buying a tikkun
Jun. 26th, 2003 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioTonight I went to Pinsker's in search of a "tikkun", the book that gives all the torah portions with trope and division into parts. (I don't know why this is called a tikkun.) This turned out to be more challenging than I had anticipated.
[Geeking follows.]
I've heard lots of things about "Kestenbaum" (I guess that's the editor), so I looked at that one first. It's large, has English translation, and costs $60. It's also physically very heavy. I don't need English translations, and the English introduction didn't say anything new to me (near as I could tell), so I kept looking.
There was one that was entirely Hebrew (including what looked like an introduction). It didn't make the boundaries between parshiyot obvious, and I had to do some digging to find the markings between aliyot within a parsha. Fine if you know the text well; not so good if you need those guideposts, like I do.
There was another all-Hebrew one that had very small print; I didn't examine it closely.
This left the one published by Ktav. (I think that means "book". Well, same root, anyway.) It has clear headers at the beginning of each parsha and each aliya, and it shows the weekday aliya breakdowns as well. I can't tell if it gives you what you need to handle double portions; I looked at Matot-Masei (the one we're doing for that service at the end of July) and there's something at the right point for the end of the first (combined) aliya, but I can't make it out and the book does not contain an introduction explaining notation.
This book had a familiar look to it, though. Upon closer inspection, I realized that this is what David has given me photocopies from on a couple occasions. It seems to be sound, and I know I've been able to work from it in the past. And it was $20, which is a far cry from Kestenbaum.
None, not even Kestenbaum, had Hebrew that was large enough that could read without mechanical assistance. That's disappointing, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
I opted for the familiar-looking, inexpensive Ktav. And this Shabbat, I will begin learning Matot-Masei in earnest.
[Geeking follows.]
I've heard lots of things about "Kestenbaum" (I guess that's the editor), so I looked at that one first. It's large, has English translation, and costs $60. It's also physically very heavy. I don't need English translations, and the English introduction didn't say anything new to me (near as I could tell), so I kept looking.
There was one that was entirely Hebrew (including what looked like an introduction). It didn't make the boundaries between parshiyot obvious, and I had to do some digging to find the markings between aliyot within a parsha. Fine if you know the text well; not so good if you need those guideposts, like I do.
There was another all-Hebrew one that had very small print; I didn't examine it closely.
This left the one published by Ktav. (I think that means "book". Well, same root, anyway.) It has clear headers at the beginning of each parsha and each aliya, and it shows the weekday aliya breakdowns as well. I can't tell if it gives you what you need to handle double portions; I looked at Matot-Masei (the one we're doing for that service at the end of July) and there's something at the right point for the end of the first (combined) aliya, but I can't make it out and the book does not contain an introduction explaining notation.
This book had a familiar look to it, though. Upon closer inspection, I realized that this is what David has given me photocopies from on a couple occasions. It seems to be sound, and I know I've been able to work from it in the past. And it was $20, which is a far cry from Kestenbaum.
None, not even Kestenbaum, had Hebrew that was large enough that could read without mechanical assistance. That's disappointing, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
I opted for the familiar-looking, inexpensive Ktav. And this Shabbat, I will begin learning Matot-Masei in earnest.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-02 08:00 am (UTC)The best modern one (all-Hebrew) is a blue one called "Simanim". It has marginal textual notes, it indicates shva na vs. shva nach (pronounced vs. not), and various other nice features.
The one I use is published by Mishor, it has nice clear print on both sides, and an introduction with rules for Hebrew pronunciation.
I think Artscroll made a big mistake putting an English translation in their tikkun - a tikkun is used solely to learn how to lein, and an English translation is superfluous.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-02 08:54 am (UTC)I agree with your comments on Kestenbaum. The English translation unnecessarily adds to the cost and the weight of the book. I'm not going to pay three times the cost of Ktav for that unless there's something really good about the book. I might buy another, more-expensive, tikkun later, if I conclude that there's something significantly better than Ktav out there (like yours, maybe), but Kestenbaum doesn't seem to be that.
It has one major drawback compared to most contemporary models, though: the newer ones have the lines in the pointed and unpointed text synchronized. That is, each line in the pointed text has the same words as the line in the unpointed text.
Are the line breaks uniform on Sefrei Torah, and if so do they match what's in Kestenbaum? If not, then I don't think I care if the pointed and unpointed texts match; I can scan for a keyword to find the verse I want, and if I can't rely on the spacing to prepare me for the actual reading anyway, it doesn't seem all that important to me. And actually, I'd rather not get too used to a particular spacing if it's not going to be the one I'll see in the scroll, because I have a very visual memory and that could trip me up. (It did when I read from Emor this year, as a matter of fact. The scroll had some very wide reishes and heys that I had trouble with.)
I've found a couple of typesetting glitches in Ktav, but nothing insurmountable. A couple of lameds in the first aliya of Matot are missing their top strokes. What remains is something that is clearly not a letter, so it was easy to notice the error and I just pencilled in the missing parts. I had also reviewed the portion in a Chumash first (just reading, Hebrew and English), so I knew those words looked wrong. But I do hope that's not a sign of problems to come.