100 blessings a day, but how many letters in the pasuk?!

In parshat Ekev, a famous pasuk {Devarim 10:12}:

יב וְעַתָּה, יִשְׂרָאֵל--מָה ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ, שֹׁאֵל מֵעִמָּךְ: כִּי אִם-לְיִרְאָה אֶת-ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ לָלֶכֶת בְּכָל-דְּרָכָיו, וּלְאַהֲבָה אֹתוֹ, וְלַעֲבֹד אֶת-ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשֶׁךָ.

12 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul;

The gemara in Menachot 43b reads:

תניא היה רבי מאיר אומר חייב אדם לברך מאה ברכות בכל יום שנאמר (דברים י) ועתה ישראל מה ה' אלהיך שואל מעמך

It is not necessarily relevant, since there is not always a precise correspondence between the actual pasuk and the pasuk as cited in the gemara, especially where writing a word malei is an aid to pronunciation, but note how shoel is spelled with a vav. This may indeed be relevant.

This derasha seems at odds with the spirit of the pasuk. The pasuk is coming to basically say (IMHO) that rachmana liba ba'i, Hashem basically wants us to follow in his ways, love him, do what is right in accordance with what he has commanded. To darshen it to impose an extra ritual requirement of 100 blessings that one must say each day seems at odds with the theme of the pasuk. And there might be a great answer to this, which will increase our understanding and appreciation of the meaning of berachot. Regardless, the standard understanding of this derivation is that מה is to be reread as מאה, such that Hashem is asking of you 100. And those are the 100 blessings.

Baal Haturim offers other derivations, but I often like to point out that his approach is to find extra derivations encoded in gematria, roshei teivos, and the like, to further support and discover what was already known and derived by Chazal using more standard midrashic methodology.

Here, Baal Haturim points out several additional derivations of this law. First, that using A"t Ba"sh, a cypher in which you fold the aleph beis over itself, such that aleph, the first letter in the beginning, matches the last letter tav; and beis, the second letter, matches shin, the second to last letter. If you take the word מה, the mem matches to yud and the heh matches to tzaddi. Thus, יצ. Yud is 10 and tzaddi is 90, for a total of 100.

Second, that there are 100 letters in the verse. And note that he also cites the pasuk with שואל having a vav.

Third, the word ממך is mem + mem + kaf = 40 + 40 + 40 = 100.

There are "problems" with these derivations. Firstly, there is no word ממך in the pasuk! If I understood Baal Haturim's third point correctly, he was trying to make such a derivation based on gematria of a non-existent word. The word in the pasuk is מעמך. (But in the dibbur hamatchil he had it right! It is possible I am making some catastrophic error here in understanding this derivation. Help will be much appreciated.)

{Update: As DovBear pointed out to me in private correspondence, based on his Mikraos Gedolos, the Baal Haturim is likely referring to another pasuk, in Micha 6:8:

ח הִגִּיד לְךָ אָדָם, מַה-טּוֹב; וּמָה-ה' דּוֹרֵשׁ מִמְּךָ, כִּי אִם-עֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט וְאַהֲבַת חֶסֶד, וְהַצְנֵעַ לֶכֶת, עִם-אֱלֹהֶיךָ. {ס}

8 It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the LORD doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. {S}

While earlier in his comment Baal Haturim did speak of sheol mimcha, he likely is directly or indirectly referring to this pasuk in Michah. Thus, Hashem is doresh "mimecha", which is gematria 100.

}

But secondly, he claims that there are 100 words in the pasuk, while there are only 99! This is related to an earlier post on parshablog, which discussed a Rashi which appeared to darshen a word for being chaser yud, when we had it malei. Here, it would seem that Baal Haturim has an extra letter. And that letter would be the vav in shoel. But even so, didn't he just drop out the ע from מעמך. We would need still another letter, if so! {Note: As per the update, that it referred to a pasuk in Micha, this last objection is no objection.}

At any rate, here is what Minchas Shai writes:

וְעַתָּה יִשְׂרָאֵל מָה ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ שֹׁאֵל מֵעִמָּךְ -- The Baal Haturim writes that there are 100 letters in this verse, corresponding to the 100 blessings. And so too in the Aruch, entry מאה {thanks, Z!}, 100. Also, the Rav Ibn Yarchi in sefer Hamanhig in the name of Rabbenu Yaakov מ"כ that he found in the masoretic notes that this verse is in its entirety possessed of 100 letters, and that shoel is malei {such that that extra vav would bring it from 99 to 100}. End quote. And so wrote the Ramban in his commentary to sefer Yetzirah, page 23, that so wrote the kabbalist, the rav, R' Y"T {Yom Tov ben Avraham Asevilli} za"l, in the sefer called Kesem Paz, in the name of the rav, Rabbi Eliyahu the kabbalist, that the word שואל is malei {vav}, and that the count of 100 is in this verse, end quote.

However, in our sefarim it is chaser; and so wrote the Rama, za"l: שאל מעמך is chaser, and just like it is ושאל אוב וידעוני. And so too wrote the rav, Rabbenu Bachta in his sefer Kad Hakemach, letter Bet, Beracha, and this is his language:

And further, you will find in this verse 99 letters, and with the addition of the aleph which {Chachmeinu} za"l said "do not read it mah but meah", it will sum up to 100.

I have also seen one who wished to add a vav to {the beginning of} the word לָלֶכֶת in the verse in order to complete the count, and wrote that so it {=the verse} is written in the sefer of Rabbi Yosef Tov Elem. And one should not rely on this at all.

There is indeed a difference between your typical malei and chaser, in which we can follow the gemara and say that anan lo bekiin bemeleios vachaseiros, and that such differences do not invalidate a sefer Torah, and adding or subtracting a connective vav in the beginning of a word.

It also might be useful to see the sefer Hamanhig inside. Beside the masoretic tradition being cited, of 100 letters in the pasuk, we also see other efforts to arrive at 100, such as the atbash cypher, or adding the aleph from Chazal's derasha to make the word 100. It seems that this masoretic note did not necessarily conform even to his sefer Torah, and so these various methods of deduction and/or arriving at 100 were required. This might be true as well of Ramban and others. Indeed, perhaps it was even so of the Baal Haturim, who gives two other methods of reaching 100, one of which is atbash; perhaps he only wrote this 100 count according to those who had such a count, but wrote in brief. On the other hand, he makes no note of dispute in this pasuk, and the dibbur hamatchil has שואל with the vav present.

Should one put stock in this alternate masorah, that there are 100 letters and the שואל is malei? I don't think so, because even that masoretic note seems aware of the variant, by saying that שואל is malei and that brings the number of letters to 100. This seems congnizant of the alternative, and that saying that it is malei "helps out" in the "problem" of getting to 100 to bolster the derasha. And if so, it is choosing one variant (or creating it?) for this very purpose. Meanwhile, the text with only 99 letters is more "difficult" since it does not support the derasha in this extra way, and requires Rabbenu Bachya's explanation of adding the aleph to make it work. Lectio difficilior thus favors the 99 letter verse to be more original.

There is also the Yerushalmi (I don't recall where) which says that if given two Torah variants, to prefer the chaser over the malei as the likely more original.