Many a young bochur has labored over the taamei hamikra for his bar mitzvah parshah. Following the trail through the sources uncovers some interesting findings.
M
any a young bochur has labored over the taamei hamikra for his bar mitzvah parshah, and those whose parshah includes the Ten Commandments face an even harder task — learning the special trop for those verses. But why do we have this extra set of taamim, only for these occasions? And when did the taamim come into existence, anyway? Following the trail through the sources uncovers some interesting findings.
The text in a typical Chumash is accompanied by special cantillation marks indicating how the words should be read aloud during leining. They function much like musical notation and guide the baal korei in the trop he should use. In addition, these marks serve as a sort of punctuation; they delineate the beginnings and endings of pesukim, as well as providing pauses and emphasis. The marks, known in Lashon Hakodesh as the taamei hamikra, follow a system of rules that remains consistent throughout the Chumash. (Indeed, the system applies to all of Tanach, although the taamim for the books outside of Chumash denote different musical notation.)
We find an interesting discrepancy, however, in the two passages where the Aseres Hadibros are transmitted, the first time in parshas Yisro in Sefer Shemos and the second time in parshas Va’escḥanan in Sefer Devarim. In these two places, a unique situation obtains: the passages are marked with two different versions of the trop.[1] One version is like the trop found throughout the rest of Chumash, but the other version appears only here.
The two versions of the trop that appear in these two places have come to be called by special names in the halachic literature. The version that stays consistent with the trop in the rest of the Chumash is called taam tachton. Meanwhile, the special version that appears only in the two Aseres Hadibros passages is called taam elyon, so named for the preponderance of notes written above the letters — unlike the standard trop, which distributes the marks fairly evenly above and below the letters.
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