small victories

[cellio]

I just, for the first time, correctly chanted my little chunk of Parsha Behar from the text as it appears in the Torah scroll -- no punctuation, no vowel pointing, no cantillation marks, tiny calligraphy. Yay!

Granted, it's one aliya of the weekday Torah reading, and in this parsha that's pretty darn short, but still -- it's as much as I did for the "adult bat mitzvah", and I learned it a heck of a lot more quickly this time and with much less help. I've got a month and a half to go; I bet I could learn the next aliya in that time. (I'm not sure I will, because it might look weird to do 2 out of the 3 and I don't think I can learn the third, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless.)

And yes, I know I have to practice it periodically between now and then so it doesn't rot, but maintenance is easier than acquisition.

Comments

Re: The System

[goljerp]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that they're common; quite the contrary, I have rarely seen them used. Sometimes I've seen a gabbai try to signal the end of a sentance or parsha by hand, but it's often akin to someone in the back seat using their imaginary brakes. (When I was learning to drive, my mom had an imaginary brake. When I heard her thumping the floor, I knew that she wanted me to stop for some reason. I think my dad had an imaginary hand brake, which was much quieter...)