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59-596: The ben Asher family of Masoretes was largely responsible for the preservation and production of the Masoretic Text , although there existed an alternative Masoretic text of the ben Naphtali Masoretes, which has around 875 differences from the ben Asher text. The halakhic authority Maimonides endorsed the ben Asher as superior, although the Egyptian Jewish scholar, the Saadya Gaon , had preferred

118-408: A conjunctive , joining the two words (like a slur in music). Thus, disjunctives divide a verse into phrases, and within each phrase all the words except the last carry conjunctives. (There are two types of exception to the rule about words having only one sign. A group of words joined by hyphens is regarded as one word so they only have one accent between them. Conversely, a long word may have two—e.g.,

177-709: A Bible manuscript then in Egypt, Maimonides wrote: "All relied on it, since it was corrected by ben Asher and was worked on and analyzed by him for many years, and was proofread many times in accordance with the masorah, and I based myself on this manuscript in the Sefer Torah that I wrote". Umberto Cassuto used the Aleppo Codex as the basis of his edition of the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew cantillation Hebrew cantillation , trope , trop , or te'amim

236-485: A chant to Biblical readings. This chant is technically regarded as a ritualized form of speech intonation rather than as a musical exercise like the singing of metrical hymns: for this reason Jews always speak of saying or reading a passage rather than of singing it. (In Yiddish the word is leynen 'read', derived from Latin legere , giving rise to the Jewish English verb "to leyn".) The musical value of

295-452: A disjunctive on the stressed syllable and the related conjunctive two syllables before in place of meteg .) The disjunctives are traditionally divided into four levels, with lower level disjunctives marking less important breaks. The general conjunctive is munach . Depending on which disjunctive follows, this may be replaced by mercha , mahpach , darga , qadma , telisha qetannah or yerach ben yomo . One other symbol

354-572: A later hand. In general, it may be observed that the Jerusalem and Tiberian systems are far more closely related to each other than either is to the Babylonian. This system of phrasing is reflected in the Sephardic cantillation modes, in which the conjunctives (and to some extent the "near companions" such as tifcha , pashta and zarqa ) are rendered as flourishes leading into the motif of

413-555: A person making hand signals to the reader to show the tune, as in the Byzantine system of neumes . This system of cheironomy survives in some communities to the present day, notably in Italy . It is speculated that both the shapes and the names of some of the accents (e.g. tifcha , literally "hand-breadth") may refer to the hand signals rather than to the syntactical functions or melodies denoted by them. Today in most communities there

472-639: A single family. For example, in these traditions the Torah reading is always or almost always in Maqam Sigah . There are some variations, among individual readers as well as among communities: for example the Egyptian melody is related to the more elaborate and cantorial form of the Syrian melody and was transitioning toward Maqam Huzzam before the mass expulsion in 1950. The Karaite tradition, being based on

531-479: A strong case, however not strong enough to tip the scales and end the debate. Some examples of evidence for this assertion include: A turning point came in the 1950s when Benjamin Klar discovered that an anti-Karaite polemical poem by Sa‘adia Gaon criticized a Karaite masorete by the name of "ben Asher". This agrees with Sa‘adia's rejection of ben Asher in favor of the rival school of ben Naftali , as well as

590-410: A symbol on each word, to replace the fragmentary systems previously in use. In particular, it was necessary to invent a range of different conjunctive accents to show how to introduce and elaborate the main motif in longer phrases. (For example, tevir is preceded by mercha , a short flourish, in shorter phrases but by darga , a more elaborate run of notes, in longer phrases.) The system they devised

649-477: Is mercha kefulah , double mercha. There is some argument about whether this is another conjunctive or an occasional replacement for tevir . Disjunctives have a function somewhat similar to punctuation in Western languages. Sof pasuk could be thought of as a full stop, atnach as a semi-colon, second level disjunctives as commas and third level disjunctives as commas or unmarked. Where two words are written in

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708-548: Is also used for some other words and passages which it is desired to emphasize. Other communities, such as the Syrian Jews, observe the differences between the two sets of cantillation marks for the Ten Commandments but have no special melody for ta'am 'elyon . There is no special tune for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in any Sephardic tradition. As with Ashkenazim, the normal musical value of cantillation signs

