New Orthographic Methods for Teaching Novice Hebrew Readers

Transcription

NEW ORTHOGRAPHIC METHODS FOR TEACHING NOVICE HEBREW READERS
Linda Sue Sohn
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts
May, 2011
Author Note
Linda Sue Sohn is a student in the Cantor-Educator Program, a curriculum of coursework
in the School of Jewish Music and the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education at
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, culminating in receipt of the title of Hazzan through
cantorial ordination and a Master of Jewish Education degree. This thesis is submitted to the
Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education in partial fulfillment for the Master of Jewish
Education degree.
Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to Linda Sue Sohn,
[email protected]
NEW ORTHOGRAPHIC METHODS FOR NOVICE HEBREW READERS
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NEW ORTHOGRAPHIC METHODS FOR TEACHING NOVICE HEBREW READERS
Linda Sue Sohn
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts
Advisor: Scott M. Sokol, MSM, PhD, ABPdN
Abstract
This project demonstrates how reformatting Hebrew texts can mitigate challenges faced
by beginning Hebrew readers, of all ages and abilities, in areas such as syllabification and
phrasing. The proposed format employs advantageous font choice and point size; extra
horizontal space between phrases, words and syllables; extra vertical space between lines and
visual representations for sheva na’ and kamatz katan. Using DavkaWriter Platinum 6 (a popular
Hebrew word processing program), this project presents a series of macros (small computer
programs) that automate much of the reformatting. This automation provides quick access for
creating source texts for use in a variety of teaching and learning environments: B’nei Mitzvah
training, prayer recitation practice and Hebrew text study. Results of this project show how better
formatting of text improves Hebrew reading fluency and accuracy for both typical students and
individuals with special needs. These innovations are presented in sample Torah, Haftarah and
siddur texts.
Unpublished work © 2011 Linda Sue Sohn – all rights reserved
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all of my classmates and teachers at Hebrew College for inspiring
me with their wit and wisdom. Dr. Joshua Jacobson opened up the world of cantillation and
gave it a structure and a beauty that I had only vaguely sensed before I studied with him. His
support and encouragement of my work in reformatting Biblical Hebrew texts validated my
efforts. His attention to detail and questions about how I grouped ta’am phrases gave me the
inspiration to automate more of the reformatting.
Marion Green generously shared her tools and methods for working with different kinds
of learners. She showed me her methods for reformatting Hebrew texts for individuals with
learning disabilities. This provided the inspiration for automating what can be a tedious, but
necessary, editing task.
Hazzan Dr. Scott Sokol of Hebrew College and Temple Beth Sholom (Framingham, MA)
has always provided a positive, encouraging and knowledgeable sounding board. Without his
suggestion seven years ago that I consider working on my Certificate in Jewish Special Needs at
Hebrew College while simultaneously training to be a cantor in the School of Jewish Music, I
would never have discovered that I could combine not only those two areas of expertise, but also
come full circle and transform twenty-five years as a software engineer into what has become a
passion and a necessity for me to “write my own Torah.”
Lastly, I want to thank my students, who have provided the most compelling reasons why
this work is so important. It has been and continues to be an honor and a privilege to be your
teacher.
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DEDICATION
To my mother-in-law Dorothy Sohn (z”l) and my father-in-law Sam Sohn (z”l), who
showed me by example the importance of being part of a Jewish community.
To my mother Louise Moss, who taught me that I am a Jew.
To my brother Dan Moss, the nicest man I know who inspires me to be my best. I
promise to fix your computer as soon as I graduate.
To my daughter Hana, who will graduate with her Bachelor’s Degree a mere two weeks
before I graduate with my Master’s Degree and Cantorial Ordination. 2011 will always be a
special year for the both of us.
To my husband Richard – my partner, my confidant, my best friend. I could never have
done this without you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM ...................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER II. JUDAIC MOTIVATION ........................................................................................ 4 Write One’s Own Torah: Deuteronomy 31:19 ............................................................................ 4 Do Not Further Disadvantage the Disadvantaged: Leviticus 19:14:........................................... 8 CHAPTER III. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON READING ISSUES ...................................... 10 Overcoming Dyslexia - A Book Review ................................................................................... 10 2009 GISHA Conference .......................................................................................................... 13 Dr. Esther Geva ..................................................................................................................... 13 Dr. Tami Katzir...................................................................................................................... 16 Dr. Nina Elisabeth Goodman................................................................................................. 17 Hazzan Dr. Scott M. Sokol .................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER IV. BRIEF REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON TYPOGRAPHY ............................... 23 Basic Typographic Principles.................................................................................................... 23 Typography for Children ........................................................................................................... 24 CHAPTER V. REVIEW OF RESOURCES USED FOR B’NEI MITZVAH TRAINING ......... 26 Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem by Joseph Marcus (1943) ........................................................... 26 HaMaftir Series of Bar Mitzvah pamphlets, Shilo Publishing Company (1963) ..................... 27 A Guide to Torah Reading by Cantor Samuel Rosenbaum (1982) ........................................... 28 Tikkun Lakor’im published by K’tav Publishing House (1969) ............................................... 29 Tikkun Kor’im—Simanim by Feldheim Publishing (2001) ....................................................... 30 The Art of Torah Cantillation by Cantor Marshall Portnoy and Cantor Joseé Wolff (2000) ... 31 Trope Trainer Computer Program (2011) ................................................................................. 32 Chanting the Hebrew Bible by Dr. Joshua R. Jacobson (2002) ................................................ 34 CHAPTER VI. CLASSICAL HEBREW TEXT APPEARANCE FOR NOVICE READERS ... 37 Influential Prior Work ............................................................................................................... 37 Motivation ................................................................................................................................. 39 Why Depart From Available Resources? .................................................................................. 41 Proposed Formatting Standard .................................................................................................. 42 Macro 1: Modify font and spacing. ....................................................................................... 44 Macro 2: Make each verse begin on a new line. ................................................................... 45 Macro 3: Mark sheva na’ with bold sheva. ........................................................................... 45 Macro 4: Identify potential kamatz katan or kamatz gadol followed by sheva na’............... 46 Macro 5: Append Hindu-Arabic verse numbers to Hebrew verse numbers.......................... 47 Macro 6: Insert a line break after the last whole grammatical phrase on each line............... 50 Macro 7: Remove nekudot from tetragrammaton. ................................................................ 51 Macro 8: Syllabify words. ..................................................................................................... 51 Macro 9: Unsyllabify words .................................................................................................. 53 Macro limitations................................................................................................................... 54 CHAPTER VII. EFFICACY OF MODIFIED TEXTS IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS.......... 56 Evaluation of Formatted Classical Texts .................................................................................. 56 Student Reactions .................................................................................................................. 56 Colleague, Classmate, and Teacher Reactions ...................................................................... 56 Unpublished work © 2011 Linda Sue Sohn – all rights reserved
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Supervisor Reactions ............................................................................................................. 57 Parent Reactions .................................................................................................................... 57 Hebrew Font Preference - An Informal Survey ........................................................................ 58 CHAPTER VIII. PUBLISHING GOALS .................................................................................... 63 APPENDIX I ................................................................................................................................ 64 Samples of B’nei Mitzvah Training Resources......................................................................... 64 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 88 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Excerpt from 3rd, 4th and 5th lines of Haftarah in Figure 8 ......................................... 27 Figure 2: Hebrew numerical values .............................................................................................. 47 Figure 3: Samples of each font used in the survey ....................................................................... 60 Figure 4: Results of font preferences for each cohort – raw data ................................................. 61 Figure 5: Results of font preferences for each cohort - percentages............................................. 61 Figure 6: Collective results of font preferences ............................................................................ 62 Figure 7: Aggregate Hebrew Font Preferences ............................................................................. 62 Figure 8: Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem – 1st page of Haftarah for the Shabbat during Sukkot ... 64 Figure 9: Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem – 2nd page of Haftarah for the Shabbat during Sukkot ... 65 Figure 10: HaMaftir – No. 40 – Parashat Balak, pg. 19: opening Haftarah blessing ................. 66 Figure 11: HaMaftir – No. 40 – Parashat Balak, pg. 20: 1st page of Haftarah Balak (Hebrew) . 67 Figure 12: HaMaftir – No. 40 – Parashat Balak, pg. 21: 1st page of Haftarah Balak (English) . 68 Figure 13: A Guide to Torah Reading, p. 89 (actual size) ............................................................ 69 Figure 14: Sample of K'tav Tikkun Lakor’im, pg. 160, Numbers 7:42-47 ................................... 70 Figure 15: Sample of Koren Tikkun Kor’im—Simanim, pg. 160, Numbers 7:42-47.................... 70 Figure 16: The Art of Torah Cantillation, pg. 35.......................................................................... 71 Figure 17: Trope Trainer computer software – Leviticus 9:1 (plain text) .................................... 72 Figure 18: Trope Trainer computer software – Leviticus 9:1 (colored phrases) .......................... 72 Figure 19: Trope Trainer computer software – Leviticus 9:1 (colored te’amim) ........................ 72 Figure 20: Chanting the Hebrew Bible, pg. 548 ........................................................................... 73 Figure 21: Numbers 7:42-47 original cut&paste copy of from DavkaWriter Text Library ......... 74 Figure 22: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s DavkaWriter macros (part 1) ............... 75 Figure 23: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s DavkaWriter macros (part 2) ............... 76 Figure 24: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s Syllabify DavkaWriter macro (part 1) . 77 Figure 25: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s Syllabify DavkaWriter macro (part 2) . 78 Figure 26: Numbers 7:42-47 with hand-drawn modifications ...................................................... 79 Figure 27: Macro 1: Modify font and spacing. ............................................................................. 80 Figure 28: Macro 2: Make each verse begin on a new line .......................................................... 81 Figure 29: Macro 3: Mark sheva na’ with bold sheva. ................................................................. 82 Figure 30: Macro 4: Identify potential kamatz katan or kamatz gadol followed by sheva na’ .... 83 Figure 31: Final result after inspecting Macro 4 text .................................................................... 84 Figure 32: Macro 5: Append Hindu-Arabic verse numbers to Hebrew verse numbers ............... 85 Figure 33: Macro 6: Insert a line break after the last whole grammatical phrase on each line .... 86 Figure 34: Macro 8: Syllabify words ............................................................................................ 87 Unpublished work © 2011 Linda Sue Sohn – all rights reserved
1
CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM
The needs of novice non-native Hebrew readers are no different than the needs of novice
readers of any language, including their native language. The books that kindergarten and first
graders use to learn to read their native language are presented in a large font that discriminates
easily among the letters, uses more white space between lines than in chapter books and
sometimes more white spaces between the words. This is done in order to give the eye a chance
to isolate individual letters and words. The author has observed, however, that many texts for
novice Hebrew readers are not presented using these same simple principles. There seems to be
an assumption (witting or unwitting) by some publishers that novice Hebrew readers, who have
more proficient reading skills in their native language, have the same visual processing and
decoding skills for discriminating small Hebrew font letters as in their native texts. The author’s
experience has shown the opposite to be the case when teaching most typical and learning
disabled students.
This paper will present a new method for formatting Hebrew texts for novice Hebrew
readers to help mitigate problems with correct syllabification and phrasing. Using the macro
language built into DavkaWriter Platinum 6 (a popular Hebrew word processing program), the
author has created a series of macros (small computer programs) that automate much of the
reformatting. This automation provides a quick way to create source texts for novice Hebrew
readers in a variety of educational settings: B’nei Mitzvah training, prayer recitation practice,
and study of Tanakh. Over the past six years the author has successfully used selected
reformatted texts to help students achieve Hebrew reading fluency and to increase their overall
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Hebrew reading speed and accuracy. Positive anecdotal feedback on these texts has been
received from students, parents, teachers, colleagues and classmates. The ultimate goal of this
reformatting standard is to provide a set of the most commonly used source texts (Torah
portions, Haftarot, siddur texts) to the community at large. These texts have been used by typical
learners and a variety of individuals of all ages with special needs, such as individuals with
autism, dyslexia, memory impairments, executive functioning disorders and speed of information
processing disorders.
