Recent Notes On Hebrew Pronunciation

By Rabbi Avi Grossman

Edited by Mr. Jonathan Grossman 

Many of the ideas discussed in this article were in my notebook for some time, and just as I was getting around to preparing them for publication, my prolific colleague Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein sent a copy of Professor Geoffrey Khan’s The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew to me. After reading it and briefly corresponding with the author, I concluded that it was time to release this article. Professor Khan invites the yeshiva world to read his book, available for free at this link, and to check out his website. Full disclosure: although Prof. Khan’s research is enlightening, not only do I not agree with or endorse everything he claims, I do not believe that certain points are admissible as halachic sources in the Bet Midrash. 

With regards to the details of halachic pronunciation, I have already released my own book wherein I try to show how the rishonim would pronounce Tiberian Hebrew, and I direct readers to Rabbi Bar Hayim’s videos on the subject. Rabbi Bar Hayim follows the views of Rabbi Benzion Cohen. All of us are attempting to recreate something that we cannot really know, and for now, we still have to debate the fine details. I seriously doubt that the Masoretes spoke a ritual Hebrew that sounded exactly the way any of us describes it. 

Before getting into the nitty gritty of Prof. Khan’s arguments, I would like to introduce some basic ideas that can be gleaned from an elementary, comparative study of Arabic.

A few years ago I took some classes in modern spoken Arabic, which I hoped would help me begin to read Maimonides’s original writings. Aside from helping me realize how there is so much I have to learn about that language, it helped me learn more about Biblical Hebrew. Fifteen years ago, when I started working on what would become my aforementioned book about Masoretic Hebrew, I wondered about certain missing consonants. Thankfully, those and many other questions I had have been somewhat answered, and I now wish to present some of my own findings. I realize that for some, these may not be so novel, but my intention is to bring them to the attention of those in the yeshiva world who, for whatever reason, would enjoy learning about this but will not come across these issues in their regular courses of study.

Concerning the Consonants:

Arabic has only a cursive form, unlike our Hebrew which has had over the course of time many forms, including the common, Assyrian block form and the various cursive forms, which thanks to the advent of modern-Hebrew education has become much more standardized. Also, many letters have up to four forms: the isolated (stand-alone) form, the initial form, which the letter takes at the beginning of the word or in the middle of the word when the previous letter is cursively non-connective, the medial form, and the final form. For some letters, there is significant overlap. See a chart here, for instance. 

The Arabic letter alif is basically the Hebrew alef, but it is used much more often as a mater lectionis, the Latin translation of the Hebrew אם קריאה. (See below.) 

The Arabic equivalent of bet, ba, is always strong, meaning that in most forms of Arabic there is no letter that represents the weak bet sound, that of V, while the Arabic equivalent of pei, fa, is always weak, and never strong.This means that in most forms of Arabic there is no letter that represents the strong pei sound, that of P. Thus, many native Arabic speakers have a hard time pronouncing foreign words that have the P or V sounds. Today, in Israel at least, the solution is to use the stop, B, to also represent the P, thus giving us words like بيانو, biano, for piano, while the V sound is a variant of the fa, ف, and sometimes it is marked with three dots on top instead of one to indicate the V. Consequently, Israelis who pronounce their surnames that begin with vav in the standard, European-influenced accent, e.g. Vaynshtain instead of Weinstein, have the Arabs spell their names with a variant of fa. 

Unlike in Hebrew, the diacritical dots you find above and below certain Arabic letters are not vocalizations but rather critical components of the letters. It seems that early on the diacritics were used to distinguish between alternate sounds created by single letters, like the dagesh qal is and was used to distinguish between sounds made by single letters, while other letters originally had unique forms, but evolved into identical forms, and the diacritics were introduced in order to preserve the distinctions. The initial and medial forms of the Arabic letters ba, nun, ya (the equivalent of the Hebrew yod), and ta (the equivalent of the Hebrew tau) are orthographically identical and distinguished by the diacritics, the ba with one dot below, the ya with two; the nun with one above, and the ta with two, even though in all of the earlier Semitic alphabets, the equivalent consonants had distinct forms. This has made Arabic very receptive to new letters: it is very easy to modify an already existing letter form by adding anywhere from one to three dots as a superscript or subscript. In Hebrew, we still have not completely assimilated new consonantal symbols into new letters (the ג׳, ץ׳, ז׳, etc.), and the typical method of representing them looks out of place in context. 

Gimmel: In many languages, the hard G sound has been assimilated to a soft one, and this is as true in Arabic as it is with certain English words. However, the Arabic jim is not always pronounced like a J, which, as I pointed out in my book, is a combination of the D sound followed by a voiced shin (SH) sound, or the voiced equivalent of the CH sound achieved by clustering the T and SH sounds. Rather, jim makes the voiced shin sound (the G in massage) on its own. Also, the jim is still pronounced like a hard G in some countries, such as Egypt. 

Dal is the Arabic equivalent of our dalet, and it, like our dalet, has a weak, fricative counterpart, the dhal, (as in “the”), although unlike Hebrew, in which the weakness or strongness of the bet, gimmel, dalet, kaf, pei, or tau (the “beged kefet” letters) depends on the form of the word, and one set of rules governs all of these letters, in Arabic it seems that dal and dhal no longer have such a relationship, and as above, are now considered separate letters. 

The Arabic waw serves the same purposes as our vav. More on that soon. 

Het has its equivalent in the Arabic ha, while the sound of our kaf’s weak counterpart, khaf, appears in Arabic as a variation of the ha, pronounced kha, and the latter is represented by writing the former with an additional upper dot: ح and خ, respectively, while the one with a lower dot, ج, is the aforementioned jim. This seems to indicate that the weak sound of the khaf that distinguishes our Hebrew so much from English is a historical latecomer, and that while we first made it a variation of kaf, the Arabs made it a variation of het, and indeed, since in most Jewish circles the het is pronounced (incorrectly) as a khaf, perhaps the Arabs were just anticipating us. Many academics claim that the sound migrated; even in Hebrew the sound of the khaf was made by the het in certain words, but later, when all hets were pronounced alike, the sound was given to the weak kaf. This would explain why, for instance, certain proper nouns have been historically transliterated unusually. E.g., Jericho, Rachel, etc.

The Arabic counterpart of tet is the ta, but unlike our Hebrew tet which has no voiced counterpart, like tau has dalet and samech has zayin, the Arabic ta does have a voiced counterpart, the dad, ض, which is the D in words like Ramadan. Just like English transliterations of Hebrew commonly lose the distinction between tau and tet, they also lose the distinction between dal and dad, and in many systems used to teach Arabic to Hebrew speakers, they simplify the dad and tell them that just like they always pronounce the tet like a tau, they can pronounce the dad like a dal.

The Arabic counterpart of the yod is ya, and it pretty much behaves like the yod, but has traditionally been used as a mater lectionis even more than yod has. For example, many transliterations of Hebrew into Arabic not only use the ya to represent the Hebrew tzeirei, they even use the ya to represent the segol in open, accented syllables.

I was asked concerning the yod in second-person-possessive male suffixes, as in, for example בנֶיךָ ba-NE-cha: if the yod is not meant to be pronounced as part of the segol vowel, why is it even there? My proposed answer is that it is there to distinguish the singular from the plural, along the lines of the silent yod in the third person counterparts of those nouns, for example in בנָיו ba-NAW, which most never even get around to wondering why we do not pronounce as ba-NAYW. I believe that the yod in words such as בניו may have once been pronounced, and this explains the suffix’s relationship to its Aramaic counterpart, וֹהִיx or וֹיx. In essence, the two languages present the combined sound of the low vowel with the two semivowels, just that in Hebrew the Y sound preceded that of the W, whereas in Aramaic the W sound preceded the Y. Similarly, up until the common era, decisors would represent the western sound of “OW” (as in “brown” and Ashkenazi surnames with “baum” in them) in Yiddish and Yiddish-influenced written Hebrew as וֹי, “oy,” despite the inaccuracy. In any event, the silent yod in the plural possessive suffix is a critical indicator of the plural state, even more so than the potential vav of the holam in words like אבֹתֶיך  and עֹלֹתֵיכם. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of these words are written in the Torah with the yod and not the vav, and even when there is no need for a possessive or constructive suffix, the vav of the (generally) feminine plural suffix is usually omitted. Rather, the holam is usually written plene when the vav (or the yod that it replaces) is part of the root of the word. Thus, there is always a vav after the first tau in the word Torah (of the root yod-reish-silent hei) and its derivatives, but more often than not there is no vav after the reish indicating the plural of Torah.)

Sometimes, at the end of words, the alif is in the form of a ya minus the two lower dots that  distinguish the ya from the ta, ba and nun. Such an alif is called an alif maqsura (a “shortened alif”), and is often used in place of the ya that was part of the root word. See below for how this may relate to the phenomenon of the equivalency of yod and silent hei as the third letter of many Hebrew roots.

The Arabic counterpart of kaf, ka, is always strong. This would remind us of the instances in which the suffix khaf in Hebrew is strong, as in ארוממךָּ, although in spoken Arabic, what was once the sound of qamatz/patah after the suffix ka has now been placed before the kaf, such as in possessives that end with the sound “ak” instead of “ka.”  Similarly, the possessive suffix is pronounced “kha” in Hebrew, while in Aramaic it is pronounced as “akh.” 

The Arabic counterpart to lamed, lam, is often orthographically combined with the alif that precedes it or comes after it. Certain Hebrew printers would use a combined letter for alef and lamed; I do not know who learned from whom (no pun intended), or if it is just a coincidence. 

Samech has no true Arabic counterpart because the Arabic sin corresponds to both the Hebrew sin and samech. Considering how the samech–sin redundancy in other Semitic languages predates the Arabic’s language’s evolution, this is understandable. Yiddish also has this phenomenon: in native Yiddish words, only samech is used to represent the S sound, and the sin is only used for words that have their source in semitic languages. Rav Mazuz recently pointed out that in Rashi-era French, not only did the samech and sin sound like an S, but the shin also did, and this is why when Rashi invokes French, the shin is usually used for the S sound. 

