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Thought for the Day: From Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur -- The King; The King of Holiness, The King of Justice

Yes, I am well aware that we are just entering Tammuz and painfully aware that we are headed to the dreadful Three weeks and the dreaded Tisha b'Av. Nonetheless, I'd prefer to discuss the upcoming Days of Awe. Don't worry; we'll ease into it with some grammar. I mean, most people do find grammar pretty awful, right? (The phrase, "no pun intended", has rarely been less fitting.)

Chazal tell us (Brachos 12b), that from Rosh HaShanah to Yom Kippur, we alter the conclusion of the third and eleventh brachos of shmone esrei. The third bracha becomes המלך הקדוש; the eleventh becomes המלך המשפט. Rashi immediately explains to us that המלך המשפט is to be understood as מלך המשפט. Okay... Then, just in case you have any doubts about that explanation, Rashi marshals three verses from Tanach (Yehoshua 3:14, Malachim II 16:17, and Yirmiyahu 31:39) that also contain double word phrases where both words take a ה prefix and Rashi says that are to be understood as though only the second word has a ה prefix.

It is not shocking that Rashi is commenting on grammar; though I feel as though it is less frequent in his commentary on Gemara than Chumash. But three proof texts? And, just by the way... what did they prove? After all, Rashi needed to manipulate them all the same way!

I spent a good hour or so researching those verses and I also spent another 20 minutes or so with R' Avraham Isenberg. (R' Isenberg is a renowned scholar of Hebrew grammar and is very generous with his time.) Now I have some clarity.

It's like this. In Hebrew, the adjectives follow the noun. Also, when it is a particular noun -- the house, not just a house -- then the adjectives all take the ה prefix, which means "the". "בית לבן גדול" means "a big white house", to be become "the big white house" you prepend ה to each word: "הבית הלבן הגדול". On the other hand, when you forming a compound noun from two nouns, such as בית כנסת, which mean synagogue, but is literally "house of assembly" -- not "assembly house"; then the ה is prepended to only the last noun: בית הכנסת/the synagogue. If you put the ה on both words, הבית הכנסת, then you get "The house; the house of assembly." The pronunciation/vowelization of the word can also change. When describing a house, בית is pronounced "bayis". When part of a compound noun, though, the pronunciation changes to "beis".

The issue with מלך is that it is tricky to know if the other words are describing the king or telling you which king. Rashi comes to tell us that these phrases are not descriptions of the King, but referring to how the King interacts with the world during these 10 days. Hence the catchy title:
The King; The King of Holiness, The King of Justice


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