If you review the text of the parsha every week...

amother

Wed, Jan 25 2023, 12:42 pm

How do you go about it? When do you do it?

Do you review Hebrew, English, both?

With mefarshim?

With any contemporary commentary?

I try to review the parsha either very late Friday night or very early Shabbos morning. My Hebrew skills are weak, so I read the English translation and all the English comments and footnotes in the Stone Chumash. If something strikes my interest, I will take the time to try to read the relevant part in Hebrew. If something raises questions, I may try to look it up in the shul library.

amother

Cornsilk

Wed, Jan 25 2023, 2:02 pm

I lein the parashah Friday night. Yes, with te-amim. They're like punctuation marks and really do help with understanding the pshat. When I see something perplexing, I pull out my magnifying glass and look in the mefarshim. Most of the time I don't find anything addressing my question. Often they have to do with grammatical details like why does a letter not have a dagesh when it normally would. The answers to these kinds of questions are seldom in regular מקראות גדולות so they remain inaccessible to me unless I find someone to ask.

In shul, I often zone out and read the English commentary if the shul has something like the Stone Chumash. However, by the time leining is over I've forgotten it. Anything I remember I probably learned before the age of 18.

amother

Sand

Wed, Jan 25 2023, 6:55 pm

I read it every week shabbas morning in... Yiddish! Sometimes when there are the highlights, I will read the pasuk loudly in lashen kodesh.

Bought a chumash with yiddish translation and love it. It keeps me sane. I am very busy during the week. Keeping down full time job, lively bunch of brilliant kids, I feel this is the perfect way to unwind so to say. It keeps me connected to our heritage, our past, our avos. and I feel life is grounded, like there is a higher true purpose of being in this world.

amother

Sand

Wed, Jan 25 2023, 7:02 pm

amother Cornsilk wrote:

This is unbelievable! Being that I am married to a ball korei that leins since his bar mizvah (approx 18 years) I'm blown away by the fact that a woman can lein! Mind sharing details of how this came about?

amother

Alyssum

Wed, Jan 25 2023, 7:07 pm

amother Sand wrote:

I learned when my husband started leining regularly and I would test him as he practiced. It is not so hard once you know what each note is. The hard part for the bal korei is memorizing it! Many men are given the haftorah moments before they lein and have no problem with it because they can read the notes as they are leining.

amother

Cornsilk

Thu, Jan 26 2023, 1:24 am

amother Sand wrote:

A friend of mine had joined a local women's davening group that met every Shabbat Mevorchim. I went with her once when I was eating at her house, and when they leined, I realized that despite being an Orthodox Jewish woman and attending Orthodox schools, I had never before seen the inside of a sefer Torah up close. Conservative women were more familiar with a ST than I was. Shocking and pathetic.

I loved the way the women in the tefillah group leined. Many men mumble, swallow half the words, or mute the trope into a vague singsong that resembles nothing so much as the moans of an old refrigerator's dying motor. These women not only pronounced every letter of every word so clearly they could have moonlighted as pronouncers at the National Spelling Bee, they really sang the parashah. Who even knew that the trope is supposed to be melodic?

They needed more people to volunteer to lein. Count me in, I said. I didn't know how but thought that if every runny-nosed 12-1/2 year-old boy can learn how to lein, surely a motivated, intelligent 20-something woman who isn't entirely tone deaf can, too. So with a tape and a book, I set to work. The first time I leined only a few pesukim, but the satisfaction and the feeling of power and connection to the text was amazing. Plus it felt so good to know that those strange squiggles weren't insect tracks but a musical notation-come-punctuation.

Today there are electronic aids to learning how to lein. Programs let you choose different fonts, voices, speeds, accents, and nuschaot, as well as highlight words, phrases, pesukim or entire aliyot in an array of different colors. When I started, the most hi-tech you got was a cassette tape player.

ETA for the benefit of the English experts here: I "typed notation-c.u.m-punctuation," and that's how it shows up in my pre-send view. As in Latin for "with." Evidently the system, which either has a dirty mind and didn't like this word, or doesn't recognize expressions from Latin, replaced it. Just wanted to make it clear that I do know how to spell.

amother

Blushpink

Thu, Jan 26 2023, 1:47 am

I once went to a bar mitzvah where the boy thanked the person who taught him to lein - and it was his grandmother. You never know!

It's heartwarming to see lots of posters reviewing the parsha. I often get the sense here that many women never open a Chumash, much less any other seforim.

To answer the original question, I go to shul for leining. If for some reason I don't, I read the parsha at home. I don't do every Rashi, just look at meforshim based on whatever piques my curiosity that week.

BrisketBoss

Thu, Jan 26 2023, 10:38 am

amother Cornsilk wrote:

Yess you're so right about the mumbling and rushing! Very different experience. In particular there's a Chassidishe shtiebel I've been to where I couldn't follow leining for the life of me, just too speedy.

I said before I used to lein a haftorah for a lot of people--I remember my sister specially requesting that I not rush through the brachos after it like the bar mitzvah kids do.

Of course, all this may contribute to how late davening ends at that shul. :- )

amother

Tuberose

Thu, Jan 26 2023, 10:51 am

I started learning the parsha chitas style several years ago. I say the hebrew and read the English translation. Then I read the rashis in English.

I have to say that I have learned so much that I never knew. It has been an awesome experience and I am grateful I finally got the push to read every word in the Torah Hashem gave us and to know every word and concept that Hashem wants to communicate with us.

I am also embarrassed to admit that despite my FFB upbringing I never knew that every detail of the Yomim tovim was clearly commanded by Hashem in the Torah. I had thought that they were rabbinic commandments. Confused

I feel foolish even writing it here.