Ashkenazi~Sefardi Customs - Pronunciations | Rabbi Anthony Manning

thank you for coming um I hope you don't get too wet on the way home but if you do then enjoy the rain we definitely need it bezat hasem I'd like to thank our sponsors for the Academic Year 2025 the year most very kindly sponsor and Ben and if I could please ask you to turn off your phones that would be very kind okay so I promised you something which I hope is interesting this week um I put a lot of work into the source sheet this is all new material I've been looking into and it's pretty packed with footnotes and all sorts of things so we won't be able to look at every word I'd like to look at this topic in two sessions this week and next week and then I just want to announce in advance the please God I'm here next week and then for the two weeks after that I'll be away there will be Shear him I'm quite sure but I won't be here and then back at the beginning of March the uh topics the top the way I'd like to divide it as follows today I'd like to talk about some of the origins and the historical background to the different accents that we have um next week I'd like to talk about the issue of switching changing accents either because well three scenarios either because you move into a different Community or you begin to associate with a different Community has graphically let's say or because you visit a different Community let's say you're visiting a and they give you an Al to the Tor should you be saying are you sure should you be trying to sound Morey or is that just going to come out all wrong and they're going to think that you're making fun of them how does that work and what should you do or if you ask the D from theed Etc or Amud or should I say Amud uh for well how are you going to do that um and the third scenario is women who get married to men with a different halfar uh how do they change do they change can they stick with their original pronunciation that's all coming up please God next week there's some very important chuat next week will be a lower number of sources but there'll be mey chuat that we need to read so this week I'd like to start with a little bit of background and if I could make a disclaimer at the beginning please I am not a historian of linguistic development and language I am not a grammarian or a philologist and therefore I will try to be as accurate as I can be but what I say will probably be simplified because of my own simplified understanding and I'm sure almost every single thing I say today someone can write in and say well actually you know it's more complicated than that take it as r that everything I say it's more complicated than that but nevertheless I will try and give you uh as good a view as I can without getting too much in the weeds and but also covering a lot of ground it's a big S sheet and there's a lot for us to get through so the first thing is we cannot possibly know how Hebrew was originally pronounced we don't know how Abu spoke Hebrew or whether mosenu spoke Hebrew with the same accents or have a rather AR ainu did we have no they both came from completely different geographical backgrounds um and we will never find out nevertheless there are halic implications to how we pronounce words we're going to look at those towards the end of the sh when we say the Shar we have to say correctly what does that mean correctly how do I know which way to say it should I be saying it with a number of different havs just in case and if so where do I stop so I started with a a comment on the page one that there are basic basically five prevailing customs of Hebrew pronunciation in today's Jewish World obviously they fall in they they divide up further but there are basically five and when I say today's Jewish World be aware that the Samaritans have a very different pronunciation again and I brought you in the footnotes I found some fascinating material a lot of websites uh mentioned in the footnotes the Academia has a website where they have hundreds if not thousands of recordings that they made as immigrants got off the boat in the 1900s uh they stopped and they ran up to them and said to them please would you say these sukim uh for posterity I don't know if they did it as they got off the boat but they basically got original because they realized that the children and grandchildren of these immigrants would become you know much more blurred in terms of Blended in terms of their Hebrew so you can get every possible accent there Iraqi and Italian and and Ethiopian and you name it you can go and search it's a fascinating site I I've given you a reference there and you can listen to different people and they give they give you the pum that they're reading as they're reading them so you can see how they're pronouncing them but these are the basically the five there's traditional ashis let's call it where you know is we'll go to the O in a minute um then there's a traditional accent spoken by and Moroccan jury Etc then there's a traditional yemenite uh pronunciation now I've given you I don't know if youve ever spent a little bit of time in a yemenite community I I have occasionally been for Shabbat yemenite shes and it's a very very different pronunciation again if it's a traditional pronunciation I've given you some uh some indicators down here in yemenite for example they are very much with the w sound for for VAV a lot of other spity communities are but that was maybe even an original SP pronunciation uh the Kamas is very similar to an ashkanazi Kamas it's an o sound not an a sound and they differentiate strongly between the kamat and the P for example Kesh for the yemenites ises it's which with a more with an O they have a seal or an e sound which is much more like an a sound so Chev like like an a sound rather Chev is pronounced more Shava Shava rather than cheva so there's the a sound is a little bit closer to the a sound they definitely differentiate between a T and A th the T without a d is a th they have a dad without a d which we'll talk about in a minute which is more of a kind of V sound okay um they