Re: Hebrew Stress

[I. Oppenheim <i.oppenheim...>]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Susan Lerner wrote:

> There has been a recent trend in the Reform movement
> (and perhaps others?) to edit liturgical music so as
> to be consonant with the stress patterns of Sephardic
> Hebrew.

I think some of you are confusing the different
pronunciation traditions of Hebrew, with the difference
in stress patterns between Hebrew and Yiddish.

While Dutch, Litvian, Portuguese or Yemenite Jews may
pronounce Hebrew in very different ways, when speaking
proper Hebrew they all place the stresses at exactly
the same places.

In Hebrew, stresses are not a matter of taste or local
custom: they are determined by grammar. Therefore there
does not exist something like "sephardi stress" or
"askenazi stress".

Changing the stress, can change the meaning of a word
in Hebrew. To give an example from the Shema prayer:

ve-no-sa-TI or ve-na-ta-TI means "I will give," while:
ve-no-SA-ti or ve-na-TA-ti means "and I have given."

ve-o-hav-TO or ve-a-hav-TA means "you must love," while:
ve-o-HAV-to or ve-a-HAV-ta means "and you loved."

One of the standard tests a chazzan has to pass in
Holland, is to recite the Shema the proper way. You
will be amazed how many mistakes people make in the
declamation of such an important prayer as the Shema.


I must note that it is true, that under influence of
Yiddish, many European cantors and composers used to
pronounce Hebrew words according to European stress
patterns. But this practice has nothing to do with the
proper pronunciation of Hebrew, which is a semitic
language.

If you take a look on my website, you will notice that
e.g. chazzan Katz (1881-1930), while pronouncing Hebrew
the Ashkenazi way, placed all the stresses correctly
according to the Hebrew grammar in his music
manuscript:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~danio/irwin/music/katz/

The Dutch composer Aron Wolff Berlijn (1817-1870) even
mentions in the forewords to his different liturgical
publications, that he had all his compositions checked
by the prominent hebraist G.I. Polak.

So, no, I do not think you can speak of a recent trend
towards the correct pronunciation of Hebrew.

Gut SHABbes/ShabBAT Shalom,

Irwin

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