva rules by recasting them into
> rules about syllables.
>
> A sheva (nach) [na] under a letter is the vowel of a syllable.
>
> A sheva (na) [nach] means the consonant is closing the syllable;
> i.e. we just finished a "consonant-vowel-consonant" syllable

This is exactly my understanding of these two shevas. A sheva na is like a
regular vowel. It is a major defining characteristic of a "syllable". But a
sheva nach is a null value, empty of sound, signifying nothing.

But these thoughts led me to a strange calculation.

If the sheva na is a regular vowel and can create a syllable, then isn't
chataf patach even more certainly so?

Tonight, in Tehillim 92, we will say the word "poalei" twice. How many
syllables are in this word? I would say three: "po" (peh cholam), "a" (ayin
chataf-patach), and "lei" (lamed tzere yod). And the accent is on the first
of these.

That means that the accent is neither on the final syllable, nor the
next-to-last. What is this word? Is it mi'l'eil or mi'l'ra? How do we
categorize it?

I once asked someone more knowledgeable than me, and his answer was that
for this purpose, "The chataf-patach counts as a sheva. This word has only
two syllables. It is mi'l'eil."

He seemed to mean that the first syllable is "poa". I was stunned, and
walked away, disabused of the idea that I knew what a syllable is...

Or, just as likely, that I don't know how to pronounce a chataf-patach
correctly. In which case I *certainly* don't know how to pronounce a sheva
na properly...

Akiva Miller
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No, I am not looking for indications of mil'ra. I am quite aware that 
that is the default. Only me'l'eils.

I'm prejudiced against Tefillas Yeshurun because he changed Nochri to 
Goy unilaterally. He also is very much Nusach Frankfurt oriented. My 
educated guess is that in K"K Bechhofen they said Nochri, and that they 
did not follow Nusach Frankfurt on other matters. Minhag Bechhofen is 
the minhag I would like to approximate.

KT, GS,
YGB

First, my apologies to everyone on the crossed wires when I said
it was better to explain the sheva rules as syllable rules. The
words "sheva nach" and "sheva na" were flipped in my head as I
typed the first part of it.

That email ought to have read:

On a very different note, I found it easier to remember sheva rules by
recasting them into rules about syllables.

A sheva [na] under a letter is the vowel of a syllable.

A sheva [nach] means the consonant is closing the syllable; i.e. we just
finished a "consonant-vowel-consonant" syllable.

So:

Hebrew doesn't have a syllable that is only a consonant. So, the first
letter's sheva has to be na, because the first letter can't be a syllable
all by itself.

(It also doesn't have very many two-consonant dipthongs like /sht/ in
the one syllable "shtei".)

Similarly, by definition, the vowel of an open syllable is a long
vowel. So a sheva under the next letter can't be nach, as that would
have meant that letter closes a syllable with a long vowel in it.

And if a letter is degushah, the second half of the letter starts a
syllable, and the sheva must be that syllable's vowel, so it must
be na.

If the same letter both closed one syllable and opened the next, it
would only be written once, and the Baalei Mesorah would give it a
dagish. So, if you see the same letter twice, you know they must be in
the same syllable, and any sheva must be the short vowel inside that
closed syllable.

(And an os geronois is too faint to close a syllable, so it could
never take a dageish. Except the reish, which the Seifer haYetzirah
says takes a dageish and the two times in Tanakh it gets a dageish
are not exceptional cases.)

This is something Bavli niqud does better than having a sheva nach symbol
(never mind sharing its symbol) and a dageish for a doubled letter....

(This tangent and the one about not taking rules too seriously, deleted.)


On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 03:42:29PM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
: It was certainly not run by amei-haaretz -- it was run by the
: then-LR's son-in-law, later to become the LR.  But he himself said
: that it was prepared in haste and they didn't have time to get
: everything perfect...

Which is quite different than finding one of the minority of siddurim that
mark shevas, and marks them following the rules of a minority opinion,
and using that as your base text.

Between it being the future LR who chose a text with the Razah's shevas
and the other, non-sheva evidence that the Baal haTanya followed the
Razah, I can see why many concluded that he probably held like the Razah
when it came to shevas as well.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 29th day, which is
mi...@aishdas.org        4 weeks and 1 day in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org   Chesed sheb'Hod: When is submitting to another
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       an act of kindness?

