parsha bit: Vayeira

[cellio]

S'dom and 'Amorah were destroyed because of their great evil. Rabbi Yehudah said that the leaders of S'dom made a proclamation that anyone who so much as gave a loaf of bread to a poor man would be put to death. He further says that Lot had a daughter who fed a poor man and was punished in this way.

(Source: Pirke d'Rabbi Eliezer)

Aside: can anyone reading this tell me how the translators got from 'Amorah (ayin, patach) to "Gomorah"? There's no gimel there. (The vowel change is less surprising, as random vowel changes in translation/transliteration aren't uncommon. But adding a consonant is novel.)

Comments

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

OK, get me started... :-). Actually it's not a long story: the vav was originally pronounced "w." It still is among the Yemenites. How and when it elided into v, I do not know, but I believe the ambivalence about it goes back to the Phoenecians, since their version is an antecedent to both V and W in modern English orthography. If you look in the Hebrew Encyclopedia (which is very pokey today) they always use waw for vav.

I know about that mapik but didn't remember what it was called. Yeah, it's in the siddur -- magbiah shefalim -- just before mi kamocha.

[cellio]

I know about that mapik but didn't remember what it was called. Yeah, it's in the siddur -- magbiah shefalim -- just before mi kamocha.

And "eitz chayim bah", and "y'hei shemei rabah", and every occurrence of "halleluyah". Once I learned this tidbit I stated noticing them. :-)