Two weeks ago, we began our next big adventure in 6th grade, the cantillation of Haftarah. We started with a discussion about how Haftarah trope and Torah trope are similiar:

1. The names of each symbol are the same (Mercha, Tipcha etc.).

2. The family or clause groups are still the same (and their color-coding): Sof Pasuk, Etnachta, Katon, T’vir, R’vi-i and Segol.

3. Each trope symbols still functions as it did in Torah, as a M’chabeir (connector) or Mafsik (separator).

4. The location of the trope symbol, above or below a word, still indicates the word’s syllabic stress.

So what is different, the melody! Each trope symbol will now indicate a different melody than we learned for Torah. It can be a little tricky at first, like learning a new language, but once we have the sound of Haftarah firmly in the students heads, switching between Torah and Haftarah will become possible.

As with Torah, we will learn Haftarah trope by chanting the symbol names in Hebrew, along with their corresponding hand motion. Then we write the symbols on the board with their Hebrew name, and then identify and color-code the clauses in our Haftarah example, Ki Teitzei Isaiah 54:1-10. We started with the Sof Pasuk clause, and last week we learned Etnachta.

All of the Haftarah trope resources, including recordings of each clause, the examples, the Blessings before and after reading Haftarah etc., can all be found on the bottom half of the trope page.

In Religious School for the past few weeks, we have been exploring mitzvot or commandments. Last week we looked at the 10 Commandments as set out Exodus. This week, we examined the prayer אלו דברים Eilu D’varim. We compared the two sets of instructions from God. The students discovered that the commandments were mostly about how we relate to God, as were in the prayer, our instructions were mostly about how we relate to one another. We will delve further into these concepts in the coming weeks.