Ilustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
The mahpakh is a common note that appears in most of the verses in the Torah. The name means “reversal” and its shape looks like that too: it is like a “V” on its side, the line first going forward (in the Hebrew direction!), then reversing course and going backward.
It kind of sounds like that too; the note goes down and then comes a bit back up. If you see a mahpakh, you always know what comes next—a pashta (wait to hear more about that one next week)! That’s right, the mahpakh always just sets up the next word and doesn’t really stand on its own. It literally appears all over the place. Here is an example from the first aliyah of our parashah:
כִּ֤י כׇל־הָֽעֵדָה֙ כֻּלָּ֣ם קְדֹשִׁ֔ים
For all the community are holy
Don’t confuse mahpakh with yetiv, another note we will meet in a few weeks. Although they look similar, mahpakh always appears right under the accented part of the word, so look for it there!
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