Teruma | Just a Vav: Rashi and Textual Criticism, by Rav Yitzchak Etshalom

Why is Rashi explaining a "Vav" that isn't there? (Shemot 25:22).

Rashi's comment on Shemot 25:22, explaining the letter "vav" in the word ואת as being superfluous, has raised eyebrows over the centuries...since in our Sifrei Torah, the word is את, without a Vav. We identify other Rishonim who apparently had that reading in their text of the Torah and then review those supercommentaries of Rashi who addressed this unusual note. This leads us to a discussion of the phenomenon of textual variants in Tanakh and the fact that it is not an isolated phenomenon; we see examples of this in the manner in which Biblical texts are quoted in Chazal as well as the well-known story of the three Sifrei Torah found in the Azara, each of which had one unique feature relative to the other two, leading the Chakhamim to favor the two over the one. The unexpected result was that each of these scrolls was ultimately judged to be invalid.

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