"They Regard it [Grammar] as Nearly Heretical" Hebrew Grammar and Philology in the Beit Hamidrash, Beit Haseifer, and Beit Hak'neset

Abstract:Describing his own work as "the first attempt since the Mikhlol to record, explain, and arrange the tradition of grammatical knowledge systematically," Zalman Hena (1687–1746), one of the outstanding Hebrew grammarians of his era, built a theoretical linguistic edifice (a youthful opus was even called Binyan Sh'lomo) on a combination of the critical analysis of his predecessors and considerable original, even radical, thinking. If one of the accomplishments of the Haskalah was the renaissance of Hebrew, then it appears that Zalman Hena bears significant responsibility for that achievement, even though it is likely that he would have dissociated himself from that movement as did most of the Orthodox communities of Central Europe in which he lived.Yonatan Wormser, a professor of Hebrew language at the College of Efrata, provides us with a comprehensive portrait of Hena's theories on phonology, including vocalization and the nature of the letters, and morphology, including the construction of Hebrew roots, verbal stems (binyanim) and conjugations, and the classifications of nouns. The book also covers matters of syntax, semantics, and rhetoric, such as the use of particles, the definite article, gender and number, absolute and construct states, parts of speech, and word order.Another chapter describes Hena's attempts to formulate new rules, or recast old ones, to account for many of what his predecessors saw as exceptions and anomalies. Because he was dedicated to the proposition that Hebrew is a God-given language and, hence, perfect, he sought to limit the number of grammatical exceptions to those that were crafted deliberately to draw attention to (unspecified) esoteric meanings. A final chapter details Hena's application of his grammatical theories to standard Ashkenazic liturgical texts to correct what he saw as numerous mistakes in vocalization and punctuation. This effort met with considerable resistance and had a patent impact on Hena's life and reputation.Herein, we shall endeavor to place Hena's work, and Wormser's informative and functional guide, into a larger historical and cultural context, exploring the role and impact of formal grammatical study in three dimensions: the beit hamidrash (representing traditional religious scholarship), the beit haseifer (Jewish education), and the beit hak'neset (apropos of Hena's liturgical emendations).