Ayin exists also in Arabic, although orthographic variants thereof, specifically the addition of a diacritic dot above, changes the ayin to a ghayn. (I would have expected the aforementioned jim to therefore to be an orthographic variant of this letter instead of the ha.) Many have pointed out that early Greek translations of personal nouns such as ra’am, ‘amora and ‘aza have used the progenitor of the latin G, and this would indicate that Hebrew once had a similar dual use for the ayn symbol, and as Professor Khan has shown me, the jim was once actually the equivalent of a hard G, and still is in some places, so it would be a natural and eventual variant of the ghayn. 

Pei’s equivalent is the fa. It has this weak form, and never a strong form. As I wrote above, modern Israeli Arabic uses a new variant of the ba, but with three lower dots, to represent the P sound. 

The tzadi has the Arabic sad. Further, the sad has a voiced counterpart, ظـ, ẓāʾ, the most recently developed letter in the Arabic language, and the sad and tet are already variants of each other, with the ta being a sad with a vertical line. Strangely, the voiced counterpart of the ta is a sad with an extra dot, ضـ, while the voiced counterpart of the sad, the ẓāʾ, is a ta with a dot. I would have done the opposite. Years ago I wondered why Hebrew did not have these letters. I now realize that they are just too inconvenient, or else we could also expect to see the fricative forms of both the tet and the dad in Arabic. Thus, Arabic developed and maintained letters to represent many of the consonantal sounds that were either lost by spoken dialects of Hebrew, or were never present in Hebrew. Considering that the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet is considered sacrosanct by the Hebrews, and that even the weak sounds from the six beged kefet letters did not earn their own letters, I do not believe we will see new Hebrew letters to represent these sounds any time soon, although the sound of the jim (represented in Modern Hebrew by ג׳) and the modern English CH (represented by צ׳), for instance, are today ubiquitous. I was prompted to think about this by my daughter, who, in second grade, was mindful enough to point out that her version of the Alphabet had both bet and vet, but Ashrei, as printed in her siddur, only had a verse for bet.

Modern Hebrew tutorials for spoken Arabic use the samech to represent the Arabic sad, because the samech is much closer to the way sad should be pronounced than the way the Modern Hebrew tzadi is, although on some street signs, proper nouns with sad’s are rendered with tzadi in Hebrew, e.g. the town of Musmus in the Galilee is מוצמוץ, which delighted my daughter. Also, the ubiquitous condiment hummus, although spelled חומוס in modern Hebrew, should be spelled חֻמֻץ to accurately reflect its Arabic spelling. There are even some families here in Israel that do not eat chickpeas on Passover not because they are legumes but because back in the old country, the word was too similar to חמץ, “leaven.”

Quf: Many people know that the Hebrew quf should be pronounced like the true Arabic quf, what the speech professionals call the voiceless uvular stop, or, to the rest of us, the sound made by pressing the tongue farther back in the mouth, but like the quf in Modern Hebrew, the Arabic quf has also suffered from neglect. In some places it is pronounced like a hard G, while in others it is pronounced like a K, as we do, and sometimes, especially in local dialects, it is not pronounced at all, and is basically treated like an alif. For example, local speakers refer to Jerusalem as al-uds instead of al-quds, and even al-uds often comes out as il-uts, all of the previous with a short vowel sound. Or the imperative of stand up is um instead of qum, and daqiqeh, minutes, becomes da’i’eh. 

Reish: The Arabic sign for reish is the zayn with an additional dot on top, which may indicate the closeness of the two sounds. According to Sefer Yetzira, the reish is produced by the teeth, just like the zayin and samech.  

Shin and sin are one symbol, with the shin having three dots on top. They both even resemble the Assyrian shin: س ش. The extra tails do not appear mid word.

Tau: Both the strong and weak tau have Arabic counterparts, the ta and tha, respectively, with the former with two dots, the latter with three. As we mentioned, the strength of the Hebrew beged kefet letters depends on a letter’s position in a given word, while in Arabic that is not the case. 

More interestingly, the ta has a common silent form, called “ta marbuta,” literally, a “sad ta,” that appears as the feminine suffix roughly equivalent to the qamatz-silent-hei suffix in Hebrew. Interestingly enough, this ta marbuta is silent, like our hei, and is even written as a ha but distinguished by the characteristic two dots on top, just like a ta. That is, orthographically it is a combination of ha and ta. Just like the Hebrew hei suffix becomes an actual tau in various construct states, the ta marbuta becomes an actual ta in construct states. For example, the Arabic word for automobile is sayara, while “his car” is sayarato. When we consider Hebrew, we often think of the silent hei as converting to tau in construct forms, whereas from this point of view, the tau can be considered the default letter, and the hei that exists in isolated forms is the simplified form. This explains, for instance, why we encounter words like zimrath as in עזי וזמרת י-ה and aqereth in מושיבי עקרת הבית are spelled with the tau although they are not in the construct state. (Hat tip: Rabbi Yedidya Naveh of Koren Publishers.)

This is reminiscent of the phenomenon in Hebrew that in certain roots, the final silent hei become a tau in certain conjugations, e.g. ראה is ראתה in the feminine, while in other conjugations it becomes a yod, e.g., as in ראיתי and ראינו. Had an alef been in those roots, it would have stayed in both types of conjugations: the feminine of ברא is ברָאת, and the first persons are בראתי and בראנו.

Concerning the possessive suffixes, in spoken Arabic the male form is as in Hebrew, an O sound, but it is written with a silent ha, reminiscent of uncommon instances where the mater lectionis is also hei for the holam, as in שלמֹה, שילֹה, אהלֹה, and סֻכֹּה. Whereas in Hebrew, the female possessive suffix is usually qamatz-nonsilent (mappiq) hei, and this is mostly overlooked in spoken Hebrew. I know of no one, (not even the usual professionals who otherwise pronounce things properly) who actually tries to pronounce the mappiq hei in conversation. The equivalent suffix in spoken Arabic is much easier to say, as it is written as ha-alif, and is pronounced as “ha.”

The lack of a local Arabic equivalent to the hard G sound made by gimmel has led to some interesting inconsistencies regarding how to spell Ben Gurion, which comes up often considering all the places named after him. Some spell his name with a jim, others with a ghayn, and others with the new, hard-G gim, the aforementioned jim but with three dots instead of one. The first version enjoys the precedent that the Hebrew gimmel has been represented by the Arabic jim, and it is up to the reader to know that historically both were pronounced as G, while the second version enjoys the precedent that foreign words with a hard G have been represented with a ghayn because vocally it is is closest to the hard-G sound. For example, in Arabic a gorilla is called a ghorilla. Indeed, in this case they would be pronouncing “Gurion” with a form of gimmel, just the weak form. I have noticed that, especially around the eponymous airport, all three Arabic spellings of Gurion are commonplace.

Otherwise, many Israeli street signs can be seen as the work of vigilant trolls, who mock the way most Jews pronounce the tzadi, vav, tet, and quf incorrectly. For example, the signs pointing to my town, Kochav Yaakov-Tel Zion, appear as they should in Hebrew, כוכב יעקב – תל ציון, but in Arabic they are rendered as كوخاڤ ياكوڤ تل تسيون, which, represented in Hebrew characters, is כּוכאבֿ יאכּובֿ תל תשיון. That is, although the Biblical name of Jacob has a well-known classical rendering in Arabic, because the Jews pronounce the ayin and quf as alef and kaf respectively, they are rendered as such, and the same with the tzadi of Zion, rendered ts because that is how it is pronounced. Similarly, place names with tet are transliterated with the counterpart of tau, ta, because that is how it is incorrectly pronounced. An example: טירת צבי, Tirat Zvi, is rendered by the Arabic equivalent of תיראת תשבֿי. Lastly, פתח תקוה is (thankfully) transliterated into formal English as Petah Tiqwa, but in Arabic it is   ‎بتاح تكفا, or in Hebrew characters, פּתאח תכּבֿא, although it would have been more egregious had they rendered the first word as פתאך.

The Vowels

The Arabic counterpart of the dagesh hazaq is the shadda, a small W or shin-like symbol written above the letter indicating its gemination. The counterpart of the sh’wa nah (silent sh’wa) indicating that the consonant closes the previous syllable is the sukkun, which appears as a small circle above the letter in question.  

As a general rule, the major vowels are represented with their plene spellings, while the minor vowels are defective, and the ya represents what sound like the Hebrew tzeirei and hiriq, while the waw represents the holam and shuruq sounds. However, there is more ambiguity with regard to the representations of the minor vowels: there is one vowel superscript symbol that represents the short patah sound, and not coincidentally it is called fat-ha, while a single waw-like superscript is used to represent both the equivalents of the qamatz qatan and qubbus, and a single subscript dash represents the equivalents of the short segol and hiriq. Surprisingly, accented, segols in open syllables are transliterated into Arabic also as plene. For example, Petah Tiqwa, above, is sometimes spelled with a yod after the pei equivalent, פיתאח. And, along those lines, many of the counterparts of the qamataz gadol are represented by an additional alןf, as are patahs in open-accented syllables. Thus, names like Ibrahim (Abraham) and Binyamin are written with alif’s after the reish and ya respectively, and in Israel place names with the words sha’ar and har are represented by the Arabic equivalents of האר and שאער. This far more liberal use of the alif to represent the presence of vowels is also characteristic of Yiddish, in which the alef has completely transformed from a mater lectionis into a vowel-letter, although I would be very grateful if someone could enlighten me as to why in Yiddish, our ancestors chose to represent the segol with the ayin. I cannot fathom even a tenuous connection between that particular vowel and the consonant.

Concerning mater lectionis it must be noted that although in many of the languages under discussion they are silent place holders that do not affect the pronunciation, once upon a time they did. It is not due to some arbitrary decision or convenience that the prophets chose to represent the holam and shuruq sounds, for example, with a waw. Rather, it is because the vav and yod once were, and often should still be, a natural, necessary, and logical component of the vowels’ pronunciations, and as I wrote about in my book, the true hiriq and shuruq sounds cannot be articulated without the natural semivowels that complete them, and when they are followed by guttural letters that necessitate the additional patah g’nuva, or the epenthetic in Prof. Khan’s jargon, the semivowel is even geminated. 

Plural suffixes: Instead of im, יםx, in Arabic, as in Aramaic, “in” is often used. In feminine forms, instead of oth, ותx,  ات, which is the equivalent of אתx, is used. However, many nouns have a unique plural form that does not employ a suffix or any set rule of new vowel structure.

