Hello kollel!
Maybe a simple question. Rashi gives simanim of which week is "skipped" in the Arba parshiot. Zatu bo dad ubio. My question is why in the last word is it ובי״ו and not ובט״ז? Said differently why doesn't Rashi use tet zayin for the 16 instead of yud vav? He clearly does at the beginning of the siman.
Thank you.
Josh
Shalom Josh,
Excellent question! I searching for more that might be written about this issue. But, at least for the moment, let me share two observations.
1. In this particular case, using Yud Vav actually makes possible a nice rhyme between the second and fourth terms: "Zatu Bo Dad u'Byo ". Now, since the purpose of the mnemonic is to make it easier to remember, this is actually an advantage.
2. Intuitively, it is easier to justify the abbreviation Tes Vav, which replaces Yud Hay, than it is to justify the abbreviation Tes Zayin, which replaces Yud Vav. For Yud Hay is actually one of the prominent Holy names of Hash-m, so we can understand why people adopted the practice to avoid writing it. But Yud Vav, although these letters are associate with Hash-m (consider, for example, the names Yoram, Yocheved, Yochanan, etc), nevertheless it is not an actual Holy name as Yud-Hay is. In fact, even though Tes Vav has been used as an abbreviation for Yud Hay for ages, it only was relatively recently that Tes Zzyin was introduced as an abbreviation for Yud Vav.
Warmest regards,
Yishai Rasowsky