[HANASHIR:7635] Re: Torah Study Aid for Rachelle

[BZcantor <BZcantor...>]

   Sorry folks, this reply was supposed to go out when
this question was fresh, but my e-mail was messed up.
This answer picks up on just one point of the question.
Hopefully y'all will find it useful even if the conversation
has since moved beyond this point.
                                 Neil S.

In a message dated 12/10/2000 9:33:01 AM 
Eastern Standard Time, Barbara462 (at) aol(dot)com writes:

>  how does American reform trop differ from other trope 
>  systems?  Is it a difference between Binder and Rosen 
>  or Rosowsky or something more fundamental?

Binder taught Rosowsky's trope at HUC, and Rosowsky
himself taught at JTS.  The result of this is that many (if
not most) Conservative and Reform Rabbis and Cantors
who were trained in HUC or JTS before and after WWII
do a very similar "Lithuanian-Jerusalem" tradition for
Torah chant.  The students of these two pace-setters 
were the teachers of trope for those of us who went to
JTS or HUC in the last decades of the 20th century.

The "other systems" to which you may refer are the
chants of each different Jewish ethnic community:
German, European Sefardic, Moroccan, Yemenite,
Babylonian, Syrian-Egytian, Tunisian, Persian, ...
Each community uses the same trope symbols with
different musical values for Torah, Haftarah, High Holy
Day Torah, Esther, Eicha, and Shir HaShirim-Ruth-
Kohelet.  This helps differentiate the various holidays
on which these books are chanted.

The fact that (at least in the East European Askenazic
tradition) there is the same set of melodic values for
the trope of Ruth-Kohelet-Shir HaShirim reflects the
use of these three books on the 3 "Shalosh Regalim"
or Pilgrimage Festivals.  Ruth is chanted on Shavuot,
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) on Sukkot, and Shir HaShirim
on Pesach.  The acronym "RaKaSh" is used to refer
to the trope melodies shared by these three books.

                    Cantor Neil Schwartz  

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