In an effort to provide relevant theoretical background for this project, this paper will also
examine recent published research regarding native and second language reading skills when the
second language has an orthography different from the native language. Particular attention will
be paid to understanding the impact of teaching Hebrew decoding skills with minimal
comprehension, a fact for many congregational schools. In addition, the reality of limited
practice time to achieve mastery with the new and unfamiliar orthography will be considered.
For example, can such children be adequately prepared for B’nei Mitzvah, given that they have
not yet consolidated all of the sound-symbol combinations of Hebrew?
Part of the discussion will center on visual processing. Hebrew proves to be a greater
challenge than many other languages because not all of the graphemes – the smallest meaningful
contrastive unit in a writing system – are written laterally (on the same horizontal baseline) as
they are in English. Hebrew has both consonants written next to each other on the same
horizontal baseline and diacritical marks to express vowels, grammatical aids and pronunciation
aids that are written either under, next to or above the consonants. In some cases a mark can be
doubled to indicate both grammar and stress information. These differences from English can
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create difficulty in correct vocalization and syllabification of the text for individuals who have
trouble processing sound-symbol associations. Moreover, Hebrew contains phonemes – the
basic distinctive units of speech sound – not found in English (such as sound of chet (‫)ח‬, khaf
(‫כ‬, ‫ )ך‬and tzadi (‫ )צ‬when it initiates a syllable), which can add another layer of complexity.
It is often the case that a student learns to read Hebrew (or remediates their Hebrew
reading skills) as part of B’nei Mitzvah training, which typically begins six to nine months prior
to their celebration, in weekly hour or half-hour long lessons. In this situation, there is only one
direct route to reading Hebrew, namely decoding, with little to no significant lexical
development. In other words, a student can sound out the words, but has no idea what the words
mean. The student is not likely to learn the meanings of most of the Hebrew words they need to
pronounce in their prayers and Torah/Haftarah texts, given that the limited amount of teaching
time is devoted primarily to reviewing their latest assignment in Hebrew decoding and
cantillation (the musical system for chanting Biblical text). For individuals with neurologicallybased dyslexia, the emphasis on decoding an unfamiliar orthography without the associated
cognitive context can lengthen the time to vocal fluency, as well as reduce the amount of text the
student can master.
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CHAPTER II. JUDAIC MOTIVATION
There are many passages in Judaic literature that support the need to adapt teaching
materials for all kinds of learners. For this author, two of these stand out as the motivation for
this instance of tikkun olam (repairing the world) as expressed by offering this innovative
presentation of the Tanakh.
Write One’s Own Torah: Deuteronomy 31:19
‫וְ עַ ָתּה כִּ ְתבוּ ָלכֶם אֶ ת־הַ ִשּׁ ָירה הַ זֹּאת וְ ל ְַמּ ָדהּ אֶ ת־בְּ נֵי־י ְִשׂ ָראֵ ל ִשׂימָ הּ בְּ פִ יהֶ ם לְ מַ עַ ן‬
:‫ִתּ ְהיֶה־לִּ י הַ ִשּׁ ָירה הַ זֹּאת לְ עֵ ד בִּ בְ ֵני י ְִשׂ ָראֵ ל‬
“Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people Israel; put it in
their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of
Israel.” (JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 1999, p. 444).
The Jewish Theological Seminary publishes “JTS Parashah Commentary”, a weekly email commentary on the Parashat HaShavua, the Torah portion of the week. It is written by a
cadre of guest rabbis. For his commentary on Parashat Nitzavim-Vayeilekh in September, 2006,
Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz linked the verse Deuteronomy 27:26 from Parashat Ki Tavo to the
verse Deuteronomy 31:19. Deuteronomy 27:26 states:
:‫ת־דּבְ ֵרי הַ תּו ָֹרה־הַ זֹּאת ֽ ַלעֲ שׂוֹת או ָֹתם וְ אָמַ ר כָּל־הָ עָ ם אָמֵ ן‬
ִ ֶ‫אָרוּר אֲ ֶשׁר ֽ א־י ִָקים א‬
“Cursed be he who will not uphold the terms of this Teaching and observe them. – And all the
people shall say, Amen.” (JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 1999, p. 432)
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Rabbi Berkowitz quotes Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (1194-1270), also known as
Nahmanides, who concludes that the verse is speaking of one who has been given the honor of
hagbah1, but has not performed the duty to its fullest extent, namely “to show the face of its
writing to the people that are standing to the right, to the left, and turns around and shows it to
those in front of him and those behind him; it is a commandment for all the men and women to
see the writing, bow, and say ‘this is the Torah that Moses placed before the Children of Israel.”
Rabbi Berkowitz notes that Nahmanides is teaching us that the words of the Torah are not to be
“shielded from view” and that the intent is for the “words of Torah…to be generously shared and
transmitted.”
He goes on to link this thought with Deuteronomy 31:19. According to Rabbi Berkowitz,
this verse gives us three important tasks:
“First, the opening of this teaching states ‘write for yourselves.’ The first step
in transmitting the sacred treasure in our hands is becoming a literate Jew.
Text and tradition must become the essence of our being. Torah must become
the personal song in our hearts. Only then may one turn to the next step.
Second, we are commanded to ‘teach it to the Children of Israel and place it in
their mouths.’ One fails in the discipline of Torah if one becomes an island of
Torah, learning unto one's self. Torah needs to be shared generously, and
indeed we are commanded to teach our children and the children of the entire
community. It must be passed down from one generation to the next.
1
The person designated to lift and hold the Torah scroll for the congregation to view after the Torah has been read
in the course of a Jewish religious service.
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Third, God explains to Moses that this Torah will serve as ‘a witness’ for
God's continued presence among the Children of Israel. While Torah
endeavors to shape our inner and outer selves, it has the potential to bring God
into our midst.”
Rabbi Berkowitz’ concludes his commentary with the following observation: “Far from
being in the realm of the elite, Torah at its best resides in the community of amkha2. It is the
Torah for all the people of Israel.” His arguments and conclusions provide insight into the
importance of bringing Torah to all.
One cannot become a literate Jew for the purpose of writing a Torah without first
knowing how to read Hebrew. If one is able to use that new-found ability to begin studying
Torah, one needs a Torah (and by extension, the rest of the Tanakh and other Hebrew texts, such
as the siddur) that is visually accessible to Hebrew readers of all abilities. It is the author’s goal
to provide this kind of text. By doing so, there is the potential for expanding the pool of people
who might be inspired to teach Torah to the next generation. This in turn has the potential of
creating more witnesses to “God’s continued presence” and to the values that the Torah teaches
us.
ָ ‫ ) ִשּׁ‬referenced in Deuteronomy 31:19 is understood to be Deuteronomy
The poem (‫ירה‬
33:2-29, the poem in Parashat Ha’azinu. The Soncino Press publication, “The Pentateuch and
Haftorahs”, 1980, otherwise known as the Hertz Humash, notes that according to Ibn Ezra
(Rabbi Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra, 1089 -1164), a medieval Torah commentator, “this
2
God’s people.
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command is addressed to each Israelite. The Rabbis deduced from this the recommendation to
each Israelite that he write for himself a copy of the Torah” (p. 889).
The notion that the word poem (‫ירה‬
ָ ‫ ) ִשּׁ‬means Torah is supported by the rabbis of
Babylonian Talmud in Sanhedrin 21b, beginning with a quote from Mishnah Sanhedrin 2:4,
which states clearly that each person is obligated to write their own Torah.
‫מוֹציאָ הּ‬
ִ ,‫ יוֹצֵ א ל ִַמּלְ חָ מָ ה‬.‫תּוֹרה לִ ְשׁמוֹ‬
ָ ‫כוֹתב לוֹ סֵ פֶ ר‬
ֵ ְ‫ ו‬- ‫משנה‬
,‫ ִהיא כְ נֶגְ דּוֹ‬,‫ מֵ סֵ ב‬.‫ ִהיא ִעמּוֹ‬,‫יוֹשׁב בַּ ִדּין‬
ֵ .‫ מַ כְ נִ יסָ הּ ִעמּוֹ‬,‫ נִ כְ נָס‬.‫ִעמּוֹ‬
:‫ֶשׁנֶּאֱ מַ ר )שם( וְ הָ י ְָתה ִעמּוֹ וְ ָק ָרא בוֹ כָּל יְמֵ י חַ יָּיו‬
MISHNAH: And he shall write in his own name a Sefer Torah. When he goes
forth to war he must take it with him; on returning, he brings it back with him;
when he sits in judgment it shall be with him, and when he sits down to eat,
before him, as it is written: and it shall be with him and he shall read therein
all the days of his life. (Soncino Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 21b)
In the supporting commentary, Deuteronomy 31:19 is directly quoted, thereby linking the
ָ ‫ ) ִשּׁ‬to the entire Torah.
referenced poem (‫ירה‬
.‫ וכותב ספר תורה לשמו‬.‫גמרא‬
.‫ ובלבד שלא יתנאה בשל אבותיו‬:‫תנא‬
- ‫ אף על פי שהניחו לו אבותיו לאדם ספר תורה‬:(‫אמר )רבא‬
‫ שנאמר )דברים ל"א( ועתה כתבו לכם את‬,‫מצוה לכתוב משלו‬
.‫השירה‬
GEMARA: “And he shall write in his own name a sefer torah.” (quoted from
the Mishnah)
8
A Tanna taught: And he must not take credit for one belonging to his
ancestors.
Rabbah said: Even if one's parents have left him a Sefer Torah, yet it is proper
that he should write one of his own, as it is written: “Now therefore write ye
this song for you.” (Soncino Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 21b)
This author is attempting to fulfill this commandment through the work of reformatting
the Torah for novice Hebrew readers.
Do Not Further Disadvantage the Disadvantaged: Leviticus 19:14:
:‫את מֵּ אֱ הֶ י אֲ נִ י יְה ָ ֹוה‬
ָ ‫א־ת ַקלֵּל חֵ ֵרשׁ וְ לִ פְ נֵי ִעוֵּר א ִת ֵתּן ִמכְ שֹׁל וְ י ֵָר‬
ְ
“You shall not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind. But
fear your God: I am the LORD.” (JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 1999, p. 251).
This leaves no doubt that those in the community who are less fortunate must not be
further disadvantaged. Hazzan Dr. Scott M. Sokol, a neuropsychologist and cantor in the Greater
Boston area, commented on this verse in the keynote address at the first annual GISHA
Conference (Good Ideas Supporting Hebrew Access) in 2009, where he was presented to the
community as the Korman Family Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew College, Newton
Centre, Massachusetts:
These crimes take particular advantage of a person’s disability and so they are
both cowardly acts, as well as cruel. The deaf person can’t hear the insult, and
therefore, can’t defend her/himself. The blind is injured both physically and
psychologically through lowered self-esteem. The Torah is teaching us to be
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compassionate with the disabled in every modality in which we may
encounter them and to be proactive in our defense of adjustment for their
disability. Speaking out against discrimination and by removing impediments
to their participation in our greater society, we elevate them and ourselves, so
that we can all benefit for the greater good.
As a response to this mandate, this author believes that resources intended for working
with novice Hebrew readers need to be as visually helpful as possible. It is the goal of this paper
to present a way of formatting Hebrew texts used for prayer and study that helps to reduce and
ease the time to fluency for a novice Hebrew reader.
