I was pleased to receive an email from a recent graduate of Stanford University (where I went to grad school) telling me that she wrote a term paper about Orthodox language for her Intro to Sociolinguistics class. I felt that her paper offered additional evidence for some of the trends I describe in Becoming Frum, especially Chapter 5 (“Torah or Toyrah: Language and the Modern Orthodox to Black Hat Continuum”) and the part of Chapter 7 about the videos geared toward new BTs and long-time community members. So I invited her to write a guest post here. I’d love to hear from readers who studied at Ohr Somayach. Have you noticed the variation between /t/ and /s/ on the Ohr Somayach website? Did you switch your own pronunciation from /t/ to /s/ at some point? What was that transition like?
-Sarah
Guest post by Ellie Ash, recent Stanford graduate
There are two major systems of Hebrew pronunciation, the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic/Sephardic-influenced, pronunciations, which originally reflected regional and ethnic distinctions in the Jewish community. In the twentieth century, however, the more progressive Ashkenazi branches of Judaism started using a pronunciation influenced by the Sephardic system. As a result, in contemporary America the choice of Ashkenazic vs. Sephardicized pronunciation reflects the speaker’s religious position, namely, whether they are (non-Modern) Orthodox or not.
Ohr.edu is primarily composed of regular columns about specific topics. Each column is consistent in its use of “t” or “s” in transliterating tav. The columns that use only “t” are Ask!, TalmuDigest, Torah Weekly, Parsha Q&A, Ethics, Israel Forever, Love of the Land, The Human Side of the Story, and @OHR. The columns that use only “s” are The Weekly Daf, Insights into Halacha, and Kinder Torah (for children). The only column that uses both “s” and “t” is B’Yachad, the alumni magazine.
It turns out that the “s” spelling is used only by columns which are directed at people who have been involved with Ohr.edu longer and are already invested in Orthodox Judaism, while the rest use “t”. For example, the TalmuDigest and The Weekly Daf columns are both about Talmud, but the former uses the “t” spelling for tav and the latter uses the “s” spelling. This is because the first is intended to be for beginners, as reflected in the title, which is in English and implies that the material has been predigested. In contrast, “The Weekly Daf” includes the Hebrew word for “page”, daf, and is directed at more advanced students. Therefore only The Weekly Daf uses “s” spellings for tav.
-Sarah
Guest post by Ellie Ash, recent Stanford graduate
There are two major systems of Hebrew pronunciation, the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic/Sephardic-influenced, pronunciations, which originally reflected regional and ethnic distinctions in the Jewish community. In the twentieth century, however, the more progressive Ashkenazi branches of Judaism started using a pronunciation influenced by the Sephardic system. As a result, in contemporary America the choice of Ashkenazic vs. Sephardicized pronunciation reflects the speaker’s religious position, namely, whether they are (non-Modern) Orthodox or not.
One difference between the two systems is the pronunciation of the Hebrew letter tav when it does not have a dagesh. In the Ashkenazic pronunciation tav is pronounced /s/, and in Sephardic-influenced pronunciations it is /t/. For example, the word meaning “commandments” is “mitzvot” in Sephardicized systems and “mitzvos” in Ashkenazic.
I recently examined the transliteration of tav-without-dagesh in the website Ohr.edu, which is the website of the kiruv (outreach) organization Ohr Somayach. Ohr Somayach is a Haredi Orthodox organization which, according to their mission statement, aims to “instill Jewish pride in university students…through knowledge” of traditional Jewish text and belief. It is fair to assume that as members of a Haredi community, the rabbis and other staff of Ohr Somayach consistently pronounce tav as /s/ among themselves. However, both “t” and “s” are used to transliterate tav on Ohr.edu.
I recently examined the transliteration of tav-without-dagesh in the website Ohr.edu, which is the website of the kiruv (outreach) organization Ohr Somayach. Ohr Somayach is a Haredi Orthodox organization which, according to their mission statement, aims to “instill Jewish pride in university students…through knowledge” of traditional Jewish text and belief. It is fair to assume that as members of a Haredi community, the rabbis and other staff of Ohr Somayach consistently pronounce tav as /s/ among themselves. However, both “t” and “s” are used to transliterate tav on Ohr.edu.
Ohr.edu is primarily composed of regular columns about specific topics. Each column is consistent in its use of “t” or “s” in transliterating tav. The columns that use only “t” are Ask!, TalmuDigest, Torah Weekly, Parsha Q&A, Ethics, Israel Forever, Love of the Land, The Human Side of the Story, and @OHR. The columns that use only “s” are The Weekly Daf, Insights into Halacha, and Kinder Torah (for children). The only column that uses both “s” and “t” is B’Yachad, the alumni magazine.
It turns out that the “s” spelling is used only by columns which are directed at people who have been involved with Ohr.edu longer and are already invested in Orthodox Judaism, while the rest use “t”. For example, the TalmuDigest and The Weekly Daf columns are both about Talmud, but the former uses the “t” spelling for tav and the latter uses the “s” spelling. This is because the first is intended to be for beginners, as reflected in the title, which is in English and implies that the material has been predigested. In contrast, “The Weekly Daf” includes the Hebrew word for “page”, daf, and is directed at more advanced students. Therefore only The Weekly Daf uses “s” spellings for tav.
I think there are several reasons for using “t” in the majority of the website. The primary reason is that the intended audience for Ohr.edu is more familiar with the “t” spellings, since they are non-Orthodox Jews. Another reason is that the “t” spelling is associated with secular scholarship. Ohr.edu stresses that its rabbis are conversant with mainstream academics, and using the “t” spelling is meant to be a further indication that Ohr Somayach is not against secular scholarship. It is also possible that Ohr.edu wants to downplay its Orthodox identity for newcomers who may have negative associations with Orthodoxy.
Once a student gets involved with Orthodoxy, Ohr.edu switches to the “s” spellings of tav because they represent the community norm. Not only is the student likely to be more familiar with the /s/ variants by this point, but also it is important for them use the Haredi pronunciation norms as they prepare to join a Haredi community.
I think this is interesting because it reveals that the people who write for Ohr.edu are aware of the different social meanings of the /s/ and /t/ pronunciations of tav. They do not simply think that /s/ is the correct pronunciation, which would lead them to use “s” spellings exclusively. Instead, they use “t” when it is appropriate to accommodate their audience, and “s” when it is appropriate to integrate students into the Orthodox world.
- Ellie Ash