cellio | HHD torah reading

I'll be chanting torah for Rosh Hashana this year. Nifty! The portion is the Akeidah (the binding of Isaac); I get the climax. Which I will read in front of 900 people, give or take. Fortunately -- near as I can tell -- that sort of thing doesn't make me nervous any more.

It's just as well I didn't get Yom Kippur after all. I'd been hoping for that to allow more time to learn the portion (Rosh Hashana is in a bit under three weeks), but I'd forgotten that I'm reading on the Shabbat two days after Yom Kippur. Yes, I think Rosh Hashana will be better spacing. :-) (On the other hand, Ha'azinu, that Shabbat portion, has got to be the easiest portion out there, so it wouldn't have been a show-stopper.)

The book of B'reishit (Genesis) overall seems to be easier to learn than much of the rest of the Torah. I should remember that when choosing portions in the future, when looking at corner cases (i.e. end of D'varim versus beginning of B'reishit, and end of B'reishit versus beginning of Sh'mot.) Sometimes a week or two makes a real difference.

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Neat! Have you done a HHD reading before? I'm chanting the first aliah of Yom Kippur this year. I had hoped to do first day of Rosh Hashana so my Dad would get a chance to hear me leyn, but it's just as well I get an extra week to practice. Especially since I've not had my head in HHD tropes for a whole year. :-)

No, I haven't done this before. Aside from the (err, how do you pluralize...) rebetzim, I've never seen adult readers for the high holy days at my congregation before. We have the best students (who are also willing) from the previous year's b'nei mitzvah do the HHD readings. This year we had a smaller class and apparently there weren't enough, so they asked some adults to read.

We're not learning HHD trope. The congregation isn't used to it anyway (they don't make the kids learn it; in fact, many of the kids read instead of chanting), and there's not a lot of time. I'll be happy to learn it properly for next year if my rabbi thinks I'll get another chance to use it.

It's a pity your dad won't get to hear you read -- but yeah, more practice time is good too. :-)

It's too bad you're not learning the HHD trope - it's really beautiful. I remember the first time I heard it, I was mesmorized. Of course, the guy reading it was outstanding, so that may have had something to do with it, but still I have a special affection for the HHD trope.... I hope you get a chance to do it next year!

Plural of rabbi?
Rebbaiyim (grr... transliteration sucks. "reh-bay-yim")

(The 'tz' in your plural made me wonder what the plural of rebbetzin is.)

I was trying to indicate "the wives of the two rabbis". Each of them gets a portion to read each year for HHD services, and the rest has been kids until this year.

Ah, sorry for the read-o.

I don't think the 'im' ending would be appropriate for rebbetzin, somehow. The only way I've heard it pluralized is "rebbetzins," actually.

Does your synogogue use special trup for the HHD or do you use regular trup?

I never found any particular book easier to learn. Interesting. What makes B'reishit easier for you? I've never manegd anything better than rote repetition over and over again to nail a section down.

We use the regular trope. But my rabbi is fine with people learning the HHD trope, so if it looks like I'll get this opportunity again (I intend to ask later) I'll learn the system for next year. I just don't think I can learn the trope and the portion in two weeks.

What makes B'reishit easier for you?

I have limited experience so far, so it's possible my impressions are simply skewed, but that aside, I've noticed a few things.

First, the vocabulary seems easier. That is, I seem to recognize and comprehend more words, which makes memorization easier. And names are relatively frequent in B'reishit, so aside from the begats that helps. Patriarchs and matriarchs make for easy word-recognition.

Second, I find narratives a little easier to learn than law-giving, and there's no law-giving in B'reishit. I don't know if this is about vocabulary or about assembling the words into meaningful chunks -- probably the latter. (When I read the Nadav/Avihu passage earlier this year it just flowed, in a way I hadn't experienced before. Yeah, that's not B'reishit. :-) )

I have very limited comprehension on my own, and anything that aids comprehension helps me to put the phrase breaks in the right places, which in turn helps with remembering trope. Example: if I can't remember if this clause has a munach before the katon and I know the word I'm on ends a phrase, then I know it has to mean go straight to the katon. Stuff like that.

Third -- and I have insufficient data for this -- there seem to be fewer cases of look-alike words. I learned one parsha in Vayikra -- maybe Tazria; can't remember -- where words that looked the same after you stripped out the vowels, or looked nearly the same (and near enough to confuse me), were vowelized differently. This was hard for me to memorize.

Now I'm trying to learn biblical Hebrew, which will eventually help with comprehension, which will in turn help with memorization. So I'm hoping this is not a long-term problem. We'll see.

And it's possible that I've just been lucky (or unlucky) in which parts I've learned so far.

Congratulations :-)

Thanks!

Breisheet is the oldest stories, the ones that went through the most generations of oral transmission before being written down. Makes sense that they'd be the easiest ones to chant.

Anywhattaway, yasher koach on the yom tov reading! I'm sure you'll do great!

Thanks! I spent some time this afternoon practicing the portion, and it doesn't seem hard. (Haven't tried it without vowels and trope yet, but wasn't planning to quite yet anyway.)

HHD torah reading

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