…

And now for the nitty-gritty of Prof. Khan’s book. The second volume of Khan’s work is a translation of the Hidāyat al-Qāri, which was written by a prominent grammarian, and it and other Karaite works and documents make up a significant portion of his sources. Although there may be that which we can learn from both Karaite and Samaritan sources, they can hardly be considered by traditional Jews to be sources for anything halacha l’ma’aseh. For example, the notion that the shuruq form of vav hahibbur before labial letters is pronounced as “wu,” and not “u,” is very hard for me to believe, especially because it contradicts most modes of pronunciation among world Jewry, and makes one wonder why such a vav would not therefore be considered a complete syllable unto itself. As I wrote about last time, an analysis of the trop indicates that the Masoretes did not not count the prefix vav as a syllable even when it was pronounced as a shuruq. If they had been pronouncing such a vav as “wu”, it would count as a full syllable, especially if it preceded a letter with a sh’wa. I believe that even the Karaites and Samaritans themselves do not pronounce it that way anymore, if they ever did. R’ Schachter likes to relate a story about a conversation between Rabbi Soloveitchik and Rabbi Saul Lieberman, in which the former was dismissive of certain medieval sources, because just like today when we have pseudo-scholars who write halachic nonsense, they also had such things back then. Just because you can find that Karaites distinguished between the mobile and silent sh’was using different criteria from ours, we should do as they do?!

I would also like an explanation as to why, considering the mountain of proof that the vav was and should be pronounced like a W and not like a V, he recommends that it be pronounced as a V in certain instances. It is inconsistent in theory as well as in practice. However, it is interesting to note that historically Jews in Palestine began to assimilate the vav into a V sound around the same time that speakers of Greek began to assimilate the sound. Although I am happy to let people speak however they may like, I would strongly recommend against this and another common phoneme, namely the Modern Hebrew pronunciation of reish. Both made it into Modern Hebrew via Yiddish, and both make Modern Hebrew sound unpleasantly Germanic. For example, the word aquarium is both pleasant and easy to pronounce, and sounds like a fun place to visit with children, while ak-VA-ghi-um is jarring, hard to pronounce, and sounds sinister. If most can pronounce the vav and reish properly, they should try to do so. For those who may ask, I spell the name of the letter v-a-v in order to distinguish it from the Aarabic waw, although I believe that it makes the W sound. 

Prof. Khan’s take on orthoepy on page 101 fits with my point here that the Sifrei Emet have a higher tendency toward conjunctive cantillation marks than the rest of the books of the Bible. Along similar lines, you will find that in the majority of the biblical books, the non-Emet books, the lower level disjunctives, which therefore also occur earlier in a particular half of a verse, tend to be musical flourishes, and not unsurprisingly, can have many more conjunctive words (i.e., words marked with conjunctive trops) preceding them. For example, silluq and ethnah have at most one conjunctive word connected by either a mercha or munah, respectively, and the second-level disjunctives like tip’ha and zaqef have at most two conjunctives, while the pazer and t’lisha g’dola often have four or five conjunctives, and even up to seven at my last count. (Often, a string of connective words form one adjectival phrase beginning with asher, that or who, even if that phrase itself has many parts of speech.) Jacobson has already pointed out that there are no disjunctives lower than these, and therefore, even at preceding words where we would expect disjunctives, we find conjunctives. There is thus a proportional relationship between musicality and connectivity. 

A recurring argument is that when the Karaite transliterations into Arabic omit mater lectionis, the indication is a short vowel in the original Hebrew. I disagree, because we see that the farther back we go in Biblical Hebrew, fewer and fewer long vowels, especially qamatz and holam, are in the plene form. Incidentally, some have asked me for rules of thumb as to when the holam is plene or deficient. I have two of them: 1. In post-biblical Hebrew, the accented holam of segolate nouns is deficient (e.g., חֹדֶש, עֹשֶק, אֹכֶל, etc.) while in participles, the holam is unaccented and written in the plene form (e.g., אוֹכל, עוֹשֶק, etc.). In Biblical Hebrew, the older the book, the less likely these participles are to have the vav. 2. In the Torah and the earlier biblical books, the holam is often deficient when it is part of a plural suffix. Those words in which it is written plene, e.g., in בנות, are the exceptions. However, when the vav is part of the root, it usually is written, for example when the root of the word is yod-reish-(silent) hei and the conjugation is in the hif’il, which is why the word תורה and its variants are written in the plene form. 

Pg. 113. I used to joke that the common Ashkenazi practice of distinguishing between qamatz and patah and tzeirei-segol was an enactment of the biennial convention of Ashkenazic Jewry, for if you were to claim that qamatz and patah used to sound the same, and tzeirei-segol sounded the same, why do Ashkenazim distinguish between? However, Prof. Khan seems to say that it was apparently the case, and we are left looking for an explanation as to how our ancestors figured out the difference in theory and adopted it in practice. 

The argument on page 409 regarding epenthetic vowels fits with the argument I made previously about the pronunciation of ohela.

Pg. 428: Yaamdu. I believe that Prof. Khan and I are making similar proposals, except that he is using much more advanced terminology. 

Pg. 450: As per the brilliant and indispensable treatise on cantillation found in the classic Tiqqun Mishor, I believe that it is much easier to explain the vocalization of the word מה (ma) with the rules governing the hei hay’dia, the definite article. The atei merahiq (dehiq) explanation may account for the dagesh in the first letter of the second word, but it does not account for the variety of possible vowels: segol, qamatz, patah, etc. that parallels that of the hei hayedia and that can be explained using the general principles of vowel shifts. 

Pg. 509. Is the masoretic hyphen supposed to be called a מַקֵּף or מַקָּף? I can entertain either, just like the exact vowelization (and names for that matter) of the words we use for the vowels are also pretty dynamic, and the same can be said of the trop. 

Pg. 519: Prof. Khan does not find any lengthening of the vowel in the syllable marked by the metiga of the zaqef gadol, nor of the geresh of the ravia mugrash. As I wrote earlier, I am of the belief that these particular symbols are quite arbitrary, and their placement is less about accentage, etc., and more about distinguishing them from similar symbols, and explains why trop like the dehi and t’lisha gedola are always marked on the first syllables even if those syllables are not accented. 

Pg. 524: Concerning the verb להניח, Prof. Khan offers that the forms which have the dagesh are not reflective of a different root altogether, but rather are a convention to create a distinctive meaning. The forms with the weak nun imply “to give rest,” while the forms with the strong nun imply placement. It would thus seem logical that the blessing on laying t’fillin should be להַנּיח תפלין and not להָניח תפלין. However, most siddurim follow the Shulhan Aruch’s ruling (Orah Hayim 25:7) to use the latter formulation, and indeed, the Mishna B’rura there explains that the weaker form implies placement, while it is the strong form that implies handing over. However, in the original source in the Beth Yosef, it is mentioned that there is no actual difference in meaning between the two forms, but the weak form is preferred because it is the one used in the verse (Ezekiel 44:30), להָניח ברכה, “to place a blessing within your house.” The Vilna Gaon seems to endorse this view. 

The following is from a letter I wrote to the publishers of the Makbili edition of the Mishneh Torah:

במהדורתכם, בהלכות תפילין, פרק ד׳, כל פעם שמדובר על מעשה הנחת תפילין וברכתה, הנו״ן דגושה והתנועה לפניה או חיריק חסר או פתח, ושתיהן תנועות קלות, וזה למרות דעת השולחן ערוך וכמה אחחרונים שצ״ל נו״ן רפה והתנועה לפניה או קמץ או צירה, ושתיהן תנועות גדולות. לדעת מרן הבית יוסף, זה בגלל שהנחת תפילין שורשו נו״ח, ומעשה ההנחה הוא בבנין הפעיל, לעומת הנחה בנו״ן דגושה, שהיא באה משורש אחר ומשמעותה לשון עזיבה

?האם דעתו של הרמב״ם מפורשת שכן צריכים להגות ״הנחה״, או האם יש לכם סיבה אחרת בשיטת הניקוד

In short, they decided to vowelize l’haniah t’fillin, the blessing on laying t’fillin, with a dagesh in the nun, l’hanniah t’fillin. This is in contrast to most known opinions, including that of the Shulhan Aruch. Whose opinion were they following, bearing in mind that Maimonides himself did not actually state anything in regards to the matter and his own editions of the Mishneh Torah were not vowelized?

The editor answered that

:זוהי תמצית תשובת ד”ר יחיאל קארה, עורך המשנה של המהדורה לענייני ניקוד

במהדורתנו ניקדנו על פי המסורת התימנית, וכן הוא גם בכ”י קאופמן של המשנה. אכן במקרא אפשר שיש מקום להבחין בין “והניח לכם מכל אויביכם” ב-נ’ פשוטה לעומת “והניחם שם” ב-נ’ דגושה, כהבדלה בין נתינת מנוחה לבין שימה, אך הדבר אינו מוחלט, ובכל מקרה מדובר במה שמכונה “פועל עלול”, שבו יש תנועה בין הגזרות השונות. וראה גם במילון אבן שושן, שמביא את שתי הצורות בלא להבחין ביניהן

Or in short, that there is a Yemenite tradition that it should be that way. Indeed, one Yemenite rabbi showed me some Yemenite codes that explicitly record the practice.

A few years ago, I found what may be the source for the Yemenite/Maimonidean tradition.  According to the Shulhan Aruch, the three-letter root of l’haniah is nun–yod (or waw)-heth. Thus, all the letters of the root are present in that conjugation, and thus do not require any letter to be geminated in order to compensate. However, In The Guide for the Perplexed, 1:67, Maimonides wrote (Friedlander translation):

Our Sages, and some of the Commentators, took, however, nuaḥ in its primary sense “to rest,” but as a transitive form (hif’il), explaining the phrase thus: “and he gave rest to the world on the seventh day,” i.e., no further act of creation took place on that day.

