Haftarah Trope

When Haftarah is chanted out loud, this is called ‘leyning’ (Yiddish: “to read”). Symbols above or below the words, known as te’amim, indicate how to parse the word grammatically and also how to chant the word with the correct emphasis and what melody to use. There are a number of different melodic systems – or trope – that can be used to chant the Torah and indeed other texts within our tradition. The recordings on this page are Western Ashkenazi trope.

Each leyning group or family is colour-coded. This helps to identify which family we are learning (e.g. Sof-Pasuk, the Blue family), and will be incredibly useful when we are applying the leyning theory to the text as we will be able to colour-code our text too.

Each leyning family has a number of variants, which you can hear in the recordings. These variants will be accompanied by its music and transliteration. In the transliteration, the capitalised syllable is the emphasised syllable in that melody.

The transliteration and music notation (example below) are read left to right.

The diagram (example below) reads like Hebrew, from right to left.

These diagrams demonstrate where the leyning symbol (ta’am) is in relation to the word. For example, this picture shows you that all these leyning te’amim (symbols) occur underneath the word, with the rectangle boxes representing the words. If the box is white, this ta’am is conjunctive. This is punctuation that connects words together, and means that its melody can change if it is a munach, merkha or kadmah, depending on the ta’am that follows it.

If the box is grey, this ta’am is disjunctive. This is punctuation that separates ideas and we typically take a short pause after a disjunctive. Its melody will always be set, it will not change depending on what comes after it.

This is the end of every verse, where you see a : in the text.

This appears once in almost every verse and denotes a pause.

This is a short pause in a verse. In this family, the trope signs are both below and above the word.

t’VIR

תְּבִ֛יר

GE-resh

גֵּ֜רֵשׁ

r’VI-a

רְבִ֗יעַ

This ta’am appears in various families, so it does not have its own colour.

t’lisha k’taNA

תְּלִישָא קְטַנָּה֩

zakef ga-DOL

זָקֵף גָּד֕וֹל

ger-sha-IM

גֵּרְשַׁ֞יִם

y’TIV

T’lisha G’doLA

תְּ֠לִישָא גְדוֹלָה

PaZER

פָּזֵ֡ר

 

Sof – Aliyah

סוֹף־עֲלִייָֽה