Torah Trope

How to Chant Torah and Haftarah:
Learning to chant Torah and Haftarah is a lot like learning to read music. Various markings above and beneath the words of our texts indicate which melody we should sing while reading. These markings are called trope. You may have seen trope before, such as is in the prayer book when we chant V'ahavta. View the image below to see what trope markings look like (the red arrows point to the trope, and the names of the trope are included).

To begin learning to recognize the various trope and how to chant them, you can print out the following: Guide to Chanting Trope. (If you have a smartphone and would like to print the guide, you can use the free app "Layar" to enhance the guide with audio.)

While Torah and Haftarah use the same trope markings, different melodies are used to chant each one. This is to distinguish between readings from the Torah and other readings from the Hebrew Bible. Use the following resource to learn how to chant both Torah and Haftarah trope.