Reflections on Hebrew: Which pronunciation?

One of the chant variations encountered these days is in the pronunciation of the Hebrew. The reader has many versions to choose, and I will highlight three: the standard Hebrew heard in common usage today (Israeli Sephardic), the European pronunciation of the last several centuries (Ashkenazi), and Yemenite. It may seem like a strange question to ask. After all, shouldn’t we just employ the current style of speaking Hebrew in Israel? There are valid concerns by those who advocate, often ardently, for different approaches. The case against using Israeli Sephardic concerns its blurring of certain sounds (such as the final letter “taf” with and without a dagesh (dot in the middle of the letter). Ashkenazi Hebrew pronounces the two taf and saf respectively. But Ashkenazi Hebrew is also not fully correct. It does not distinguish the sound of saf and samech. More importantly, it fails to separate aleph and ayin, and the latter is clearly a consonant from the point of view of the grammar. Perhaps we should all emulate the Yemenite punctuation as the most authentic. On the other hand, the Yemenite gutturals simply will not emerge trippingly off a western tongue.

There is another concern, and that is to separate the biblical diction from the language of the street. As a friend remarked, “Modern Hebrew is certainly not loshen kodesh (the holy tongue).” There is a tension between a desire for immediacy and a wish to lift the language of prayer and public chant above the mundane.

When it came down to it, my personal choice was for Israeli Sephardic. The revival of Hebrew as a modern language is a small miracle. The opportunity for a direct listening to the word and power of Torah overshadowed for me all arguments for alternative pronunciations. The concern about Torah sounding ordinary is already handled by the tradition. The correct pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew in chant differs from the rules of Modern Hebrew, sufficiently to separate it from the sound of the street. I will describe these differences in an upcoming post.

Reflections on Hebrew: Living Words

Two illustrations:

• In 1959, my father z’l got off the plane from America and landed with his family in Tel Aviv.It was his first time in Israel.He knew Hebrew from study of ancient texts, and from prayers.He immediately began conversing with people on the street as if he had been there all his life.
• Last summer my son was a counselor at a Jewish camp. Having trouble with a verse in the Torah, he turned to a visiting fourth grader from Israel, who immediately gave him the correct interpretation.

Torah is unique among the ancient works in the Western canon in that it is written in a living language. By contrast, a reader in Greece needs a translation to read the Iliad just as an English speaker does. Even going back 2500 years to the first documented public reading of Torah, at the time of Ezra and the rebuilding of the Temple, the people needed translation into Aramaic to understand the words.

For the Torah reader, the ability to read an ancient work in living words is an opportunity and a challenge. The ba’al keriyah can reach the listener with an unprecedented immediacy. That is why there needs to be a call to perform in an artful way, bringing letters to life, and giving voice to the full power of the text in a way pleasing to heart and mind.

The Agenda

The Agenda

The first two postings on Chant and Torah came easy: a sort of introduction, and a kavanah – a reminder of the attitude I hope to maintain. But where to go from here? The choices are vast. In 1975 when my wife and I took a three month “honeymoon” to Israel, we would wander the labyrinthine alleyways of the Old City of Jerusalem, and were constantly surprised by turning a corner to find a new discovery – a Crusader era church, an even more ancient ruin, a human scene; it seemed impossible that so much could be contained within its walls. Exploring Torah is like that. How can such a physically small book contain so many surprises, so much richness?

What should I write about first? A technical observation about a nuance of technique? A broad comment about Torah and its meaning for the world? An interpretation of the music of a particular passage? The choices are endless. So what I decided to do instead of a regular posting is to set a proposed table of contents for this blog. I would appreciate comments from those familiar with the medium on how this sounds to them. I doubt if I will be wedded to this program, and will likely digress often and maybe go in entirely different directions.

I expect to do some serial themed postings, and will begin with one: “Reflections on the Hebrew Language” and how it affects the process of reading the ancient writings. The first posting in the series, “Living Words”, will go up immediately. Also planned for the first series :

• The argument for Israeli Sephardic pronunciation and the direct experience of Torah
• Lashon hakodesh (Holy Tongue): the difference between biblical and modern Hebrew sound
• The details of correct pronunciation in Torah reading
• Future series/postings will go on to explore, in no particular order
• Reading Torah as theatrical Script
• Character development in Torah
• The problem of the lists, or – List as literature and song
• The individual Trop accents – how they feel to me as I sing them
• Speculation: the evolution of melody, different chant traditions
• Performance: music and emotion
• Stories in the light of Trop. Why stories?
• Thoughts on translation
• Practical utopianism – the Torah’s vision for humankind

To paraphrase Ramban, I hope to write this and more, with the help of The Rock.

Love and Fear

I had already named the two parts of my upcoming book Ahava andYir’ah – Love and Fear, when I saw the movie Donnie Darko. Its flim-flam spiritualist preaches that love must conquer fear for a person to succeed. That is not the Jewish way. “Unite our hearts to love and fear You” is our request as we approach Shema, the central prayer of the morning service.

It is appropriate for the ba’al keriyah, the Torah reader, to work towards this same balance. Discipline in grammar and meticulous attention to correct pronunciation are paramount. This need not interfere with the soaring of the spirit in the music of the Torah, with its wondrous storytelling and its eloquence about centrally important human issues. So we balance ardor with reverence and caution, emotion and intuition with reason and intellect.

In suggesting musical interpretations of ancient texts, sometimes with startling and “new” meanings, one should be mindful of traditional readings, and most of all constantly mindful of text. After all, the music changes over the millennia, as any oral tradition must. My “Lithuanian” style trop sounds different from my Yemenite cousins’. So when chant has suggested a particular way of interpreting the Torah, I always return to the text: do the words confirm what my ears seem to hear? And I look into the words of the classic commentators. They were intimately familiar with Scripture, and were wonderful readers of the texts, as many modern scholars acknowledge. I hope to strike the right balance of enthusiasm for my craft with caution in evaluating what I hear as I explore the Song in the Torah.

Chant and Torah

By profession, I am a country doctor. But long before I was a physician, I was a ba’al keriyah. I have been chanting Torah for fifty years, since age nine. In practicing the craft, I gradually wakened to a different sensibility about chanting the Torah and the ability of chant to make text come alive when it is done well. Magical things happen when the Song in Torah is given full expression.

In 2004 I took a three-month sabbatical from medicine to begin a book whose title I had thought of years ago: And the Cloud Covered the Tent of Meeting: Reflections of a Torah Reader. A first time writer, I had to learn to the discipline of coherent writing without including every stray thought. That was a difficult task, because by inheritance I am a tangential thinker. Fortunately the world has developed a literary form for writers of stray thoughts. With the book nearly complete, and hopefully to be published this fall, it is time to start a blog….