Torah Reader is the perfect iPhone app for bar mitzvah tutors and their students. With the Torah Reader app you can learn the Torah and Haftarah leining at your own pace and wherever it's most convenient for you while either listening to your teacher’s personalized recordings or to one of the 10 prerecorded weekly portions which can be downloaded for free. Not only can you listen to each aliyah and the Haftarah from beginning to end, you can easily select any verse to repeat the recording starting from the selected verse. For the Torah portion you can either hide or display the trope and vowels with a single click of a button.

The app includes the text for all the portions of the week and the corresponding Haftarot in the Ashkenazi tradition, the Torah blessings, and the Haftarah blessings. The app also includes sample recordings for the first and last aliyot of the weekly portions Beha'alotcha and Matot as well as the corresponding Haftarot. It also includes recordings of the Torah and Haftarah blessings. You can also download for free, directly from the app, the recordings of the Torah and Haftarah leining for the weekly portions of Bereshit, Noach, Lech Lecha, Bamidbar, Nasso, Behaalotcha, Shlach, Korach, Matot, and Shoftim.

Using the iTunes built-in file sharing feature you can easily transfer from a computer to an iPhone or iPod touch your own MP3 files and simple one line text files which specify the start time of each verse in the segment. To include your own recordings for any of the aliyot, Haftarot, or blessings you need to transfer to the iPod touch or iPhone an MP3 file with the name “part#.mp3” and a plain text file with the name “part#verses.txt” where # is the number of the option in the list. For example, for the first aliyah which is the first option in the list the files should be named part1.mp3 and part1verses.txt. For the blessings after the Haftarah which is the 12th option in the list the files should be named part12.mp3 and part12verses.txt. The text file should include one line of text with the start position in seconds of each verse separated by an underscore. The length of the line will vary based on the number of verses in the corresponding segment. The following is an example of what this might look like:

0_5.2_20.5_28.8_41_50_62.5_70_81_95.5_109_116.5_125_136

If you plan on uploading recordings for multiple portions of the week you will need to include the book and parashah index in the file name. For example, the files for the fourth aliyah of Mishpatim, which is the sixth portion of Shemot (the second book), should be “part20604.mp3” and “part20604verses.txt”. The files for the seventh aliyah of Lech Lecha, which is the third portion of Bereshit (the first book), should be “part10307.mp3” and “part10307verses.txt”.

At trbeacon.com there are detailed instructions and screenshots on transferring the teacher files to your iPhone or iPod touch.