have a k which is more like a gimmel a height obviously the height is very much more aspirate Etc so if you take the words in the Yem pronunciation will sound much more like and I've given you transliterated him there that you can see for yourselves so there's yite there pronunciation more about that in a minute sometimes that feels like kind of random vowel selection when you're going through it but it's not really it has a logic to it and then of course there's the modern Israeli pronunciation and we're going to talk quite a bit about that so just consider the word David what could be easier than David well evidently it's not so easy because it's David or it's doid or it's duid or it's do uh in yemenite because don't forget the first dad has a d and the second dad does not have a D um and therefore there's a lot of uh there's a lot of variation even the the poor old the o sound like a V with a DOT over it is pronounced in so many different ways you have the north German Holland pronunciation which is the yeah as in how you have the oi in Poland or Hungary which is as in toy the you have an A sound which is additional Lithuanian pronunciation the and there aren't so many people who speak that way anymore but that was a Lithuanian sound the Kish was very particular to keep the a sound of the Lai if you'll hear his recording speaks with an a sound of T certainly Ric used that Lithuanian a when I was growing up in Leeds it was a very Lithuanian community and people all the time were calling me a galum don't be a galum all the I don't was a galum what's a galum all the time I was a galum there's anything worse than a galm this be a stick gum you know it's like even worse but there was the a sound there was the o sound in South Germany and France and England Switzerland ltia North America as in boat to withot long o there's the a sound which all these are the Israeli Safar the Tor and then there's the more Gite kind of sound which is somewhere between them like more like an earth the value the an earth and I'm sure I'm not doing that right um but there are so many different variations of course it becomes a little bit of a lonus at a certain point one of my friends told me when I lived in London and of course the has to pronounce o it's explicit in theim hash O So G Hashem gave o to his people uh another person came up with the idea that obviously the the has to be oi because think of the word go it's spelled giml or rather it can't be an oi think of the word go it's giml VAV yud why do you need a yud if an O if an was pronounced as oi then go should just a go rather should be written just giml you don't need a you so it can't be an oi so what's the response to that can't bring a proof from a on this so so it's like you know you got to come from somewhere else so there's a lot of late sonus on that as wellin the Torah tamima Torah tamima is one of the ashkanazi poin we'll see there's a few who really felt in the end of the 19 centur beginning of the 20th that the pronunciation was more proper was more accurate not just spard think that but there were many Ash and we'll see this too um although that's less less favored these days he brings an example he was particularly unhappy with the Lithuanian pronunciation that he grew up with the a pronunciation for the so he says for example which is apos we say in Lithuania is which is you know tribute to Hashem liver and goat and he said that cannot be right um confusion of and is very common so sdu can become IU which God forbid is destroy destroy Hashem with Sim and therefore there's a lot of mess uh around I brought you in the um in the footnotes as well R binyomin hamburger who wrote a numberous forum called the sh minhag Ash is very worthwhile in Hebrew and there's a few in English as well a synopsis in English he brings all sorts of photographs from different places he quotes from The vagon Who said that he actually left the traditional Lithuanian pronunciation he said that the should be he has Al Al with a com under the first Al so it's o oh so more like an o sound than an a sound and he also found the photograph of the 1937 cania gadola viaus Israel where it's written Gala g a g d a u l o so you can bring all this interesting historical uh stuff here as well I wanted to start in terms of the First Source with a with a is particularly unhappy with the ashaz we'll see that as a bit of a theme and he says here number one anyone who looks in more depth at the asazi pronunciation and they also can't decide they have so many different Etc this pronunciation of the ashm is so it's so messed up okay damaged completely changes what the words really mean he so look at the every who becomes a he and you don't know you don't know what's a who and what's a he is okay elu is El anden is and is he says How can any of this be that's surely a proof that this cannot possibly be correct when you're changing in this way I heard you know there's a POS in braus of a where says to God you don't need to look at this in sign I brought in a footnote where he says didn't he say to me it's he's my S she's my sister so when when it's all the same it all comes out you know you don't know who's the he and he is the she and he is The Who and it all comes out in a very confused way oh my goodness yes okay we'll get to that so how are we going to find some some authentic sources here let's start in t so one of the most interesting places to start is a a major debate in pronunciation which happens to sephin with the when if it's a very sad episode in Jewish history FR and manasha had a civil war daa those two brothers who are the examples normally of Brothers who can live together after all the the fighting of the generation previously never they nevertheless they also fall out look at number two from the east side of Jordan in gilad in the north of manasha he gathers again together all the an G and they fought Wars against and they smashed the people of e they complained that they had been insulting them etc etc go to that third line and are trying to flee back across the Jordan back to their lands to the