Spirituality

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Chanting Hebrew from the Torah

requires skill with pronunciation,

and a new book helps hone it.

NATALIE WEINSTEIN
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California

LAKE VILLAGE

erty Road and Pontiac
West Bloomfield
248-960-2300

*offer expires August 31, 2000

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8/18
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San Francisco
ivka Sherman-Gold, a native
Hebrew speaker, sometimes
would cringe when she heard
e Torah chanted at her Palo
Alto synagogue.
On occasion, even the best Torah
chanters at Congregation Kol Emeth, a
Conservative synagogue, would inadver-
tently mispronounce a certain Hebrew
vowel — the kamatz katan. But when
Sherman-Gold, 51, of Palo Alto would
try to correct someone, she would get
blank looks. "Many people didn't even
know what I was talking about," she
said.
So what did the biotech executive
do?
She spent five years of her free time

to research and write a 294-page book
on the topic.
The Ohs and Ahs of Torah Reading,
which Sherman-Gold self-published
late last year, is devoted to correctly
pronouncing this vowel in the 1,100
times it appears in Torah, haftorah
and megilla readings.
"It's fairly esoteric," Sherman-Gold
acknowledged.
But for Torah chanters, correct pro-
nunciation means everything because
they are upholding a centuries-old
oral tradition.
"You want to transmit the informa-
tion accurately and honor the Torah,"
she said. "People take pride in reading
Torah."
So what exactly is the kamatz
katan? It's the vowel that looks like a
horizontal line with a short vertical
line shooting down from its center —
kind of like a tiny capital "T"
In modern, "Israeli-style" Hebrew,
which has been taught in America over
the past several decades, this vowel is
pronounced "oh" or "ah," depending on
the word and context.
The problem, so to speak, is that the
kamatz katan looks exactly like another
vowel, the kamatz gadol, which is only
pronounced "ah."
And when the kamatz katan is pro-

