I wonder who put in your head this vulgar idea that zachar is ‘the piercer’ and nekeva is ‘the punctured’?
Uri Dudotchki
There was a disagreement between the Sages as to whether the mezuza should be placed horizontally or vertically. As a compromise, it was placed on an angle.
That's interesting.
1. Thanks for the link.
2. There's a fascinating article by Jordan Penkower in which he discusses what he deems the erroneous custom of repeating the word זכר with both a tzeyrei and segol. See Penkower, Jordan. 1997. Minhag and Massorah: On the Recent Ashkenazi Custom of Double Vocalization of "Zekher Amalek" (Hebrew). In Studies in Bible and Exegesis, edited by Rimon Kasher et al, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press.
What is also interesting is how some baalei keri'ah that don't usually differentiate the segol and tsere will do so just in this verse...
>So from here he learns that Yoav learned the word zecher with two segol marks. Had he learned it correctly, withe a tzerei instead of the first segol, he wouldn't have made the mistake
I don't get it.What difference would it have made if there was a segol or a tserei?
I mean,in mishkal 'ketel'with 2 segolim it doesn't change in the construct state.
e.g.yeled,sherets,beged,etc. remain the same in the construct.(exceptions:cheder-chadar;hevel-havel;
sheger-sh'gar & a few others).
But the same is for'ketel' when the first is a tsereie.g sefer,cheker etc.it remains the same in the construct.
The ex.you gave of 'ashan'-eshen(ex.19:18),there other ex.of miskal 'katal',with 2 k'matsim,that the construct is shelo kadin:
lavan-l'ven;hadar -heder.
However,I wonder why in *eshen* & *heder* we resort to saying that their construct is yotse min hak'lal.
Why can't we say they are nouns with their own mishkal?
Ibn Ezra write ad locum:
כי שמןת משקלי השמןת משתנים
BTW,IIRC,R.Eliyah Bachur(16th c.)in his "Masoret haMasoret" quotes the above gemara as proof that the 'nikkud'was unknown to the Talmud.(let alone the neviim or even miSinai,as it was believed).For had the nikkud been known Yoav wouldn't have made this mistake.He would have seen it written zecher with tserei segol.
שבוע טוב ופורים שמח.
Liorah,
Concerning the angle of the mezuzah, here's a little tidbit of information: The disagreement was not that some sages said it should be vertical and some sages said it should be horizontal. Actually, it was that some sages said it should not be vertical and some sages said it should not be horizontal. I find the distinction between these two types of compromises interesting.
At the risk of making yet another farfetched connection between Hebrew and English, I'd like to offer the following:
"some scholars ... claim that the root זכר originally meant "to pierce".
There are two words in English that have a conceptual connection between "cut" and "remember" -- and they sound like they could be related to זכר. These words are "scar" and "score".
JFT - I've mentioned before that I'm far from being an expert in the subject of the טעמים or even nikkud in general. Perhaps in memory of Rav Breuer, I'll try to get his book on Taamei HaMikra and learn it.
In the meantime, as far as questions about the nikkud for zecher - read the article I linked to in Megadim.
I have long been intrigued by the connection between Rosh Hashana (i.e. יום הזיכרון) and the ayil - the ram which is דכר in Aramaic (presumably b/c it is the male)and which is sometimes referred to in Mishna and Gemara as Zechar. See particularly Rosh Hoshana 16a תקעו לפני בשופר של איל כדי שאזכור לכם עקידת יצחק. Clearly the Gemara means that the ram's horn will remind us of the ram of akedat yitzchak but I can't help wondering if there is some midrashic wordplay at work...
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