west of the Jordan and they're stuck in a battle at the East which they've lost they're trying to flee and the man captured those River Crossings when the refugees the the war you know the captured or trying to escape cap from they were going over the the uh the river they say that I need to cross but they say to him okay sorry they said to him the man from G are you from epim y they say no course they had to lie otherwise they'd be killed y they'd say to him say and they said because they couldn't speak properly Rashi [Music] says what does this mean now does that mean that they had an impediment they just had a like a stammer or a stutter in this case or does it mean they had a different dialect now usually mamame means they were messing it up mamame is not a good way it's not the right way to speak so we're going to have to see in all of these situations what if that's just the way they speak in that you know your locality is that called a gim but they said c now it's interesting they didn't write it in the the T didn't write it with a sin they wrote it with a Sam okay they should have pronounced it shibolet with a shin but they pronounced it CET with a Sam why didn't they just write sin instead of Sam because sin and Sam are not meant to have the same sound they were originally there were way more Sounds by the way the phones and there are graphin um the is the um Middle Eastern Semitic languages originally had 29 different symbols for the letters but the Phoenicians made do with 22 and Hebrew follows The Phoenician alphabet so we have 22 letters but at least 24 25 26 maybe more sounds so some of the letters have to double up so we had a shin which a sh and we had a Sam which is s but then there was a another sound in between them for which there was no graphic letter which is uh like a like the Welsh I can't do it okay Double L in Welsh and that was halfway between so what did they do they wrote they said we'll write it later on much much much later on when they wrote they wrote down the the Codex the codices in the time of the uh the merarites in the 10th 11th century 19th century they said you know what we're going to write this sound as a shin with a little Sam next to it to show it's not the real shin and it's not the S of the Sam it's a in between them I can't really do it sorry I'm not R so what happened is they wrote Shin with a little tiny Sam to show you that's the kind of and that Sam migrated to the top left of the shin to become the dot that you and I know and love on the sin so now sin which was never meant to be S which was meant to be more this sound has this dot on it and and then they say well now there's a DOT on the left hand side for a sin let's put a dot on the right hand side for the shin so the the sin was first you could call it original sin if you like okay the sin the sin came first so they they pronounced it as seet now we have like they all become one and the tragic end Landing number two and they'd grab him and they'd Slaughter him 42,000 Jews fell in a in a in a brutal CI Civil War now the red says something interesting look at the re number three they try to say this word wasn't just the word sheet they had a problem with they had a problem with every sh sound they just pronounced it maybe this was caused by a climatic uh influence they just spoke differently because they lived in a different place okay Kamar and Sh Sarat and of course this is the Rak who is Spar he always always good to have a kind of dig at the ashkenazim just like the Jews of Sarat I don't know if it's meant to be Shin or sin actually whatever that letter is they can't pronounce it current raer and they pronounce it like a soft tff now what's a soft tff if you're a spardy f probably okay so he gets at jbes at the yashim that they don't pronounce their toughs their shins and their Tas properly but this mix up with shin and sin he says maybe it was a climatic maybe it was uh you know adopted because of the different places that they went that they lived Etc it's actually very interesting that they're not the only people that had a problem with this uh the the S and the shin comes up uh in other places for example the the Amon King balis okay is written Bish in uh their in non-jewish sources also don't forget Greek didn't have a sound for a sh they didn't have that sound so when the Greeks you translit ated these words in the SE and afterwards every sh for them just turned into a s it wasn't just the shet was the problem and therefore shabat becomes sabath okay becomes hosana Mia becomes Mah that's because they didn't have that Shin sound but the Reda suggests maybe that was the issue it's actually interesting he doesn't say this I just wanted to mention this gilad of course comes up we in the Torah as a linguistic barrier as a boundary linguistic boundary where when yakob and laan make their pacts inra it and Lavon builds a they build a pile of stones together what does yakob call it galed this is a mound which is a testy and what does he call what does lav call it the two words of Aramaic in the uh in the in the Torah itself and therefore we know that gilad is a place which is on the boundary of two linguistic Traditions which we know that from braus I don't know if this is a correct idea I thought of this it's actually also interesting that the the Aramaic sah sah which is uh witness testimony to be a test witness to something morphed later into the Arabic word Shahid which we think of as a mar which is like you're giving testimony adus to what the the true belief as it were and it's interesting you've got the sin and the shin there going on as well anyway uh the redak was not the only person who thought this I brought you from rovid vosi uh an asazi who lived in different lands and eventually in ER Isel he says in number four could be the he's talking to maybe UT have a better more accurate pronunciation we were wandering in so many places from one exile to the other and you weren't as wandering okay thein were very badly treated by many of the you know PR grams of Spain and the expulsion from Spain Etc but