It is possible that the word wayyanaḥ is derived either from yanaḥ, a verb of the class pe-yod, or naḥah, a verb of the class lamed-he, and has this meaning: “he established” or “he governed” the Universe in accordance with the properties it possessed on the seventh day”; that is to say, while on each of the six days events took place contrary to the natural laws now in operation throughout the Universe, on the seventh day the Universe was merely upheld and left in the condition in which it continues to exist. Our explanation is not impaired by the fact that the form of the word deviates from the rules of verbs of these two classes: for there are frequent exceptions to the rules of conjugations, and especially of the weak verbs: and any interpretation which removes such a source of error must not be abandoned because of certain grammatical rules. We know that we are ignorant of the sacred language, and that grammatical rules only apply to the majority of cases.

Thus, it seems that in the form l’hanniah, the yod of the beginning of the shoresh has been left out, necessitating the dagesh in the second letter of the root, the nun. However, Maimonides acknowledges the apparent difficulty: usually, when the first letter of a root is yod, verbs in the hiph’il conjugation are vowelized with a full holam after the prefix, for example להוציא from יצא and להושיב from ישב, and even להוליך from הלך, which does not even have a yod. 

Pg. 599-600: The discussion reminds me of my epiphany concerning the Vilna Gaon’s pronunciation of זֵכר. The difficulty native speakers have when trying to distinguish between sets of similar sounds is very frustrating, especially when they attempt to add their own vowelizations. I tell Israeli schoolteachers that it is not even worth it for them to try, because when it comes to qamatz-patah and segol-tzeirei, they will always get it wrong. 

Finally, Prof. Khan is not alone in advocating that the sh’wa na’ of Tiberian Hebrew be pronounced basically like a hataf patah. Support for this position comes from written testimony that describes it as such. However, I do not accept this. It seems to me today, linguists discuss dozens of types of vowels, and spoken English, for example, utilizes dozens of vowel sounds, but in the medieval period, they used to only discuss three, and then five, different vowel qualities. It makes sense that to them, the sh’wa would have to fit into one of those descriptive categories even if we now have the tools to be more specific. Further, if the sh’wa was supposed to sound like a hataf patah in the majority of cases, why did the Msaoretes choose the sign of the sh’wa, which half the time is used to mark a letter that closes a syllable, and not the hataf patah, which they had already created to mark specific sh’wa’s? Also, it would be a practice that contradicts the living custom of most of Jewry, and would require a thoroughly novel explanation as to why the pronunciation of the vav hahibbbur changes before words that begin with a letter vowelized with sh’wa. However, I also believe that a sh’wa should not be pronounced identically to the short I sound as is common in most places today. The best description of the sound that I can offer today is the sound in the word “the,” as in “I went to the store.”

…

Concerning Vav Hahippuch

As opposed to the conjunctive vav, the vav hahippuch generally turns a past-tense verb into future tense, and a future-tense verb into past tense. Many thus believe that the hippuch, inversing, refers to the tense. But, the vav hahippuch inverses a lot more:

The accentage: In most past-tense verbs converted to future, the accent is shifted from the middle syllable, if that is its position, to the last syllable. E.g. a-HAV-ta is “you loved,” whereas w’A-hav-Ta is “you shall love”. (Most speakers of Hebrew are unaware that the past-tense second person plural verbs are accented on the last syllable: אהבתם is ahav-TEM, and not aHAV-tem, and when marked with the vav hahippuch stay accented as such.) Notable exceptions occur in verbs with yod/silent hei as the last letter of the root. E.g., w’a-SI-tha, “you shall make,” is accented on its middle syllable even though it is future tense. Once again it is verbs of this category that are the major exception; last time I pointed out that the singular masculine past-tense conjugations of these verbs do not follow the rule of athei merahiq. In the case of a future-tense verb made past, the accent is shifted from the last syllable to an earlier one. (e.g., ya-QUM becomes way-YA-qom, and yo-MAR becomes way-YO-mer).  

The syntax: Standard form would be subject-verb-object. When vav-hahippuch is utilized, the order is verb-subject-etc.. This is the usual form used throughout the Bible when describing events, and usually in chronological order. When I teach about vav hahipppuch, this is the first indication: Does the verb start the sentence or clause instead of the subject? If yes, then you most likely have vav hahippuch.

Lastly, the vocalization is changed, at least from future to past. Instead of simply being marked with a sh’wa, or whatever would have taken the sh’wa’s place based under other considerations (e.g., becoming a shuruq before labial letters), the vav hahippuch is vowelized with either a patah before the future-prefix tau, yod, or nun, or a qamatz before the future prefix alef, which cannot receive a dagesh. Thus, when you have a vav hahippuch before a first-person singular pi’el verb like avaqqesh, which starts with an alef vocalized with a hataf patah, the vav hahippuch will be marked with a qamatz. There are two practical applications with regard to the meaning: If the vav preceding such a verb was not a vav hahippuch, it would be marked with an ordinary patah and the verb is in standard future-tense form, and therefore the reader must distinguish between the two. If he does not, he should be corrected, and normally, the vocalization of the vav hahippuch actually matters.  However, the vocalization of the vav hahibbur, which can prefix all parts of speech, is not critical, i.e., whether one pronounces it with a sh’wa, or any vowel, or as a shuruq, does not affect the meaning and intent. Because vav hahippuch only prefixes verbs, any time a vav prefixes anything but a verb, I would not correct the reader if he pronounces it with the wrong vowel. For example, if one were to read וגדולה as vig-do-LA  instead of ug-do-LA, or ושמעון as wa-shim-’ON instead of w’shim-’ON.

As far as I can tell, classical Aramaic has no vav hahippuch, and perhaps others can weigh in on whether such a form exists in other semitic languages.  

Once one is familiar with the style of the vav hahippuch, he will notice that certain verses (or parts of verses) actually follow standard syntax: The subject will precede the verb, which will be in the correct tense. In such cases, the subject may be preceded by a vav hahibbur, and the overall indication will be that the information expressed is that which had happened previously. I.e., such a style of syntax indicates the past perfect. Some examples:

Genesis 4:1: והאדם ידע את חוה אשתו, “The man had known his wife, Eve.” Many scholars have pointed out that this indicates that Eve had at least conceived her first children before Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, with the Midrash even describing Cain’s birth the day Adam and Eve were created.

Genesis 14:1: עָשׂוּ מִלְחָמָה אֶת-בֶּרַע מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם, “They had made war against Bera, King of Sodom, etc.” As is evident from the subsequent verses, the initial war preceded the events of the running narrative by some fourteen years.

Genesis 18:17: וַה׳ אָמָר הַמְכַסֶּה אֲנִי מֵאַבְרָהָם אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי עֹשֶׂה “And the Lord had said, would I conceal from Abraham that which I am doing?” That is, God had already decided, so to speak, that He would inform Abraham of the judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah. 

If you read II Samuel 2, it seems that Abner crowned Ishbosheth in the aftermath of Saul’s death, shortly before or right around the time David was crowned king of Judah, and considering that the verse describes how Ishbosheth’s kingdom gradually expanded as more tribes accepted him, it seems to me that it took David five and a half years after Ishbosheth’s death to then be accepted as king over all of Israel, and in support of the Ttosafists’ classical position against that of  Rashi’s (Sanhedrin 20a) , it took some time before Ishboshesh was accepted  by all of the tribes, but the five years of no kingdom seem to have been after his death, as the tribes came around to accepting David as king.  

A Year in Berlin:
The Beginning of Hebrew Printing in Berlin in c. 1699
by Marvin J. Heller

The publishing of Hebrew books in Berlin is a relatively late phenomenon. The article provides a background to early Hebrew printing and then discusses the first Hebrew press in Berlin. It addresses Jewish history in Berlin, explaining why Hebrew printing began there at the end of the seventeenth century, almost two hundred and fifty years after it began elsewhere. Several unique works, rather than the usual communal prayer books and bibles, are described in some detail in the article.

Hebrew printing has a rich and lengthy history. The first Hebrew books were printed close to the mid-fifteenth century, in 1469 and 1472, approximately a decade and a half after Johann Gutenberg printed the first Bible in c. 1455 in Mainz, Germany. Those first Hebrew books, printed in Rome by Obadiah, Menasheh, and Benjamin of Rome, and several who followed, are undated. Their name appears in the colophon of R. Moses ben Nahman’s (Nahmanides, Ramban, 1194–1270) Torah commentary[1] The first dated Hebrew book was Abraham ben Garton ben Isaac’s edition of Rashi’s Torah commentary (Reggio di Calabria, 1475, completed 10 Adar, 5235 = Friday, February 17, 1475). It was followed soon after by Jacob ben Asher’s Arba’ah Turim, printed in Piove di Sacco, Padua province on 28 Tammuz, 5235 (July 3, 1475).[2]

A conservative listing of Hebrew books that can be said with certainty to have been printed prior to 1500 are, according to A. K. Offenberg, 139 titles, which he writes “may yet be too high.”I[3] In an index Offenberg records close to twenty locations in which Hebrew incunabula were printed, in Italy, Spain, and a 1493 Constantinople edition of the Arba’ah Turim.[4] Among the more notable locations in which Hebrew printing occurred in the incunabular period are Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara in Italy, and Guadalajara in Spain.

In contrast to the small number of incunabular imprints, approximately 2,700 titles were printed in the following century, that is, from 1500-1599. To be more precise, 2,672 Hebrew titles (or books with Hebrew letters) were printed, according to Yeshayahu Vinograd, in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the number of Hebrew books published increased to 3,526 entries.[5] The primary centers of Hebrew printing in those centuries were, respectively, Venice and Amsterdam. Parenthetically, the latter’s imprints were sufficiently popular that publishers in other locations frequently wrote with a small font “printed with” and in a large font “Amsterdam,” and again in a small font “letters.” Below, again in a small font, the actual place of printing.[6]

That Hebrew printing began so much later in Berlin than in other centers of printing might seem unlikely, given the subsequent importance of that city’s Jewish community and press. However, it is not surprising in light of the early history of Berlin Jewry, which was difficult, indeed stormy. Expelled in the middle-ages, during the Black Death, Jews were allowed to return in 1354, but not permitted a synagogue. There is no further mention of Jews until the sixteenth century. Subsequently, Jews were expelled and readmitted several times. Gotthard Deutsch and A. Freimann write that “The real history of the Jewish community of Berlin does not begin until the year 1671.” At that time, Jews expelled from Vienna were admitted to Berlin. On Jan. 3, 1676, a decree was issued which stated “die Juden in Berlin in ihren Freyheiten und Privilegien nicht zu turbiren, noch zu kränken, sondern sie vielmehr dabey gebürend zu schützen” (not to disturb or worry the Jews of Berlin in their grants and privileges, but to protect them properly).”[7]

Hebrew printing in Berlin began soon after, that is, in the last decade of the seventeenth century. According to the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Hebrew printing in Berlin, “which commenced later than in other German cities,” began when Daniel Ernst Jablonski published a Hebrew Bible in 1699.[8] Yeshayahu Vinograd, in the Thesaurus of the Hebrew Book, records eleven works printed from 1690 through 1699, eight in the latter date. He begins with a 1690 quarto format (4⁰) Bible attributed to a Knebell, who Moritz Steinschneider describes in his entry for the 1699 Bible as “Opera et impensis Jo. Henri Knebel . . .” (the works and expenses of Jo. Henri Knebel),” the printer given as Jablonski.

