One Vav Between Kayin and Metushelach

Slug: one-vav-between-kayin-and-metushelach SEO title: Did Ashkenaz Write מנשא Without a Vav? The Disputed Letters of Parshat Bereishit Meta description: Old Ashkenazi Torah scrolls, the Erfurt scrolls, the Keter and Teiman all write מנשא without a vav. Where the vav in our scrolls came from, and what a magiah should do with it. Excerpt: Two words in this week’s leining are written differently depending on which scroll you open. One of them tells you how Ashkenaz got its Torah text. Categories: Parsha Companion, Masorah, Scroll Research Tags: Bereishit, מנשא, Minchat Shai, Erfurt scrolls, Yemenite Sefer Torah, Keter Aram Tzova, chaser and malei, hagahah Featured image: one-vav-featured.png (alt: The word מנשוא with the vav outlined in gold, over a line from an Erfurt Torah scroll reading מנשא without a vav) Inline image: one-vav-figure.jpg (alt: Bereishit 4:13 in an old Ashkenazi Torah scroll and in an Erfurt Torah scroll, both reading מנשא without a vav)

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Two words in this week’s leining are written differently depending on which scroll you open.

The first is Kayin’s answer to his sentence: גדול עוני מנשוא. Open an Ashkenazi or Sephardi scroll and you will see מנשוא with a vav. Open a Yemenite scroll and you will see מנשא. Both are kosher. A magiah who “fixes” one to match the other has just made a kosher scroll pasul.

The second is in ספר תולדות אדם. Metushelach lives שבע ושמנים שנה before Lemech, then שתים ושמונים שנה after him. Same number, one pasuk apart, written two ways. Here there is no dispute between kehillos at all. There is a printing error from Venice, and Minchat Shai names it.

This post is about the first word, because it tells you something most people do not know about the Ashkenazi text. Ashkenaz wrote מנשא. No vav.

The rule

Kiddushin ל ע”א: the Soferim counted every letter of the Torah, and in the same breath, אינהו בקיאי בחסירות ויתירות, אנן לא בקיאינן. The Rambam (Hilchot Tefillin uMezuzah veSefer Torah 7:11) does not soften it: a malei written chaser or a chaser written malei is pasul. In 8:4 he names his authority, the codex Ben Asher checked in Egypt, from which he wrote his own scroll. That codex is the Keter Aram Tzova.

The Rema (Orach Chaim 143:4) concedes reality. A second scroll comes out only for a טעות גמור, אבל משום חסרות ויתרות אין להוציא אחרת שאין ספרי התורה שלנו מדוייקים כל כך. The Mishnah Berurah (143:26) defines the category: a vav or yud malei or chaser where neither meaning nor pronunciation changes. Both of this week’s words sit inside it.

So the standard is absolute, and in practice a scroll is checked against the mesorah of its own kehillah. That is the whole story of מנשא.

Minchat Shai lays out the camps

R’ Yedidya Shlomo Norzi, on Bereishit 4:13:

מנשוא. רבו הדעות בזאת המלה בקרית ספר לגאון המאירי ובס’ שמן ששון כתוב שהוא חסר. הם חמשה שכוונו לדעת אחד. וכן נמצא במקצת ספרים ישנים וגם בשם ס’ עזרא ובשם ירושלמי. ועמהם הסופר ר’ מאיר שדינו להיות חסר ושכנגדם הם ג’ ועוד המכריע. אבל בהללי הוא מלא. ומסר עליו לית ומלא. וכן הוא בס’ ספרד וכן כתב הרמ”ה ז”ל מלא וא”ו ואל”ף כתיב. וכתב אור תורה שזה עיקר.

For chaser: the Meiri in Kiryat Sefer, Sefer Shemen Sason, “some old books,” a codex called Sefer Ezra, a codex called Yerushalmi, and a sofer named R’ Meir. For malei: the Hilleli codex, the scrolls of Sefarad, the Ramah, and Or Torah, which calls the vav the ikar.

Read that list again. Norzi names Sefarad for the vav. He never names Ashkenaz.

Teveria and Teiman

The Keter Aram Tzova is missing the Torah up to Devarim 28:17. Its reading here comes from R’ Yaakov Sapir, who sent the Aleppo community a list of questions on chaser and malei while the Keter was still whole. Their answer: מנשא. Breuer’s reconstruction follows it. The Leningrad Codex (1008/1009) reads מנשא with the Masorah parva ל’, only here. Ben Asher wrote it chaser.

Yemenite scrolls follow the Rambam, and the Rambam followed the Keter. They write מנשא. It is the first entry on the familiar list of differences between Yemenite and Ashkenazi/Sephardi scrolls, and the first in the Torah.

The Meiri opens Kiryat Sefer by tracing every one of these variations, the kri and ksiv among them, to Ezra HaSofer. In Toledo he had a model codex that carried the name, ספר נקרא ספר עזרא. It stands on his side: chaser. R’ Yitzchak Ratzaby identifies it with the Sefer Ezra that Teiman cites for מנשא. Norzi had that witness in hand and outvoted it with the Ramah. He never saw the Keter.