they didn't wander as many places the asaz went all around and around and around and around I mean maybe we went from Poland to Germany to France to Poland to Russia to this and we picked up stuff uh along the way and as we'll see one of the suggestions as to how the ashkanazi O came about is because of Yiddish the kind of impact you had a question right ah good so well exactly so let's let's come to that uh in in a couple of minutes the accents on the vowels Etc and just a couple of other comments before we get into the next section it's important to know that the way you pronounce words is Tash Al it always was T it's like that in English as well there are so many words in English unless you have the oral tradition you wouldn't have a clue how to pronounce these words I've given you some examples laugh l a u g h you show that to a foreigner who doesn't have police English they'll never they'll never get laugh playright with a w q love the word q quu e how on Earth are you meant to pronounce that if you don't know what you're doing um and English family names are wonderful you might not even know all of these names unless you're English but their names I've written here Chumley fhaw badet singen you there's no way in the world you'd know how to pronounce those names from the uh from the spelling Alone um I mentioned the issue with the 29 letters um but what happened is eventually when they started producing the the codices of the Torah in the N9 10th century and many of these people by the way were from a karite background as well and the if you remember the famous Aleppo codex and the Leningrad CeX and the Cairo codex they were produced in erit Israel in around the 9th 10th century and they said we want to prod produce a definitive text with all of the pronunciations written down so then they had to decide how are they going to write the vowels there were no vowels written into Hebrew in the Torah as you know and therefore when these codifiers these ma merarites came along to do that they had to decide how are we going to annotate this so I brought you here I don't want to get too bogged down in this but on pages two three and four there were basically three systems we're very familiar with one of them that's that's the Tiberian one but there were three basically there were three ways of writing the vowels I brought you at the bottom of page two there was the Palestinian vocalization in ER Israel 6th sth Century we only found out about that when we found the kyoga most of Theon they didn't know anything about that but we now know it was there it had five vowels five five signs and they wrote them above the letters not below the letters flip over to page three I've brought you here the five sounds there was an a e e o just they like English vowels okay um but they did not have a separate Pak and Kamas and they did not have a separate seol and S they only had five not seven so what happened is later when the seven vowels that we ended up adopting came to be the accepted version so the people who were used to this Palestinian vocalization they they only had five sounds they had had seven symbols and they only had five sounds and that say many of the academics is the origin of the sparad pronunciation that they use the same basic sound for the Kam and the they're both shabat and the same basic sound for the and the and the the SE it's a yeah is is not and it's the reason they did that is because they only had five sounds and they were used to five vowels and now you they were given seven so some of them up that's the first Theory and I brought you here from the kairoa a section from yahu with the Palestinian vocalization then there was the Babylonian vocalization the Babylonian vocalization was mostly in Yemen and Persia uh and they had six vowel signs and I brought you here as well uh they did differentiate between the Pak and the kamat but they didn't differentiate between um the Pak and what we now call the segull and the theory is that that's where the yemenites came from they do have different Pak and Kam sound but they don't have a different Pak and se sound and the reason for that is again they were giving six vow signs six vowel sounds with only with seven signs they had an extra one and I brought you some examples of that as well from Thea and also from yemenite sidim and the one that caught on was the Tiberian one over to page four with seven vow signs these are the signs that we know and love today the p and the SE and the and the and the Kam and K and the cuits and the sh okay these are what we do and everybody ended up using those because probably because the the the versions of the the codices that really C arm the ones prepared by the Tiberian and they use the Tiber if you go to the aleo CeX codex you'll see it's annotated with the T the system we use the Tiberian system and that they say po potentially is the origin of the ashkanazi vocalization which differentiates all of those seven sounds but it's not at all simple there many other theories as to how this works um I would just mention the dag for a second a dag is very interesting because the D that we put in the middle of a letter so there are two kinds of dages there's a dages and a d kak a dages Kal is what you are used to that makes a v vet into a b vet it makes the sound a pive sound so there are the rule is there are six letters that have this they beged which is BET gim and in modern Hebrew all that survived was bet and P F and per and C right and C okay and they dropped the others as well the ashkenazim kept another one t and saf okay there is a difference but only the yemenites kept the other two which is giml and jiml okay giml with a dages and jiml without a d and d d and the D and the sound okay and in fact only if you're a yite do you really get the following look at number five when you're saying the you have to elongate the sound because you're saying god reigns in the seven heavens and the Earth seven plus one eight because the in the Tora because has little sort of triangle little roof sitting on it which is pointing up it's it's anchored