The 1690 Bible entry is followed by two 1698 octavo editions (8⁰: 90 pp., no pagination given for the second edition) of Psalms both in the Bodleian library and then the 1699 imprints.[9] Steinschneider dates the first Psalms as “3–9 Tischri 458 (18-24, Sept. 1697), the second as [ca. 1697-9]. These are followed by an edition of Bereishit (Genesis).[10] Also printed at this time was a siddur (prayer book) and another edition of Psalms. All of these works, as well as the following titles, were printed at the Jablonski press.

Daniel Ernst Jablonski’s (1660-1741) involvement with Hebrew printing is surprising given his background and career. He was the son of Peter Figulus, a minister of Unity of the Brethren (Unitas fratrum) and grandson of Johann Amos Comenius, the last bishop of the Unity. Jablonski served as a preacher at Magdeburg in 1683, and from 1686 to 1691 as head of the Brethren College at Polish Leszno (Lissa), a position filled by his grandfather. In 1691, Jablonski was appointed court preacher at Königsberg by the elector of Brandenburg. In 1693, he was transferred to Berlin as court preacher, and in 1699 he was consecrated a bishop of the Unity of the Brethren, where he worked to bring about a union between the followers of Luther and Calvin. In 1700, Jablonski became a member of the Academy of Sciences (Brandenburgische Societät der Wissenschaften), serving between 1710 and 1731 as director of Philology and Oriental Studies and, from 1733 and 1741, as president of the Academy.[11] He was also the author of several books on Christian theology and philosophy.

In Berlin, Jablonski established a Hebrew printing press. Vinograd very conservatively crediting him with having printed as many as twenty titles. However, a significant multiple of that number of titles were printed in Berlin at that time with no printer’s name assigned to them in the Thesaurus, or, in some instances, attributed to an editor at the press.[12] Concerning Jablonski’s heading a Jewish press in Berlin, it may not seem as improbable as it appears. Jews could not initially obtain licenses to own a printing-press, so that of necessity, the owner had to be a non-Jew, although the managers and workers were usually Jewish. Jablonski employed a number of Jewish workers at his press. The most important was Judah Loeb ben David Neumark (d. 4 Nissan = April 9, 1723) from Hanau, author of Shoresh Yehudah (Frankfort on the Main, 1692), the manager of and an editor at the Jablonski printing-house.[13]

Another of Jablonski’s achievements relates to the printing of the Talmud. He was instrumental in securing approval for Michael Gottschalk, the Frankfurt an der Oder printer, and Johann Christoph Beckman, professor of theology at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder, to publish the Frankfurt an der Oder Talmud (1697-99). Jablonski’s opinion was requested by Friedreich III, Elector of Brandenburg, after Gottschalk and Beckman sought permission to print the Talmud. Jablonski’s measured response was, overall, positive; he found the Talmud to be, with reservations, a work of value, and recommended that Friedreich approve the request to republish that work. Jablonski subsequently printed the first Frankfurt on the Oder/Berlin Talmud together with Gottschalk (1715-22).

We turn now to the more distinct books published at the Jablonski press, that are non-biblical nor prayer books, although the press issued both. Our first title is Azmot Yosef, novellae on tractate Kiddushin by R. Joseph ben Isaac ibn Ezra (c. 1560–1620), attributed in bibliographies to Neimark, as it is his name that appears on the title-page. Perchance, he managed the press and Jablonski was the proforma owner.

Azmot Yosef – Azmot Yosef was published in folio format (2⁰: 125 ff.) in the year “[Show me a sign of] Your favorאות לטובה ( 459 = 1699) that my enemies may see and be frustrated because you. O Lord, have given me aid and comfort (Psalms 86:17). R. Joseph ben Isaac ibn Ezra (c. 1560–1620) was a scion of the renowned Ibn Ezra family of Spain. Publication of Azmot Yosef is attributed by Vinograd to L. Neimark. Joseph ben Isaac Ibn Ezra was a student of 1R. Samuel de Medina (Maharashdam, 1506-89) and of R. Aaron ben Solomon ben Hasson (16th Cent.). Ibn Ezra subsequently headed the yeshivah of Don David ben Yahya, where he had several eminent students, among them R. Shabbetai Jonah. He later left Salonika for Constantinople, and afterwards served as rabbi in Larissa and Sofia.[14]

The first paragraph of the title-page, a reprint of the first edition, states that it is an explanation of the rules by which the Torah is explicated, and that it is:

a commentary in iyyun and pilpul (deliberation and casuistry) of tractate Kiddushin, from the beginning until the end, on the Talmud, Rashi, Tosafot, Rif, Rambam, Rosh, his son the Ba’al ha-Turim, and others on the laws of kiddushin (betrothal). After the iyyun and pilpul I conclude with the halakhah . . . .

Also, for the benefit of the students [I explain] the rules of [kal ve-homer] (a fortiori inference), dayyo (sufficiency), and other rules: I also delve deeply into the passages of parah ve-rahel in Kol ha-basar and at the end of Kaitzad ha-regel.

The second paragraph, somewhat lengthy, informs that Azmot Yosef was printed previously in Salonica in 1601, further expounds it virtues, and informs that it is being printed for the second time in the praiseworthy city of Berlin and extols Friedreich III.

Azmot Yosef

Courtesy of the Library of Agudas Chassidei Chabad Ohel Yosef Yitzhak

In addition to the peshat (clear meaning of the text) on Kiddushin, Azmot Yosef also addresses Talmudic methodology. Ibn Ezra was also the author of Rosh Yosef, novellae on the Tur, Ḥoshen Mishpat, of which the part on taxes and associated communal issues was published as Massa Melekh (Salonica (1601). Some of his responsa were published in the responsa of R. Shabbetai Jonah, R. Solomon ha-Kohen, and R. Samuel Hayyun.

Azmot Yosef is an important work on Kiddushin and has been reprinted several times. Initially printed in Salonika (1601), as noted above, at the press of Abraham and Joseph BathSheba, this is the second edition; four additional printings of Azmot Yosef are recorded in the Bet Eked Sepharim, the most recent a Warsaw edition (1883).[15]

Gefen Yehidit – Our next work, Gefen Yehidit is a multi-part work, primarily on ethics, by R. Ze’ev Wolf ben Judah Leib of Rosienie. It was published in a small sextodecimo format (16⁰: 59 ff.)

Gefen Yehidit

Courtesy of the National Library of Israel

The title page of Gefen Yehidit has a brief text that states that it is:

A book, small in size but of great quality. It speaks of matters of ethics and reverence in a clear language . . . The author should have merit. He is one of the maskilim (a person of understanding) and in this small book he demonstrates his expertise and sharpness. . .

Included is Sefer Luah ha-Hayyim which speaks of remedies in order that a person should be healthy and strong in order to serve his God continuously.

The title page is dated “a sign for good אות לטובה (459 = 1669)” (Psalms 86:17). Next is the introduction (1b-2a) of R. Judah Leib Hanau,[16] who brought the book to press. In his introduction, Ze’ev Wolf begins with a quote from Midrash Ruth in which Rav Ashi says that this Megillah is not primarily wisdom nor Torah, but to learn from it gemillut hasadim (acts of kindness), so too the work that he is writing. He informs that he has had a difficult life, and frequently quotes from the Zohar.

The text, in a single column in rabbinic letters, is comprised of Gefen Yehidit, a work of mussar (ethics); an accounting (39a-40b), beginning with and based on the memorial prayer El Malei Rahamim, of what befell the Jews of Podhajce (Podgaitsy), Ukraine in 1677 during a Tartar incursion and massacre of the Jews; followed by a dirge (40b-41a); Zemer le-Purim (42a-46b), verse for that festival in both Hebrew and Yiddish, translated word for word into the latter language because that is the language of Ashkenazim; and concluding with Luah ha-Hayyim (47a-59b), a popular medical work.

Gefen Yehidit has been reprinted several times, beginning with a Hanau (1717) edition.

Luah ha-Hayyim – Although included in Gefen Yehidit Luah ha-Hayyim is an independent work. In contrast to the other additional parts of the former title, Luah ha-Hayyim has its own title-page. Written by R. Hayyim ben Benjamin Ze’ev Bochner,[17] (for our ealier discussion regarding Bochner on the SEfohere), a prolific writer, whose works include Orḥot Ḥayyim, a commentary on R. Isaac Tyrnau’s Minhagim (1669, Prague), Mayim Ḥayyim, homilies and comments on Bible and Talmud, and Toẓeot Ḥayyim on grammar. This edition of Luah ha-Hayyim is based on earlier edition printed by Johann Christoph Wagenseil (Altdorf, 1687), also part of a larger work.

Luah ha-Hayyim

Courtesy of the National Library of Israel

The title-page states that it is:

Luah ha-Hayyim

“It will be a cure for your body [a tonic for your bones] (Psalms 3:8) etc.” “They are life to him who finds them; healing for his whole body (Psalms 4:22):

Abbreviated rules of conduct for a person in the matter of healing to maintain a healthy body and it is a primary principle in the service of the Lord. In order to benefit the public, we have printed anew R. Hayyim ben Benjamin Ze’ev Bochner of Cracow’s work. It received in the past approbations from leading medical authorities for all these words are true and correct to those who are knowledgeable and meritable.

