Torah tidbits
Towards Better Davening and Torah Reading

Couple of fine-tuning points from TO-L'DOT.
• First, the name of the sedra... again. This comes up a lot. Many people say TOL (first syllable) DOT (or DOS, second syllable). Wrong. The first syllable is TO. The CHOLAM is (most often) a strong enough vowel to be in an open syllable with its letter (the one before it), and not get the next letter as a closer of the syllable. TO - L'DOT. SHO - F'TIM. It's not just the "problem" of taking a letter into one syllable that belongs to another. It's the changing of the SH'VA from a NA to a NACH. The LAMED of L'DOT and the FEI of F'TIM have a SH'VA NA under them. Wrongly saying TOL or SHOF makes the SH'VA a SH'VA NACH. There are many examples of this in davening. Take the weekday Amida, for example. Check out these words. SHO-F'TEINU (not SHOF-TEINU); O-Y'VECHA (not OY-VECHA); SO-F'REIHEM, HABO - T'CHIM. It happens with other vowels too, but we'll stick to the CHOLAM examples , in honor of Parshat TO - L'DOT. (And, no, it doesn't change the meaning of the words- not usually, at least - but it still is nice to pronounce words, especially of LASHON HAKODESH, and especially in davening and Torah reading.

• B'reishit 25:21. And (Yitzchak) prayed... VAYE-TAR. There is a SH'VA NACH under the AYIN. Ashkenazim don't hear from that AYIN. Resist the temptation to say VAYE-E-TAR, as if there is a CHATAF-SEGOL under the AYIN, which there occasionally is, but not here.

• ANOCHI is usually MILRA, i.e. ano-CHI. When the word comes at the end of a pasuk or at an ETNACHTA (full stop in the middle of a pasuk), the accent shifts to MIL'EIL. So in 25:22, where Rivka is having a tough pregnancy and finds out why, she says, LA-ma ZEH aNO-chi.


[The Parshat To-l'dot Homepage]
[The TORAH tidbits Homepage] [How to use TORAH tidbits]
[About The OU/NCSY Israel Center] [About TORAH tidbits]
[www.ou.org]

The Torah Tidbits Archive