Comparing Tiqunim: Surprising Data
Art Roth
I have previously mentioned on this list that I first learned to lein (at this point almost 60 years ago) using the blue KTAV tiqun, which was almost the only one available at the time. Of course, we know today that this tiqun is unreliable and full of errors --- but I have never abandoned its weekly use, at first not realizing its problems, later out of force of habit, and later yet as an almost silly symbol of my youth (which is long gone). Instead, over the years, I have marked the errors in writing inside the tiqun to prevent myself from being misled.
Koren and Simanim are both well regarded (though not error free) tiqunim. Except for the hundreds of places where Koren has a xataf patax while most other sources have a sh”va, these two tiqunim largely agree with each other and differ only occasionally even in cases where other tiqunim disagree with them and/or with each other. Koren almost universally follows Heidenheim --- so with the exception of the xataf patax’s, I wonder whether Simanim also mostly follows Heidenheim or some subsequent source based on him (perhaps even Koren itself). Can anyone shed light on Simanim’s sources?
Nowadays many of us regard R. Breuer’s tanakh as the gold standard, given all the research that went into it, entailing detailed inspection of old authoritative manuscripts (the Keter and Leningrad among others) and incorporation of the writings of recognized experts such as Minxat Shay and Or Torah.
For all of the weeks since the start of the current cycle (i.e., from B”reishit through Vayishlax), I have looked in some detail into the differences between KTAV, Koren, Simanim, and Breuer with the aim of reevaluating how to lein the affected words in practice (mostly, but not always, deferring to Breuer). For purposes of this posting, I will restrict myself to differences that actually affect my leining (trope or word pronunciation). This means that I’ll be excluding, among other things, (a) differences in the presence or absence of a meteg, which I don’t consciously incorporate into my leining, although I’ve been told by my listeners that I have a natural tendency to distinguish most secondary accents anyway, (b) differences in the presence or absence of a dageish in non-בגדכפת letters, and (c) differences between a qamatz and a patax (since I lein in havara s”faradit), e.g., the ג in בשגם (Gen 6:3).
SIDE NOTE: My comparisons have also included a fifth source, namely the Stone (Artscroll) xumash. My interest in this xumash stems from the fact that it’s so widely used in shuls throughout the English-speaking world, and I would like to be aware of the places where my leining differs from what the majority of the tzibur sees in front of them. However, this posting will not include any information from the Stone xumash.
Now I’ll get to my main point. Given the reputations of the various tiqunim, I would have expected that with only rare exceptions, any differences between KTAV on one side and Koren/Simanim on the other side would find Breuer siding with Koren/Simanim. This is indeed the case more often than not --- but to my surprise, Breuer sides with KTAV in a significant minority of such cases. In fact, I started seeing this often enough that I decided to try to quantify it. To this end, I compiled a list of cases where Koren and Simanim agree with each other but differ from KTAV. Obviously, this excludes cases where Koren and Simanim agree with KTAV (even if Breuer disagrees with all three of them) and the few cases where Koren and Simanim disagree with each other. My list identifies 50 such cases --- and it turns out that Breuer agrees with Koren/Simanim in 34 of them and with KTAV in 16 (almost 1/3) of them. Some of KTAV’s errors are really egregious, including a couple of places where it has two contradictory tropes on the same word. This reinforces what we already knew, i.e., that Koren and Simanim are much more reliable than KTAV. But, surprisingly, it also says that when KTAV differs from “better” tiqunim, it is “right” often enough that it can’t be dismissed out of hand.
I have compiled an Excel spreadsheet with the details of the 16 cases where Breuer agrees with KTAV rather than Koren/Simanim. There doesn’t appear to be a mechanism for attaching the spreadsheet to this posting, but I’d be glad to send it to anyone upon request.
This is where I was planning to end my posting. But just before hitting the “send” button, I started wondering about the source used by KTAV, given that it’s not quite as unreliable as I had originally believed. I realized that back in those days, the Hertz xumash played the role that the Stone xumash plays today, i.e., it was widely used in shuls throughout the English-speaking world. So I decided to compare KTAV against Hertz in the 50 cases on my list (both the ones where Breuer agrees with KTAV and the ones where he doesn’t) --- and the level of agreement is uncanny. It turns out that KTAV and Hertz agree with each other in 47 out of the 50 cases! Furthermore, none of the 3 differences have anything to do with trope --- and only 1 of them affects word pronunciation, and that one might well be a misprint. More specifically, two of the differences are instances where KTAV indicates the end of an aliya one pasuq too early. The third difference is in Gen 21:12, where KTAV has an obviously incorrect xiriq instead of a tzeire under the yud in ירע. I think it’s very possible that this is not a “real” error, i.e., that a tzeire was intended but one of its dots simply didn’t come through to the final printed page. I say that because there are about 10 places in xumash where KTAV is missing either a רביעי or one of the dots in a ז"ק. While checking KTAV against Hertz, I also noticed in passing that they share the same masoretic notes at the bottoms of the pages. Based on all of this, the evidence is overwhelming that KTAV and Hertz are based on a common source and are hence in widespread agreement that goes well beyond just the 50 cases that I checked and includes even potential differences due to the issues denoted by (a), (b), and (c) above in the fourth paragraph of this posting. Does anyone know what that common source is? Both KTAV and Hertz went through numerous editions, but Hertz preceded KTAV by about a decade. Specifically, the first edition of Hertz was published in 1936, while KTAV was originally copyrighted in 1946 by someone named Fannie Scharfstein.
Art
AMK Judaica
****************
Ari Kinsberg
Sent: Friday, December 4, 2020 5:14 AM
To: leining <lei...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [leining] Comparing Tiqunim: Surprising Data
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Art Roth
Art Roth
Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon
On Jan 3, 2021, at 5:33 PM, Art Roth <artj...@gmail.com> wrote:
Addendum to the last sentence (comment (e)): The fact that I found only 5 places in the entire book of B'reishit (other than Koren's xataf patax's) where Simanim and Koren differ also seems to contradict the assertion that they are based on different sources.
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