in the ground and pointing up to the heaven that's the seven heavens and the and the ground which is eight good and thead by the way if you're in ashkanazi there's no such letter as Dad it's Dallas as in the Texan town it's Dallas dad does not have a du at the end doesn't have a dad at the end of Dad it's Dad Lama so if you're ashis and you say Dad you're not getting it wrong just like that you're not getting it right rather just like there's no Alf in Asis it has to be it's not Alf okay so everyone's a bit confused about that as well but the if you say you have to elongate the and you have to have a doubt long enough that you think that God is not just above and below but in all horizontal four corners of the world and he says um we see at the end not longer than that there is to even move your head around have you ever seen anyone saying they move the head up and down side to side all around it's like up and down and left and right all four corners now you tell me how do you elongate a dad to elongate a is easy because it's got a sound you can make it as long as you like but you can't elongate a dad if you're or if you're asazi this is impossible because once it's a dirt sound so what what do people do people either elongate the a well what's that that's not an elongated dad that's just like lots of alfs in the middle or they go which is just like 16 raes at the end of the word okay that you can't do but of course if you're a yemenite and you go you can make it as long as you like not longer than it takes to swivel your head around because he said there and therefore unless you're a yemenite you don't get that Dad Hala and it makes it very challenging there is a there is a rumor that rabak kineski used to read the uh Shar three times with an asazi accent with a SPI accent and that's true because he writes those two but there's a rumor that he also added a yemenite acting towards the end of his life I heard from one of the kineski grandchildren that's nonsense it's not true he never did it um but that could have been one of the reasons why he wanted to that's a dages a dages kazak is actually very interesting you see a in the middle of unusual letters a a l a a a z what does that do that sort of doubles the letter it doubles the letter so has with a shin with a D should be read if you're reading it properly in the Torah it should sound like there's a sh the beginning there's a with a should be there should be a little if you of laning he Lanes like this you can hear it so shouldn't be read it should be [Music] read because they have a double consonance because of the dages okay that's how it's meant to be something for you to think about um and therefore it could be that the what we have today is because of those three vocalizations okay maybe but let's go on because we now have this funny hybrid called Israeli pronunciation which people get extremely um fed about uh they get very excited about it and there was a lot of uh there was a lot of uh ideology that went into this as well um how did this come about so again you know entire doctorates have been and should be written on this let's just talk about it for a minute by the late 18th century the late 1700s most of the Jewish people in the world lived in a state of what's called diglossia they basically basically spoke two different languages the ashkanazi spoke Yiddish and when they daved and when they learned Torah they spoke loesh Kesh Kesh Kesh whichever you want to do okay and therefore they lived in those two different worlds the Safar spoke lakesh when they were learning and with the Safar accent obviously when they were learning and daving and then in their everyday life they spoke some version of judeo Greek judeo Spanish l judeo Arabic Etc Zionism did not invent modern Hebrew that's a a fallacy many people have already a hundred years before Zionism secular Zionism political Zionism the hascal movement in Eastern Europe moved towards a new reality where they said we're going to have two different languages now everyone's we're going to drop yourish and there for Jew should speak German in Germany France in French in in France and English in England and they should speak a beautiful recreated modern Hebrew that they developed for the Poetry for the literature for the newspapers for for medicine as it was evolving and therefore before Zionism even came about there was already a Revival a massive Revival through the 1800s of a new language Hebrew to some degree was it was based on the ramal of course was preala but also re revitalized Hebrew he wrote poetry plays in Hebrew so the the masculin basically brought back a modern Hebrew and they more or less decided it should be saric pronounced pronounced not entirely there were some who got upset about this and they liked the ashkanazi pronunciation but most of them mascum didn't they said spari because number one they found it more aesthetically pleasing maybe even aristocratic meaning they swallowed a bit of that kind of Sardi kind of snobbism um they thought it was more accurate in part of the visen shaft movement said they thought this was a more accurate way of speaking and also they wanted to do everything they possibly could to get away from the shettle and everything the shettle meant and everything the shettle represented and the O and theashes and that that was just like you know it was all very triggering and they wanted to move well away from them now when El Yehuda and David yelen picked this up in early Zionism they basically took the maskilim version of Hebrew and they said but let's make it a one language not two languages everyone should speak Hebrew so which havra did they pick they they did not pick they picked AI type pronunciation that ashim were able to say because they were all ashkanazi married this woman but didn't and they couldn't pronounce they didn't know a from or from I should say they just pronounced it all yeah and therefore modern Israeli is a is is a mishmash it's a blend again I'm not trying to be down on Modern Hebrew but don't think the modern Hebrew is a pure language it's