On a bright Sunday morning just before Purim, I happened to be in the Social Hall and noticed a group of about thirty adult Adat Shalomers sitting in groups of five or six at several tables. They were intently engaged in an activity I could not identify. I knew they were not members of the Purimspiel cast then rehearsing in the sanctuary, and wondered what had brought them indoors on such a gorgeous day. So I came nearer and saw that each had a booklet containing single Hebrew consonants with vowel signs underneath. Having used such books first as a child just before my Bar Mitzvah, and then as a Hebrew teacher years later, I recognized them at once. They were beginning Hebrew books, the first step on the road to Hebrew literacy. I knew many of these earnest, beginning scholars, some of them quite well. I write to salute them.
Learning a language written in an alphabet other than one’s own takes thick skin and determination. One needs thick skin because beginners frequently feel a bit ashamed. We all learned our letters as children. And the world we are entering can be alarming, since at first we can neither understand what is said to us nor make ourselves understood, a state that we last knew at a time most of us can’t even remember. And here were adult students making strange sounds in response to unfamiliar signs. Far from being ashamed, however, the participants in this wonderful venture have every reason to be proud. Like a surprising number of Jewish American adults, they have decided to acquire a basic skill that no one inspired and enabled them to acquire at a time when they could have progressed much more easily. Something wonderful is moving them now, and something similar seems to be inspiring Jews all over America, leading teachers and publishers to invent new tools and methods that make learning Hebrew easier and more engaging.
What’s going on? I don’t know, frankly, but I note that for quite a few years now, the Reform movement has been increasing the use of Hebrew its service and has been teaching children not only basic Hebrew prayers but certain words and phrases that are commonly used in Israel. Why? Coming closer to home, why has Hebrew literacy been part of the Reconstructionists’ aspiration from the beginning? One reason, surely, is that Hebrew literacy gives one access to the numerous, unique associations to ideas and texts that a word or phrase in the Hebrew liturgy or the Tanakh conjure up. That vastly enlivens and enriches both prayer and text study. A second reason is that Hebrew is the language of the State of Israel, and being able to converse with our Israeli cousins and access modern Hebrew literature will strengthen our ties and broaden our imaginations.
The renaissance of Hebrew as a spoken language didn’t happen easily, and the fact that it happened at all is something of a minor miracle. Hebrew ceased being the vernacular of the Jewish People hundreds of years before the Common Era. It was replaced by Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Mesopotamian region until well into our era. That’s why, in order to create the appearance of historical accuracy, Mel Gibson had his Passion script translated into Aramaic and read by Aramaic-speaking actors. The hero of the modern Hebrew revival (though he was not alone) was Eliezer Ben Yehuda, a Lithuanian Jew who emigrated to Palestine in 1881 at the age of twenty-three. Though his father was a Chabad Hasid, Ben Yehuda was both a Zionist and a child of the Haskallah, the enlightenment. He became convinced that the Jewish homeland, whose creation was then firing the imagination of Jews in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, had to have a common language and that it must be Hebrew. A great entrepreneur, he set about to accomplish that goal. How did he do that?
The first giant step began in his own family. Six months after he married he announced to his wife that he wanted her and their children to speak Hebrew at home. Happily, she joined in the enterprise, and their son became the first child in millennia whose native language was Hebrew. Ben Yehuda was a teacher, and he began to teach his classes in Hebrew, overcoming the objections of his employers. With others, he created a journal to espouse his vision and published numerous essays and broadsides advocating his views. At the same, he began visiting the struggling new kibbutzim to spread the idea and to train teachers who would instruct other kibbutzniks. The obstacles were legion. Many orthodox authorities in Israel opposed the enterprise. Hebrew, they insisted, was “lashon hakodesh,” the holy tongue, and should not be sullied by being used to communicate about mundane matters. Imagine using holy speech to ask the location of a public toilet! His opponents’ tactics were sometimes ugly. When Ben Yehuda’s first wife died the Ashkenazi religious community denied her burial in a Jewish cemetery because of her and her husband’s supposed heresy. The Sephardi Jews and their rabbis, however, were shocked at such an outrage and Deborah wa s interred in one of their cemeteries.
Creating modern Hebrew faced another obstacle that you will readily appreciate. Since Hebrew hadn’t been used except for the study of sacred texts and in certain commercial contexts, it had no words for a great many things and activities that either didn’t exist when Hebrew became a classical language, or were not mentioned in sacred literature. So Ben Yehuda and his mentor and colleagues set about to create an academy to invent new words! Imagine that. That’s a story of its own, and it would be fun to tell it, but space does not allow. Suffice it to say that the Academy he founded to create and pass upon new words still exists, though it’s an uphill struggle to keep Hebrew “pure” in the face of the natural infiltration of foreign words from English (like “computer,” for which the modern Hebrew word “machshev” based on the Biblical/modern root Chet-Shin-Beit meaning “to think,” is used) and other words that ordinary people create sometimes to the consternation of the academics. But Ben Yehuda’s vision triumphed, despite the obstacles in part because of his great energy and determination, and in part because others quickly realized that he was right. Without a common language, Jewish olim (immigrants) from many lands wouldn’t be able to create a new polity because they wouldn’t be able to speak or write to one another.
A similar determination, I believe, lies behind the presence of our members on a bright Sunday morning, studying their letters. I hope many of them will have an opportunity to progress, to taste some of the sweetness that accompanies a growing understanding of “lashon hakodesh”. It is not easy, but it is by no means impossible, for a mature adult to acquire a working vocabulary of the words used in our liturgy. With a narrow base acquired in childhood and careful listening to the weekly Torah portion in synagogue, over many years I acquired the capacity to understand much of the Torah reading without any specific instruction. But it’s a lot more fun and much quicker to continue with formal study. There are “ulpanim” here, and in Israel, where Hebrew is taught in Hebrew, in intensive sessions over a week or a month that can vastly accelerate one’s progress. And there are evening beginning and intermediate courses organized by the Montgomery County Board of Jewish Education that can help mightily.
I salute the intrepid band I saw taking the first step and I hope that they will be inspired to persist and to acquire greater facility. If so, I can testify, they will be amply rewarded. “Behatzlahah, haverim”, may you be successful, friends.
Rabbi George