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Why is it by some of the kri and ksivs in the megilla - like Memuchan and kiblu, we just say the Kri and other ones I've seen some actually say both the kri and the ksiv - the Baal Koreh reads be-amram, ki-amram (third chapter, fourth verse) or bifneihem, lifneihem (looking up chapter and verse).? What’s the source for all of these?

Double AA
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Draizy-Levi Pine
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1 Answers1

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Every word in Tanakh has a Kri (the way it is read) and a Ktiv (the way it is written). In the vast, vast majority of cases, those are the equivalent to each other. Sometimes they are different. (Very, very rarely one of those values will actually be null, but never in Esther or the Torah.) In every single case we only read Kri and only write Ktiv.

In your case (Esther 3:4) there is a small debate what the Kri for that word is. Almost everyone thinks the Kri is כאמרם different from the Ktiv. A probably mistaken minority opinion [allegedly] thinks the Kri matches the Ktiv there. Therefore in recent years some people decided to be stringent to read both just in case.

The same sort of story applies to a handful of other places in Esther where some minority opinion exists or allegedly exists or historically existed that a word should be read in some other way than the dominant traditional position dictates (eg. 1:22, 2:9, 7:6, 8:11, 9:2). CYLOR before doing jumping on the bandwagon to see if such a practice is worth your time and worth promulgating doubts about our Mesorah of Tanakh.

Double AA
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    Do you have a source for the “mistaken minority opinion?” – Draizy-Levi Pine Mar 02 '18 at 11:06
  • @draizy a source that says what? I've never actually met a notable rabbi who thinks a reader should say באמרם though I once heard a reader do it on his own. (That it's mistaken? Yes, I have hundreds of sources. Artscroll. Koren. Breuer. Every single known Tiberian manuscript of Tanakh. Minchat Shai. Etc. They all indicate clearly the Kri is not the same as the Ktiv. Plenty of rabbis oppose this double reading, like R Ovadia Yosef and R Yitzhak Ratzabi. Plenty of others have probably never even heard of it.) – Double AA Mar 02 '18 at 12:22
  • What are the 1:22 and 2:9 minority readings? – magicker72 Mar 02 '18 at 14:14
  • @magic shorer with a shin, and et without the conjunction the last time – Double AA Mar 02 '18 at 14:15
  • Sorry - do you have a minority source that says to read it be’amram? – Draizy-Levi Pine Mar 04 '18 at 02:00
  • Lifneihem - bifneihem are also a minority opinion on saying both? – Draizy-Levi Pine Mar 04 '18 at 02:07
  • @draizy there is no source that says to say beamram, and everyone says it's just a mistake, but see Alei Tamar to Megillah 2:2 that says he found a town in Yemen that read only beamram so maybe that's a source. The vast majority of Yemenites don't know from that at all, it's almost certainly just a mistake that that town developed, and anyway it's not clear how so many people would have gotten this practice from that town's Yemenites without knowing that they did so. Basically it's ridiculous and don't do it. – Double AA Mar 04 '18 at 19:43
  • Bifneihem is the minority opinion (for reading and writing). Lifneihem is the majority opinion (for reading and writing). In that case there a fair amount of old manuscripts that have Bifneihem, so it's not as ridiculous as reading beamram, but it still is clearly a minority and not found in the most accurate manuscripts – Double AA Mar 04 '18 at 19:43
  • First off - thank you! Do you mean that there are manuscripts out there that have a different version of the actual text written לפניהם? Do you have a picture you could upload? Fascinating. Thanks – Draizy-Levi Pine Mar 05 '18 at 13:26
  • @Draizy-LeviPine The most common version of the text is לפניהם. Here's a manuscript from 1000 years ago that way https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Leningrad-codex-18-22-megilloth.pdf&page=32 and a modern Ashkenazi Megillah that way http://www1.saad.org.il/elihu/esther/e8.jpg . It's only some Ashkenazim that read/write בפניהם. In Spanish, North African, Yemenite, etc. traditions, as well as some Ashkenazim too, the word is לפניהם. As you may have seen, some Ashkenazim read both just in case. – Double AA Mar 05 '18 at 14:23
  • So you’re saying majority have לפניהם? All modern Megillah’s I’ve seen, three tikkun’s I checked, as well having spoken to a highly regarded Sofer, have בפניהם. When did בפניהם pop up in your opinion? Again - thank you for taking the time to enlighten me on this. – Draizy-Levi Pine Mar 05 '18 at 15:53
  • @Draizy I just gave you a link above to a modern Ashkenazi Megillah with לפניהם. Simanim's Tikkun has לפניהם and so does Chorev's Tikkun, as does איש מצליח. Even the Artscroll Chumash has it. Also, are you speaking only to Ashkenazim? Check a Sefardi Megillah or a Yemenite one and for sure you'll see לפניהם. The Keset HaSofer writes that the practice in his area was to use בפניהם; perhaps the Megilot you've seen or the Sofer you spoke to follow his position. This variant is quite old; I'm not denying that. But the majority of the oldest best manuscripts we have available today do support the ל – Double AA Mar 05 '18 at 16:13
  • Googling around modern Sofer stores provides these images of scrolls with לפניהם: http://www.orhatfilin.com/154783/katalog-megilot , https://i0.wp.com/sefer-torah-jerusalem.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/17083256/wp-image-1722170591.jpg?resize=350%2C200 – Double AA Mar 05 '18 at 16:23
  • I was speaking/seeing all ashkenzim, and one 130 yr old "chassidishe" megila – Draizy-Levi Pine Mar 05 '18 at 19:11
  • Also 4:11 some Temanim read וחיה mileil – Double AA Aug 21 '18 at 19:55
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdfHCvqSaIU – Double AA Dec 09 '20 at 17:13
  • Apparently some Chasidim (Satmer?) read ובמלואת again with another cholom on the alef – Double AA Nov 23 '22 at 23:56