it's a hybrid um for example like sarit it doesn't differentiate between T and saf it doesn't differentiate between Pak and Kamas but like ashis it also doesn't differentiate between Al and and doesn't differentiate between and like ashis it pronounces that s more as a as opposed to which is much more of ay sound um it mispronounces words completely like where you have a at the beginning sorry the beginning of the word like it should be it's is just AES way of saying the word and yet all Israelis say they don't say Z they say man they've just swallowed a lot of the Yiddish stuff it introduced this strange sound that didn't exist in any of the Lang any of the pronunciations before as far as people are aware and it also played Havoc with the syllable emphasis with a strong Trend to Miller things go at the end not always so it's always David S not doid SAR but it's a little bit uh it's a little bit uh well it's very uh you know Broad in the way it does that for example it adopts certain emphases which are pure German or pure Russian think of the following think of the Russian ones gnia philon [Music] okay why don't they say Poli no one says politica they say politica good but they they changed everything else why there's no reason in the world where they couldn't have said and even if you say it's based on an English word English people don't say politica they say on the politics on the first they don't say politics so it's not based on an English word it's based on a Russian pronunciation of a western word politica so a lot of the stuff in modern Hebrew is completely not Hebrew which is fine but just as long as you're aware that aware of that um certain things are completely you know unintelligible for example if you say the meal is ready two words which are identically pronounced modern Hebrew which are completely different words one is and the second one is but nobody says it like that so just don't get too carried away with modern Hebrew um but that's how it kind of developed which is the most authentic Hab so let's spend a few minutes on this so I brought you in number six at the bottom some of the theories we've talked about some of these did it split in the 13th century with Yiddish did it split back in the day with the Babylonians did it split even earlier between the Galilean pronunciation and the judian pronunciation we'll see a little bit of that coming up in a minute so uh let's uh let's go over the page to page six I mentioned last week one of the conundrums in this topic is that nobody seems to talk about this different ashkanazi pronunciation until Theon until the 16th century the maral of Prague is really the first and the question is why why doesn't everybody talk about this in the 13th 14th and 15 centuries there was lots of movement rabenu Yona of Jona from Spain he learns with the balat hosas in Normandy in EV he went to live in France um the rash who grew up in Germany went to live in Spain but none of them pick up and say ah now I've come to Spain everybody pronounces the words differently no one says this one theory is they didn't pronounce the words differently the ashim and theim pretty much had the same pronunciation back in the 9th 10th 11th 12th centuries and only with Yiddish and German started to change and shift the ashkanazi pronunciation that's one Theory and there's a fascinating Rashi I brought you in seven I'm not going to learn it inside but there's a gamar that says you're not allowed to grab the in the word uh the word okay that we talked about before you have to say it properly with with a proper letter not it has to be and rash says it has to have the proper sound like aash says do you mean a it's a under it's a why is Rashi saying why unless he said in which case maybe he didn't pronounce it differently or unless it's a misprint and it should have been a Kam and they put and it's just like you can you can go through all of that and again there's there's so much more about that the Zohar is very clear number the different letters have different pronunciations it says here is with the with the throat is with thef with the lips is with with the pet is with the is with the tongue and Z is with the sh with the teeth um and therefore clearly there was a lot of thinking about how these words were meant to be pronounced but the first as I mentioned before and there's a lot of cabala about five different tun for and horror and other things as well but the Mah says as follows number N I have very strong reliable proof are right are wrong the most true correct way of doing things ISS him or wrong ROV jumps on to this in number 10 he says our owni colleagues says it's not it's not a good a good enough uh uh pronunciation we don't have the correct pronunciation of all the words I grant you he says but the is even worse why they don't have an an or sound and God doesn't like that how why why would like reminds me of my Uncle Sam I had a my wife's uncle was from jalta he said to me when I met him he says listen he said I'm way so basically was very clear so he said God doesn't like why not why would why would he say that what's the difference about the ashkanazi mistakes he because when they the way that you pronounce sh Hashem we'll see next time I haven't got time for this today but there's a difference he says between as it's written and when it's written and it's actually meant to be slightly different pronunciation but one thing's for sure the far I didn't get that all wrong because it all ends nine not no okay and if you think about it the word ad means my master ad with a means my masters and AD and then with a no at the end with the Kam is God and he goes St different suim and if you don't get this right he says this is really bad it's bad it's one thing mispronouncing your head okay but saying God's name when it's meant to be KES and it comes out and it's meant to be and it comes out KES that's really a problem and we'll see next time a little bit more about this and then he says at the end last line and therefore I'm so happy I thank God with my whole heart Yi asazi okay the ni he