This is followed by approbations of two doctors from Lublin. An example of the text (51a-52b) is:

a clear white wine , sweet and aromatic, is healthy and caring. If one drinks a measure of wine, it is a balm for the body, for it increases bodily heat and strengthens as a lion. It gladdens the heart and hones the mind. It also helps in the digestion of food. The measure of a reviis as the amount to drink is logical.[18] More than this measure one should cease and desist. However, if one is accustomed to become inebriated from it and drinks more then enough than the head is ill and the heart is pained. One whose nature is warm and thirsts to drink should mix a little water every time. Honey that is clear and of average sweetness and strength is somewhat comparable to the nature of wine in all respects. . . .

A popular work the Thesaurus of the Hebrew Book records twelve editions of Luah ha-Hayyim, but again these are generally not independent publications.[19]

Keter Torah – Keter Kehunah – our final publication, is a Kabbalistic work on Psalms and liturgy by R. Joseph ben Moses (Ashkenazi), darshan of Przemyslany (17th cent.) Printed in quarto format (4⁰: 91, 62-66, [1]; 76 ff.) Keter Torah and Keter Kehunah are, respectively, the second and third parts of Keter Yosef, the first part of which was printed in 1700.[20] Joseph ben Moses, who was a darshan (preacher), served as rabbi and dayyan in Przemyslany.

Each part was printed separately and has its own title page, albeit with the same frame but somewhat varying text. The pillared frame has cherubim at the top and at the bottom of the frame an eagle with a shield, and holding a sword in one talon and a scepter in the other. In its beak is a banner with the date of the respective volume.[21]

The title page of Keter Torah states that it is the second part of Keter Yosef,

A holy workbook, old replete with new, a desirable commentary, where is its like? On Psalms by the author of Zafenat Pa’ne’ah and Haluka de-Rabbanan. He is the great darshan, grandson of the gaon R. Abraham Ashkenazi, descended from Rashi, son-in-law of R. Abraham av bet din in Luntshits, and a branch and descendant of R. Saul Wahl.

It is dated “Now Israel loved Joseph אהב את יוסף וישראל (459 = 1699)” (Genesis 37:3). Keter Torah has an introduction from the author followed by the text, comprised of Psalms in the middle of the page in square vocalized letters with Joseph’s expansive commentary, Keter Yosef, on the sides in rabbinic letters. The text is divided by the days of the week and has the heading Keter Yosef. The title page of Keter Kehunah states that it is part three of Keter Yosef and that

It is the threefold part that “is not quickly broken” (cf. Ecclesiastes 4:12). In it are found at intervals some sharp novellae on Tosafot and gemara. I have entitled it Keter Torah on the order of the avodah (divine service) for the entire year. It is by the great darshan . . .

Keter Kehunah
Courtesy of Hebrewbooks.org

Keter Kehunah is dated “This is the Torah of the burnt offering זאת תורת העולה (459 = 1699)” (Leviticus 6:2). Here, too, the text is comprised of the liturgy of the daily ma’amadot (division of prayers) in the center of the page in square vocalized letters, the commentary Keter Yosef on the sides in rabbinic letters, and the heading Keter Yosef. After the daily ma’amadot are bakashot for the day and bakashot in the manner of Kabbalah. The daily ma’amadot are followed by kabbalistic prayers for special occasions such as selihot for Mondays and Thursdays, fast days, Rosh Hodesh, Shabbat with special Torah readings, Shabbat Teshuvah, Hanukkah, Purim, brit milah, kinnot for Tishah be-Av, and for dreams. There is also a prayer for someone incarcerated from R. Leone (Judah Aryeh) Modena.

This is the sole edition of any of the parts of Keter Yosef. Joseph was also the author of a commentary included in Haggadah Haluka de-Rabbanan (Amsterdam, 1695), a commentary on the Passover Haggadah; Ketonet Passim (Lublin, 1691), discourses on festivals and the Haggadah; and Zafenat Pa’ne’ah he-Hadash (Frankfurt am Oder, 1693-94, above) on diverse subjects.

In conclusion, we have described individual publications that are not part of the customary frequently printed works comprising traditional and necessary parts of Jewish literature, that is, biblical and liturgical books, although, as noted above, such works were also published by the Jablonski press. The subject matter of these other varied books addressed here encompasses Talmudic novellae, ethics, medical recommendations, and a Kabbalistic work.

What is particularly noteworthy is, given the late start of Hebrew publishing in Berlin, that it rapidly became a center of Hebrew printing. The Thesaurus records 457 titles issued by the Berlin press in the following century (1700-1799), a remarkable growth for a new press that had hardly published any books in the previous century and for a community that was initially young and relatively small compared to other Jewish communities. Despite the small number of works published in that early period, at the end of the seventeenth century, the books published not only addressed communal needs, but also included a variety of valuable works expressing the varied intellectual needs and interests of the community. It quickly grew from a small but press that had from its beginning began by serving its community with needed and valuable varied works to a press of significance.

A Gift for Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulay: On R. Yaakov Shimshon Senigallia, author of the Machshirei Pischa haggada, and his relationship with Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulay,‘the Chida’.

Moshe Maimon, Jackson NJ

Every antique sefer collector has his specialty. Some collect first prints, some collect classic editions and some collect the prints from a specific European press. The genres vary as well, with some focusing more on Kabbalah while others focus more on polemical literature. Yet, every collector will tell you, that each sefer has a story, and when you examine the individual characteristics of the sefer, the personalities involved with the sefer – whether it be the author or previous owner or the like – verily come alive and step off the pages to tell you their story.

One such cherished possession in the collection of a friend of mine, is the 1788 edition of the classic haggada, Pesach Me’uvin, by R. Chaim Benveniste, chief rabbi of Izmir in the tumultuous era of Sabbatean messianism and its after wake, and author of the important and voluminous halachic compendium, Kneset HaGedolah which collects and analyzes the considerable halachic literary output of the preceding centuries.

Benveniste’s haggada Pesach Me’uvin, first published in Venice 1692, is likewise an important compendium of halachic rulings pertaining to Passover and the seder night, and is widely quoted in the standard halachic sources. It has since been printed many times, up to the most recent edition (Lakewood 1997) in which the manuscript glosses of R. Yaakov Emden were included. A unique feature of the first publication is that it was printed simultaneously in two editions – one containing the Sephardic rite and one containing the Ashkenazic rite.

The 1788 edition is the second edition of this haggada and it was published in Livorno (Leghorn) by a young and promising scholar from an aristocratic Italian family, R. Yaakov Shimson Shabetai Senigallia of Ancona. Along with the Pesach Me’uvin, this edition included the original work of the publisher, R. Senigallia, called Machshirei Pischa, which continued the work of R. Benveniste concerning the laws of kashering kitchen utensils for Passover. 

This would prove to be the first of many scholarly contributions by R. Senigallia, and by the time of his death in 1840 he had built up a reputation as a great scholar, as well as a pious and saintly individual, with many important publications to his credit.[1] This work too would stand the test of time, and a hundred years later, in 1889, when the Netziv of Volozhin had his own commentary on the haggada, Imrei Shefer, published in Warsaw, he had it printed together with the Pesach Me’uvin and Machshirei Pischa.

At some point during the Chida’s tenure in Livorno, R. Senigallia became personally acquainted with him,[2] and the two would maintain a friendly correspondence throughout the years. R. Senigallia would refer frequently in his writings to the Chida’s own works, always with great honorifics, and after the passing of the latter, R. Senigallia was wont to chastise a fellow rabbinic scholar when he felt not enough deference had been shown in arguing with Chida’s halachic rulings.[3]

Before presenting the Chida’s copy of R. Senigallia’s haggada, a brief summary of the surviving record of their correspondence, preserved in the Chida’s letters published by Dr. C. Rosenberg,[4] is in order. Only one actual letter to R. Senigallia from the Chida has survived (#7 p. 11), a critical edition of which is appended at the end of this article, but in his other letters the Chida often makes mention of R. Senigallia, from which we can reconstruct a partial record of their correspondence and from which we can gage the nature of the close relationship they shared. 

The earliest mention of R. Senigallia is in a letter (#3 p. 7) the Chida wrote in the summer of 1787 to his erstwhile pupil and confidante, R. Yoel Camis of the Ancona Beth Din, in which he shares that he had received requests from R. Senigallia and R. Elia Nahamo, they too of Ancona, to give his haskama on the forthcoming publication of R. Senigallia’s aforementioned haggada. The Chida writes that he is unable to comply as he has already made a firm decision not to grant any haskama, and he has already had occasion to turn down many persistent entreaties from close acquaintances on account of this decision.[5 ] Concurrently, the Chida requests of R. Camis to make peaceful overtures towards the aforementioned rabbis and beg them to excuse him.

The mention of R. Senigallia in this letter is not accompanied by the terms of endearment we find in later references to him in the Chida’s letters, and perhaps we may surmise from this that they had not yet developed the close relationship they would later share. This assumption is bolstered by the fact that R. Senigallia apparently did not feel he could rely on the merit of his own relationship in approaching the Chida, and therefore turned to R. Nahamo, whose own haskama graces the sefer, for help in requesting the Chida’s haskama.[6]

Aside for the one letter in the collection addressed to R. Senigallia, the remaining references to R. Senigallia are found in the Chida’s letters to his son, R. Raphael Yeshaya Azulay, who had assumed the position of Chief Rabbi of Ancona in the summer of 1788. The Chida played an integral role in the negotiations with communal leaders to have his son elected to this position,[7] and he remained very appreciative of the efforts of the Anconians who had helped with this appointment.[8] It is difficult to ascertain if R. Senigallia had himself assisted in this matter, but the fact remains that from this point forward, he is mentioned frequently in the letters from the Chida to his son,[9] and we may rightly surmise that he had quickly become a close member of the inner circle of the new rabbi of Ancona.

Almost all of the references to R. Senigallia are in the context of the Chida’s request that his son extend warm greetings to R. Senigallia in his name, and the Chida often adds that he prays for R. Senigallia constantly. The Chida also says as much himself in his letter to R. Senigallia, where he also makes mention of his learning and praying for a few other philanthropists in Ancona as well. Likely this is indicative of the gratitude the Chida felt towards these individuals for the financial support they may have extended to the Chida,[10] and this is why the Chida wanted them to know that he was repaying his debt of gratitude.

