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. :-)

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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

[goljerp]

Hmm... Transliteration...

I'm lousy at fern languages[1]. I can sound out unfamiliar hebrew words, very slowly. Sloowwwlly. My vocabulary is very limited. Calling myself functionally illiterate in Hebrew would be generous.

However, as lousy as I am at languages, my brain remembers songs. So if you were sitting next to me at my shul, you might not realize my hebrew is so bad, because I'd be singing with the congregation and participating. I use the Hebrew in the siddur, but mainly as a reminder - I'm not reading the words so much as using them to remember what I've already memorized. So I can pick up a different siddur and not get totally lost.

I can use tranliterations in the same way. I also find the transliterations helpful for things which I don't say often enough to have memorized (like the holiday additions to benching, for example). So I'm in favor of 'em.

[1] I don't include things like Java, FORTRAN, Basic, SQL, etc. as foreign languages. I'm good at using those, but that's really a different skill.