I get an R.Eli J. Mansour's Daily Halacha Sunday through Friday. The email for Friday, December 20, 2013 was titled “Peri Ha’gefen” or “Feri Ha’gefen” (http://tinyurl.com/m7ppx5w). (Which reminds me of the joke about "HaGefen, HaGafen" but that's for another time.)
The majority of the article revolved around a dagesh; its presence of absence in the letter פ.
I'm not going to join the debate on how to say the blessings over ground plants or wine. I'm not qualified.
Neither are the rabbis, gadolim they may be.
Whether or not there is a dagash in the character or not is a matter for grammarians and, although the blessings have been around for a very long time, the grammarians should examine the issue from today's Hebrew.
R. Monsour's column reads, in part:
"There is a debate among the Halachic authorities regarding the proper pronunciation of the Berachot recited over fruits and wine. According to some opinions, the text should be pronounced 'Boreh Feri Ha’etz' or 'Boreh Feri Ha’gefen,' as opposed to 'Peri.' Meaning, according to this view, the Beracha should be pronounced without a Dagesh (dot) in the 'Peh,' such that it is pronounced 'Feri' instead of 'Peri.' This was the view of Hacham Bension Abba Shaul (Israel, 1923-1998), in his Or Le’sion (vol. 2, p. 304), who noted the grammatical rule that when a word ends with an 'Alef,' and the next word begins with a 'Peh,' the 'Peh' is pronounced without a Dagesh (e.g., "Feh').
'Hacham Ovadia Yosef, however, disagreed. In his Yabia Omer (vol. 9, Siman 22), he explains that the aforementioned rule applies only when the two words are read together. But in the text of these Berachot, the words 'Peri Ha’etz' and 'Peri Ha’gefen' are read together, separate from the word 'Boreh.' As such, the letter 'Peh' is pronounced with a Dagesh, and the word should therefore be pronounced as 'Peri'."
I have a son-in-law who can - but fortunately for me does not - speak Temani Hebrew. He can pronounce ג with and without the dagesh - ah, you didn't know ג had a dagesh? Actually, you can find a dagesh lene in each of the following: ב, ג, ד, כ, פ, ת
(I just "discovered" there are TWO dagesh types: lene (ibid.) and forte. The commercial web site, Biblical Hebrew Made Easy ( http://tinyurl.com/m5lcjw5), explains the difference. )
There are two points to this rant.
Point 1: We can't even get together on how to pronounce unadorned (characters sans dagesh) Hebrew letters. Does a ת sound like a "t" or an "s" ? And what happens if that ת has a dagesh in it? Depends on who is saying the word in which the letter appears. (No, it's not just some Ashkenazim that make a ת sound line a ס.) Maybe some people put a dagesh into EVERYפ just as some Moroccans put a dagesh into every ב.
Point 2: Grammar is not part of the rabbinical purview. I understand that at one time the rabbis had a lock on how Hebrew was to be pronounced, but that was nearly two centuries in the past. Today, the use of a dagesh is the purview of the "Academy Of The Hebrew Language, an Israeli institution that is the supreme authority on the Hebrew language. Established by the Knesset in accordance with the "Law for the Supreme Institute for the Hebrew Language, 1953," it succeeded the Hebrew Language Committee (Va'ad ha-Lashon ha-Ivrit) inaugurated in Jerusalem in 1890. In 1889 a group calling itself "Safah Berurah" had been formed, with the object of "spreading the Hebrew language and speech among people in all walks of life." This group elected the Committee, the first members of which were Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, David Yellin, R. Ḥayyim Hirschenson, and A.M. Luncz. Initially the Committee devoted itself to establishing Hebrew terms needed for daily use and to creating a uniform pronunciation for Hebrew speech to replace the then current variety of pronunciations. After only one year of existence, organizational problems disrupted the Committee's activities, but in 1903 at the Teachers' Conference in Zikhron Ya'akov, it was reconvened with an enlarged membership, and thereafter held regular monthly meetings" (http://tinyurl.com/lwbyrox).
