minor liturgical oddities
Apr. 17th, 2006 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioDuring Pesach I've finally noticed two things I'm a little curious about.
First, there are many brachot that we say before performing mitzvot. They all follow a formula: "blessed...who commanded [*] us...". What's odd is that the final few words are sometimes verbs ("to kindle lights") and sometimes nouns ("about counting the omer"). Why the difference? Why l'hadlik but al s'firat? If most of the bracha is standardized, why didn't the rabbis standardize on one more piece, either "to" (infinitive verb) or "about" (al noun-phrase)?
[*] Or "commands us"? Is that a reversing vav? I've seen both translations.
Second, a few paragraphs after we say the sh'ma we say mi chamocha. That phrase appears twice but is slightly altered the second time: mi chamocha ba'elim..., mi kamocha nedar.... Back when I didn't really know anything about Hebrew grammar I just surrounded this question with a "weird grammar stuff" field. But now I know that they are both the same phrase: "who is like". So why does the first have a dageish (changing kaf to chaf) and the other not? What I noticed recently is that in one of the two, the words are joined by a "hyphen" (I'm not sure if that's what Hebrew calls that mark). Presumably they're like that in the siddur because they're like that in the torah. If one were chanting this from torah trope, the joined words would be treated as one -- one trope symbol rather than two, and you'd run 'em togther a little. Chaf is one of the "beged kefet" letters, letters that get or drop a dageish depending on where they are in the word (or, more precisely, the kinds of syllables that preceed and follow them in the word). I'm a little fuzzy on the rule, but I suspect that "michamocha" and "mi kamocha" trigger this rule differently. It all makes me wonder why the torah (well, the Masorites who added vowels and punctuation to the torah) did it this way in this case -- is there some deeper meaning that argues against consistency?
First, there are many brachot that we say before performing mitzvot. They all follow a formula: "blessed...who commanded [*] us...". What's odd is that the final few words are sometimes verbs ("to kindle lights") and sometimes nouns ("about counting the omer"). Why the difference? Why l'hadlik but al s'firat? If most of the bracha is standardized, why didn't the rabbis standardize on one more piece, either "to" (infinitive verb) or "about" (al noun-phrase)?
[*] Or "commands us"? Is that a reversing vav? I've seen both translations.
Second, a few paragraphs after we say the sh'ma we say mi chamocha. That phrase appears twice but is slightly altered the second time: mi chamocha ba'elim..., mi kamocha nedar.... Back when I didn't really know anything about Hebrew grammar I just surrounded this question with a "weird grammar stuff" field. But now I know that they are both the same phrase: "who is like". So why does the first have a dageish (changing kaf to chaf) and the other not? What I noticed recently is that in one of the two, the words are joined by a "hyphen" (I'm not sure if that's what Hebrew calls that mark). Presumably they're like that in the siddur because they're like that in the torah. If one were chanting this from torah trope, the joined words would be treated as one -- one trope symbol rather than two, and you'd run 'em togther a little. Chaf is one of the "beged kefet" letters, letters that get or drop a dageish depending on where they are in the word (or, more precisely, the kinds of syllables that preceed and follow them in the word). I'm a little fuzzy on the rule, but I suspect that "michamocha" and "mi kamocha" trigger this rule differently. It all makes me wonder why the torah (well, the Masorites who added vowels and punctuation to the torah) did it this way in this case -- is there some deeper meaning that argues against consistency?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-20 03:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-20 03:46 pm (UTC)