Re: Hebrew Stress

[SamWeiss <SamWeiss...>]

At 08:05 AM 4/12/02, I. Oppenheim wrote:
>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".

Wrong.  This is wishful thinking and/or denial of empirical evidence, but 
the fact is that Ashkenazi Hebrew was =spoken= (i.e. read out loud whether 
in prayer, study or in some instances, even conversation) by millions of 
European Jews with primary stresses generally falling on the penultimate 
syllable irrespective of the "grammatical" stressess (i.e. as exemplified 
by the trope system) or what you call "proper Hebrew".  Exceptions were 
usually made when reading from the Torah, but not always.  As a matter of 
fact, to this very day expert Torah readers in Chassidic shtiebels ignore 
these stresses while sticking meticulously to all other details of "proper" 
Torah reading.  And of course the preponderance of Yeshiva-educated 
Ashkenazi Jews outside of Israel continue to use the Ashkenazi 
pronunciation system, as do many within Israel for liturgical use.

A good resource on this topic is <<Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A Language in 
Exile>> Oxford University Press, 1993, edited by Lewis Glinert.

_____________________________________________________________
Cantor Sam Weiss === Jewish Community Center of Paramus, NJ

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+