Besides for learning and praying for the merit of his benefactors, the Chida would also honor them with his letters, and his holiday greetings to R. Senigallia in the letter to him preserved in this collection (a critically edited version of which is appended below) would seem to fit that bill perfectly.[11] Yet, the terms of endearment with which the Chida consistently refers to R. Senigallia, such as ידידינו אהובינו (our very dear beloved) and מאור עינינו (the light of our eyes), indicate clearly the genuine affection he felt for the latter. In one letter (#22 p. 35) he calls him ידידינו חמודינו נשמת רוח חיים (our very dear cherished breath of life), in which חיים meaning life, is a double entendre, also being the Chida’s first name – indicative of how important R. Senigallia was to him.

The letters also discuss other interactions the Chida had with R. Senigallia, such as the gifting to him of the Chida’s works Sha’ar Yosef (#24 p. 39) and Shem HaGedolim (#32 p. 49), or the distribution through him of other sefarim (#26 p. 43; #51 p. 67). We learn from these letters of instances (#10 p. 18; #11 p. 21) where R. Senigallia had turned to the Chida for his assistance in communal affairs, and in one case (#36 p. 53), the Chida asks his son to reply in his name regarding a request made of him by R. Senigallia for a segula needed for an acquaintance who had taken ill.[12]

All in all, this sampling serves well in painting a picture of a cordial relationship that blossomed with time and eventually became a deep and abiding friendship. At one point, their correspondence had reached a point where the Chida would become greatly distressed when too much time had elapsed without a letter from R. Senigallia (#25 p. 42), and by 1793, five years after R. Senigallia had published his Machshirei Pischa, a scant two weeks without hearing from him would give the Chida pause (#34 p. 52).

We are now in position to better appreciate the Chida’s inscription in the copy of this haggada gifted to him by R. Senigallia. We don’t know for certain when the haggada was given, but knowing of R. Senigallia’s interest in having the Chida’s recommendation on his work, it is likely that it was gifted shortly after it was published. The Chida’s apparent delight in the gift is evident in his inscription:

 מתנה מנצב על הכושרים מכשירי פסחא ששי”ם ושמחים יצ”ו להצעיר חיד”א ס”ט

Loosely rendered, it reads thus (and we emphasize “loosely”, as the Chida’s melitza is not given to literal translation): “A present from the one who stands over and guides those who are kashering and readying the preparations for Pesach joyously and happily to the humble Chida”. This clever inscription incorporates the title of the sefer Machshirei Pischa (“preparations for Pesach”), the nature of the sefer (“stands over and guides those kashering”) and even the name of the author whose initials make up the word ששים (“joyously”).[13]

Evidence of the Chida’s having studied the sefer comes from his gloss on the last page of the Machshirei Pischa section where R. Senigallia references the discussion of the Safed practice for kashering baking utensils. R. Senigallia quotes the sefer Eshel Avraham (Orach Chaim 453)14 who in turn quotes the respona of R. Yosef David of Salonika, Shu”t Bet David (Salonika 1740), who discusses this practice. R. Senigallia further cites the responsa of R. Moshe Amarilio, Shu”t Dvar Moshe (#30) who he says also discusses this particular practice. 

The Chida’s sharp eye, tremendous bekiut and keen bibliographical sense were on full display in his comment on this:

הוא טעה והלך אחר טעותו וברור כי במקום בי”ד שכתוב באשל אברהם צ”ל דבר משה והסי’ מוכיחים ופשוט והכותב שראה דבר משה לא הרגיש ואין להאריך

The Chida was quick to realize that by citing Shu”t Dvar Moshe as an additional source to the Bet David cited in Eshel Avraham, R. Senigallia was unwittingly duped by a typographical error in the Eshel Avraham. When the Eshel Avraham originally cited the Bet David, it was a mistake (as evidenced by the inaccurate citation), and in fact should read Dvar Moshe, which, it turns out, is the only source to discuss this practice.

I imagine that over the course of their long and fruitful correspondence, the Chida must have had occasion to bring this correction to the attention of R. Senigallia, and I imagine R. Senigallia must have been just as overjoyed – ששי”ם – with the knowledge of the Chida’s delight in his gift and his interest in the sefer, as we have been to learn all about the lives and emotions of these two great individuals as they come to life and step right off the pages of this cherished haggada.

*****

[1] See the entry for R. Senigallia in R. Mordechai Shmuel Girondi’s Toldot Gedolei Yisrael (Trieste 1853, p. 158). It should be noted that the list of publications there is scant compared with the fuller listing in Dr. C. Rosenberg’s Igrot M’Harav Chida (Budapest 1927, pp. 11-12). It should be further noted that some of the titles listed in R. Girondi’s work as manuscripts, such as Yaakov L’chok and Shomer Shabbat, had actually been published earlier together with other works of R. Senigallia. For a complete bibliography of his works, in print and in manuscript, see the entry for R. Senigallia in Asher Salah’s Le Republique Des Lettres, Brill 2001, p. 617.
[2] One meeting is recorded by R. Senigallia in his responsa, Meged Shamayim, Livorno 1844, p. 22a, in which R. Senigallia remembers debating the Chida with regards to a problematic text in Shu”t Rashbash. This meeting is said to have take place twenty years before the writing of this responsum, though the responsum is undated and all we know is that it was written after the Chida’s passing in 1806. Presumably, R. Senigallia was in Livorno for the 1788 printing of Machshirei Pischa, and perhaps that is when he met with the Chida, though there is no way to know for certain. R. Avraham Tikotzky writes in his preface to the Jerusalem 1986 edition of R. Senigallia’s Matan B’seter – Niddah (p. 10) that the Chida never met with R. Senigallia in person save for the one time when the Chida saw R. Senegallia as a youth (כשהחיד”א ראה את רבינו בעודו בחור). No source is given for this contention, and this is hardly evident from the aforementioned source in Meged Shamayim.

Despite the more than 200 miles separating Ancona on Italy’s east coast and Livorno on her west coast, it is likely that over the course of the Chida’s twenty six or so years in Livorno the two had more than one occasion to meet up, either in Livorno or Ancona. This is all the more likely when we consider that the Chida’s eldest son served as Chief Rabbi in Ancona from 1788 and on, and on at least one occasion, in the summer of 1791, the Chida did make the journey to Ancona to visit with him (See letter 22 on p. 34 and Dr. Rosenberg’s note there, see also p. 12 fn. 3 where he surmises the Chida’s wife, whose warm regards for R. Senigallia’s wife are expressed in the Chida’s letter to him, owed her acquaintance with Mrs. Senigallia to this visit).
[3] See Meir Benayahu’s biography: Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulay (Jerusalem, 1959 pp. 122-123, the reference in Asher Salah’s aforementioned bibliography to pp. 112-113 in this book should be corrected).
[4] Hatzofeh L’Chochmat Yisrael, Vol. 11 (Budapest 1927, pp. 241-309). This collection has likewise been printed in a separate pamphlet, also in Budapest 1927 (available here), and the references to this work in the present article follow the pagination in this pamphlet.
[5] The Chida emphasizes this point with the following melitzah (wordplay): ואין לדרוש בקל וחומר כי אם בגזרה שוה. This phrase which is a spinoff of the Talmudic phrase found in Pesachim (66a) and elsewhere (דאין אדם דן גזירה שוה מעצמו אלא קל וחומר) has been explained by Dr. Rosenberg in a footnote to mean that Chida’s refusal to grant haskamot was on account of his humility; he did not want to appear important (חמור) at the expense of others (קל), but rather wished to be viewed as an equal (שוה).

Whether this is indeed the Chida’s rationale for withholding his haskamot is debatable (and Benayahu in his biography (pp. 96-97) has made the convincing case that there must have been other factors as well), but it is clear that Dr. Rosenberg, who in any event had little appreciation for the melitzah of the Chida (as per his own comments in the introduction to his edition of Igrot), missed the innuendo in this melitzah as well. In this context, it is clear that what the Chida meant to say was that he does not want to be strict (חמור) with some requests for haskamot and lenient with others (קל), but rather must apply his decision (גזרה) to everyone equally (שוה).
[6] Benayahu writes in his biography (p. 97) that R. Senigallia had turned to R. Camis for help in obtaining the haskama, but this is a mistake and should say R. Nahamo in place of R. Camis, as is evident from the above quoted letter. R. Tikotzky, who seems unaware of Dr. Rosenberg’s edition of Igrot, shows his hand when he writes in his preface to the Jerusalem 1986 edition of R. Senigallia’s Matan B’seter – Niddah (p. 10): כשעמד רבינו להדפיס בשנת תקמ”ז את הספר “פסח מעובין” עם הוספותיו בשם “מכשירי פסחא” הכולל דיני ליבון והגעלה, ביקש מחברו ר’ יואל חמיץ מאנקוה (צ”ל אנקונה) כי ישפיע על החיד”א שיתן הסכמה לספר.
[7] See the documents detailed by Benayahu in his biography from p. 504 and on. Some important documents from this episode are reproduced, transcribed and translated in R. Dessler’s Shnot Dor V’dor vol. 2 (Jerusalem 2004, pp. 71-98).
[8] Cf. Dr. Rosenberg’s comments on p. 18 fn. 5.
[9] He is mentioned in 15 out of the 47 letters the Chida wrote to his son in this collection (they are: #10,11,22,24,25,26,32,33,34,36,37,40,45,46,51).