didn't quite say in the morning shal but he he felt it he really felt it okay um so that's r y now now rather predictably R yosf disagrees very strongly number 11 there's no question it has to be it's obviously correct they did they differ between these do that are you gonna say what about what about Al what about Al and um sorry what about p and Kam excuse me that's really important p and kamat you're going to get sh and then he says you're right most do not correctly pronounce those words the what thein that really know what they're doing they do know how to differentiate between them it's just that you ashim can't hear the difference okay but real real pronounce people who know how to pronounce they know the difference between them even though it's a it's a subtle difference nevertheless it's a difference okay so you have ashaz is saying the ashkenazim are right and theim saying theim are right so not quite go over to page seven I mentioned before that there are many ashkenazim that agree that the may be more correct I brought you ratan Adler who famously he's a the teacher of the sofa um who employed a sparity shooter for two and a half years to teach him how to change his accent was German from ashaz to spit when he thought he mastered it he said I'm the only one who can be the in the sh because I'm the only one who now speaks Hebrew properly and he changed the Tor we saw before the is not happy about the the ashkanazi AC certainly not about the the kidish ACC he thinks that's completely wrong Rak ysf henin Raku kineski understood in some ways that far maybe more accurate and as I mentioned he did read this a second time in there are po that think the yemenites wrong because the seol is kind of mixed with the with the a sound and almost everybody agrees that the O is wrong so the O don't have it as it were um so we look at number 12 if you the laichi with reference to the question of the pronunciation ashaz fari surely you know that there is also yite pronunciation other the adherence of each pronunciation of course claim that there is the right one as a matter of fact in recent times there's been a growing opinion that the ashkanazi pronunciation is more authentic than the spari at any rate if you want my opinion says the rebel as to which pronunciation you should use personally my answer is that you should not mix pronunciations at any rate not during the same prayer or better still not even on the same day so if you want to be ashkanazi on Monday Friday on Tuesday and yite on Wednesday okay but not in the same daving and maybe not in the same day in view of the force of human habit and especially in so much as prayer requires concentration heartfelt devotion it will be well to get used to one pronunciation and to abide by at least as far as prayer is concerned so he basically says I don't really mind which one you do but just don't don't speak ashadi okay because that's that's definitely wrong according to everybody ra Moshe ra Moshe Feinstein number 13 in 1969 okay I went to an Israeli Jewish school where all the Hebrew teachers were Israeli and they were telling everybody to switch over to to modern Israeli modern Hebrew pronunciation this is around the same time changing people's and it's 197 1969 and who's he writing this to he's writing it to in the walking so look what he says first of all you have to realize that both of them areally correct and I'm sure he'd say this about yite as well Hally correct and what's his proof great proof that it has to be that way you have to say that we see in a second when you do a has to be said Ines it's one of the few things doesn't but does and if the if the people are reading it wrong if the's reading it wrong if the is reading it wrong it doesn't work and if it doesn't work you've got big problems because then this has not really done she's going to go off and marry someone else and it's going to play you know a lot of problems with and what do we say you'd have if you're saying that there's one pronunciation that's correct you'd have to teach every woman who's doing she'd have to say it again and again and again and again with every different just in case that one is right like in some places but every you'd have to teach you to speak like a yite speak like a this speak like a that if not Apostle for us and Apostle for that he says it can't be I'm bringing you a proof that has only ever been said in one it must be that all those habat are Kosher it has to be otherwise all the has done since the beginning of time wrong then he says very importantly it doesn't make any sense to me that in the original Judaism that they spoke with different pronunciations I don't know what he does with because it sounds like unless he says like rash that was just a speech impediment they just couldn't get it out but they were really meant to say it if you have two different every one of them is Hebrew even though only one of them might be historically correct this is a very important point because even if you can prove to me if you find some recording if that were possible of mosu saying Hebrew and you say oh you see irrelevant because there's historical Hebrew and there's Hally Coos Hebrew Kos Hebrew is any Hebrew that a recognized Jewish Community speaks have a look here at the end if there's a Jewish Community a community who read the letters if they read it with one specific language it's a issue meaning it's it's same as a say for Torah what would be if we dug up a sa Torah that was had the like autograph of mosh there were different versions of what should be the correct wording in a sa Torah not many different versions but we'll talk about that another time ra Lyman many years ago was in a in Trad was in a conversation with one of the students of the I forgot the name right now if we found an original sa Torah would we change our cph Torah to match the original zon says Lian says maybe yes and the other person says no no no no no sa Torah is a halic reality not a historical reality this is a halachically Kosh sa Torah it's a Kosh sa Torah I don't care what the original one said so