New Daf Yomi Blog

A little Weekly Shtikle blog cross-promotion. I recently started the new cycle of דף יומי and decided it would be nice to put down my thoughts and observations on the דף. And so, The Daily Leaf was born, joining the Weekly Shtikle family of blogs. There is even the occasional דקדוק piece. You can link to those straight with this link. Please check it out, read, enjoy, subscribe and comment.

Sunrise

A rather heated exchange has been brewing over at our sister-blog, AstroTorah, as to the exact proper grammatical term for sunrise. Is it נץ החמה or הנץ החמה? (Further, it is הָנֵץ or הֶנֵץ?) I figured we could settle this here. Discuss!

First-born males

I just received this excellent question from my father:
Why is it מכת בכורות but תענית בכורים?
I'm sure there's an excellent answer as well but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

בעלמא די ברא כרעותיה

As per the comments, the below theory is most probably invalid. But I thought it would be nice to bring up the discussion anyway:

I once had a discussion with a friend about the specific pronunciation of the word כרעותיה in the above exerpt from the beginning of קדיש. Should there be a דגש in the כ"ף or not? He reasoned that with no דגש, the word כרעותיה connects with ברא as it is the ending vowel sound that steals the דגש. This would then group this phrase together to mean "the world which He has created according to His will."

However, if you leave the דגש in the כ"ף that disjoints the word כרעותיה from ברא, essentially forming a complete thought out of all the words that precede it. "His will" would therefore not be defining "the world He created," but rather "יתגדל ויתקדש שמיה רבא." Let His name grow exalted and be sanctified according to his will.

Leaving aside which understanding is correct, I would like to suggest the דגש does not necessarily change the meaning in this manner. I say this based on the טעם העליון and טעם התחתון, the two distinct arrangements of trop for the עשרת הדברות. Commandments 6 to 9 have a varying דגש in the leading תי"ו depending on which reading is used. But surely the meaning of the words has not changed. This would seem to imply that presence of the דגש at the beginning of the word is somewhat arbitrary and does not determine the meaning of the word on its own.

Dikduk in the Rishonim

Someone today asked me whether I knew of a good book explaining dikduk of the Rishonim. Any ideas?

Looking at the cup ... full

Here's a question from a reader:

Here's a question that's been bugging my family for a while:

At the end of the צור משלו why is it כוס יין מלא and not מלאה? Poetic license? It doesn't really help the rhyme, though, because if it did it would be the סגול of ויתעלה and the צירי of מלא. And even if a סגול and a צירי are similar enough, the beat is all wrong. Any thoughts?

P.S. I think I might have figured it out. Each verse follows an "X-Y, X-Y, X-Y, X-Y, X ....Hashem" rhyme format. I guess the writer assumed that a סגול and a צירי do rhyme. Never mind!

However, if you come up with any more satisfying ideas, please let me know.

About Re-Posts

Recently, I reposted a piece from a previous year and was asked in the comments why I reposted my question if it was answered in the comments.

Because most of the stuff that is posted here is relevant to the פרשה, it makes sense to bring the issues up all over again in following years (especially advisories.) However, there is often discussion in the comments that is crucial to the topic at hand. The problem is that when you view the blog on the main page, the comments are not shown unless you click on the link. And I also believe there is something to be said about maintaining the original integrity of the question-answer process.

This week happens to feature many reposts. What I have begun to do is to take important comments from previous years and paste them in to the actual post and remove them from the comments. That way, they will show up (with proper attribution, as well) on the post.