Old Ashkenaz wrote מנשא

Every old Ashkenazi Torah scroll I have examined at Kayin’s verse reads מנשא. So does every one of the Erfurt scrolls, the oldest surviving group of Ashkenazi Torah scrolls, now in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

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On the left, an old Ashkenazi scroll: מנשא הן גרשת אתי, the shin running straight into the alef. The same column carries three-high tagin on the letters Sefer Tagin lists, and the curled pe of the old Ashkenazi otiyot meshunot at ויצא קין מלפני. A sofer who followed the old Ashkenazi tradition this closely wrote מנשא because his tradition said so. On the right, Erfurt: the column ends on קין אל יהוה גדול עוני מנשא הן גרשת. No vav.

Norzi’s “some old books” with the chaser reading are these scrolls. He knew them, did not follow them, and sided with the Ramah.

מנשא is not alone. Wherever the old Ashkenazi reading is documented, it stands with the Keter and Teiman. Breuer cites Minchat Shai on Bereishit 9:29: ובספרי אשכנז ויהיו. Lishkat HaSofer still had such scrolls in front of him and ruled that the extra vav be scraped after Shabbos. The Worms scroll attributed to the Maharam of Rothenburg reads דכא with an alef at Devarim 23:2 (Hayom Yom, 7 Elul). The Frankfurt minhag and the “Eiger” scroll in Worms keep the Rambam’s parashiyos at Vayikra 7:22 and 7:28.

How the vav came in

Breuer, in Keter Aram Tzova veha-Nusach ha-Mekubal shel ha-Mikra:

נוסח זה שבידי האשכנזים מושתת כולו על הכרעות הרמ”ה. יש רק מקומות מועטים, שהרמ”ה הביא בהם את שתי הנוסחות ללא הכרעה; באלה הכריע אחר כך ר’ מנחם די לונזאנו בספר אור תורה.

The Ashkenazi text we write today is the Ramah’s, by adoption. It came in through print: Or Torah, Venice 1618; Minchat Shai, Mantua 1742 to 1744; then the printed tikkunim every sofer worked from. Where the old scrolls disagreed, the magihim corrected them. At ויהיו a vav was scraped. At מנשא a vav was added.

An old Ashkenazi scroll that passed through a magiah’s hands after Minchat Shai often shows it: a vav squeezed between the shin and the alef, crowded, thinner, sometimes in a different ink. On Erfurt 7, X-ray fluorescence separated the original iron ink from the zinc-rich correction ink (Gordon, Bonnerot and Rabin, Manuscript Cultures 15, 2020). An added vav in later ink is the change in Ashkenazi practice caught on the klaf.

Metushelach, briefly

Every mesorah writes 5:25 שבע ושמנים chaser, 5:26 שתים ושמונים malei, 5:28 שתים ושמנים chaser. The Masorah counts six שמונים malei in all of Tanach, and the only one in the Torah is the second of Metushelach. The Ramah says it outright. The Venice Mikraot Gedolot printed the first one malei and hung the six-malei note on it. Norzi: שתי טעיות. From the 1500s on, soferim had printed chumashim on the table. A vav at 5:25 in an old scroll means one of them was open next to the klaf.

At the open scroll

A Yemenite scroll with מנשא, or a Sephardi or modern Ashkenazi scroll with מנשוא, is kosher. Leave it. The Komarna on דכא/דכה: kosher lechatchila, forbidden to erase, המוחק יתקצצו ידיו. Rav Ovadia Yosef (Yechaveh Daat 6:56) rules all these scrolls kosher for every kehillah, since each reading rests on a mesorah.

An old Ashkenazi scroll with מנשא is the old Ashkenazi text, not a mistake. It is not a טעות גמור under the Rema, so no second scroll on Shabbos. Before anyone adds a vav, call me. Once the vav is in, the witness is gone.

Check Metushelach too: 5:25 and 5:28 chaser, 5:26 malei. A vav at 5:25 is the Venice error. Correct it.

The open file

The Museum of the Scroll is building a register of 4:13 and 5:25 in early scrolls: the Erfurt scrolls and codices, Munich BSB Cod. hebr. 487 and 488, Vatican ebr. 2, the National Library of Israel scroll and fragment, the Maharam fragments, the Bologna scroll, and every old scroll that comes through our doors. If you hold an old scroll, or know where one sits in an aron kodesh, photograph the Kayin column and ספר תולדות אדם and send them to us. WhatsApp +1 (551) 238-7791.

The full companion, with the Minchat Shai texts, the comparison tables, the checklist for magihim and the sources, is a free PDF: One Vav Between Kayin and Metushelach

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Rabbi Binyomin Terebelo is the founder and director of the Museum of the Scroll, a 501(c)(3) in Passaic, New Jersey, devoted to preserving Jewish community history through their Torah scrolls. He is the author of Clues in the Klaf, Where Is the Menorah?, and Ink Without a Quill. Museum of the Scroll Print House · museumofthescroll.org · Sponsored by Terebelo Distillery · לזכר נשמת אבי מורי זעליג דוב בן יהושע