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CHAPTER III. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON READING ISSUES
Overcoming Dyslexia - A Book Review
In the last several decades, much research has been published regarding the neurology
and educational needs of individuals learning to read. In her book “Overcoming Dyslexia”
(2003), Sally Shaywitz, M.D., lays out in plain language the neurology of both typical and
dyslexic readers. She identifies the telltale signs of dyslexia and how it can be treated. Her
research shows that one in five individuals has dyslexia (p. 6, p. 30) as defined by the
International Dyslexia Association:
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is
characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and
by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result
from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often
unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of
effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include
problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can
impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge. (p. 132)
In order to quantify the diagnosis and effects of dyslexia, Shaywitz undertook a
longitudinal study of 445 children who entered kindergarten in the 1983-1984 school year and
followed these individuals for 20 years. Her findings showed that dyslexia, as a diagnosis that
merits reading remediation services in school systems, is determined at an arbitrarily decided
point on a continuum of reading difficulties. As such, many children are near to but fall below
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the cut-off point of eligibility for special help, despite the fact that they could benefit from such
services.
Scientists describe language as a system for reading and speaking with a hierarchy of
components: discourse, syntax, semantics and phonology. Dyslexia typically reflects a problem
with the brain’s ability to process the last component, phonology, specifically “the functional
part of the brain where the sounds of language are put together to form words and where words
are broken down into their elemental sounds.” (p. 40) In linguistic terms, these elemental sounds
are known as “phonemes.” Individuals with dyslexia have a hard time breaking down a word
into its constituent phonemes.
In typically developing humans, the brain is wired at birth to enable speech. In contrast,
writing is a code that is a human invention. Achieving mastery in learning to crack the code is a
straight-forward task for most individuals. However, those whose brains do not process soundsymbol associations easily benefit from systematic and scientifically based programs that help
individuals map letters into sounds. If applied early enough, these interventions can actually
strengthen and repair areas of the brain to enable “struggling children to become skilled readers.”
(p. 86)
Dyslexia is not something that can be outgrown; that is, it is not developmental.
However, Shaywitz’ research shows that with early and consistent intervention, the effects of
dyslexia can be lessened, often with excellent results. Dyslexia does not necessarily correlate
with a weakness in intelligence. On the contrary, many dyslexic individuals are otherwise quite
bright.
12
Shaywitz documents several scientifically tested programs that systematically remediate
decoding and comprehension problems. She outlines the basic steps for teaching children to read
as:
1) Develop an awareness of rhyme (p. 178).
2) Learn how to take words apart (segmenting) and how to put them together (blending).
In order to do this, the student must learn how to identify the syllables in a word and
then further identify the phonemes (sounds) that make up each syllable.
3) Learn to identify letters and the sounds they make. In some languages, letters can
make more than one sound or may be combined with other letters to make one sound.
For instance, in English the ‘c’ can make a ‘k’ sound, as in cat, or an ‘s’ sound, as in
cell. The phoneme we represent in English with ‘sh’, as in ship, is written with two
letters, even though it is spoken as one phoneme. Learning these sound and letter
combinations is called “phonics.”
4) Practice, practice, practice – in order for a new reader to become proficient, she must
practice reading out loud. Studies show that reading test scores correlate with time
spent reading. In other words, more reading results in better reading. (p. 107) This is
achieved by learning sight (irregular) words, such as ‘the’, ‘once’, ‘was’; learning to
write the letters of the alphabet and using them to spell simple words (‘cat’, ‘mom’,
‘dad’); and expanding this further to reading and writing larger, more complicated
words. (p. 191)
By learning the concrete skills of phonemic awareness and sound-symbol associations
combined with lots and lots of examples and practice reading to achieve fluency and good
13
comprehension, it has been shown that the effects of dyslexia can be reduced. It should be noted
that all of Shaywitz’ work was done in the United States using English as the target language for
literacy. This author sees how her recommendations are applicable to learning to read and write
in any alphabetic language and will describe later in this paper how some of the principles
presented in Shaywitz’ book inform the development of specially formatted Hebrew texts, which
can be used in a beginner level Hebrew reading curriculum.
2009 GISHA Conference
In April, 2009, Hebrew College convened the first Annual GISHA Conference (Good
Ideas Supporting Hebrew Access). The focus of the conference was to provide information
about the latest research on and best practices for teaching Hebrew to both typical and special
needs students. Featured presenters reviewed the results of their latest research on Hebrew
acquisition as a second language, Hebrew reading proficiency, Hebrew reading assessment tools
and a compelling justification for developing and sharing methods for teaching Hebrew to all
types of learners. This author will review the work of four presenters: Dr. Esther Geva, Dr. Tami
Katzir, Dr. Nina Elisabeth Goodman and Hazzan Dr. Scott Sokol. Each of them presented
findings that are relevant to the author’s work in formatting Hebrew texts for novice Hebrew
readers.
Dr. Esther Geva
Dr. Esther Geva is Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Development and
Applied Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
14
“Her research, publications and teaching focus on developmental issues and best practices
concerning language and literacy skills in children who are learning in various second language
(L2) contexts, including…English-Hebrew…children…”(2009 GISHA Conference Program
Booklet). Her presentation focused on “Second Language Learning/Challenges of Teaching
Hebrew.” Geva’s work stems from her definition of reading: “the meaningful interpretation of
printed symbols in light of the reader’s own background and experience, and as such, is regarded
as an ability to attach meaning to words, phrases, sentences and longer selections.” (E. Geva,
PowerPoint presentation, GISHA Conference, April, 2009) She made a distinction between
“reading” and “decoding,” the ability to sound out printed words without necessarily
understanding their meaning. Two questions that have motivated her work are:
1) How does reading fluency in a native language (L1) influence the acquisition of
reading skills in another language (L2)?
2) Do you have to understand L2 in order to read words in L2?
Geva reported that research says that L2 reading development is different because L2s
draw on L1 competencies and experiences. It has been shown that if a native English speaker is
a good reader in English (L1), that individual is likely to be a good reader in Hebrew (L2). Geva
found that many factors contribute to becoming a successful and skilled reader, such as ability,
attitudes and motivation, and age-appropriate instruction.
Reading in L2 requires sensitivity to new sounds, i.e., phonological awareness. This can
be tested by seeing if a student can correctly show phonemic awareness in L1. For instance, ask
the student the following questions (Geva, PowerPoint presentation slide, GISHA Conference,
April, 2009):
15
1) “boy”, “toy”, “bag” – which one begins with a different sound? A correct answer
shows the ability to hear initial word sounds.
2) Say “cowboy” – Now, say it without “cow.” A correct answer shows the ability to
isolate syllables.
3) Say “stop” – Now, say it without the ‘s’. A correct answer shows the ability to isolate
and remove an initial word sound.
Geva presented a chart that links and relates four distinct branches of cognitive and
environmental variables that are necessary for reading comprehension:
-
Home Literacy
-
Language Comprehension
-
Decoding
-
Attitudes & Motivation
The Decoding branch requires knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondence,
orthographic knowledge, phoneme awareness, knowledge of the alphabetic principle, letter
knowledge and understanding of concepts about print. Decoding skills can be tested with both
real and nonsense words.
Hebrew has a “shallow orthography,” as there are few exceptions to the phonological
rules of written Hebrew. In one study, Geva found that children whose L1 is English were more
accurate in decoding Hebrew (L2) words than in their native language between first grade and
fifth grade. This appears to show that once phonological awareness is established, accurate
decoding can be achieved without necessarily having knowledge of the cognitive content.
Geva’s findings correlate well with the anecdotal evidence of this author and generations of other
16
B’nei Mitzvah tutors, who more often than not must guide their students to prepare for their Bar
or Bat Mitzvah service using only Hebrew decoding skills to make their way through their
assigned biblical and prayer texts.
Dr. Tami Katzir
Dr. Tami Katzir is a senior lecturer at the Department of Learning Disabilities at the
University of Haifa. Her research focuses on reading development, reading breakdown and
similarities of reading disabilities in various languages, including English, Hebrew and Spanish.
In her 2009 GISHA Conference presentation on “U-Shaped Development: The Unique
Challenges of Learning to Read in Hebrew” she notes that little research on the development of
reading fluency among native Hebrew speakers has been done in comparison to the volumes of
research on reading fluency for native English speakers.
English is considered to have a deep orthography because there are so many spelling
exceptions. Hebrew is considered to have a shallow orthography when the diacritical vowel
markings (nekudot) are in place. However, when nekudot are removed from Hebrew texts, such
as in newspapers and most adult books and for children in the fourth grade and higher, Hebrew is
considered to constitute a deep orthography, and as such, becomes harder to decode. At this
point the reader must often rely on the context of a word in order to read and understand it
correctly.
Katzir noted that “developmentally, the role of vowels in reading in extremely important
in isolated word reading, and for novice readers.” (T. Katzir, GISHA Conference PowerPoint
presentation, April, 2009) Much of Katzir’s research is more relevant to how native Hebrew
17
speakers learn to read Hebrew, and how this might affect the development of curricular materials
to match the cognitive needs of native Hebrew speakers. However, the finding about the
importance of vowels in Hebrew orthography is relevant to this author’s work in reformatting
Hebrew texts. As will be shown, some of this author’s work focuses on presenting Hebrew
words broken into their constituent syllables to aid the novice reader in correct vocalization of
the text. The vowels are key in determining where a syllable ends.
Dr. Nina Elisabeth Goodman
Dr. Nina E. Goodman coordinates Academic Support at the Abraham Joshua Heschel
Lower School in New York City and is also a teacher in its Judaic Studies resource room. Her
Ph.D. dissertation thesis, “Word Reading Strategies: English-Speaking First-Graders Learning
Hebrew as a Second Language” sought to determine how English-speaking first-graders
employed word attack strategies to read Hebrew, which they were learning as a second language.
Goodman studied seventeen first-graders in an English-Hebrew day school. The questions her
dissertation sought to answer were: (p. 5)
1) What word-identification strategies are observable among first-grade students
learning to read English (L1), and learning to speak and read Hebrew (L2), when they
read each language?
2) What word-identification strategies used by first-grade students reading English (L1)
and Hebrew (L2) are consistent with each language’s orthographic structure?
3) Do first graders learning to read English (L1) and Hebrew (L2) decode both
languages with similar accuracy and fluency?
18
This author does not usually use her specially formatted texts with this young a cohort,
but rather with students who are learning Hebrew for the purposes of learning prayer recitation
and chanting biblical texts for as part of their B’nei Mitzvah training. Goodman’s third research
question is relevant to this author’s work as older students learning to read Hebrew through
decoding and rote recitation strategies often show similar dysfluent decoding skills by sounding
out words one syllable at a time.
Goodman contrasts English and Hebrew orthography (pp. 8-13). English has
inconsistent, but rule-based spelling, making the reading task one of decoding known, but
irregular combinations of letters or onset-rime consonant + vowel-consonant (C+VC) syllables.
A single letter is the most accessible unit in print. “In Hebrew, while several phonemes may be
represented by more than one grapheme (consonant), each grapheme only carries one possible
sound.” (p. 13) Pointed Hebrew (Hebrew with vowels in print) is read, in general in consonantvowel (CV) or consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) combinations.
She concluded that the children in her study used “Hebrew’s natural orthographic
structure to help them sound out unfamiliar words.” (p. 156) This result supports this author’s
anecdotal findings and influenced some of the design decisions of this author’s text formatting
standard.
Hazzan Dr. Scott M. Sokol
Hazzan Dr. Scott M. Sokol is the Korman Family Professor of Jewish Education at
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts. He is also a board certified pediatric
neuropsychologist and a hazzan in the Conservative Jewish Movement. He brings a unique
19
perspective to the topic of Hebrew language acquisition from both neuro-cognitive and religious
practice points of view. His presentation, “Teaching Hebrew in Jewish Educational Settings”, at
the 2009 GISHA Conference focused on the results of a survey filled out by 40 synagogues, day
schools and community-based supplementary schools in the Greater Boston area. The survey
sought to answer the following general questions (S.M. Sokol, PowerPoint presentation, GISHA
Conference, April, 2009):
1. Who are your teachers?
2. Is Hebrew language integrated into the overall education program of your school?
3. What are the goals of Hebrew language instruction?
4. What curriculum do you use for Hebrew instruction?
5. Do you have supports for students with special needs?
The following were posed to determine educational philosophies and priorities of Hebrew
language instruction (S.M. Sokol, PowerPoint presentation, GISHA Conference, April, 2009):
1. Students should be able to decode Hebrew fluently. (Decode)
2. Students should be able to translate biblical or siddur texts with a dictionary.
(Translate)
3. Students should be able to carry on simple conversations in Modern Hebrew.
(Converse)
4. Students should be fluent speakers of Modern Hebrew. (Speak fluently)
His findings revealed that day schools use multiple curricula for Hebrew instruction,
especially for Modern Hebrew, and synagogue-based schools use curricula that support the
20
fluent reading of t’fillah (prayer). He also concluded that across educations settings Hebrew
decoding was a shared goal of primary importance.
