The Conservative affiliated Religious School where I work, like all Jewish institutions, is consistently behind schedule. The planned activities outside of the classroom – services, shirah, and bagel break – inevitably detract from the already limited time each teacher has with his or own class. Yet despite this already segmented schedule, the Synagogue felt that something was missing, and so beginning this year, my fifth grade class spends half an hour of the two-hour Wednesday time learning T’ameem, or trope (the musical notations for readings from the Torah), with the community’s new Rabbi.
While I cannot determine which activities and lessons educationally benefit students most, based on my recent observations I have found this half an hour of trope study to be time well-spent. I was originally doubtful of its potential, slightly frustrated that there were only forty minutes each Wednesday for me to teach the children traditions that have taken generations to form. Yet to my surprise, my students have retained the trope names and sounds better than they have the Hebrew alphabet.
Perhaps they are impressed that the new, young Rabbi takes this time to study with them. Or perhaps their still developing minds connect well with the combination of the learning tools provided – the notes on the piano, the diagramed sheet music, and the hand gestures that mimic the motions of the trope. They are just as rambunctious during this time, shouting out names and laughing amongst themselves, but somehow, by the end of the day, they can accurately recreate a mercha or a soph pasuk.
At the Jewish Day School that I attended, by sixth grade we were taught to rotationally read Torah each week at the Monday school wide services. I remember learbubg to read the Viahavta according to the tope of each word – and realizing that my memorized version of this prayer had come to follow a very different tune. Prior to my Bat-Mitzvah, I began to meet weekly with a Trope tutor from my community, reinforcing for me were the Torah and Haftorah tunes that I heard each week at synagogue. Despite this foundation, however, my un-musical mind still draws a blank for certain notes, as I try to mentally sift through Beshalach, my Bat Mitzvah portion, to identify that sound.
Yet it seems that this early exposure to the tunes of the Torah is worthwhile in a religious school setting. My energetic students are attentive during their trope class, eagerly retaining the sounds and then comparing their favorite notes amongst themselves. The Rabbi soon wants to apply this knowledge to a text of Torah, and I wonder whether this can be successful as they still confuse a delat and a reish. Regardless, I think that this early introduction to reading Torah can serve as positive reinforcement for future involvement. Perhaps for some this conduit for connecting to Judaism will motivate them towards further study, while perhaps for others just the hearing of these tunes will remind them that they had actually enjoyed something at the ‘un-cool’ Religious School. It is a difficult task to develop a curriculum that offers the array of Jewish tradition during only two or three afternoons a week, to give the students lessons of substance without alienating those who connect differently. Yet for those students lacking a consistent rhythm to their day, it seems that a weekly lesson on the old tunes of the Torah can offer an attainable means for self-expression.