767-461: Is generally performed by a young boy. Conversely, the Syrian community knows two types of Torah cantillation, a simpler one for general use and a more elaborate one used by professional hazzanim . It is probable that the simpler melody was originally a teaching mode. Today however it is the mode in general use, and is also an ancestor of the "Jerusalem-Sephardic" melody. Some communities, such as

826-527: Is generally the "default" tune for any book of the Ketuvim (Hagiographa) that does not have a tune of its own. Unlike the Ashkenazic tradition, the eastern traditions, in particular that of the Syrian Jews, include melodies for the special cantillation of Psalms, Proverbs and the poetic parts of Job. In many eastern communities, Proverbs is read on the six Sabbaths between Passover and Shavuot , Job on

885-592: Is known about them other than their names. His father, Moses ben Asher, is credited with writing the Cairo Codex of the Prophets (895 CE). If authentic, it is among the oldest manuscripts containing a large proportion of the Hebrew Bible . Scholars have long debated as to whether Aaron ben Asher was a Karaite . While many modern scholars lean toward this being true, there is no clear consensus, and so

944-486: Is no system of hand signals and the reader learns the melody of each reading in advance. The Tiberian system spread quickly and was accepted in all communities by the 13th century. Each community re-interpreted its reading tradition so as to allocate one short musical motif to each symbol: this process has gone furthest in the Western Ashkenazi and Ottoman (Jerusalem-Sephardi, Syrian etc.) traditions. Learning

1003-469: Is replaced by a "coda" motif at the end of each Torah reading and of each haftarah verse (though there is no special coda for the end of the haftarah), suggesting a common origin for the Sephardi and Ashkenazi chants. Eastern Jewish communities have no liturgical tradition of reading Ecclesiastes, and there is no public liturgical reading of Song of Songs on Passover, though brief extracts may be read after

1062-681: Is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services . The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic Text of the Bible, to complement the letters and vowel points . These marks are known in English as 'accents' ( diacritics ), 'notes' or trope symbols , and in Hebrew as taʿamei ha-mikra ( טעמי המקרא ) or just teʿamim ( טעמים ). Some of these signs were also sometimes used in medieval manuscripts of

1121-526: Is the one in use today, and is found in Biblical manuscripts such as the Aleppo Codex . A Masoretic treatise called Diqduqe ha-teʿamim (precise rules of the accents) by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher survives, though both the names and the classification of the accents differ somewhat from those of the present day. As the accents were (and are) not shown on a Torah scroll, it was found necessary to have

1180-661: Is used in manuscripts of the Qur'an to guide the reader in fitting the chant to the verse: see Qur'an reading .) This system is reflected in the cantillation practices of the Yemenite Jews , who now use the Tiberian symbols, but tend to have musical motifs only for the disjunctives and render the conjunctives in a monotone. It is notable that the Yemenite Jews have only eight disjunctive motifs, thus clearly reflecting

1239-549: The Geonic period contain no cantillation marks in the current sense, but small Hebrew letters are used to mark significant divisions within a verse. Up to eight different letters are found, depending on the importance of the break and where it occurs in the verse: these correspond roughly to the disjunctives of the Tiberian system. For example, in some manuscripts the letter tav , for tevir (break), does duty for both Tiberian tevir and zaqef . In general there are no symbols for

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1298-549: The Hebrew block. The names of some of the cantillation signs differ in the Ashkenazi , Sephardi , Italian and Yemenite traditions; for example Sephardim use qadma to mean what Ashkenazim call pashta , and azla to mean what Ashkenazim call qadma . In this article, as in almost all Hebrew grammars, the Ashkenazi terminology is used. The names in other traditions are shown in the table below . A primary purpose of

1357-570: The Mishnah . The musical motifs associated with the signs are known in Hebrew as niggun or neginot (not to be confused with Hasidic nigun ) and in Yiddish as trop ( טראָפ ): the word trope is sometimes used in Jewish English with the same meaning. There are multiple traditions of cantillation. Within each tradition, there are multiple tropes, typically for different books of