Dr. Sokol described the Dual-Route Model of Reading as being made up of two
dissociated neurological systems (S.M. Sokol, PowerPoint presentation, GISHA Conference,
April, 2009):
1. Grapheme/Phoneme Conversion System – the mechanism used to sound out letters
into words. The result of this system goes to the Phonological Buffer, which holds
that information until it arrives at the Phonological Output System, which instructs
our vocalization system to say the word.
2. Lexical System/Addressed System – look up the visual representation of this word in
our internal memorized set of words (internal dictionary). Once the word is
identified, it is sent to the Phonological Output Lexicon, which transfers the
information to the Phonological Output System, which instructs our vocalization
system to say the word.
Typical learners first read by whole word recognition. Then, they learn phonological
elements of the language. Eventually, they move beyond most phonological processing and go
back to whole word reading strategies. In some forms of developmental dyslexia, one or both of
these systems do not develop properly.
Dr. Sokol notes that our brain’s lexical structure is organized by meaning, structure and
frequency. The more we know about a word’s meaning and the more often it is heard, the
stronger its representation is in our lexicon. Likewise, the more often a word is read out loud and
21
seen in print, the easier it is to read it by sight. Learning to read in an individual’s native
language is readily accomplished due to the high exposure to that language.
[In contrast] for children learning to read Hebrew in a non-native environment
is quite a different matter. For most Americans, reading Hebrew is akin to
reading a nonsense word. There are three types of words:
‐
regular – words whose pronunciation can be figured out by sounding
them out, such as CAT
‐
irregular – words whose pronunciation must be known, such as
YACHT
‐
non-words – pseudo-words that you need to sound out, such as BOKE
For Americans reading Hebrew phonetically, most Hebrew words are
like the third category BOKE. (S.M. Sokol, PowerPoint presentation,
GISHA Conference, April, 2009)
The reality of B’nei Mitzvah training in the United States is that most students will be
required only to sound out the words of their assigned prayers, blessings and Biblical texts, but
not be required to have each word that they utter in their cognitive lexicon. Therefore, Hebrew
reading is in essence a nonsense-word reading task. If we accept this reality, what does this say
about how we teach Hebrew outside of Israel? “We need to learn about syllable structure and
the relationship of vowels to syllables. Hebrew has a fairly straightforward system of long and
short vowels that come together to form open and closed syllables. By learning how to properly
divide complex words into syllables, it is much easier to learn to read and read well, even words
22
that we’ve never seen before.” (S.M. Sokol, PowerPoint presentation, GISHA Conference, April,
2009)
Dr. Sokol concluded his presentation with the following observations:
1) Schools need to engage in active discussions of the specific goals of Hebrew
language instruction prior to implementation of any programs or curricula.
2) Across academic settings, those surveyed identified their primary goals for Hebrew to
be the ability to read classical texts fluently.
3) Accordingly, emphasis on Hebrew language instruction should be placed on reading
acquisition, specifically on developing fluent decoding strategies that are based on an
understanding of the phonological and morphological structure of Hebrew.
4) There is a significant need for training of special educators for Jewish schools and
especially training that provides Jewish studies and Hebrew expertise.
This author hopes to provide classical texts that are as visually helpful as possible for the
novice Hebrew reader to decode. As will be shown, these texts address the third item on Dr.
Sokol’s list by revealing the syllabic structure of each Hebrew word to aid the reader in proper
decoding and vocalization.
23
CHAPTER IV. BRIEF REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON TYPOGRAPHY
The adage “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” seems to apply to typesetting style.
Typography is both an art and a craft. Typesetting principles vary according to the needs of the
potential reader. For instance, the needs of those designing print advertisements to market the
latest new car, breakfast cereal or diet plan differ from the typesetting needs for the content of
the Wall Street Journal, postage stamps, mystery novels or children’s books.
Basic Typographic Principles
The “Elements of Typographic Style” by Robert Bringhurst brings the reader’s attention
to many common sense guidelines that validate and are pertinent to this author’s work in
reformatting texts for novice Hebrew readers, such as:
‐
“typography exists to honor content” (p. 17)
‐
“read the text before designing it” (p. 20)
‐
“discover the outer logic of the typography” (p. 20)
‐
“make a visible relationship between the text and other elements a reflection of their
real relationship” (p. 21)
3
‐
“give full typographic attention even to incidental details” (p. 24)
‐
“set ragged if ragged setting suits the text and the page” (p. 27)
‐
“don’t stretch the space until it breaks” (p. 35)
‐
“choose a basic leading3 that suits the typeface, text and measure” (p. 36)
Vertical space between lines
‐
“mark each beginning and resumption of the text” (p. 63)
‐
“choose faces4 that suit the task as well as the subject” (p. 95)
24
Each of these selected guidelines and maxims will be related to the formatting standard
presented later in this thesis. In general, Bringhurst notes that “typography should perform these
services for the reader:
‐
invite the reader into the text;
‐
reveal the tenor and meaning of the text;
‐
clarify the structure and the order of the text;
‐
link the text with other existing elements;
‐
induce a state of energetic repose, which is the ideal condition for reading” (p. 24)
Typography for Children
This author found no literature regarding typographic style for Hebrew texts intended for
novice Hebrew readers. However, it is reasonable to expect that the typographic style issues for
novice readers in other languages may be generalized, since much of the research and guidelines
center on the issues of layout, spacing and typeface features. A search on the topic of
typography for children revealed a moderate bibliography published at the web site
www.kidstype.org, the web site for the Typographic Design for Children Project at the University
of Reading in Reading, England. Sue Walker is the project leader and Head of the Department
of Typography & Graphic Communication there. The web site contains information about “what
children thought about particular typefaces and how they described them, and whether they
4
fonts
25
noticed and could describe variations in letter, word and spacing.” (Walker, “Typography in
Children’s Books”, on-line article)
Walker’s findings show that children do not necessarily find reading tasks easier or
harder with serif or sans serif fonts. Teachers seem to prefer sans serif fonts “because of the
simplicity of the letter shapes” (www.kidstype.org). Moreover, it seems that children’s typeface
preferences influence their motivation to read. Children seem to prefer “reading things that look
familiar or ‘normal’” (www.kidstype.org).
Varying letter and word spacing revealed that children can usually detect changes in
letter spacing and generally prefer wider spaces between letters. Changes in word spacing
produced varied responses from children, but approximately half of the respondents thought that
tighter word spacing was easier to read. In general, children preferred wider spacing between
lines, but they couldn’t always identify the wider line spacing as the reason why they thought a
text was easier to read.
In her article Typography for Children, Ilene Strizver provides guidelines for text
legibility that are general enough to be applied to any alphabetic font. She advocates using fonts
with counters (the enclosed shapes within characters, such as the inner area of the letter ‘b’) that
are rounded and open, rather than angular. The presence or absence of serifs is not important.
The font should not be too condensed, too wide, too bold or too hairline in nature. Spacing
between lines should be adequate enough to allow the reader’s eye to migrate easily from the end
of one line of text to the beginning of the next. Lines should be kept short and no page should
have too much text. She recommends at least four to six points of leading. It should be noted
that this suggestion is based on English (L1) texts for English (L1) readers.
26
CHAPTER V. REVIEW OF RESOURCES USED FOR B’NEI MITZVAH TRAINING
Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem by Joseph Marcus (1943)
This author’s husband celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in the fall of 1960. He learned how to
chant his assigned Haftarah from Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem (The Complete Bar Mitzvah
Book), which contained the text for every Haftarah in the Jewish calendar. Every boy in his
Orthodox synagogue was given a copy of this book and told which pages they would use to learn
their assigned Haftarah. This author’s husband was a typical learner and had good supervision in
his Bar Mitzvah training and does not recall any undo difficulty learning to chant his Haftarah.
In contrast, this author’s brother-in-law was not able to learn Hebrew as a boy and could not
navigate the visual demands of this kind of text. No accommodations for his learning style were
available, so he never celebrated his Bar Mitzvah.
As one can see from Figure 8 and Figure 9 (pp. 64-65 below), the text is legible, but
cramped. The typesetting standard for this book caused te’amim – trop marks – ascending above
and descending below words to cross the same baseline. If necessary, vowel marks were moved
to accommodate the placement of a ta’am.
One can see this in the excerpt in Figure 1 below, which has been magnified to twice its
original size, that the sheva (two vertical dots) were moved slightly to the left of center under the
letter
‫ ה‬in word ‫ יהיה‬on the first line in order to accommodate the placement of the t’lishah
k’tanah ta’am placed at the end of the word ‫ הים‬on the second line. Moreover, the zakef katon
over the ‫ מ‬in the word ‫ האדמה‬in the third line looks identical to the sheva under the ‫ ו‬in the
27
word ‫ ועוף‬and almost looks like the two marks could be interpreted visually as one mark if one
didn’t know how to distinguish between the two of them.
Figure 1: Excerpt from 3rd, 4th and 5th lines of Haftarah in Figure 8
The Haftarah text in Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem is set all in one paragraph with no
breaks in the text except for the page boundary. There are no verse numbers in either Hebrew or
English. There is a Hebrew designation in small print before the first word of the Haftarah,
indicating that the text comes from Yechezkel – Chapter 38. There is no indication that the
verses are, in fact, Yechezkel 38:18-36:16.
HaMaftir Series of Bar Mitzvah pamphlets, Shilo Publishing Company (1963)
The HaMaftir Bar Mitzvah pamphlet is published as a series – one pamphlet for each
parashah in the Hebrew calendar. It contains instructions and laws for laying t’fillin, the names
of all the te’amim, the Torah blessings, the text of the Maftir rendered side by side in both
Hebrew printing and hand-drawn Torah script, the Haftarah blessings and the text of the
Haftarah. These pamphlets are still available today on-line and in Judaica shops. These
pamphlets are not meant to be used without supervision and instruction from a knowledgeable
28
teacher. Examples of the opening Haftarah blessing and the first page of a Haftarah text can be
found in Figure 10, Figure 11 and Figure 12 (pp. 66-68 below).
There is more spacing between the Hebrew words and lines in comparison to the text in
Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem, resulting in no collisions with the printed matter from one line of
Hebrew with another. The verses are translated into English and printed on the facing page in
the booklet as seen in Figure 12. This is useful in helping the novice Hebrew reader to get a
sense of what the words mean, even if the reader cannot translate the Hebrew on their own. By
convention, Hebrew letters are used to designate numbers (see page 47 for an explanation). In
Figure 11, we can see that the Hebrew verse numbers are written in a smaller font than the text of
each verse. This is helpful in distinguishing between the verse numbers, which are not vocalized
by the reader, and the text of each verse, which is.
This author finds it curious that the more familiar text of the blessings, such as the
opening Haftarah blessing in Figure 10, is set in a larger point size than the text of the Haftarah,
which is less familiar to the a student studying their first Haftarah text. It might make more
sense to set the Haftarah text in the same point size as the blessing, or set the blessing in the
smaller point size and the Haftarah text in the larger point size to reduce the number of words per
line, thereby making the text a little more visually accessible to the novice reader.
