[The] Year in Review, or Ahead
Scrubba dub dub
In the daf of this past Shabbos and Sunday (Nedarim 60b, going on to 61a), I was confounded by a divergence between Rav Ashi’s proof from the Mishnah, vs. how it actually appears in our Mishnah (for today, Nedarim 63a).
The Mishnah in Nedarim 8:1 had discussed taking a vow against drinking wine HaYom (the day), where the vow lasted until the end of that day. In contrast, if one vowed against drinking wine Yom Echad, it would encompass a day’s worth of time, 24 hours, from that period. What if he omitted the definite article Ha-, and also omitted the unit Echad, and just said Yom?
Rav Ashi seems to bring evidence from the Mishnah on 63a, quoting it as:
״קוּנָּם יַיִן שֶׁאֲנִי טוֹעֵם הַשָּׁנָה״, נִתְעַבְּרָה הַשָּׁנָה — אָסוּר בָּהּ וּבְעִיבּוּרָהּ.
If one vowed: Wine is konam for me, and for that reason I will not taste it this year, then if the year was extended, i.e., declared to be a leap year, he is prohibited from drinking wine in it and its intercalated month.
The elaboration of his proof idea seems convoluted. Namely, this Mishnaic statement would be an obvious law if it is indeed as written with Ha-shana, so we must instead emend it to read Shana, and deduce that these two formulations are the same. (Tangentially, this argument confused me, since why not say that since the first Mishnah with the contrasting was ambiguous and could not be taken as evidence in either direction [as the immediately preceding segment stated], by repeating the case here as Ha-shana, without a contrasting case of Echad, we see that the Ha- was deliberate.) After this confusing proof, the Talmudic Narrator rejects it, so their is no conclusion either way.
As I am wont to do, and as you should do anytime you see a source quoted, I looked the Mishnah up to see it in context. And here is where I was truly confounded. For that Mishnah on Nedarim 63a has neither Shana or HaShanah. It has לשנה:
״קוּנָּם יַיִן שֶׁאֵינִי טוֹעֵם לְשָׁנָה״, נִתְעַבְּרָה הַשָּׁנָה — אָסוּר בָּהּ וּבְעִיבּוּרָהּ.
״עַד רֹאשׁ אֲדָר״ — עַד רֹאשׁ אֲדָר הָרִאשׁוֹן. ״עַד סוֹף אֲדָר״ — עַד סוֹף אֲדָר הָרִאשׁוֹן.In the case of one who said: Wine is konam for me, and for that reason I will not taste it for the entire year, if the year was extended, i.e., it was declared to be a leap year, he is prohibited from drinking wine during the year and its intercalated month.
If he vowed until the beginning of the month of Adar, the vow remains in effect until the beginning of the first Adar. Similarly, if he says that his vow applies until the end of Adar, the vow remains in effect until the end of the first Adar.
In the automatic punctuation on Sefaria (provided by Dicta’s deep-learning algorithm, at Nakdan), they vocalize it as le-shana, with a sheva. In my printed Hebrew Steinsaltz, Rav Steinsaltz put in a patach and a dagesh chazak, so it was la-shana. Artscroll also has la-shana, and that is how I encountered it.
From this initial lamed, I theorized that what Rav Ashi really did was to quote the Mishnah as we have it, leshana. This lacks the definite article, and so is equivalent to just plain Shana, yet it goes until the end of the year, just like HaShana. Or alternatively, it says לשנה, and had we read a patach in there, then lashana has the definite article and is equivalent to le-ha-shana, which would be obvious, as equivalent to the preceding Mishnah. Therefore, says Rav Ashi, we must vocalize it with a sheva and yet have it apply to the end of the year. This suggested variation in unwritten vowels makes a whole lot more sense than quoting from a text we don’t have, then changing the text to remove an explicit heh consonant, and making a derivation from what it didn’t actually say.
But before making such an assumption, we should confirm that it does say לשנה somewhere. Yes, it has this in our printed texts in the Bavli and Yerushalmi Mishnayot. But what about manuscripts?
While we are at it, given the disparity between the Mishnah as cited in the gemara and the Mishnah as we have it, we should see what text Rishonim have. For instance, look at the dibur hamatchil of various commentaries. For instance, Tosafot quotes Rav Ashi’s proof as:
ת''ש קונם יין שאני טועם השנה אסור בה עד סופה
The quote is entirely different. It doesn’t mention נִתְעַבְּרָה הַשָּׁנָה and the length of time is עד סופה, rather than the Mishnah’s אָסוּר בָּהּ וּבְעִיבּוּרָהּ. Also, nothing in the Ta Shema, come and here, indicated that it was a quote of a Mishnah, so this could just be some stand-alone brayta. This would work well to not having a clash with our Mishnah which, as far as we know at this point, has לשנה.
But assuming it is actually a quote of the Mishnah, we should see how the Mishnah is quoted on 63a in printings and Talmudic manuscripts.
The Vilna Shas has לשנה. So does the earlier Venice printing.
Once we look to manuscripts at Hachi Garsinan, we see several that have השנה instead of לשנה. Thus, Munich 95 has השנה:
So too Vatican 110-111:
CUL: T-S NS 254.21 is a fragment, and it ends just about at this line in the Mishnah. And, the specific word with שנה is partly deficient. Take a gander:
Recall the phrase potentially reads ״קוּנָּם יַיִן שֶׁאֲנִי טוֹעֵם הַשָּׁנָה״, נִתְעַבְּרָה הַשָּׁנָה — אָסוּר בָּהּ וּבְעִיבּוּרָהּ. The last visible line ends with ונתעברה, and we see part of the ה and ש of השנה. The word preceding ונתעברה also has part of a ש and נ and ה visible for שנה. There seems to be a preceding letter, without enough to make it out. But it kind of has to be a ה, since the manuscript isn’t missing parchment in the space above it, where the line of a lamed would appear. So, I would guess השנה. Again, this word is here:
Hachi garsinan doesn’t have any manuscripts with lamed. However, I did manage to find one! In the Kaufmann manuscript (a complete manuscript of the Mishnah), we find this:
If you look closely at the first letter of our word of interest, you will notice that it used to be a lamed. Then, a scribal hand rubbed out the neck and the bottom of the lamed’s curve. The resulting letter looks more like a yud, but presumably he was going for a heh. For the sake of comparison, from close proximity, here is what lameds look like in Kaufmann:
I would guess that influence from Talmudic texts — from Rav Ashi’s proof, and from Talmudic Mishnayot, influenced this emendation. But perhaps there should be no emendation. And perhaps similar hypercorrections were made in the Talmudic Mishnayot, on the basis of Rav Ashi’s proof, even though according to Tosafot’s citation it wasn’t our Mishnah, or even if his proof was in accordance with my conspiracy theory, about the vowel under the lamed.