1416-508: The Ninth of Av , and Psalms are read on a great many occasions. The cantillation melody for Psalms can also vary depending on the occasion. The Spanish and Portuguese Jews have no tradition for the rendering of the Psalms according to the cantillation marks, but the melody used for several psalms in the evening service is noticeably similar to that of Syrian psalm cantillation, and may represent

1475-508: The Tanakh . One is used in the twenty-one prose books, while the other appears in the three poetical books of Psalms , Proverbs and Job . Except where otherwise stated, this article describes the "prose" system. The current system of cantillation notes has its historical roots in the Tiberian masorah . The cantillation signs are included in Unicode as characters U+0591 through U+05AF in

1534-485: The construct state (for example, pene ha-mayim , "the face of the waters"), the first noun ( nomen regens ) invariably carries a conjunctive. The cantillation signs are often an important aid in the interpretation of a passage. For example, the words qol qore bamidbar panu derekh YHWH ( Isaiah 40:3 ) is translated in the Authorised Version as "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye

1593-405: The tifcha-etnachta , zarqa-segolta and pashta-zaqef sequences, with or without intervening unaccented words. These sequences are generally linked by a series of dots, beginning or ending with a dash or a dot in a different place to show which sequence is meant. Unaccented words (which in the Tiberian system carry conjunctives) are generally shown by a dot following the word, as if to link it to

1652-566: The trope symbols used for cantillation. The nakdanim were successors to the Masoretes in the transmission of the traditional Hebrew text of the Old Testament. This article related to the Hebrew language is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Ben Asher Aaron ben Moses ben Asher ( Hebrew : אַהֲרוֹן בֶּן משֶׁה בֶּן אָשֵׁר , romanized :  ʾAhăron ben Moše ben ʾĀšēr ; 10th century, died c.960)

1711-502: The Ashkenazic musical tradition for Te'raim, each of the local geographical customs includes a total of six major and numerous minor separate melodies for Tera'im: The Ashkenazic tradition preserves no melody for the special cantillation notes of Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, which were not publicly read in the synagogue by European Jews. However, the Ashkenazic yeshiva known as Aderet Eliyahu , or (more informally) Zilberman's , in

1770-509: The Babylonian notation. The same is true of the Karaite mode for the haftarah; while in the Sephardi haftarah modes different disjunctives often have the same or closely similar motifs, reducing the total number of effective motifs to something like the same number. The Babylonian system, as mentioned above, is mainly concerned with showing breaks in the verse. Early manuscripts, by contrast, are mainly concerned with showing phrases: for example

1829-404: The Bible and often for different occasions. For example, different chants may be used for Torah readings on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur than for the same text on a normal Shabbat. Three systems of Hebrew punctuation (including vowels and cantillation symbols) have been used: the Babylonian, the Jerusalem, and the Tiberian, only the last of which is used today. Babylonian Biblical manuscripts from

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1888-408: The Bible. The music varies with different Jewish traditions and individual cantorial styles. The cantillation signs also provide information on the syntactical structure of the text and some say they are a commentary on the text itself, highlighting important ideas musically. The tropes are not random strings but follow a set and describable grammar. The very word ta'am , used in Hebrew to refer to

1947-513: The Egyptian, also forms part of this group. Another recognisable family consists of the Iraqi (Mosul and Iraqi diaspora), Spanish-Moroccan and Spanish and Portuguese melodies. The probable reason for the occurrence of similar melodies at opposite ends of the Arab world is that they represent the remains of an old Arab-Jewish tradition not overlaid by the later Ottoman-Sephardic tradition that spread to

2006-551: The Old City of Jerusalem, uses an adaptation of the Syrian cantillation-melody for these books, and this is becoming more popular among other Ashkenazim as well. At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a single Ottoman-Sephardic tradition (no doubt with local variations) covering Turkey, Syria, Israel and Egypt. Today the Jerusalem-Sephardic, Syrian, Egyptian and Baghdadi melodies recognisably belong to

2065-578: The Portuguese community of Amsterdam, have a simplified melody for the Prophets for study purposes, distinct from that used in reading the Haftarah : the distinction is mentioned in one medieval Sephardic source. The following table shows the names of the te'amim in the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Italian traditions together with their Unicode symbols. The following additional symbols are found in