A Guide to Torah Reading by Cantor Samuel Rosenbaum (1982)
A Guide to Torah Reading by Cantor Samuel Rosenbaum is a concise treatise on the
rudiments of Torah cantillation. It is now out of print, but included here because it was the text
that this author used as an adult to learn how to chant the Torah. It introduces the reader to the
29
names of the trop marks and the various groupings in which they appear. Each time a new
concept is introduced, it is followed with an exercise to help the reader consolidate the
information in the lesson. The Hebrew font used throughout the book is small, but clear. This
book was intended for readers who were fluent in reading Hebrew, but wanted a systematic way
of learning the basics. Figure 13 (p. 69 below) shows a sample text in which the reader has been
instructed to chant as many complete phrases as have been introduced in the book up to that
point. Each Hebrew verse number is set with a smaller point size than the verse text.
Unfortunately, there is no answer key to determine if the reader understood correctly which
phrases to chant and which not to. If the reader misunderstood any of the previous lessons, there
would be no way of knowing unless the reader checked in with a knowledgeable source.
Tikkun Lakor’im published by K’tav Publishing House (1969)
A tikkun is a traditional text from which one studies a Torah portion in preparation for
reading from the Torah. When this author was preparing to read Torah for the first time, she was
given a recording of her two aliyot and a copy of the associated page in Tikkun Lakor’im. She
was expected to listen to the recording and practice her assigned verses using the right side of the
tikkun page (see Figure 14 on p. 70 below). When sufficiently fluent, she was expected to use
the left side of the tikkun page to see if she could chant the assigned verses without the vowel
and ta’am marks.
The font is small and clear on most of the pages. The vowels are sometimes faint,
requiring the reader to consult another reliable text source to be sure to chant the text according
to the te’amim. The pashta ta’am is typeset in a non-standard position. This ta’am is
30
traditionally placed just to the left and above the last letter of the word that it punctuates. This
tikkun places it above and centered over the last letter of the word it punctuates. The zakef-katon
ta’am is not consistently centered over the first letter of the stressed syllable on which it appears.
The left side is hand-written in the manner in which the Torah scroll is written.
Sometimes the
hand-written text is cramped with spaces that are hard to distinguish. While this makes it hard
for the novice reader to read, this feature makes this tikkun a good source for training one’s eye
to the appearance of the Torah scroll in preparation for a public reading.
Even if a novice reader uses a more visually helpful text with vowels and te’amim to
learn their Torah reading, it is appropriate to eventually use a tikkun source, such as this one or
the one in the next section, to prepare for reading from the actual Torah scroll. The Torah scroll
is usually not available until the day of the public reading, so it is a good idea to find a
reasonable substitute during the preparation phase.
Tikkun Kor’im—Simanim by Feldheim Publishing (2001)
Tikkun Kor’im—Simanim is another popular source for Torah readers. See Figure 15 (p.
70 below) for a sample text. It has features not found in Tikkun Lakor’im, such as distinguishing
sheva na’ from sheva nach with a bolder sheva vowel mark and distinguishing kamatz katan
from kamatz gadol with a longer stemmed kamatz. The verses are numbered with Hebrew letters
used as numbers. This feature makes this tikkun a little harder for a novice Torah reader to find
their place. A Torah reader usually learns a Torah portion by mastering one verse at a time by
training on the “vowel” side and then testing themselves on the “Torah” side of a tikkun page.
The text of each line in the left-hand column (without vowels) matches the text in the
31
corresponding line in the right-hand column. This feature makes it a little easier to train for a
Torah reading than the Tikkun Lakor’im text. The pre-positive ta’am (t’lisha g’dolah) and all the
post-positive te’amim (t’lishah k’tanah, pashta, zarka, segol) are doubled when the word’s
stressed syllable is not the final one. If one knows how to read Hebrew, there are helpful
marginalia that illuminate features about the text that might not be obvious otherwise, such as
how repeated words or phrases may have the same or different te’amim, or which verses are used
in a holiday Torah reading. All of these extra features combine to create an excellent resource
for both the novice and experienced Torah reader.
The Art of Torah Cantillation by Cantor Marshall Portnoy and Cantor Joseé Wolff (2000)
The Art of Torah Cantillation – A Step-by-Step Guide to Chanting Torah is a methodical,
well structured resource for teaching Torah cantillation. It comes with a CD, so that an
independent Hebrew reader could acquire these skills independently without the aid of a tutor.
There is a companion book for learning how to chant Haftarah text.
The Hebrew text is clear and consistently set in the same point size throughout the entire
book. Ample exercises are available in every lesson and each lesson builds on the skills
mastered in the previous lessons. Figure 16 (p. 71 below) shows a page that gives the reader a
chance to demonstrate mastery of etnachta, sof-pasuk and katon phrases in several verses found
in the book of Genesis. The page is nicely laid out with instructions on what to do, the practice
Hebrew text, a translation and the same practice Hebrew text in Torah script without vowels.
Many of the te’amim are so large that they do not appear to be in the same font as the text
and the vowels. If the authors used this exaggerated style for all of the te’amim, then this might
32
be visually helpful to the novice Hebrew reader as an aid to distinguish the te’amim from the
vowels. As it is, the appearance of some of the te’amim makes the text appear a bit odd to this
author. The overall text layout is a bit tight in terms of spacing between words and lines for
readers with any visual processing issues.
Trope Trainer Computer Program (2011)
Kinor Software’s Trope Trainer computer program was initially published in 2001. This
author has the latest update, Version 5, installed on her computer. It provides everything for the
user to learn how to chant any part of the Hebrew Bible. Built into the program is a facility to
electronically chant the text for the user in any musical key, in any one of six voice styles, in any
one of six pronunciation traditions and in any one of over two dozen chanting traditions. A
tutorial is included that takes the user step-by-step through the process of learning to chant, with
lots of exercises for practicing and mastering each stage of the learning process. It cautions the
user both at the beginning of the tutorial and at the end of the tutorial that one should not rely on
the program alone to ensure successful mastery of chanting Hebrew text and the customs
surrounding this sacred task.
“Many students will want to learn with the aid of an instructor. It is recommended that
every student's work be periodically reviewed by someone who knows how to chant these texts.
This feedback can be very important for judging the progress you are making and for avoiding
mistakes that you can't hear yourself making.” (Trope Trainer, Tutorial page: “Outline of
Lessons”)
33
“Kinnor Software recommends that you consult your Rabbi before reading from
the Torah. Your Rabbi or someone appointed by your Rabbi can check that you are doing
everything correctly and explain to you any special local customs that the congregation expects
you to follow.” (Trope Trainer, Tutorial page: “Final Notes on Torah Reading”)
The text is displayed in a font that is consistent and clear. Verse numbers are written
with a point size that is smaller than the text making it easy to find and easy to distinguish from
the text itself. Kamatz katan and sheva na’ are distinguished from kamatz gadol and sheva nach
respectively. Torah text is displayed in only one size of the font, but it is large enough both on
the computer display and in printouts. The Haftarah text size is adjustable. The user can view
the text with colored te’amim, colored te’amim phrases in any customizable coloring scheme,
colored phrases and te’amim, or unadorned (see Figure 17, Figure 18 and Figure 19 on p. 72).
This kind of flexibility is helpful in training the user from a higher level of visual assistance to
one that makes the user more independent and ready to move on to more compact printed
sources for learning Torah and Haftarah readings. The te’amim are written slightly higher and
slightly lower than standard Hebrew sources. When the user selects the option to view colored
te’amim by pressing the Tropes button, the colors connote a bit of the grammatical structure.
“Trope symbols have several levels of force, indicating the strength of breaks between parts of a
verse, just like a comma is weaker than a period or a semicolon. To display tropes in colors that
distinguish green - connector tropes, orange - weak separator tropes and red - strong separator
tropes, click the Tropes button.” (Trope Trainer help file).
When the user selects the Groups button, the te’amim phrases are colored, as shown in
Figure 18. One sees the background color in each phrase colored uniformly. The only
34
shortcoming is that the spaces between words remain uncolored. If two phrases in the same
ta’am family occur adjacent to each other, such as the two zakef-katon phrases that begin
Leviticus 9:1 in Figure 18, one cannot distinguish where the first zakef phrase ends, unless one
knows what zakef-katon looks like, or unless one turns on ta’am coloring with the Tropes button.
Even in this situation, unless one knows how to interpret the color code of the te’amim, one does
not immediately see that there are two zakef-katon phrases in a row.
This software is a relatively inexpensive way of generating both a helpful text and an
associated recording. It is used by lay individuals who cannot chant the texts independently,
clergy and B’nei Mitzvah instructors who may not have the singing skills to create an accurate
recording of the text and/or who like the ability to provide the colored printouts for their
students.
Chanting the Hebrew Bible by Dr. Joshua R. Jacobson (2002)
Chanting the Hebrew Bible – The Complete Guide to the Art of Cantillation by Joshua R.
Jacobson is a thorough treatment of the topic of cantillation, proper pronunciation of classical
Hebrew and the history of our system of vowel notation and grammatical punctuation of our
sacred texts. It is not intended for the novice Hebrew readers, but it is an excellent resource for
anyone who wishes to delve into the intricacies of how the te’amim strive to, first and foremost,
punctuate each verse by dividing it into manageable phrases and how they inform the reader of
which syllable receives the most stress in each word. Once those two pieces of information are
derived, applying the assigned chanting motifs for each ta’am is a matter of learning the music
for that ta’am. He provides ample exercises for learning every nuance of the topic.
35
He has also written a Student Edition that pares down the information to the essentials: a
little bit of history, a few pages on the fine points of correct pronunciation, and an excellent set
of exercises for learning how to chant the te’amim. This version shares much of the same
material with the complete edition with musical notation for learning how to chant all six forms
of cantillated text: Torah, Haftarah, Festival, Esther, Lamentations and High Holy Days.
Hebrew grammarians define a Hebrew syllable as a combination of one to four letters
containing one and only one vowel (hatuf vowels and sheva don’t count as vowels). Jacobson
defines a syllable as what this author calls an audible syllable. Since sheva na’ and the hatuf
vowels are vocalized, he counts them as vowels reasoning that if they are vocalized, they will
receive a chanted music note. He notates the music for each ta’am in a most unique and helpful
way, with each ta’am notated with three different sections. The first section has no shading and
contains the note or notes that are chanted on all the audible syllables before the stressed syllable
of a word. The darker shaded notes are chanted on the stressed syllable. The lighter shaded
notes are also chanted on the stressed syllable if it is the last syllable of the word. If the stressed
syllable is not the last syllable, then any remaining syllables are chanted using the note (or notes)
in the lighter shaded section. Each ta’am model comes with a set of examples showing how
different stress patterns are chanted and a set of exercises to allow the reader to have extra
practice. Figure 20 (p. 73) shows a sample of Jacobson’s method of demonstrating how a ta’am
is applied to Torah text.
Both of Jacobson’s books are excellent if the reader is an accomplished adult Hebrew
reader or if the book is used in a classroom or tutoring situation in which the students are eager
to learn every nuance of the topic. Unfortunately, the Hebrew font used for the examples and
36
exercises is too small and cramped for most novice readers or anyone with visual processing
difficulties. This author, with Dr. Jacobson’s permission, has begun to develop a companion set
of the same example and exercise texts found in his book, but formatted in a way that is
accessible to a wider range of Hebrew readers.
37
CHAPTER VI. CLASSICAL HEBREW TEXT APPEARANCE FOR NOVICE READERS
Influential Prior Work
This author’s work has been informed and influenced by two individuals, Marion Green
and Dr. Joshua Jacobson. Marion Green is a prominent Jewish educator in the Boston,
Massachusetts area specializing in teaching individuals with special needs, creating and
modifying materials for her students to aid them in learning and mastering Hebrew reading, and
instructing other teachers in the field of Jewish Special Needs at Hebrew College. She has
developed an unpublished method for teaching Hebrew reading to individuals with special needs
using a series of flash cards. Each card has a picture of a Hebrew letter, vowel or special
combination on the front adorned with a colored emblem that incorporates the shape of the letter
or vowel. The back of each card has an associated mnemonic that describes the emblem on the
front using the sound of the Hebrew letter or vowel. As students master the mnemonics for each
lesson, they are given a set of approximately seventy practice reading words that help reinforce
the information on the new flash cards, while at the same time scaffolding the sound-symbol
associations established in previous lessons. After mastering all the flash cards and successfully
demonstrating mastery of the practice words, students are given prayers and Torah texts to read
and chant.
