transliteration, cantorial stuff

[cellio]

We ended up talking a little bit about the Hebrew/English balance at services and the use of transliteration in the siddur. Some rabbis apparently hold the view that transliteration is a crutch that keeps people from actually learning Hebrew. I suspect that's not quite right.

I dislike reading from transliteration, and avoid it except when urgent even if it means I won't be able to say every word (due to being slow). On the other hand, when I was just starting to attend services and didn't know anything yet, I was really grateful to have it. I was able to use it to jump-start my participation, yet I did not lose my motivation to learn to read for real. I commented on this to my rabbi, who said something like "yeah, but you taught yourself trope too -- you're not typical". Actually, though, I suspect I am typical among that subset of the population that will learn to read anyway. It's just that most people will apparently settle for transliteration -- but if it weren't there they'd sit in silence, not say "gee, I'm not getting any help here; I better learn the language". Or so I theorize. (Data welcome.)

The real issue there, I guess, is that most people don't want to learn to read a foreign alphabet at speed. I'd rather give them some tools for participation than write them off. (And just to clarify, I'm pretty sure my rabbi shares that view. He's not the one who said transliteration should be eliminated.)

But I'd also be thrilled if I, personally, never had to rely on transliteration again. :-)

- - - - - - - -

In other news, I met with our cantorial soloist last night to discuss that service at the end of July. She is quite happy to have me doing most of the music, with other committee members doing some, and she said she would like to see more of this. So we'll be sort of a test case or something, to see how the congregation reacts. The subs are already mostly lined up for her maternity leave (which is going to be very short, because she wants to be back before the high holy days), but she pointed out that next summer there will be an opportunity to do more. No, she's not planning another kid (or if she is, she didn't share that information), but the congregation has managed to clear next summer of b'nei mitzvot, so services during the summer can be less formal and more experimental. (Next year's class is small, so we are taking the opportunity to do some sanctuary renovations.) I'd love to see more lay people being more involved in things like this.

We also talked about the trope class I want us to have in the fall or winter, and she's going to do what she can to make it happen. The lines of responsibility are a little fuzzy here, and we both want to make sure it doesn't fall through the cracks.

Comments

Re: Trope Music?

[cellio]

Oh, and yes -- torah and haftarah trope are different. I don't know exactly how, as I have been carefully avoiding the latter until I completely learn the former. No sense confusing myself with that. :-)

Noach isn't for a while -- you could relearn the section for real and chant it this year, assuming your congregation allows that sort of thing "just because" rather than because you have a specific occasion like an aufruf or bar mitzvah.

Re: Trope Music?

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

"It's called Binder": Well, Rabbi Binder (Reform) wrote a well-regarded (in Orthodox circles as well) book on tropes, including music for all the various modes in general use, at least for Ashkenazic, and I think some Sephardic styles: Torah, Haftorah, High Holidays Torah, Esther, Eichah, Other Three Megillas. It goes in & out of print.

I taught myself to read Ruth (one of the Other Three Megillas) from the musical examples in Idelsohn's "Jewish Music in its Historical Development" one Shavuot when we didn't have anyone who knew how to do it. Germans have a system that's a little different from Eastern European Ashkenazic, whose Torah trope sounds a bit like our Esther.

I spent a year and a half learning my bar-mitzva parsha (Lech Lecha), first learning the tropes themselves with flash cards, then applying them to the text. I cut it kind of close, but learned the haftarah in the last week-and-a-half. Once I was used to the cadences of Tanach text from the Torah, learning a new set of notes was all but trivial.

Rabbi Binder

[cellio]

Thanks for the information. I only had the name "Binder", which I got from Trope Trainer. (Trope Trainer has a couple dozen trope systems, and I cycled through them until I found the one I recognized.)