Machol as name of Instrument

For posterity:

 Gabriel Wasserman On another topic: Do you know anything about the בתוף ומחול thing?

Fred MacDowell You mean to define them? No clue what you mean.

Gabriel Wasserman The Iyyun Tefillo, in the 19th or 20th century -- Reb Arye Leib Gordon of Jerusalem -- insists that מחול can't mean "dance", but must be some kind of musical instrument, and he insists that the Targum חנגין is a musical instrument. (But I'm pretty sure that that's the usual Targumic Aramaic word for "dance".)

Fred MacDowell Interesting. Should I look or is that it?

Fred MacDowell http://books.google.com/books?id=OIYpAAAAYAAJ...
Haschiloah

Gabriel Wasserman And that makes its way, interestingly, into the Siddur Meforash of Weingarten, which I davvened out of from ages 13 to 17 or so, and learned tons from. But what's interested is that Weingarten presents it as a complete דבר פשוט. Until today, I assumed that it must be in Rashi, possibly even Chazal! Do you have an ArtScroll siddur? How do they translate it? Oh, let me look at your Haschiloah link; I assumed it would be about the maskil and the Gaon, but it's about musical instruments.

Fred MacDowell Artscroll, drum and dance.

Gabriel Wasserman Oh. Interesting! We should check some other translations of the siddur.

Fred MacDowell Especially old ones, English, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish. See what the goyim say too.

Gabriel Wasserman Goyim say dance; I checked that earlier today.http://www.biblestudytools.com/psalms/150-4-compare.html Interesting that in the old ones, they use "choir" for _dance_. (As in Greek _khoros_.) In Wycliffe, it's spelled "quire".

Fred MacDowell Ben Yehuda milon also. Sounds like one of those clever chiddushim type things. What do the Syriacs and the Old Slavonics say?

Gabriel Wasserman Yes, but fascinating that it made its way -- as a דבר פשוט -- into Weingarten. I assume the old ones all say "dance", though we could check. What I'm more curious about is how far this clever chiddush spread.

Fred MacDowell Yeah, worth checking.

Gabriel Wasserman Weingarten says: ומחול -- אולי הוא כלי השיר "מחלת" הנזכר בתהלים (פח:א). ובמשנה (ביכורים פ"ג מ"ג) נקרא "חליל". אך אין פירושו כאן בריקוד (עיין בתרגום כאן ובתרגום מ"א א, מ; ובפירוש עיון תפילה).

Fred MacDowell I just saw someone in the 19th century write "a small flute or a dance"

Gabriel Wasserman Who, a yit or a notzri?

Fred MacDowell Notzri. Jeremy Montagu's Musical instruments of the Bible seems to say that there is an argument to be made for instrument in Psalms, while dance elsewhere. I bet it was a 19th century scholarly thing that may or may not have been "borrowed" by R Aryeh Leib.

Gabriel Wasserman Fascinating. And then by Weingarten, in late 20th-century chareidi Israel. There's haskala-type stuff all around the Iyyun Tefillo, IIRC. He talks about the Hyksos when commenting on the Haggodo Shel Pesach.

Fred MacDowell Yeah, in the 19th century they were all over machol as an instrument: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en...

Gabriel Wasserman Etz Yoisef has it, too: ומחול. הוא חליל והוא נבוב וחלול. If any have illustrations, we could make this into a great post. Did you try "mahol", too?

Fred MacDowell The question seems to center around the idea that it means both, the instrument assuming the name of a dance, or even the opposite. No, I have not even begun to research, as John Paul Jones would say.

Gabriel Wasserman But you have! Anyway, Who was this Etz Yoisef guy? I once asked Prof. Hananel Mak:

בקרב לומדי מדרשי האגדה, סידור התפילה, ו"עין יעקב", ידועים פירושיו של חנוך זונדל, שקראם "עץ יוסף" ו"ענף יוסף". ברם, לא מצאתי אף אחד שידע פרטים על חיי האיש הזה. מסתמא הוא חי במאה הי"ט, אבל איפה? בליטא? מי היו רבותיו? מתי בדיוק הוא חי? האם כתב ספרים אחרים חוץ מן הפירושים "עץ יוסף" וענף יוסף?

(Wow, that email was about 4.5 years ago. I would have guessed *maybe* two years ago.)

He responded:

[...]

לצערי אינני יכול להוסיף הרבה על דבריך. כנראה היה האיש צנוע וכמעט שלא דבר על
עצמו וגם אחרים אינם מזכירים אותו בפרטים. אביו של ר' חנוך נקרא בשם יוסף ועל
שמו קרא הבן את ספריו הוא כתב גם חיבור בשם יד יוסף שהנו פירוש על מדרש איכה
וכן על "סדר עולם". ר' חנוך חי בביאליסטוק שבצפון מזרח פולין, סמוך לליטא
(שהיתה מאוחדת באותם ימים עם פולין) וברור שניכרת בכתביו השפעה ליטאית אבל יש
שם גם הרבה מאוד קבלה. הוא חי בסוף המאה השמונה עשרה ובתחילת התשע עשרה. כתב
גם מבוא נרחב לסידור התפילה בשם "בשמים ראש". בלי ספק ניתן וראוי למצוא חומר
נוסף על האיש, אולי ימצא משהו בספר הזיכרון לקהילת ביאליסטוק
[...]

Well, there you go. Next step is the Memorbuch of the Bialistok community.

Fred MacDowell Adam Clarke. Love him. 1833. "It never means dance." http://books.google.com/books?id=Q2pCAQAAIAAJ...

Gabriel Wasserman "Never means dance" sounds like Weingarten. אך אין פירושו כאן בריקוד But at least Weingarten qualifies it by saying "here". Hey, this is retroactively a parasha-post for last week; after all, we had: ותצאן כל הנשים אחריה בתפים ובמחולות. I realized that only now.

Gabriel Wasserman What does Malbim have?

Fred MacDowell Have to wait and see.

Gabriel Wasserman And, on Exodus 15:20, what have Hirsch, Mecklenberg, the Netziv, Shadal, Reggio... This could definitely be a post.

Fred MacDowell Yup.