Green developed a method of modifying Hebrew texts in DavkaWriter, sometimes
simplifying the spelling of the words in the prayers, such as removing the silent yod and inserting
extra space between words, in order to aid the special needs student to more easily isolate each
word visually on the page. Moreover, she inserted a space between each audible syllable to
38
further aid the student to achieve correct vocalization of the text. Often, she would color the
vowels by hand according to the system introduced in her flash cards or insert small pictures
above the consonants according the emblems on her flash cards. As an intern in one of her
special needs classes, this author learned her methods and observed how effective they were with
students, who could not be educated in typical supplementary Hebrew School or Jewish day
school settings.
Dr. Joshua Jacobson, as noted in the previous section, is the author of Chanting the
Hebrew Bible – The Complete Guide to the Art of Cantillation and its companion Chanting the
Hebrew – Student Edition. He is a tenured faculty member at Northeastern University in Boston,
Massachusetts and an adjunct faculty member at Hebrew College. His books illuminate the
relationship of each disjunctive ta’am5 by diagramming its associated phrase with respect to its
level of grammatical importance in any Biblical verse. In Biblical texts, each word is punctuated
with a ta’am positioned above or below the first letter of the stressed syllable. If that letter has a
vowel under or over it, the ta’am is placed to the left of the vowel. By contrast, in English
punctuation marks are placed immediately before a word (such as an opening quote or opening
parenthesis), immediately after a word (such as a period, closing parenthesis, or question mark),
or inside a word (such as an apostrophe).
Each ta’am conveys three pieces of information:
1) Whether a word ends a phrase or not, and if so, whether or not that phrase is part of a
larger phrase or thought in the verse;
2) Which syllable receives the most stress when vocalized;
5
Trop is the Yiddish term.
39
3) How the word is chanted.
By knowing which te’amim – the plural of ta’am – are combined to create complete
phrases within a verse, one can get a sense of the overall grammatical structure of each verse.
Anyone who has learned to diagram English phrases according to subject, object, and preposition
phrases can relate to this method. Jacobson has taken a method that was initially described by
Israeli author Michael Perlman in his book Dappim Lelimud Ta’amey Ha’mikra (Jacobson,
Chanting the Hebrew Bible, p. 36) and adapted it in his descriptions of the function of each
ta’am. “The key to the whole system of cantillation [is] syntax, or sentence structure. The
te’amim [punctuation marks] serve as an elaborate system that clarifies ambiguities in meaning.”
(Susan Miron, quoting Jacobson in “The Science of Torah-Chanting”, published in The Forward
on April 18, 2003). While it is ideal to understand the words one is chanting, it is possible to
gain a sense of the text by knowing when and how much to pause after each phrase.
Motivation
This author found that typical learners and individuals with special needs could be aided
by modified texts that incorporated techniques learned from both Green and Jacobson. All of
these students needed to learn the basics of reading Hebrew and how to read and chant prayers
and Biblical texts in preparation for their B’nei Mitzvah. These students have little to no
cognition of the Hebrew language and because they are novice Hebrew readers, their soundsymbol association fluency is still emerging.
By developing a formatting standard and a means of automating the modifications of any
extant Hebrew text in the DavkaWriter Hebrew/ English word processor, this author has been
40
able to reduce the time to modify large portions of the Tanakh to just a few minutes, rather than
go through the text word by word to modify each word and verse by hand. The automation of
these modifications creates a consistent appearance that might not otherwise be achieved if one
were to do the modifications by hand on such a large scale.
When teaching a student to chant verses of the Torah or Haftarah, there are two methods
this author uses:
1) Teach how to chant all the words that are marked with a particular ta’am family, such
as siluk or etnachta, in all the verses of the assigned Torah or Haftarah portion. After
mastering all the phrases in this ta’am family, move on to another ta’am family. This
method works well with students who have a good musical memory and can transfer
a melody learned from the ta’am model to the actual words in a verse of Torah or
Haftarah with a phrase marked with the same te’amim as the model. Some students
can do this easily. Others have more difficulty.
2) Provide the student with a recording of each verse. Through repeated listening and
personal attempts, the student learns to chant each verse. Sometimes, after learning a
few verses, the student recognizes some melodies that are repeated, such as how each
verse ends with a variation of the same melody. At that point they can continue to
learn using a combination of these two methods.
In both cases, a typical student who has learned how to decode Hebrew can use any
rendering of the Hebrew text to learn their assignments. For instance, this author learned how to
chant Torah and Haftarah using Tikkun Lakor’im, published by K’tav Publishing House and
described on page 29 and now uses Tikkun Kor’im—Simanim. Unfortunately, there is little hint
41
from the texts themselves as to how the te’amim are grouped into anything more resolved than
whole verses, unless one knows the grammatical structure of the te’amim. Moreover, students
who are novice Hebrew readers usually benefit from as much visual help from the study text as
possible. When Hebrew is easier to read, it can act as a motivator, rather than create a hindrance
to learning.
Why Depart From Available Resources?
This author had specific needs in order to accommodate the novice Hebrew readers that
she trained for their B’nei Mitzvah. These students had one or more mild learning disabilities,
such as Asperger’s Syndrome, ADHD, non-verbal learning disorder, dyslexia, poor long term
memory and executive functioning disorder. Prior to studying with this author, many of the
students had not been able to learn to read Hebrew, despite having attended an afternoon Hebrew
school for several years. The reasons for this were varied. Nevertheless, along with being faced
with having to remediate their Hebrew reading skills as quickly and efficiently as possible, this
author needed to provide her students with texts that would give them the best chance at learning
to vocalize the assigned B’nei Mitzvah texts with a limited amount of teaching time. None of the
modifications that this author employs changed the fact that all students achieved mastery of the
text only through lots of repeated attempts to vocalize their assigned texts and frequent check-ins
with their tutor.
42
Proposed Formatting Standard
The format that this author found to be the most effective and helpful presented Biblical
texts that:
‐
Began each verse on a new line;
‐
Put adequate space between each line to allow for visual isolation and helpful notes
from the tutor;
‐
Visually separated ta’am phrases from each other to give the reader a sense of
phrasing;
‐
Did not break a ta’am phrase across a line boundary;
‐
Did not break a verse across a page boundary;
‐
Gave reasonable space between words;
‐
Made a distinction between sheva na’ and sheva nach;
‐
Made a distinction between kamatz katan and kamatz gadol;
‐
When needed, separated each word into its constituent audible syllables;
‐
Numbered each verse with Hindu-Arabic numbers;
‐
Used a visually helpful font;
‐
Could be modified by the tutor as needed according to any special visual processing
needs of the student.
There were extant texts, such as are found in Trope Trainer, that had some of these
requirements, but there were none that expressed all of them. For several years, this author
modified each new student’s assigned texts in the DavkaWriter Hebrew/English word processor
by hand. She soon discovered that she was doing the same key strokes in each file and that these
43
key strokes could be bundled in a series of macros, small computer programs that could be
stored on a computer and run on any text to produce the modifications, but within seconds
instead of minutes. By encapsulating the keystrokes in these macros, the modifications to the
texts became standardized and consistent, thereby cutting down on inadvertent errors in making
the modifications.
Figure 21 (on p. 74 below) shows a sample of original text as cut & pasted from the
DavkaWriter built-in text library. It is set in the default DavkaWriter font, Davka David. There
is only one space between each word. The Hebrew verse numbers are set in the same point size
as the verse text making it difficult for novice Hebrew readers to discriminate between the verse
numbers and the actual text. This author has often seen novice readers try to mistakenly read a
verse number as though it were part of the verse text, showing that it is important to set the
Hebrew verse number in a smaller point size. There is no distinction between kamatz katan and
kamatz gadol or sheva na’ and sheva nach.
Figure 22 and Figure 23 (pp. 75-76 below) shows the result of running a battery of
DavkaWriter macros, which took only seconds to complete. Figure 24 and Figure 25 (pp. 77-78
below) show the result of running an extra DavkaWriter macro on the text to produce a text that
separates each word into its constituent audible syllables. By syllabifying the text, this author
found that it aided students to visually process and vocalize accurate sound-symbol
combinations.
Students were assisted further by when each ta’am phrase was highlighted with a
different color, such as blue for siluk phrases, yellow for etnachta phrases and green for zakefkaton phrases, according to the standard coloring system established at the synagogue where this
44
author works. Some students have visual processing needs that require a vertical line drawn
between each audible syllable, even on text that already has had a space placed between each
syllable. Many students aren’t able to consolidate the musical motifs for each ta’am family as
quickly as others. For these students, this author draws a series of dots over each word to
indicate how many musical pitches are applied to each syllable. Dots that are placed higher
indicate higher pitches; dots that are lower indicate lower pitches. Combining the visual picture
of the music along with repeated listening to the recording, the students were more quickly able
to learn to chant the words for themselves. Figure 26 on page 80 shows an example of text with
these modifications.
Macro 1: Modify font and spacing.
The following steps describe the individual steps to modify the font, changing the spacing
between phrases, words and lines of text, and reducing the size of the Hebrew verse number.
Figure 27 (p. 80) shows a sample result of running this macro.
‐
Insert 3 extra spaces after each disjunctive ta’am (zakef-katon, etnachta, segol, revia,
ger’shayim, zakef gadol, t’lisha g’dolah, pazer, pazer gadol, geresh).
‐
Insert 3 extra spaces after every word (this results in 4 spaces after each conjunctive
ta’am and 7 spaces after each disjunctive ta’am).
‐
Fix makefs, so there is only one space before and after each makef.
‐
Fix legarmeh, so there is only one space between the word and its p’sik.
‐
Delete the ‫ פ‬that identifies an open paragraph in the Torah scroll (parashah p’tuchah)
(see Jacobson’s Chanting the Hebrew Bible, p. 381).
‐
45
Fix bracketed words. DavkaWriter brackets k’rey words, instead of k’tiv words. Switch
the brackets, so the k’tiv words are bracketed, instead of the k’rey words. Remove the
nekudot from the k’tiv words and reduce the point size to 16 points to differentiate k’tiv
words from the rest of the text.
‐
Remove spaces between the last word in a verse and its ‘sof pasuk’ mark.
‐
Set font to “FrankRuhl”.
‐
Set point size to 24.
‐
Align text to the right-hand margin.
‐
Set line spacing to “triple” (3.00).
‐
Set Hebrew verse numbers to 16 points.
Macro 2: Make each verse begin on a new line.
By setting up each verse to begin on a new line, the student is able to find the particular
verse they are working on during lessons and at-home practice sessions. Figure 28 on p. 81
shows the result of running the text from Macro 1 through Macro 2.
‐
Insert a carriage return after every sof-pasuk.
Macro 3: Mark sheva na’ with bold sheva.
All of the sheva vowels are marked with an unbolded sheva mark. DavkaWriter has a
second sheva mark that is bolder. Tikkun Kor’im—Simanim uses a bold sheva to mark sheva na’.
This macro uses the following rules to identify and mark each instance of sheva na’ with a bold
46
sheva mark. Figure 29 on page 82 shows the result of running the text from Macro 2 through
Macro 3.
‐
Replace sheva under the first letter of a word with sheva na’.
‐
Replace sheva under a letter-with-a-dagesh with sheva na’.
‐
Replace sheva under the first of two identical letters with sheva na’.
‐
Replace sheva after a long vowel (cholam, cholam-vav, tsere, tsere-yod, hirik-yod) with
sheva na’. Kamatz gadol cannot always be differentiated from kamatz katan with these
macros. Future work may seek to find a way to do this.
‐
Replace second of two shevas in a row with sheva na’.
