The Torah Project

Check out the "flavor" of the week!!!

Torah is usually "chanted", putting musical notes to the letters and words of the Torah and singing the words, rather than speaking them. The notations which tell the Torah reader how to chant each word and phrase are called "cantillation notations", and are found in printed copies of the Bible or Torah. The Hebrew word for the ">musical notations is te'amim, which literally means "tastes" or "flavors", since the chanting adds a flavor to the words, grouping words together and making it easier for the listener to comprehend the ideas the words try to convey. The cantillation is called "trope" in Yiddish. Although a Rabbi in Tiberias devised the first set of musical notations, there have been many other Rabbis since then who have developed their own particular "flavors". If you listen carefully to different readers, or attend services in different parts of the world, you'll get different "tastes" of the Torah!!!