to and again I'm not making out there large numbers of changes but there are some so too with pronunciation if this is a recognized Jewish community and it developed an organic whatever it is even the O okay it's legitimate modern Hebrew is not legitimate according to this because it wasn't developed organically it wasn't developed by a religious community it was imposed from On High by ideologues therefore that's for sure not uh the correct pronunciation but any other recognized one is yes sir quick because I have not much time yeah good good good it's a good question and and rosha doesn't speak about modern Hebrew I'm extrapolating from that you could now say that there is a large Jewish form community that speaks modern Hebrew and then and therefore that takes it that makes a lot of sense makes a lot of sense but I don't know what Ros would say about that although by the 70s 80s that was already a reality let's look at some halakic implications I was really hoping that I wouldn't run out of time today but I will uh but so but nevertheless let's let's at least make a start and we can maybe put some of this stuff we don't do on to next week's sheet um some things have to be in Hebrew and some things do not 14 some things can be said in any language important any language is good if you may giving a sh that you don't know any testimony or that you don't have possession of an item that can be in any language but the following have to be in a Hally correct Hebrew as we've just discussed where they you know they read has to be in Hebrew okay good Hebrew so what's going on with that's going to be very relevant to us have a look now on page eight number says a man from and a man from they may not be allowed to do they're not allowed why it's also Tau these men may also not be allowed from the from what this is the problem they don't differentiate between their and their now get has to be in Hebrew but why can't they be the we just said can be in any language why does it can be in English why does it have to be in perfect Hebrew see in a second so rash explain what's going on number again he doesn't say they have a different dialect he says that they're trying to say it right but they just can't say it they have a speech impediment and therefore he says for example when it says they mix up their irons and their Al when it says for them with an Al They God illuminate so there it comes out says rash with an in and hashem's can sometimes be hashem's anger so it sounds says Rashi like they're saying may God ignite his anger against you be H and be gracious unto you that doesn't make any sense at all and therefore rash she says you got to take these people off now one second does that mean that it's only a problem if it comes out as a bad word or if it just comes out as nonsense we'll see probably not today next time there was a there's a chuba of the RAs um actually know it's coming up right now just look at the radas number 17 sh okay sh me many you asked me I should tell you my view from Greece ites doesn't come out right they don't say say God should make you I think it means god should make you Rich okay well that's not too bad and he says at the end he says I'll summarize it outside just to save time he says one second the only problem is when these people are daving in a different Community but of course the people in Kaa who all said the word like that they can say it like that because everyone knows what they mean and the people in bam well you're going to tell me he says that they got from other communities because they had no no no no in other places it's a problem but if everybody knows that that's how you pronounce it it's not a problem and the T Evans says in number 18 something even further he says the only problem really here is that they turned it into a bad word to may God ignite his anger against you but if it just comes out as nonsense God should make your okay who cares maybe the only problem is that it's it's coming out negatively what's with the so no is different if you DAV you can DAV in whatever language you like you can DAV in English in French you could even DAV in a mix up it's not good to DAV in a mixture but God God understands the when the is daving he's being he's saying it for me so if he's saying it for me and he's saying it all wrong it says if I'm saying it all wrong he say that's no good but if you're ding for yourself he said it's not a problem and you do not need to worry and therefore we see that there are different ways of uh of understanding this different ways of appre of interpreting it let me just do one or two more sources and we'll pick it up next week just go on to page nine for a second and then we'll stop in two minutes um I want uh just to show you an important gar and then we'll finish with that for now look at number 21 so was talking to son and he said to him if you were if you were not um if you were a Ley sorry if you were a Ley in the I would passle you from from because your voice is terrible you sing you sing Out Of Tune you're tone death I would passle you from the Le from being a ladyy okay so um what happened so Paul shim went and told his father this is what my rebi said about me he says I my voice sounds like a fog horn and you passle me so re turns around to him and says say to him when you go back to you you tell to your teacher also had a problem when he got to you turns out that you're you're abusing hem you're blaspheming why because pronounced his as hay and he said I'm beating Hashem so he said to his son if he passel your voice then you passle his thiller exactly how that works exactly I'm not sure whether the two of them and yet in number 22 says when they needed a topn to bring the rain to really make it happen who did RAB himself choose the one who couldn't pronounce his and his hay so how do you put those two things together we have to pick this up at the beginning of next time so uh this is a cliffhanger okay we'll leave it here for now you've got to come back next week to hear the second part of the Shar we'll move on from here be R Chef all the best