‐
Fix Hashem’s name – replace sheva na’ under first letter of tetragrammaton with sheva
nach.
Macro 4: Identify potential kamatz katan or kamatz gadol followed by sheva na’.
After running this macro, each underlined combination needs to be inspected to see if the
kamatz is in an unstressed, closed syllable or if the sheva nach needs to be changed to a sheva
na’ vowel. Future work on this macro may include a programmatic way of determining these
results. Figure 30 and Figure 31 on pages 83-84 show the result of running the text from Macro
3 through Macro 4 and then after the user decides if any of the kamatz marks or sheva marks
need to be changed.
‐
Underline any kamatz-letter-sheva nach combinations.
‐
Underline any kamatz-letter-space combinations.
47
Macro 5: Append Hindu-Arabic verse numbers to Hebrew verse numbers.
Each verse in the built-in Tanakh texts in the DavkaWriter computer program is preceded
by its verse number, represented by a Hebrew number. In this macro the goal is to keep the
Hebrew number and append its equivalent Hindu-Arabic number at the beginning of each verse.
Figure 32 on page 85 shows the result of running the text from Macro 4 through Macro 5.
Hebrew numbers and how they relate to Hindu-Arabic numbers:
Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value. These values
can be used as numerals, as the Romans used some of their letters (I, V,
X, L, C, D, M) as numerals. The table below shows each letter with its
corresponding numerical value. Note that final letters have the same value
as their non-final counterparts.
‫ק‬
‫ר‬
‫ש‬
‫ת‬
100
200
300
400
‫י‬
‫ך‬,‫כ‬
‫ל‬
‫ם‬,‫מ‬
‫ן‬,‫נ‬
‫ס‬
‫ע‬
‫ף‬,‫פ‬
‫ץ‬,‫צ‬
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
‫א‬
‫ב‬
‫ג‬
‫ד‬
‫ה‬
‫ו‬
‫ז‬
‫ח‬
‫ט‬
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Figure 2: Hebrew numerical values
48
The numerical value of a word is determined by adding up the values of
each letter. The order of the letters is irrelevant to their value: the number
11 could be written as Yod-Alef, Alef-Yod, Hei-Vav, Dalet-Dalet-Gimel
or many other ways. Ordinarily, however, numbers are written with the
fewest possible letters and with the largest numeral first (that is, to the
right). The number 11 would be written Yod-Alef; the number 12 would
be Yod-Beit, the number 21 would be Kaf-Alef; the number 611 would be
Tav-Reish-Yod-Alef; etc. The only significant exception to this pattern is
the numbers 15 and 16, which if rendered as 10+5 or 10+6 would be a
name of God, so they are normally written Teit-Vav (9+6) and Teit-Zayin
(9+7). (Rich, T.R., http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm)
The macro algorithm:
‐
Isolate the Hebrew verse number at the beginning of every verse.
‐
Convert the Hebrew verse number to a Hindu-Arabic number: (This is a general Hebrewto-Hindu-Arabic conversion algorithm mostly borrowed from the built-in Gamatria
macro that is delivered as a sample macro in the DavkaWriter program. There are several
parts of the algorithm that will never be needed because Hebrew verses don’t get very
large.)
o Replace all ‫ ת‬letters, representing 400, with ‫( קקקק‬100×4).
o Replace all ‫ ש‬letters, representing 300, with ‫( קקק‬100×3).
o Replace all ‫ ר‬letters, representing 200, with ‫( קק‬100×2).
o Replace all ‫ ק‬letters, representing 100, with ‫( יייייייייי‬10×10).
49
o Replace all ‫ צ‬and ‫ ץ‬letters, representing 90, with ‫( ייייייייי‬10×9).
o Replace all ‫ פ‬and ‫ ף‬letters, representing 80, with ‫( יייייייי‬10×8).
o Replace all ‫ ע‬letters, representing 70, with ‫( ייייייי‬10×7).
o Replace all ‫ ס‬letters, representing 60, with ‫( יייייי‬10×6).
o Replace all ‫ נ‬and ‫ ן‬letters, representing 50, with ‫( ייייי‬10×5).
o Replace all ‫ מ‬and ‫ ם‬letters, representing 40, with ‫( יייי‬10×4).
o Replace all ‫ ל‬letters, representing 30, with ‫( ייי‬10×3).
o Replace all ‫ כ‬and ‫ ך‬letters, representing 20, with ‫( יי‬10×2).
o Replace all ‫ י‬letters, representing 10, with ‫( אאאאאאאאאא‬1×10).
o Replace all ‫ ט‬letters, representing 9, with ‫( אאאאאאאאא‬1×9).
o Replace all ‫ ח‬letters, representing 8, with ‫( אאאאאאאא‬1×8).
o Replace all ‫ ז‬letters, representing 7, with ‫( אאאאאאא‬1×7).
o Replace all ‫ ו‬letters, representing 6, with ‫( אאאאאא‬1×6).
o Replace all ‫ ה‬letters, representing 5, with ‫( אאאאא‬1×5).
o Replace all ‫ ד‬letters, representing 4, with ‫( אאאא‬1×4).
o Replace all ‫ ג‬letters, representing 3, with ‫( אאא‬1×3).
o Replace all ‫ ב‬letters, representing 2, with ‫( אא‬1×2).
o At this point, all the Hebrew letters have been converted to a series of ‫ א‬letters.
Count them up.
‐
Replace all the ‫ א‬letters with a “/” (slash) followed by the Hindu-Arabic number
representing the number of ‫ א‬letters just calculated.
‐
Copy this new text (slash + Hindu-Arabic number) to the computer’s clipboard.
‐
50
Paste the contents of the clipboard next to the Hebrew verse number.
Macro 6: Insert a line break after the last whole grammatical phrase on each line.
One of the requirements of this author’s formatting standard is to prevent any ta’am
phrase to be split over two lines. Figure 33 on page 86 shows the result of running the text from
Macro 5 through Macro 6.
‐
Insert a carriage return after every etnachta phrase.
‐
Insert seven spaces between each sof-pasuk and carriage return. Using the terminology
from Jacobson’s Chanting the Hebrew Bible, both Level 1 phrases (siluk and etnachta)
are now consistently followed by seven spaces and a carriage return.
‐
For each Level 1 phrase (which may or may not span more than one line):
o Find the end of the first line of the Level 1 phrase.
o Look for the last group of seven spaces on that line.
o Insert a carriage return after the seven spaces. (Now, the next Level 1 phrase
begins on the next line.)
o Find the end of the next line of text in the Level 1 phrase being worked on.
o Look for the last group of seven spaces on that line.
o Insert a carriage return after the seven spaces. (Now, the rest of the Level 1
phrase begins on the next line.)
o Continue in this way until there are no more lines of text to process in this Level 1
phrase before moving to the next Level 1 phrase.
51
Macro 7: Remove nekudot from tetragrammaton.
The tetrammaton of yod-hey-vav-hey that represents God’s name in Hebrew can present a
challenge to novice Hebrew readers, who often forget that this special sequence is vocalized as
“A-do-nai.” By removing the nekudot from the tetragrammaton, the novice reader will be
reminded of this special pronunciation exception because there are no vowels to inadvertently
process.
‐
Remove nekudot from the tetragrammaton, but keep it’s ta’am in place.
‐
Future improvement: Preserve the nekudot on the tetragrammaton that is vocalized as “Elo-him” to avoid incorrect vocalization of Hashem’s name.
Macro 8: Syllabify words.
The Hebrew grammatical syllable is defined by Benjamin Herson’s book, Secret of the
Pyramid, as having “one independent (full) vowel. Some syllables have one full vowel and
weak (slurred) vowels. No syllable has more than one full vowel.” (p. 17). The hatuf vowels
and sheva na’ are considered weak vowels in this definition. This author has found that this
concept is not always easy for novice Hebrew readers to master. On the other hand, it seems
easier for them to relate to a letter-vowel or letter-vowel-letter-sheva nach combination as a
syllable. This approach is validated by Jacobson in his book, Chanting the Hebrew Bible, where
he counts hatuf vowels and sheva na’ as eligible vowels for a syllable, since “anyone who is
chanting these words must assign at least one note to each vowel, no matter how short.” (p. 326)
This author uses the term audible syllable to express this concept.
52
When this macro is executed, it splits each word into its constituent audible Hebrew
syllables. Figure 34 on page 87 shows the result of running the text from Macro 6 through
Macro 8.
‐
For each verse:
o Change each space to a plus-sign (+). (This prepares the text to be “spaceneutral”, so that the algorithm won’t confuse the syllable spaces that will be
inserted with the spaces between the words, which have just been changed to
plus-signs. These plus-signs will be restored to spaces at the end of the
algorithm.)
o Insert a space after every character, except plus-signs. (Each nikud is tied to a
letter, so they are not separated.)
o Remove the spaces between the letters of the word ‫ ִהוא‬.
o Remove the space before every cholam (‫)וֹ‬.
o Remove the space before every shuruk (‫)וּ‬.
o Remove the space before every yod (‫ )י‬that has no vowel mark.
o Remove the space before every aleph (‫ )א‬that has no vowel mark.
o Remove the space before any letter-without-a-vowel-mark at the end of a word.
o Remove the space before any letter marked with sheva nach.
o Remove the space before cholam that is pronounced as “vo”.
o Remove the spaces between the letters of the tetragrammaton.
o Make sure that there are seven spaces after each word with a disjunctive as
established in Macro 1.
53
o Remove spaces between letters of bracketed words.
Macro 9: Unsyllabify words
On occasion, this author has needed a way to take a syllabified text and remove the
spaces between the syllables, so as to preserve the position of the words on every line. This kind
of presentation is useful when a student needs as few changes as possible to the text layout as
they transition from reading a syllabified text to the ultimate goal of reading from the Torah
scroll. After running this macro and preserving its output, one can then use the built-in
DavkaWriter “remove-trop” command to remove all the ta’am marks. The next presentation one
could graduate to would be rendered by running the DavkaWriter command “remove-vowels” to
remove all the vowels, while still preserving the position of words on every line of the text. Only
after this type of novice Hebrew reader successfully reads without vowels can the font be
changed to Davka Stam, which is the closest font to a Torah scroll hand-drawn script. Finally,
the word positioning can be tightened up and the font size reduced slightly to mimic the Torah
scroll presentation. Usually, the novice reader knows how to chant the text so well after all these
extra steps and the accompanying extra repetition of vocalizing the text, these last few text
transitions go quickly.
The macro algorithm:
‐
Replace all groups of eight spaces with a dummy non-Hebrew character
‐
Replace all groups of seven spaces with a dummy non-Hebrew character
‐
Replace all groups of six spaces with a dummy non-Hebrew character
‐
Replace all groups of five spaces with a dummy non-Hebrew character
‐
Replace all groups of four spaces with a dummy non-Hebrew character
‐
Replace all groups of three spaces with a dummy non-Hebrew character
‐
Replace all groups of two spaces with a dummy non-Hebrew character
‐
Remove all the spaces between the audible syllables of each word.
‐
Replace all the dummy non Hebrew characters with spaces.
54
Macro limitations
There are limitations on and bugs in the current set of macros. Future work will try to
address the following concerns:
‐
When the tetragrammaton is punctuated with a siluk , it should not be spelled with a
sheva na’ (bold sheva).
‐
ְ ‫ וַ ֹי‬needs to be marked as sheva na’ .
The sheva in words like ‫אמרוּ‬
‐
Words with a sheva and a meteg under the first letter need to be processed correctly, so
that the sheva is identified and marked and the meteg is preserved. For example,
‫ ְֽבנֵי־הָ ִא ָשּׁה‬.
‐
When the last letter of a word has a sheva, it should be marked as sheva nach. For
example,
‐
ְ‫וַ ֽ ֵתּבְ ךּ‬.