According to Dr. Rosenberg, the additional mention of סי’ ר’ יעקב, among the addressees to whom the Chida mailed letters from Firenze (listed in a 1791 letter to his son, #23 p. 37), is none other than our R. Senigallia, however I am inclined to doubt that on account of the fact that the Chida always refers to him by the name or initials of יעקב שבתי, and also always preceded with the honorific כמה”ח, which stands for כבוד מורנו החכם (contra Dr. Rosenberg p. 67 fn. 5). More likely, this סי’ ר’ יעקב is to be identified with סי’ יעקב who was one of the wealthy patrons of the community mentioned in letter #24 (p. 39), as the title סי’ (Signor), a respectful title for a layperson, would suggest.
[10] Among the Chida’s personal effects, we find a paper published in Benayahu’s biography (pp. 466-467) containing the Chida’s accounting of income for the year 1781, among which are listed several entries of subsidies he had received from various philanthropists. From what we can glean from the Chida’s correspondence, these subsidies most likely took the form of sponsorships for the Chida’s prolific sefarim output (cf. p. 38 fn. 2; p. 48 fn. 1 – the reference there to letter #23 should be corrected to #24; see also #34 pp. 51-52).
[11] Cf. #46 p. 63 where the Chida writes to his son informing him of the letter he had penned to R. Senigallia, along with that of another patron, and also asks him to deliver the letters and to elaborate on them on his own in order to compensate for the brevity of these letters.
[12] Interestingly, none of our letters are indicative in any way of a scholarly correspondence between the two, and I know of no basis for the claim put forth by R. Tikotzky in his preface to the Jerusalem 1986 edition of R. Senigallia’s Matan B’seter – Niddah (p. 10): בין החיד”א לרבינו נסבו בדרך כלל המכתבים מענייני הלכה ופלפול, אך אף בענייני קבלה החליפו מכתבים ביניהם, והחיד”א אף כותב לבנו, כי שלח קמיעות רבות לאנקונה מקום מושבו של רבינו (Our rabbi and the Chida generally corresponded in pipulistic and Halachic matters, however they also corresponded in kabbalistic matters, and in fact, the Chida even writes to his son of the many kemayas he had sent to Ancona where our rabbi resided). As far as I can tell, the only kernel of truth in this flight of fancy is the (one and only) kemaya the Chida sent to R. Senigallia, mentioned in his letter to him, and referenced in various letters to the son; however this kemaya was not intended for R. Senigallia at all, but to be used as an amulet for an ailing patron, and in any event says nothing about any supposed kabbalistic dealings between the two rabbis.
[13] This is so because the Chida uses מ for the last name, for מסיניגאליא. Although on the title page the last name is spelled סיניגאליא without the prefix מ (from), the name indicates that the family hailed from the city of Senigallia, and our rabbi sometimes spells it himself with the מ, such as on the title page of his Abir Yaakov (Pisa 1811).
[14] This is the work of R. Avraham Oppenheim first published in Amsterdam 1769 and printed in the margin of most editions of the Shulchan Aruch, and should not be confused with the similarly named work by R. Avraham David Wahrman of Butchatch, whose own Eshel Avraham, found in the back of contemporary editions of the Shulchan Aruch, was first printed in 1889, a hundred years after the Machshirei Pischa. I note this because there appears to be some confusion about this, and even the tremendously helpful Sefaria website has the former sefer listed under the authorship of the latter.

ADDENDUM:

העתק מכתבו של הרחיד”א לר’ יעקב שמשון סיניגאליא ע”פ צילום כת”י[15]5

ב”ה  ער”ח ניסן תקנ”ה[16]6

ידידנו ואהובינו חכם לב איש חסיד[17] כמהח“ר יעקב שמשון סיניגאליאה[18] יצ”ו נר”ו

ונתתי ש'[19] בארש[20]. מקוצר רוח ממה שעברתי אברים קודמין[21] יעברו חלוש‘ים[22] ודחקתי לכתוב 

שתי אותיות בפרו”ס הפסח[23] כפור”ס מן החיים[24] סוכת ש’ ולברך שמו הטוב ולכל אשר באהלי יעקב 

יחוגו הג הפסח לחיי“טם ט‘ ולש’ ובעושר וכבוד ושמחה רבה כי”ר 

מעיד אני עלי שמים וארץ כי ברוב הימים אני מברך שמו ושם אהוב ונחמד סי’ ש”םמ ‏ יצ”ו 

וסי’ יש”ע יצ”ו ואני לומד איזה ד”ת לשם יש”ע וכה יאמר להם ושלחתי הקמיעאה ליד יש”ע

על יד יאו”ר לי[25] הבן יקיר נר”ו. מצד נ”ב להגברת נ”ב מ’ ש”ר ולהבנים היקרים אצוה את ברכתי 

ברכת הדיוט. לגיסיו האהובים יצ”ו ש”ר. לכל שואל בש’ ש”ר. ואני תפלה הצעיר וזעיר 

מתפלל בעדו תמיד 

חיד”א ס”ט

אהובינו סי’ יש”ע יצ”ו יעלה עלי

‘הכתוב כאן כאלו לו לבת נתנת הארש וש

15. בספריית בית המדרש לרבנים מספר 5397 (ניתן להוריד צילומו כאן, והמכתב מופיע בעמ’ 18 בתדפיף). המכתב נדפס ע”פ כתה”י ע”י ח’ רוזנברג בספרו ‘אגרות מהרב חיד”א’ (בתדפיס מיוחד מתוך ‘הצופה לחכמת ישראל’ שנה יא, בודפסט תרפ”ז, עמ’ 11-12, ניתן לצפות בו כאן). העתקתו של רוזנברג לקויה בחסרות ויתרות (לרוב בלתי משמעויות) שתוקנו כאן בגוון אדום. תודתי נתונה בזה למכובדי הרב שלמה דיין נר”ו שעזר על ידי בפיענוח כתה”י.
16. באותו יום ערך מכתב לבנו (אגרות מהד’ רוזנברג עמ’ 62-63), ובין הדברים כתב לו אודות מכתבו הנוכחי להריש”ש סיניגאליא: “בדוחק אני כותב שתי שורות לסי’ ש”ם וכמהחרי”ש הי”ו נא לתתם בידם וישלח דברו להשלים ולגמור חסרי”.
17. אני משער שתואר זה, הבנוי כנראה על לשון הכתוב במשלי (יא:יז) ‘גומל נפשו איש חסד’ (וממנו בפיוט יגדל ‘גומל לאיש חסד כמפעלו’) מרמז על חסדו של הריש”ש סיניגליה שתיווך בין הרחיד”א להגבירים הנרמזים במכתב זה ושכנראה התפרנס הרחיד”א מהם באיזה שהוא אופן (מן הסתם ע”י התרמתם להדפסת ספריו), ולכן חש הרחיד”א כלפיהם יחס של גומלים, והוא מברך את שמם ולומד ומתפלל בעדם. להגביר האחד ‘ש”ם’ ערך הרחיד”א מכתב נוסף באותו יום כנזכר באגרתו בהערה הקודמת, ולהגביר השני ‘יש”ע’ שלא ערך לו מכתב בפני עצמו (אולי מפני חולשת בריאותו) הוסיף שתי שורות הנכתבות להלן בסוף המכתב (המועתקות כאן לראשונה) להודיע לו שיקרא אגרת זו הנוכחית כאילו שהיא נכתבה אליו בעצמו.
18. לא הרגיש המעתיק שנשמר הרחיד”א מלכתוב האותיות יו”ד וה”א ברצף ממדת חסידות, ולכן יש שאף שינה וכתב אל”ף במקום ה”א כמו ‘יאודה’ במקום ‘יהודה’, וכן אצל שם בנו הר”ר רפאל ישעיה נהג לפעמים לכתוב ‘ישעיא’ כנראה מצילומי הכתיב שע”ג המטעפות בתוך קובץ כתה”י, ואולם המעתיק העתיק תמיד ‘ישעיה’ באין מבין.
19. קיצור ל’שלום’ (וכזה תמצא עוד שבע פעמים להלן), וכבר בספרו ברכי יוסף (או”ח פה:ח) צידד הרחיד”א כשיטת האומרים ששלום הוא מן השמות שאינן נמחקין ואשר אין לכותבן באגרות שלומים.
20. מליצה ע”פ לשון הכתוב (ויקרא כו:ו) ‘ונתתי שלום בארץ’, ונשתמש בה הרחיד”א בעוד כמה אגרות, ור”ל הנני מקדם פניך בדיבור (ארש) של שלום.
21. מליצה ע”פ לשון חז”ל שאנו אומרים בתפלה כל יום בסדר המערכה, ובפירושו כתב ר’ חנניה חביב אזולאי בהערה לאגרות הרחיד”א מהד’ רוזנברג (עמ’ 44) ש’קודמין’ ר”ל החליים הישנים שבאיברי גופו, ואולם לדידי חזי לי שהכוונה לאברים שבחלק הקדימה שבגוף כמו האיצטומכא, שכן סבל הרחיד”א בימים אלו הרבה מחולי המעים כנזכר באגרתו מט”ו אדר בשנה זו (עמ’ 61) ע”ש. 
22. מליצה ע”פ לשון הכתוב בבמדבר (לב:ל) ‘יעברו חלוצים’. על חולשת אבריו והתרופפות מצב בריאותו בימים אלו, ראה אשר כתב הרחיד”א באגרת לבנו באותו יום  (עמ’ 63): “שם כתבתי כי הא גופא קשיא וכאבי נעכר ועתה רווח פורתא שאין הענין בחוזק כאשר היה ה’ ירפאני רפואה שלמה”. ואולם למרבה הצער תקוותיו של הרחיד”א להחלמה גמורה לא התגשמו, ראה אשר כתב אח”כ באגרת לבנו (אגרות מהד’ רוזנברג עמ’ 13): “נהייתי ונחליתי יותר מחודש וכל הפסח לא יכולתי לילך אפילו לישיבה ועד האידנא חייך הידיד לא איפרק מחולשא”.
23. חמשה עשר יום לפני הפסח נקרא פרוס הפסח בלשון המשנה (שקלים ג:א), ומליצת הרחיד”א רומזת שהוא פורס בשלומו בפרוס הפסח (שכן נכתב המכתב ער”ח ניסן כנזכר בתאריך).
24. מליצה ע”פ לשון הגמ’ בקידושין (סו:): “אמר ליה ר’ טרפון: עקיבא כל הפורש ממך כפורש מן החיים”, והכוונה כאן ש’חיים’ (שמו הפרטי של הרחיד”א) מבקש שיפרוס סוכת שלומו של הנמען.
25. מליצה שגורה בפי הרחיד”א לבנו בכורו ר’ רפאל ישעיה אב”ד אנקונה, המכילה ר”ת של שמו (י-שעיה א-זולאי ר-פאל), וכאן היא בנויה על לשון הכתוב בשמות (ב:ה): ‘על יד היאור’, וביחזקאל (כט:ג): ‘לי יאורי