V'dibarta Bam

4:33 PM

@Daniel Your question is very clear, objective, and well-scoped IMO.

Why must there be an alternative? What's wrong with Z"L for a lady? Just the Z would stand for "Zichrah" instead of "Zichro". — Double AA ♦ 2 hours ago

@DoubleAA I've AFAIR always heard zal pronounced zichrono livracha (when not pronounced zal), not zichro livracha. I think I've also seen it that way in print, and never as zichro livracha. Does your experience differ? Or why did you write zichro? (I do see that the common zecher tzadik livracha is inconsistent with zichrono livracha.)

4:49 PM

@msh210 safa-ivrit.org/form/zihrono.php

I'm not the only one who says "Zikhro" or "Chakhameinu Zikhram Livracha" (at least when I remember to) but I agree the other way is more common. (FWIW it's also more common to not know a shred of dikduk than to know a shred a dikduk.)

@DoubleAA In this case, in which we're talking pretty much entirely about a social convention, what's common probably matters more than what's consistent with careful grammatical/semantic analysis.

חז"ל

‏‏‏‏‏‏חז"ל (ראשי תיבות: חכמינו זכרם לברכה‏)‏ ‏הוא כינוי למנהיגים הרוחניים וההלכתיים של עם ישראל מאמצע תקופת בית שני (החל מתחילת תקופת הזוגות במאה ה-3 לפנה"ס)‏ ועד לחתימת התלמוד הבבלי, בסוף המאה ה-6. חז"ל הניחו את היסודות לכל התורה שבעל פה. == תקופות חז"לעריכה == חז"ל נחלקים לקבוצות אחדות, על-פי תקופתם והיצירה העיקרית בתקופה זו: זוגות: התקופה נפתחת עם שני החכמים שמעון הצדיק ואנטיגונוס איש סוכו, וממשיכה עם חמישה זוגות של חכמים מימי בית שני, אחד שימש כנשיא הסנהדרין והאחר כאב בית דין. תנאים: חכמי המשנה, חיו בארץ ישראל עד שנת 220 לספירה, ובנוסף למשנה נשמרו דבריהם בברייתות המפוזרות ברחבי התלמוד הבבלי...

@IsaacMoses What's "this case"?

@DoubleAA What you might consider the standard expansion of Z"L, I guess.

@IsaacMoses Do you mean "what the intent of the author was when they wrote those letters"? I wasn't aware we were discussing that.

@DoubleAA I guess I mixed up the present conversation in my head with the MY question on the table.

5:04 PM

@IsaacMoses Even the MY question wasn't asking that.

@DoubleAA Alright

@DoubleAA Interesting, thanks.

My family tends to append A"H to the names of departed relatives, so when I encountered Z"L in school, I got the sense that it was only for ~rabbis. I therefore found it jarring when I came to a community where they routinely append Z"L to everyone deceased person's name.

@IsaacMoses Females included? My upbringing matches yours (in this respect!). I wonder whether it's not a difference by community but a difference over time.

5:20 PM

@msh210 In my family, A"H for males and females. Yes, I also wondered whether A"H -> Z"L was just another case of honorific-inflation.

@IsaacMoses Re females, I was asking about the new community's "z"l" use.

Daniel

@IsaacMoses That is also my experience. A"H for "regular people" and Z"L for "important people"

@msh210 Yes. At least part of said community would likely consciously use the same honorific for males and females for ideological reasons. It's possible that the use for females is only within that part; I'll have to do some email analysis to determine that. I recall the instance that I found jarring was for a (lo aleinu) little boy. I remember thinking "I'm sure he was nice, and it's really sad that he's dead, but no need to make him into a rabbi."

@IsaacMoses Got it. Don't bother doing the e-mail analysis for me; thanks.

@msh210 :) If I do, it'll be to satisfy my own curiosity.

3 hours later…

8:35 PM

@mbloch Should we send R' Slifkin a guest post from the Purim Torah archives for Purim? I'd nominate werewolves or math for base material.

Sorry; R'Dr. Slifkin.

Monica Cellio

9:28 PM

@IsaacMoses that's a good idea. The math question was more popular, but the werewolf question is a better example of what we're looking for in PT, so if any of R' Slifkin's readers might be tempted to join in (please!), that might be a factor. (Of course, there may be even better PT questions from past years; I haven't reviewed.)