The most daunting task a prospective bar mitzvah boy faces is learning how to read, or lain, his Torah portion. He cannot simply master the Hebrew; he must also learn the trop, the musical cantillations that accompany the text. Many boys simply do not attempt to learn trop; many adults do not, either.

Navigating the Bible (distributed by Davka) is a production of ORT, the worldwide Jewish vocational training organization. The CD-ROM teaches a prospective bar mitzvah (or, for that matter, someone older or younger) how to chant the Torah reading.

The user can look at the Torah text with the vowels and trop, or without. The latter mode allows the reader to see the text as it actually appears in the Torah.

Additional features include a transliteration of the Hebrew text and a calendar that automatically locates your child's bar/bas mitzvah date until the year 2050, or your own back to the year 1900. There is also a glossary of people and places in the Torah.

These are nice accompaniments, but unfortunately, Navigating the Bible does not fulfill its primary mission: to teach laining accurately. This failure occurs on two levels. First, the audio reading is rendered in Sephardit, the modern Israeli style of pronunciation. A sav is read as a tav; the kamatz gaddol is pronounced as a patach; and so on. It would be very difficult to employ Navigating the Bible to tutor a bar mitzvah boy who plans to read his portion in Ashkenazic Hebrew. ORT can readily remedy this problem, by making both pronunciation options available. Second, the audio reading often incorrectly differentiates between the sh'va nach (the silent sh'va) and the sh'va na (the audible sh'va).

There are two prevailing opinions concerning the character of numerous sh'va'im; Navigating the Bible is consistent with neither approach. The result is a sh'va hodgepodge; a young man training to read the Torah with Navigating the Bible will learn incorrectly from the onset.

To compound the problem, some sh'va'im are pronounced wrong according to both opinions. An example is the sh'va under the letter samech in the word "has'neh" (Exodus 3:2), which is a sh'va na according to both opinions, yet is rendered by the reader as a sh'va nach.

Furthermore, the reader's intonation of the kadma preceding a mahpach, darga, zarka, and several other cantillations is suspect; he often sounds this kadma as a pashta. An example occurs in Exodus 4:14. The word "vayomer" carries a pashta; the next word, "ha'lo," bears a kadma; "achicha," two words further in the verse, carries a pashta. The reader intones all three identically, as a pashta. Clearly he thought the kadma on ha'lo was a pashta.

While these two trops look identical, they are actually quite distinct, and serve very different roles in sentence structure. The fact that this is a common error among Torah readers does not render it acceptable in a pedagogical program.

Navigating the Bible has the potential to be valuable, but more care must be taken to assure the accuracy of the Torah reading. Davka can be reached at 773-465-4070.

This review was submitted for comment to Davka prior to publication. Davka in turn forwarded it to Cantor Moshe Haschel, of London's St. John's Wood Synagogue, who is the reader on Navigating the Bible. Cantor Haschel issued the following response to the review:

Regarding the first point, the Sephardic pronunciation used in Navigating the Bible: It is true that Navigating the Bible could provide a recording in the Ashkenazic pronunciation as well as the Sephardic, but why stop there? Why not provide a version with the German tradition of the laining? And how about the style of cantillation of the Sephardic Jews? Or the Oriental, Moroccan, and the Yemenite as well? Although perhaps in the future ORT will make these versions available, the extent of such a work as this prevents it from covering all styles in the first stage, especially when you want to put the entire program on a single CD-Rom. That is why we concentrated on the Eastern European (Lithuanian) tradition of the trop, since it is the most prevalent among Ashkenazim today, and in the same way, the Sephardic pronunciation is the most widely used amongst young modern Ashkenazim in Israel and worldwide. Having said that, users of Ashkenazic pronunciation can easily switch to their own and still have benefit by learning the cantillation itself and using the other features of Navigating the Bible.

Concerning the question of sh'va nach and sh'va na, while it is true that there might be some inaccuracies in this area (something you could expect in a work of such proportions), we mustn't forget two things: a) we are talking here about a minimal audible difference between the two; b) the fact that there are different opinions in this matter.

Because of this, any prospective user of Navigating the Bible could not possibly learn the accurate pronunciation of the sh'va'im just from listening to Navigating the Bible, or any ba'al koreh for that matter. The only way is by learning thoroughly the rules of sh'va nach and sh'va na completely separately (as you would Hebrew grammar), while Navigating the Bible is primarily designed to help in the teaching of the cantillation and not Hebrew reading. So it would be unjust to say that "a young man training to read the Torah with Navigating the Bible will learn incorrectly from the onset."

Lastly, on the point of kadma and pashta, I am fully aware of the syntactical difference between kadma and pashta. However, in most oral traditions the musical intonation of these two trops is identical. Although some would claim that a difference between the two exists, it is I this time who "suspects" that this difference is an invention and not based on tradition. Not only that, the kadma that is part of the kadma v'azla trop is sung in Navigating the Bible as a pashta as well, based on several Lithuanian traditions.

In conclusion, despite everything said, Navigating the Bible is an excellent tool not only in helping bar mitzvah boys but also in promoting the knowledge of Torah cantillation in general.

Avraham M. Goldstein responds: I grant Cantor Haschel the first point, regarding the various traditions of pronunciation. However, on the second point, if one knows the rules governing sh'va na and sh'va nach, one will not make mistakes even in a "work of such proportions." This is akin to saying that in a 400-page math book, one can expect that occasionally two plus two will be said to yield the sum of five. Furthermore, in the example I cited, the word "has'neh," there are not "different opinions" concerning the sh'va under the samech; all agree that it is na.

Moreover, contrary to Cantor Haschel's assertion, the difference between the two sh'va'im is not a "minimum audible" one. Take, for example, the word "vayir'u" ("they saw"). If the sh'va under the resh is intoned as na rather than nach ("vayire'u"), we have a different word with a different root — "they feared."

As for the kadma and pashta, my intended focus was not only on the intonation, but also on the fact that Navigating the Bible treats them identically in the sentence flow. The kadma is a meshares, or servant; that is, a word carrying a kadma is connected to the following word. A pashta is a mafsik; it signifies a pause between words. In reading a word with a kadma, one should not pause before continuing to the next word, because the words are connected. By contrast, one generally should pause, even if only slightly, after a word that carries a pashta. In the example I cited, there should be no pause between ha'lo and achicha, but Cantor Haschel does pause, because he treated the kadma on ha'lo as a pashta.

This review does not dispute that Navigating the Bible has tremendous value when it comes to teaching trop; it says rather that users should be aware of the program's faults.