According to Dr. Joshua Jacobson in Chanting the Hebrew Bible, the “sheva under the
first letter of the word
‫( ְשׁ ַתּיִם‬as well as derivative forms such as ‫ש ֵרה‬
ֹ ְ ֶ‫ ְשׁ ֵתים ע‬and
‫ ) ְשׁ ַתּ ֵי‬is a silent sheva.”6 (p. 309).
The opening sheva in this case needs to be properly
rendered.
6
Sheva nach.
‐
55
Aliyah markers, such as [‫]ששי‬, need to be left alone and not processed as k’rey/k’tiv
words that swap the brackets from the k’rey words to the k’tiv word.
‐
Under some circumstances, t’lisha k’tanah is inadvertently removed from the beginning
of a word. This needs to be fixed so the ta’am is preserved.
‐
Sometimes, the ta’am is inadvertently removed and the sheva is incorrectly identified as
sheva na’, such as in the word ‫ חֵ ְטא‬when Macro 3 is run.
‐
When a khaf-sheva-khaf sofit combination is found, the sheva should be marked as sheva
na’, such as in the word
‐
ְ‫י ֽ ְָב ֶרכ‬.
A word like ‫ וַ יְצַ וּוּ‬needs to be syllabified correctly to account for the fact that the last
syllable is pronounced “vu”.
‐
The macro that identifies each potential kamatz katan needs to be able to identify words,
such as ‫ ָרנִּ י‬.
‐
Change the background color of each ta’am phrase according to its ta’am family, such as
blue for siluk phrases, yellow for etnachta phrases, green for zakef-katon phrases.
‐
Determine a programmatic way of distinguishing between kamatz gadol and kamatz
katan.
‐
Delete the ‫ ס‬that identifies a sealed paragraph in the Torah scroll (parashah setumah)
(see Jacobson’s Chanting the Hebrew Bible, p. 381)
‐
Preserve the nekudot on the tetragrammaton that is vocalized as “E-lo-him” to avoid
incorrect vocalization of Hashem’s name.
56
CHAPTER VII. EFFICACY OF MODIFIED TEXTS IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS
Evaluation of Formatted Classical Texts
Student Reactions
Most of the students this author teaches prefer to use these modified texts with syllabified
words when given the choice between these texts and modified texts with whole words. Once
offered either of these two options, they rarely want the official study texts supplied by the
synagogue. Many students appreciate the syllabified texts and comment on how helpful they are.
Colleague, Classmate, and Teacher Reactions
Some colleagues have requested copies of these texts for the Torah and Haftarah texts
they need for their students and children. One colleague wanted a copy of the syllabified Ashrei
prayer for her daughter who is in 2nd grade at a local Jewish day school and has some difficulties
reading. Her daughter was motivated to learn how to chant this prayer, but found the siddur
difficult to read.
Dr. Joshua Jacobson has provided the whole word versions of these texts for the assigned
Torah readings in his Cantillation I class at Hebrew College for the last two years. His students
are not required to use them in their chanting preparations, but this author has seen that these
texts are used by the majority of the students in his classes.
Some colleagues are concerned that using these texts will prevent students from learning
how to read the more tightly typeset Hebrew that is rendered in a siddur. In this author’s
57
experience of teaching over forty B’nei Mitzvah students, she has observed that each student was
able to transfer their reading skills from the modified texts to the Torah scroll. To be sure, the
students had learned to chant their assigned reading fluently before making the transfer, but all
were able to find and keep their place when chanting from the scroll. This author views the
modified texts as a stepping stone for novice Hebrew readers to get used to reading and
mastering novel texts and that the goal is for them to become more proficient readers able to use
and read texts from standard prayer and study resources.
Supervisor Reactions
This author’s education director has copies on file of this author’s modified texts for all
the prayers and blessings taught in grades 3 through 6 in her congregational Hebrew school and
makes them available for teachers to give out to students who may find them more visually
helpful than the siddur or workbook versions of the texts.
Parent Reactions
This author receives numerous comments every year from parents, who know how to
read Hebrew, and have seen their children struggle to learn to read Hebrew before using these
texts. These comments are appreciative and validate the use of these texts for novice Hebrew
readers.
58
Hebrew Font Preference - An Informal Survey
Anecdotal evidence shows that this author’s formatted texts are effective in a variety of
educational settings for both children and adults. However, this author was curious to find out
how the guidelines established in her research about English typography would correlate with
Hebrew typography. One variable that could be tested was Hebrew font preference. This author
designed a survey containing samples the Hatzi Kaddish prayer set in ten different fonts
available in the DavkaWriter Platinum word processor. The goal was to get data from both
novice and experienced Hebrew readers about which font they preferred. Each font was set to
approximately the same visual size on the page (not necessarily the same point size). The
respondents were asked to look at each font sample for no more than ten to fifteen seconds and
then mark whether they “liked” or “didn’t like” the font. The criteria for “liking” a font was left
to the respondent to decide. The names of the fonts were not provided to avoid respondent’s
opinion being influenced by knowing a font’s name.
Four cohorts were surveyed:
a. School of Jewish Music, Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts.
This is a group of eighteen graduate students and staff. The students are enrolled in a
program for cantorial ordination or certification in cantorial arts. Some of these
students are simultaneously studying for a Master in Jewish Education.
b. Third and fourth grade supplementary Hebrew school students.
This is a group of 46 third and fourth grade students in the supplementary Hebrew
school where this author works. All of these students are novice Hebrew readers.
59
They were not expected to be able to read the Hatzi Kaddish. They were only
expected to indicate their font preference.
c. 49 anonymous respondents from three ListServ communities:
‐
Hebrew College students ([email protected])
‐
Women Cantors Network ([email protected])
‐
IMUN ([email protected]), graduates of the lay leadership workshop run by
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
An e-mail was sent to these three ListServ communities with a PDF of the survey
attached to the e-mail. The respondents were asked to print the PDF before going to a
web site to enter their font preferences. It is not known if any of the respondents
viewed the PDF on their computer screen, which might have altered a respondent’s
opinion of each font.
d. GISHA Conference attendees, Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts
These are all teachers, parents or other individuals interested in making Hebrew
education accessible to all types of learners.
The results of the survey indicate overall that this author’s premise for using the Davka
FrankRuhl font is validated. As noted earlier in Strizver article on Typography for Children,
favored fonts have rounded counters (the enclosed shapes within characters, such as the inner
area of the letter ‘b’, or in the case of Hebrew, the letter ‘‫’ס‬. FrankRuhl is not too condensed,
too wide, too bold or too hairline in nature. The survey was done informally and without any
controls to keep track of the actual Hebrew reading ability of each participant. Nor, were any of
the participants asked to read the text they were scoring. The 3rd and 4th grade student cohort
60
was more diverse in their preferences, but that may be due to the fact that this author did not
establish the criteria for “liking” a font. Some of the students admitted after they handed in their
surveys that some of the fonts were “fun” to look at. This may account for the higher scores in
that cohort for Hatzvi and Miriam fonts.
Figure 3: Samples of each font used in the survey
Raw Data SJM Students & Staff Listservs TBE Students 61
GISHA Conference Font Name Liked Didn't Like Liked Didn't Like Liked Didn't Like Liked Didn't Like Davka David 12 6 22 27 34 12 34 29 GuttmanD FrankNew 16 2 44 5 32 14 55 8 Davka FrankRuhl 14 4 44 5 36 10 54 9 GuttmanD Ashknaz 2 16 10 39 13 33 22 42 Davka Drogolin 7 11 24 25 18 28 32 29 Davka Hadassah 16 2 39 10 28 18 53 10 GuttmanD Hatzvi 1 17 8 41 17 29 13 50 GuttmanD Keren 9 9 35 14 24 22 50 15 Davka Miriam 0 18 4 45 15 31 4 59 GuttmanD Roedelheim2 9 9 29 20 31 15 46 17 Figure 4: Results of font preferences for each cohort – raw data
Percentages SJM Students & Staff Listservs TBE Students GISHA Conference Font Name Liked Didn't Like Liked Didn't Like Liked Didn't Like Liked Didn't Like Davka David 67% 33% 45% 55% 74% 26% 54% 46% GuttmanD FrankNew 89% 11% 90% 10% 70% 30% 87% 13% Davka FrankRuhl 78% 22% 90% 10% 78% 22% 86% 14% GuttmanD Ashknaz 11% 89% 20% 80% 28% 72% 34% 66% Davka Drogolin 39% 61% 49% 51% 39% 61% 52% 48% Davka Hadassah 89% 11% 80% 20% 61% 39% 84% 16% GuttmanD Hatzvi 6% 94% 16% 84% 37% 63% 21% 79% GuttmanD Keren 50% 50% 71% 29% 52% 48% 77% 23% Davka Miriam 0% 100% 8% 92% 33% 67% 6% 94% GuttmanD Roedelheim2 50% 50% 59% 41% 67% 33% 73% 27% Figure 5: Results of font preferences for each cohort - percentages
62
Hebrew Font Preferences by Cohort
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
SJM Students & Staff
Listservs
TBE Students
GISHA Conference
Figure 6: Collective results of font preferences
Aggregate Hebrew Font Preferences 100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Figure 7: Aggregate Hebrew Font Preferences
63
CHAPTER VIII. PUBLISHING GOALS
1. Publish (or make publicly available) a set of Haftarot.
2. Publish (or make publicly available) individual Haftarah/Maftir training booklets.
3. Publish (or make publicly available) a reformatted Torah text for all parashiyot.
4. Publish (or make publicly available) weekday Torah readings.
5. Publish (or make publicly available) texts for the most widely read/chanted prayers in
siddurim.
64
APPENDIX I
Samples of B’nei Mitzvah Training Resources.
Figure 8: Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem – 1st page of Haftarah for the Shabbat during Sukkot
65
Figure 9: Sefer Bar Mitzvah Hashalem – 2nd page of Haftarah for the Shabbat during Sukkot
66
Figure 10: HaMaftir – No. 40 – Parashat Balak, pg. 19: opening Haftarah blessing
67
Figure 11: HaMaftir – No. 40 – Parashat Balak, pg. 20: 1st page of Haftarah Balak (Hebrew)
68
Figure 12: HaMaftir – No. 40 – Parashat Balak, pg. 21: 1st page of Haftarah Balak (English)
69
Figure 13: A Guide to Torah Reading, p. 89 (actual size)
70
Figure 14: Sample of K'tav Tikkun Lakor’im, pg. 160, Numbers 7:42-47
Figure 15: Sample of Koren Tikkun Kor’im—Simanim, pg. 160, Numbers 7:42-47
71
Figure 16: The Art of Torah Cantillation, pg. 35
72
Figure 17: Trope Trainer computer software – Leviticus 9:1 (plain text)
Figure 18: Trope Trainer computer software – Leviticus 9:1 (colored phrases)
Figure 19: Trope Trainer computer software – Leviticus 9:1 (colored te’amim)
73
Figure 20: Chanting the Hebrew Bible, pg. 548
74
Figure 21: Numbers 7:42-47 original cut&paste copy of from DavkaWriter Text Library
75
Figure 22: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s DavkaWriter macros (part 1)
76
Figure 23: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s DavkaWriter macros (part 2)
77
Figure 24: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s Syllabify DavkaWriter macro (part 1)
78
Figure 25: Numbers 7:42-47 after running this author’s Syllabify DavkaWriter macro (part 2)
79
Figure 26: Numbers 7:42-47 with hand-drawn modifications
80
Figure 27: Macro 1: Modify font and spacing.
81
Figure 28: Macro 2: Make each verse begin on a new line
82
Figure 29: Macro 3: Mark sheva na’ with bold sheva.
83
Figure 30: Macro 4: Identify potential kamatz katan or kamatz gadol followed by sheva na’
84
Figure 31: Final result after inspecting Macro 4 text
85
Figure 32: Macro 5: Append Hindu-Arabic verse numbers to Hebrew verse numbers
86
Figure 33: Macro 6: Insert a line break after the last whole grammatical phrase on each line
87
Figure 34: Macro 8: Syllabify words
88
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New Orthographic Methods for Teaching Novice Hebrew Readers

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