On 17/5/19 4:08 pm, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> 
> I once asked someone more knowledgeable than me, and his answer was that 
> for this purpose, "The chataf-patach counts as a sheva. This word has 
> only two syllables. It is mi'l'eil."
> 
> He seemed to mean that the first syllable is "poa". I was stunned, and 
> walked away, disabused of the idea that I knew what a syllable is...
> 

As grammarians count them, rather than as ordinary people do, sh'va na 
is not a real vowel and does *not* make a syllable.  A sh'va at the 
beginning of a vowel becones na, and a chataf is just a fancy kind of 
sh'va na.   Therefore the official syllables in "poalei" are "po" and 
"alei".

-- 
Zev Sero            A prosperous and healthy 5779 to all
z...@sero.name       Seek Jerusalem's peace; may all who love you prosper

In last week's parsha (Emor; Lev. 23:17), there is an aleph with a nekuda.

This is not even printed in most Chumashim.

What is its significance? How does it affect the leining, and why here?

Alexander Seinfeld

[I have no idea why, but it took dozens of tries to get this email past
the spam filter. -micha]

RYGB responded to me:
> I'm prejudiced against Tefillas Yeshurun because he changed Nochri to Goy
> unilaterally. He also is very much Nusach Frankfurt oriented.

WADR, I question "unilaterally".  Yes, Minhag FFdM is "shelo asani goy",
but neither R'Hofmeister nor R'Hamburger at Machon Moreshes Ashk'naz hew to
that nusach (details upon request).  As per the publication available at
http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=21467&;st=&pgnum=10, "shelo asani
goy" would also appear to be Minhag Wien.  Last and not least, RSS z'l'
is quoted <https://www.artscroll.com/Books/9781578195121.html> as
advocating the "generally-accepted" l'shon CHaZAL of "shelo asani goy"
as opposed to the "shelo asani nachri" emendation of a few grammarians
(naming Heidenheim and Baer and leaving the 3rd name to the imagination) or
"she'asani Yisrael".

> My educated guess is that in K"K Bechhofen they said Nochri, and that
> they did not follow Nusach Frankfurt on other matters. Minhag Bechhofen is
> the minhag I would like to approximate.

I can understand why you would be seeking such a siddur.  Have you ever
sought out former residents of that town or the area?  Did you ever speak
with your family (including longtime KAJer Jerry Bechhofer a'h') about
what siddur they used?

[Email #2 -micha]

(After speaking privately with RAM and then with REMT, I think it
worthwhile to briefly respond publicly....)

In Avodah V37n40, RAM wrote:
> ArtScroll does have a horizontal line above shva na's, but NOT when it is
> the first letter of the word. Apparently they expect you to be aware of the
> rule that "If the first letter is a shva then it is always na unless the
> word is shtayim."

> I find this very easy to forget, especially with letter pairs that glide
> together in English but not in Hebrew. (What's the word for such pairs? I
> think "dipthong" is only for vowels.) In Yishtabach, for example, I'd love
> a reminder to say "b*rachos" instead of "brachos".

RAM indicated a preference for "b*rachos" over "brachos", but I
think he should reconsider (and I believe he did after our conversation).
A sh'va (or, perhaps better, shva :)) is not a syllable unto itself
(that said, poets can consider it a unit for poetic purposes, e.g. the
8 units in each phrase of "Y'did Nefesh"), but emphasizing a shva na',
e.g. "b'rachos", could turn it into a chiriq. The only difference
between a shva na' and a shva nach is that the former begins a
syllable while the latter ends a syllable (and the only emphasis I would
want RAM to remind himself of is the accent, e.g. braCHOS).

Gut Voch/Shavu'a Tov
and all the best from
Michael Poppers * Elizabeth, NJ, USA

I've heard Ravi Asher Weiss make the point concerning the programmers
prioritizing driverless cars' decisions from the point of the driver. I
suspect that this will be subject to regulation and/or industry standards
since divining what the other party will do is a big part of the challenge
in the technology. In addition I'm not sure whether Halacha or secular law
will view the programmer as an agent of society rather than as an agent of
the eventual buyer. Thoughts?
You might also want to think about whether the "driver" (versus the
software provider) should  be liable for damage if the programmer is
programming based on the driver's perceived priorities.

KT
Joel Rich


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