Thursday, June 02, 2005

Shavuos is coming...

....so it's time for me to share my holiday pet peeve:

When you daven at sunrise, you pray with the netz hachamoh, right?

Wrong.

A netz is an eagle. Hanetz hachama is sunrise.

The root of the word hanetz is hey nun tzadi (shining) The first hey is part of the root and not the prefix "the". Just like the word Haggadah does not mean "the Ggadah" and Haftarah does not mean "the Ftarah," Hanetz does not mean the netz

(And yes, I am aware that there is disagreement about how to vowalize the word. Some say it should be HEnetz (wth a segol) not HAnetz (with a komatz) )