I know what you're thinking, but this is not my first hub of the July 24th 30 hubs in 30 days hub challenge.  It can't be because i don't have enough time to write it, so this. is not. a hub.

I still know what you're thinking and the answer is-I couldn't it was out of my hands.  There was no way i could have avoided having a reading this Saturday July 25.  

I know what you're thinking-and you're really confused, so i'll just explain it all to you.

The problem started a few weeks ago. I got an email from my temple's cantor. He wanted to know which saturdays i was free so that i could read torah. I told him i was free almost any saturday--Big mistake.

He signed me up for about 6 saturdays this summer. Each saturday he signed me up for, i had about six torah verses I had to learn in order to chant.

Chanting

When you chant Torah, you first need to know what the trope are and what they mean. The trope are cantillation marks in the text that tell you how to sing each word. I learned those a few years ago so i had a head-start.

After you learn the trope, you must practice chanting the trope with the words. You will be reading off of a Tikkun. On a Tikkun, there is standard hebrew text on one side, while there is the text that you will see when you are actually reading torah on the other side. The torah text is different in two ways

1. The letters are elongated and trunkated in at some parts and others
2. There are no trope (cantillation) marks

These two differences make it alot more complicated to read torah because it will be harder to read, and you will have to memorize the entire melody.

Back to the story

I put the emails away for awhile since my next torah reading wasn't until July 25th -- a long way away at that time.

Then, on Tuesday July 22, I remembered. I quickly emailed my Cantor asking him why he hasn't emailed me the materials i needed to start learning my torah reading. He's one of those lovable guys who always have their heads in the clouds so he had forgotten that i needed materials.

It was wednesday night when i recieved the email with the materials, and decided i would learn 3 verses on thursday, and another three on friday. Then on saturday I would put it all together and hope it worked.

On thursday things were alright.  In the morning I decided to just listen to the recording of my cantor singing my verse for an hour while doing other things.  That way the melody would sink into my head subconsciously.  I called it "Learning by Osmosis".

Then, that night, I read and chanted the torah portion out loud until i thought i had a good memory of what trope corresponded to which letter.  Then i tried chanting on the torah side, and it was rough, but i thought i could pull it off.  I learned it verse by verse.  Three verses that day.

To date, it is Friday, and now I am learning by osmosis while (not) writing this hub for the thirty day challenge.

I continued practicing my last three verses until i got it down. I performed the next morning and made a few mistakes, but the cantor helped me out and supplied the melody whenever I lost it.