Chanting the Hebrew Bible

by Joshua R. Jacobson

Joshua Jacobson’s 2002 edition—the comprehensive 1000-page guide to cantillation—is now available in this condensed, 300-page, user-friendly paperback edition. It is an ideal instructional guide for adult and young-adult students of Torah, for b’nai mitzvah students, and for cantors, rabbis, and Jewish educators of all denominations. Like the original edition, it includes an explanation of the tradition and a description of the practice of chanting, with all its regional variations and grammatical rules. There is detailed instruction, with musical notation, on chanting of Torah, and shorter instructions for chanting the haftarah, the megillot, and readings for the High Holy Days. More than 85 links to the audio CD throughout make it easy for readers to follow examples in sound as well as in print and is invaluable for those who cannot read music. Charts, helpful hints, pronunciation guide, glossary, and indexes to the book and the CD complete the book. Joshua Jacobson, professor of music and conductor of the acclaimed Boston-based Zamir Chorale, has been Torah chanting since he was 10 years old. That life-long experience, combined with an unquenchable desire to reconnect the art of cantillation with the most convincing and accurate treatment of the ancient text possible, led him to create this indispensable teaching tool. Using Jacobson’s highly acclaimed approach, the ancient words come alive in a new, deeply emotional and most accurate way.

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Leib Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review
5 enthusiastic stars
°°°°°°°

All parts of this book are extremely good, and the book has only gotten better with time. (I'm actually updating this review 2 years/30 chantings after purchasing the book because I keep finding new things as I study it more and more.)

What are some of the particularly great features?

1. There is a troubleshooting section that goes through the entire Chumash and points out nettlesome pronunciation problems. Verse by verse.

2. Every single cantillation mark is rendered as musical notation, also with examples of how to redistribute the pitches in the case of words of varying syllabic length/stress (VERY few people who do this have that level of detail.)

3. There is a great section on vowels/pronunciation (closed/open syllables, etc). And also, some of these things are revisited at other points in the book, because as people who use the voice-instrument know.... different / strange things can happen when you are trying to project notes at higher volumes.

4. The author does take the trouble to present Reform style cantillation, though he does not focus on it.

5. All of the high holiday motifs are rendered as musical notation. (And this is helpful, because I have seen people who are "professional" cantors just switch their voice into a lower register and do all of the same aimless/sinusoidal warbling that they do during the week day instead of properly learning the melodic motifs.)

6. The book is extremely academic / intellectual, and you can have an understanding (with LOTS of work to understand what Jacobson lays out) the underlying logic of the cantillation. So, for example the decalogue has two different sets of cantillation for reading purposes, and Jacobson has taken the trouble to present the more logically correct way to chat the decalogue (as determined by R'Mordechai Breuer).

7. There are sections that talk about the history of cantillation. There are tons and tons of primary references throughout and at the end of the book.
*****

My interest is in learning PROPER cantillation, and even though I go to Orthodox shuls:

1. Virtually NONE of the people who do the actual chanting of the Torah are trained in music-not even able to tell the difference between a major third and a perfect fifth. (Coincidentally, there are some people who do music but none of them are trained in Torah reading. And that makes this book an extremely rare synthesis of two useful things.)

2. Virtually NONE have any sense of trying to accurately reproduce the sounds in the notated cantillation marks with the voice as you would with an instrument. And you will find that most people who chance just do a lot of sinusoidal warbling for most of the pericope and others will just read it so fast that nobody can develop any sense of key and therefore none of intervals. (Some people chant so fast that you cannot even identify trop.)

3. Virtually no one can answer grammatical questions. No one can answer questions such as "What happens to the dagesh in BGDKFT letters when it closes a syllable?"

**********
I probably went to every wrong place imagineable to find the information that I needed before reading this book.

Wrong place #1. The Torah Reader/Leyner. He has no idea what a musical notes and what are intervals.

Wrong place #2. YouTube. These videos top out at about 30 minutes long, and that is not nearly enough time to learn what is necessary.

Wrong place #3. Most internet sites. When you read a webpage, it is not the same experience is having a book in your hand that you can flip through and that is indexed.

If you have been through all of those wrong places before, then this book is your next logical step--or, maybe you can skip all of the wrong places and make this your first and only step.

Conversations with several young men who chanted for their bar mitzvah revealed that: ZERO of them knew what was the logic behind the way that the sentences were parsed nor about first second third and fourth level disjunctives. (For that matter, I don't think I found a single person who even knew what was a disjunctive. And these guys are Orthodox, no less!)

Verdict: Strongly recommended at new the price. And ONLY at the new price, because you will turn back to this book so frequently as a reference guide that it does not do to have a copy that is already halfway worn out.

Recommended.
Recommended.
Recommended.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

After completing the chapter on the Torah tropes, I feel very confident on being able to teach myself a parsha without the need of a recording from the cantor/rabbi. I really like Jacobson's teaching structure. He has you chant fragments of verses. As you add more tropes to your repertoire to chant more fragments. Then by the time you get to the point of the book where he has you chant an entire verse, you discover it's made up of all these fragments you have already learned. It makes complete sense, but it wasn't immediately evident to me this is what he was doing. I was surprised the Hebrew was flowing so easily until I realized it was flowing easily because I had already learned that fragment five pages ago.

It gets three stars because the student edition doesn't seem to come with the CD indicated. I thought maybe the store left it out, but there isn't even an indication on where it would have been in the book if it had accidently got ripped or fallen out). So the musical notation is INVALUABLE (granted you read music). If you can't read music, there are several sites online that you can use to supplement your study.

I also wish there was more "why" to go along with the "how". Why is there such-and-such exception? Why does this trope only appear five times? What is special about it? Since this is the student edition, perhaps it is covered in the complete edition. It also gets a bit confusing with all the different segments, conjunctives and disjunctives, but I'm sure it becomes more clear and intuitive the more you study. The information on phrasing is well presented visually and descriptively. However, if you are like me, coming from a music background, a lot of the phrasing will be intuitive (also if you know Hebrew it will be intuitive).

[Maer]

Hebrew

[Jimmacc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really helps put a logic to the tre. Excellent.