The congregation with which I currently hang my kippa lets young boys lead the korbanote (קורבנות) and parts of Pesukai deZimrah (פסוקי דזמרה).
It's great to see the kids' enthusiasm, but it is obvious that most know the words "ba'al pei" - by heart.
Being who I am, I read along with the boys since their prayers - they not being bar mitzvah - cannot count on my behalf.
That's OK; I need to do my own thing anyway.
But I am disturbed by the "speed readers." Especially on the psalms (תהלים).
The fellow who gets them excited to read for the congregation is a great guy, one of the best, and he works with the kids on other things as well. Best of all, they respond positively to his leadership.
The only thing he failed to teach his young charges is punctuation.
Now that may seem a small thing, especially if you're used to folks who literally try to set new speed records for the prayers - yeshiva students as examples.
But the sidurim have punctuation and that punctuation is there for a purpose.
As a simple example:
הללויה | שירו ל'' שיר חדש תהילתו בקהל חסידים:
ישמח ישראל בעשיו בני-ציון יגילו במלכם:
The " | " tells the reader to briefly pause.
The " : " is the sedur's period ( . ).
If someone reads - as many do,
הקהל חסידים ישמח ישראל
the meaning is changed. It seems that the hasidem (חסידים ) are making (the people) Israel (ישראל happy. I'm sure the hasids' praise in the end adds to Israel's happiness, but that is not what the psalmist intended,
As in English and "regular" or "everyday" Hebrew, punctuation - be it written or verbal - is there for a reason.
Like the trope (תעם) for the Torah and haftarot, there is a reason for the punctuation - it is an instruction on how to say the word groups.
When I hear someone race through the prayers, paying no heed to the punctuation, I suspect these are people who, while they can read the letters and sound out the words, have little or no idea what those words mean.
The funny thing is, some of these young people speak Hebrew, better in some cases, than they speak English. But their vocabulary, their knowledge of what the words mean still is developing. The question is: Will they ever learn the word's meaning? If they practiced the punctuation, would that help there understanding? (I suggest it will.)
As with many "orthodox" congregations, we have a number of men who can read Hebrew, but they don't understand what they are reading.
Frankly, I am not much better. There are many, many words for which I lack a shoresh translation. (I'm better at reading Hebrew than hearing it since I usually can pick out the shoresh - root letters - of a printed word.) Still, I'm equipped with disctionaries and 501 Hebrew Verbs, so I can usually define a word I didn't know.
There's not much that can be done for the geezer set - my set - but I think whoever is teaching the children Hebrew today needs to spend a little more time developing an understanding of the words and how punctuation helps the understanding of word groups, a/k/a sentences, thoughts.
If we are going to have tomorrow's Rashi, today's children need to learn more than just how to read words in the sedur (and humash and the Talmuds).
חג פסח כשר ושמח
הריני מקבל עלי מצוה עשה של ואהבת לרעך כמוך, והריני אוהב כל אחד מבני ישראל כנפשי ומאודי
