Taxi ride: The Yemenite Connection

Taxi drivers like to talk to me. Not chat me up, mind; I’m a matronly lady wearing a hat for obviously religious reasons. But many of the guys seem to feel comfortable, well, chatting. Most often it’s just tedious, but sometimes a spark of connection flickers in these taxi moments. Today, getting in front next to the driver with my youngest daughter and my Mom seated in the back, I was treated to ten minutes of Yemenite cantillation.

The driver was a skinny, brown-skinned man with a cap over thinning black curls and white, white teeth. For no reason that I could follow, he asked if I knew this week’s Torah portion. Without waiting for an answer, he launched into a lecture on the ancient way of pronouncing Hebrew according to Yemenite tradition.

I have heard it said that the Yemenites have preserved this tradition almost perfectly. If not for some doubt over a few consonants, the Yemenite accent would have been rabbinically decreed as the one correct pronunciation. But, to my shame, I have never visited a Yemenite synagogue.

He chanted verse after verse, first in the modern accent so I could identify what he was going to repeat afterwards the Yemenite way. I had never heard Hebrew pronounced in this melodious, flowing, almost Arabic-sounding way. There are a dozen different shadings to the letter aleph alone. I couldn’t follow every word, as I am used to doing when hearing the text read in modern Hebrew.

“My late father had three wives,” he told me. “The first one died. After he married my mother, he took another wife; he brought both to Israel when he came to live here. So I have a brother only three months older than I.He is the cantor at our synagogue. He taught me the cantillation.”

My daughter rolled her eyes in the back seat – she’s not fond of talkative drivers, and it annoys her when I encourage them. But I found sudden tears in my eyes: tears of emotion at hearing our holiest book spoken in the most ancient way.

When we arrived at our destination, the driver asked me to look at his Bible. Tucked between the pages of the carefully-kept book was a sheet of paper showing the accents to put on every letter in the weekly portion. “I love it, and study it every spare moment,” he said. He closed the Bible, and kissed it.

You can hear Yemenite cantillation here. Search for “Yemenite cantillation” and choose among several mp3 options.