v'koyai vs v'kovei

Mesorah
1

OK, dikduk mavens, please solve this mystery (at least for me):

From the haftara for Lech L’cha, the pasuk in Yishayahu 40:31 begins with

וקוי

How is this pronounced?

Literally, seconds before I was about to chant the haftara this morning, one of our shul’s premier ba’alei kriah approached and asked how I pronounced this. Having just discovered the conundrum on leil shabbat, I was hoping no one would pay attention. That was not to be.

There is a sh’va under the first vav, a cholem vav and a tzeirei that appears under the yud in two sources I checked, including the Koren Tanach. However, I have a Mikraot Gedolot that displays the tzeirei under the second vav. That Mikraot Gedolot is based on a photographic reproduction of the Warsaw edition from 5622 - 5626.

The root is kuf - vav - heh . Thus, one might expect that the vav should be enunciated. However, if so, one would expect the tzeirei to be under the vav.

The Mikraot Hagedolot Ha-keter, which is the Bar Ilan version, online, has the tzeirei under the yud. All that Radak has to say about this (if I understand him, correctly), is that this is written with only one yud, that it is the “po-el” form, and that the second yud for the plural form is missing as written, but remains in pronunciation.

The Mechon-Mamre online Tanakh, which, supposedly is based on the Aleppo Codex, also has the tzeirei under the yud.

So, how is this word pronounced?

Avi

Avram L. Sacks
Skokie, IL

2

v'qoYEI

A theory re the tzeire being printed by some publishers under the vav can
be found here
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/leining/aeDqD0bqF8E/QhqoLrvgaHQJ&gt;\.

3

Radak, in his commentary on Nach, writes that it ia "v'koyei."
Specifically, he writes "it is written with a a single yod, which is the
second root letter (ayin hapo'al), and the yod indicaing plural is missing
from the k'siv but remains in the pronunciation."

EMT

4

And here there is an uncontrovertable proof that it is v'qoye:

We now have the Aleppo Codex, and it is available for everyone to see on the internet. and the word appears very clearly in Y'sha‘ya 40:31 וְקוֹיֵ. There is no possibility of misreading it.

The same word appears a second time in the T'NaKh, however, in T'hillim 37:9, and there the word is clearly written וְקֹוֵי. Same spelling in both places, but vocalized differently.

The Masorah shows clearly that the words are not pronounced the same, even though they are written the same: in both places, the Masorah says in each place about the word "ל", which in the Masorah stands for "ליתא," and means the the word as read appears nowhere else in the T'NaKh. If the two cases were both pronounced the same, the Masorah would label it "ב," meaning that the word appears twice. As is well known, the Masorah addresses the way the word is read, not the way it is spelled.

It is not surprising that various mss. and printed editions mixed the two forms up. But the Minchat Shay, which is printed in the Warsza edition, says about the word in Y'sha‘ya 40:31 as follows: היו"ד בצירי והיא עי"ן הפועל ויו"ד הרבים נעלמת, which is also clear and unequivocal.

So even if you claim that we don' have to follow the Aleppo Codex, all later poskim say we follow the Minchat Shay. And so it comes out that many, many people mispronounce the word, even though it is correctly vocalized in many of the newer T'NaKhs, including the Qoren, simply because it looks very strange to people who learned Hebrew in grade school, and qho would expect the form qoye to be written וקויי or at least וקיי .

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel

5

Thanks to Rs Poppers, Teitz, and Mandel for looking into this. I have chanted this haftara, for years, because the parasha often precedes my father’s yahrtzeit, which is tonight. I had always used the pronunciation, “v"koyei,” but my confidence was shaken when one of the shul’s ba’alei kriah questioned me about it and then mentioned that he thought it should be “v’kovei.” However, relying on my trusty Koren Tanakh, I stuck with my intuition and didn’t take the suggestion. It is nice to know that my intuition was correct.

Again, y’yasher koch’chem!!

Avi

Avram Sacks
Skokie, IL

Sunday, October 29, 2017, 11:35:41 AM, you wrote:

6

Just to add some anecdotal evidence to the textual sources already adduced: during the many visits of Rav Nosson Kaminetsky (a founder of ITRI in Jerusalem, a son of Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky zt"l, and a son-in-law of Rav Dovid Lifshitz zt"l) to the YU Beis Midrash, he often received Maftir, and routinely advised the Baal Keriah (the Haftara was read from Klaf) that it should be koyei.
Lawrence Teitelman

7

RSM wrote: "And so it comes out that many, many people mispronounce the
word."

And some unfortunately make a principle out of it. In a Chabad publication
that I saw in Shul on Shabbat it was stated that to read v'kovei is Minhag
Chabad. In a learned footnote the explanation was given that the Rebbe zt"l
used to read the Haftora from the Torah Temima Chumash that has v'kovei
because he followed Ibn Ezra quoted in Minchat Shai, although Ibn Ezra
wrote that in Tehillim it is v'koye and there is no evidence how the Rebbe
read the pasuk in Tehillim. Sad.

Danny Levy