2124-581: The Torah, used in teaching it to children, as distinct from the mode used in synagogue. (This should not be confused with the lernen steiger used for studying the Mishnah and Talmud.) For example, the Yemenite community teaches a simplified melody for children, to be used both in school and when they are called to read the sixth aliyah. The simplified melody is also used for the reading of the Targum , which

2183-614: The accents and their musical rendition is now an important part of the preparations for a bar mitzvah , as this is the first occasion on which a person reads from the Torah in public. In the early period of the Reform movement there was a move to abandon the system of cantillation and give Scriptural readings in normal speech (in Hebrew or in the vernacular). In recent decades, however, traditional cantillation has been restored in many communities. There are two systems of cantillation marks in

2242-403: The ben Naphtali system. It has been suggested that the ben Asher family and the majority of the Masoretes were Karaites . However, Geoffrey Khan believes that the ben Asher family was probably not Karaite, and Aron Dotan avers that there are "decisive proofs that M. Ben-Asher was not a Karaite." The Masoretes devised the vowel notation system for Hebrew that is still widely used, as well as

2301-470: The cantillation marks, literally means "taste" or "sense", the point being that the pauses and intonation denoted by the accents (with or without formal musical rendition) bring out the sense of the passage. The cantillation signs serve three functions: In general, each word in the Tanakh has one cantillation sign. This may be either a disjunctive , showing a division between that and the following word, or

2360-474: The cantillation signs is to guide the chanting of the sacred texts during public worship. Very roughly speaking, each word of text has a cantillation mark at its primary accent and associated with that mark is a musical phrase that tells how to sing that word. The reality is more complex, with some words having two or no marks and the musical meaning of some marks dependent upon context. There are different sets of musical phrases associated with different sections of

2419-471: The cantillation signs serves the same function for Jews worldwide, but the specific tunes vary between different communities. The most common tunes today are as follows. There has been an attempted reconstruction of the original melody by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura , on the basis of the shapes and positions of the marks and without any reference to existing melodies, as described in her book La musique de la Bible révélée and her records. That reconstruction assumes

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2478-411: The chant was given over orally(mesora) in use in medieval Palestine had clearly become more complex, both because of the existence of pazer , geresh and telisha motifs in longer verses and because the realization of a phrase ending with a given type of break varied according to the number of words and syllables in the phrase. The Tiberian Masoretes therefore developed a comprehensive notation with

2537-425: The conjunctives, though some late manuscripts use the Tiberian symbols for these. There is also no equivalent for low-grade disjunctives such as telisha gedolah : these are generally replaced by the equivalent of zaqef or revia . Nothing is known of the musical realization of these marks, but it seems likely that they represent breaks or variations in a set melody applied to each verse. (A somewhat similar system

2596-407: The consonant of the stressed syllable of a word. This also shows where the most important note of the musical motif should go. A few signs always go on the first or last consonant of a word. This may have been for musical reasons, or it may be to distinguish them from other accents of similar shape. For example, pashta , which goes on the last consonant, otherwise looks like kadma , which goes on

2655-708: The countries in between. There may also have been some convergence between the London Spanish and Portuguese and Iraqi melodies during British rule in India and the British Mandate of Mesopotamia . The Jews of North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Yemen all had local musical traditions for cantillation. When these Jewish communities emigrated (mostly to Israel) during the twentieth century, they brought their musical traditions with them. But as

2714-553: The fact that ben Asher became accepted as relations between the Karaites and Rabbanites improved. Aron Dotan has dealt with many of the arguments, including Klar's, and also argued that the approval of Maimonides is evidence against the claim. However, according to Zer, few researchers have expressed their support for Dotan's position. Ben Asher was the first systematic Hebrew grammarian. In an age where Hebrew grammatical principles were not considered worthy of independent study, he

2773-478: The following disjunctive rather than as motifs in their own right. The somewhat inconsistent use of dots above and below the words as disjunctives is closely similar to that found in Syriac texts. Kahle also notes some similarity with the punctuation of Samaritan Hebrew . By the tenth century CE, the symbols (note: the chant existed since the giving of the Torah, the symbols were developed over time. Before than

