From the early 1900s through the present, there have been 3 million Jewish (we can talk about what defines a Jew later) immigrants to the little strip of land called Israel. That isn't nearly the immigration that the United States saw around the turn of the 20th century, but the State of Israel (excluding the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights) is just 7900 square miles, the state of New Jersey is 8700 square miles. Although I constantly make fun of the inhospitable climate of the so-called "Garden State", the Negev Desert (which takes up approximately 55% of the Israeli land-mass) is an even more brutal place than the New Jersey Turn Pike (I know, I didn't think it was possible either)…The Land of Milk and Honey seems an exaggeration, more like land of Dehydration and B.O. But perhaps I'm too skeptical or spoiled by my pleasant north eastern childhood and my eight years in the even more pleasant New England. Perhaps the term "Milk and Honey" just gives and indication of how much less hospitable the neighboring climates are. At any rate, I digress.
This little tiny country had a population of just 800,000 Jews in 1948 (about half the Jewish population of New York). Now it has a Jewish population of almost 7 million Jews, many of them immigrants who had to learn Modern Hebrew. Although the immigrant population might have prayed in some older liturgical form of the language, few of them spoke the language I'm learning now. This somewhat crazy demography required the powers that be to get pretty good at teaching the language.
Here are some stories about the joys of learning.
For the months of September, October and November, I’m enrolled in an intensive Hebrew Language course (called an Ulpan). This Ulpan is not based at the Conservative Yeshiva, where the rest of my classes are. It is at a place called Bet Haam. Bet Haam literally means "house of the people," and my guess is that it evolved from the socialist zionist movement of the early/middle part of the last century. That movement, it should be said, has given way to a much less sympathetic (in my humble opinion) free market zionism. Again, I digress.
I am at Bet Haam every Sunday through Thursday from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm. My class is a really interesting and diverse group. There are about fifteen 18-22 year old Arab students who wish to attend Hebrew University. Many of them speak decent Hebrew, but don't understand the official grammar of the language and thus have a hard time passing the entrance exams to Hebrew U. There are five Olim Hadashim [new immigrants]. Three of them are retirees, one from Queens, one from London and one from somewhere in Germany. The other two new Olim are young men whose stories I haven't yet pursued, one from India, and one from France. There are four other Conservative Yeshiva Students (like me). There is one Protestant Minister from Geneva, and a young Catholic Priest from Paris. Our common languages are Hebrew and English.
During the 30-minute Hafsaka [break, sort of] Bernard (the Minister), Philipe (the Priest), Mohammed (one of the young Arab students) and I stand around and talk about how much our faiths have in common. No, I promise this isn’t the start of a bad joke, really. It is one of the most satisfying half hours of my day. The Europeans and I drink espresso, Mohammed does not; he is keeping Ramadan. One day I tried to have theological discussions without the coffee but soon thereafter decided drinking in front of Mohammed during Ramadan was a price I had to pay in order to stay awake for the rest of class.
It's interesting. I consider myself somewhat well rounded when it comes to discussions of theology. I've dabbled enough in Eastern Religions, and have enough friends who are faithful Christians to know at least a little bit about many religions. I even know about some of the small religions, like Bahai (5-6 million practitioners worldwide) and Zoroastrianism (100,000 practitioners worldwide), Judaism (13 million worldwide). And yet when it comes to Islam (1.5-2 billion practitioners worldwide), there is a huge gap in my knowledge.
Mohammed has a similar gap in his knowledge about Judaism (I can’t speak for his knowledge of small religions like Shintoism (3 million), or Confucianism (4 million)). And as we each learn a little more from each other we realize just how much we really do have in common. Anyone who says otherwise needs to sit down with an open mind and study…you don’t even need to read the Koran, just start with Wikipedia. Bernard, Phillipe and Mohammed all seem to enjoy these conversations, which happen partially in French, partially in Hebrew and mostly in English. I know I do.
Modern Hebrew is a very interesting language. It is derived from Biblical Hebrew and from the diverse range of Liturgical Hebrews and spoken Hebrews of the late 19th century. It also has a great many words from more modern languages like, teknologia, historia, televizia, matematika, zooologia, radio, to name just a few. The Arabic speaking students in the Ulpan have a hard time with those words. The English and French speaking students do not. We (the English and French speakers) have a hard time with the great many words that are similar to words in Arabic (and include a huge diversity of gutteral sounds like I had no idea existed). It is good for both these groups of students to be in the same class with each other. We make up for each other's gaps in knowledge. And it's good for me to hear the Arabic accent, which is more pronounced than the Hebrew accent, and therefor easier to understand the differences between the gutterals "H," "cH," "kH," "AY," "A," "R."
Our textbook is designed to teach Hebrew to English speaking Jews. I could go into some of what I think to be the mistaken and offensive reasons to do it exclusively that way, but this blog is long enough and I'll hold off. Suffice it so say even my secular upbringing had enough Jewish education to know a bit about many of the festivals and the traditions of Judaism. So it is very helpful for me (an English speaking Jew) to learn from the textbook we're using. Not so much the majority of my class. Nonetheless, it is interesting to hear our teacher (who is incredibly patient, thoughtful and open-minded, qualities not often espoused by Israelis) explain in the simplest of Hebrew what Rosh Hashanah is. Then she asks those of us who do have some Jewish knowledge to help out. "On Rosh Hashanah we eat sweet things so that the coming year is sweet" was about the most nuanced thing I could come up with, and only with a lot of help from Renana (our teacher). I'm quite sure that none of the nuance of Jewish belief comes across in the present-tense-simple-clause Hebrew of our class. Mohammed, Bernard and Phillipe are good about having me clarify things in English or French after class, so that's good. Until one considers how much Jewish knowledge I have, which is to say only a very tiny bit…
This might sound like an intense way to spend 22.5 hours a week (including hafsakot [breaks]). It is. Fortunately we have our light moments too.
One of the retiree/new immigrants is named Paul, he's British, always has a stuffy nose, asks the most inane questions, and fits into my categorization of the Holy Land (not the traditional milk and honey one). He was taking a big swig of his water bottle, and then sneezed, water, all over the back of the three people sitting in front of him. And I mean all over. The entire class, which was in the middle of a tense and difficult discussion of the nuance of linking two nouns together, burst out laughing. It was really the perfect comic relief for that situation, and although it was certainly immature of all of us (and is possibly immature of me to post it here), it was kind of awesome. The three people he sneezed on (now slightly moist) handled it commendable grace. I would have had to go home and take a shower immediately. British Paul just sort of sat there, he didn't seem exactly happy, but not nearly as embarrassed as one would think. I would have needed to leave the Ulpan and never come back, possibly the country. Just to make matters more interesting, later that same day, it happened again, it was slightly less severe the second time, but no less funny. The next day, no one sat in front of British Paul.
It is time for me to start getting ready for Shabbat, we’re not having people over this week (a nice change of pace), but there is still a bunch of cooking to be done before we welcome the Bride of Days (a traditional Jewish way of looking at the Sabbath).
Shabbat Shalom.
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