A Choral Haftarah??

Prof. Lester Kershenbaum

Both "regulars" and visitors at the New West End Synagogue on a Shabbat in mid-January were surprised to see something most unusual – five people were chanting the week’s Haftarah in unison. Many of them actually asked, "why are they doing that; and is it kosher"?

In fact, that Shabbat marked the graduation day for the New West End’s third annual successful series of "Maftir Master Classes". These series of six one-hour classes are run with the objective of getting participants to chant a Haftarah in shul by the end of the course. As was the case in previous years, most of the participants hadn’t chanted a Haftarah since their Bar Mitzvah (in one case, more than 50 years ago!). As usual, the instruction was not carried out in "parrot-fashion". Rather, the participants were taught all of the notes (trop or ta’amim) during the first 4 weeks of the course, and were only given a tape of the Haftarah in the last 2 weeks of classes. But we abandoned the old-fashioned way of teaching (mapa’ach, pashta’ah which you may remember from your own Bar Mitzvah) in favour of a more logical and easier-to-remember technique. This way, graduates should now be able to master a different Haftarah at a later stage, with only a minimum of outside assistance.

As this year’s series reached its conclusion, using Vay’chi as its model Haftarah, all of the participants wanted the opportunity to chant it in shul that Shabbat. What a dilemma!! And how to resolve it? But, with the wisdom of Solomon, Rabbi Geoffrey Shisler, came up with the novel suggestion that they could all chant it in unison. "But is that allowed?", they all asked? Apparently, yes; as long as only one of the five says the blessings, others are allowed to chant along with him in unison. And that is just what they did – much to the enjoyment and amusement of all of the congregants, none of whom could ever remember witnessing a similar event before.

The next step? Once again this year on Shavuot, we are planning that those called to the Torah for an aliyah will read (layn) their own portion from the scroll rather than depending upon the Ba’al Koreh. And so, immediately after Pesach, we will run once-a-week "Learn-to-Layn" classes. The objective will be to have "graduation" on the second day of Shavuot (Tuesday 29 May), with the six graduates reading their portions on the day - we will need one Kohen, one Levite, three Yisraelim, and a Ba’al Maftir (who can be any of the above). No prior experience is needed; the portions are all quite short. Based upon our previous successful "layn-athons", students are likely to find it less difficult than they might have imagined. Classes will be run at the synagogue on Wednesday evenings for an hour from 7 - 8pm starting on 18th April (before the Rabbi's Mishnah Shiur). Why not give it a try?