2832-468: The following word. There are separate symbols for more elaborate tropes like pazer and telisha gedolah . The manuscripts are extremely fragmentary, no two of them following quite the same conventions, and these marks may represent the individual reader's aide-memoire rather than a formal system of punctuation (for example, vowel signs are often used only where the word would otherwise be ambiguous). In one manuscript, presumably of somewhat later date than

2891-465: The immigrants themselves grew older, many particular national melodies began to be forgotten, or to become assimilated into the "Jerusalem Sephardic" melting-pot. As with the Ashkenazim, there is one tune for Torah readings and a different tune for haftarot. Spanish and Portuguese Jews have a special tune for the Ten Commandments when read according to the ta'am elyon , known as "High Na'um", which

2950-604: The linguistic background of vocalization for the first time. For over a thousand years, ben Asher has been regarded by Jews of all persuasions as having produced the most accurate version of the Masoretic Text. Since his day, handwritten manuscripts and printed versions of the Hebrew Bible have, for the most part, followed his system. Maimonides accepted the views of ben Asher only in regard to open and closed sections , but apparently admired his work generally and helped to establish and spread his authority. Referring to

3009-473: The morning service during the first half of Nisan. (Individuals may read it after the Passover Seder, and many communities recite it every Friday night.) There are specialized tunes for Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther and Lamentations. The prose passages at the beginning and end of the book of Job may be read either to the tune of Song of Songs or to that of Ruth, depending on the community. The Ruth tune

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3068-414: The others, there are separate marks for different conjunctives, actually outnumbering those in the Tiberian system (for example, munach before etnachta has a different sign from munach before zaqef ), and the overall system approaches the Tiberian in comprehensiveness. In some other manuscripts, in particular those containing Targumim rather than original text, the Tiberian symbols have been added by

3127-400: The question remains open. The idea was first suggested in 1860 by Simhah Pinsker , who argued that Masoretes in general should be ‘suspected’ of being Karaites since they seem to have devoted all of their time to the Bible and showed no interest in rabbinic Midrash or Talmud, which at times contradicts the Masoretic Text. Numerous other pieces of circumstantial evidence were presented to make

3186-464: The remnants of such a tradition. Yemenite cantillation has a total of eight distinctive motifs, falling within four main patterns: This is true equally of the system used for the Torah and the systems used for the other books. It appears to be a relic of the Babylonian system , which also recognised only eight types of disjunctive and no conjunctives. Some communities had a simplified melody for

3245-438: The signs represent the degrees of various musical scales, that is individual notes, which puts it at odds with all existing traditions where the signs invariably represent melodic motives. Some musicologists have rejected her results as dubious and her methodology as flawed. A similar reconstructive proposal was developed by American composer and pianist Jeffrey Burns  [ de ] and posthumously published in 2011. In

3304-415: The stressed syllable. Some signs are written (and sung) differently when the word is not stressed on its last syllable. Pashta on a word of this kind is doubled, one going on the stressed syllable and the other on the last consonant. Geresh is doubled unless it occurs on a non-finally-stressed word or follows kadma (to form the kadma ve-azla phrase). Cantillation signs guide the reader in applying

3363-669: The way of the LORD". As the word qore takes the high-level disjunctive zakef katon this meaning is discouraged by the cantillation marks. Accordingly, the New Revised Standard Version translates "A voice cries out: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the L ORD , ...'" while the New Jewish Publication Society Version has "A voice rings out: 'Clear in the desert a road for the L ORD '." Most cantillation signs are written on

3422-581: Was a sofer (Jewish scribe) who lived in Tiberias . He perfected the Tiberian system of writing vowel sounds in Hebrew . The system is still in use today, serving as the basis for grammatical analysis. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher lived and worked in the city of Tiberias , on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee . He was descended from a long line of Masoretes , starting with someone called Asher, but nothing

3481-489: Was the first to take this discipline seriously. His Sefer Dikdukei ha-Te'amim ('Grammatical Analysis of the Accents') was an original collection of grammatical rules and Masoretic information. Ben Asher added mesorah ( vowelization and cantillation notes ) to the Aleppo Codex , correcting its letter-text according to the Masoretic Text . The value of this work is that the grammatical rules presented by ben Asher reveal

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