After the successful completion of Torah Trope, our class has begun its work in Haftarah.  We began by discussing the similarities between chanting Torah and Haftarah: the symbols are the same, the clauses they belong to are the same, how each symbol functions is the same, and the symbol still provides syllabic stress based upon its placement.  The only thing that is different is that each symbol has a new melody.

As before, we began by learning the Etnachta clause: Mercha Tipcha Munach and Etnachta. Then we learned the Sof-Pasuk clause: Mercha Tipcha Mercha Sof-Pasuk.  We noted that the Mercha and Tipcha have different sounds whether they are in the Etnachta or Sof-Pasuk clauses (in Torah they sound the same).  We have identified the variations of each clause in our Haftarah example: Jonah 1:1-16.

We have also started working on the Blessing Before Haftarah, which uses Haftarah trope. All of the blessings, examples, recordings can be found on the bottom half of the Trope page of the website. You can also listen to recordings of the Haftarah clauses here: https://soundcloud.com/marla-aviva-bentley/sets/haftarah-clauses

If you know your student is going to be absent on a Hebrew day, please be sure to have them review the clause we went over in class at home, so they do not become behind.  So far we have covered Etnachta and Sof Pasuk.