by stacey palevsky
staff writer
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For those in the know, seeing “Go Warriors” or “Berkeley” spelled out in Hebrew letters on a stranger’s T-shirt might elicit a wink or a smile.
It’s called “Hebrish,” a way of turning English words into Hebrew letters, and the concept is teaching 40 middle-schoolers at Palo Alto’s Congregation Kol Emeth how to read and understand Hebrew.
If you’re raising a curious eyebrow, you’re not alone. Kol Emeth’s Education Director Deborah Schneider is used to people being dubious when she mentions Hebrish, a curriculum the synagogue instituted in the fall to improve students’ Hebrew literacy.
Hebrish is like reverse transliteration: Instead of Hebrew words written with English letters (baruch atah adonai …), English words are written with Hebrew letters. Like the T-shirt: Bet, reish, kuf, lamed, yud spells Berkeley.
“People are always skeptical about new things until they’re proven to work,” Schneider said. “But the kids are loving this. They’re actually wanting to come to [religious] school.”
Schneider and the congregation’s Rabbi David Booth agreed to implement the curriculum for the congregation’s middle-schoolers after lengthy discussions on how to improve the Hebrew program. “Our kids were not getting what they needed from the way we had been working,” Schneider said.
The innovative approach reflects a common concern of congregations in the Bay Area and nationwide. Can Hebrew still be taught in monolingual America? What’s the best approach? And how much does cultivating Jewish identity or a love for Jewish learning depend upon learning Hebrew?
“I think Hebrew language is a curriculum piece that’s always on everyone’s mind at every school,” said Renee Ghert-Zand, associate director of Jewish educational leadership at the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education.
“It’s being rethought and re-examined on a regular basis.”
The decline of Hebrew literacy among diaspora Jews has been widespread the past 50 years, Jewish historians say.
“American Jews have never been as ignorant as they are today when it comes to Hebrew,” Lewis Glinert, linguistics and Hebrew studies professor at Dartmouth College, wrote in the most recent issue of Hebrew College Today. “Americans have lost their attachment to Jewish languages. They’ve lost Yiddish, and they are well on their way to losing Hebrew.”
Some say Hebrew is essential to building Jewish peoplehood,
giving Jews across the country and world a common vocabulary to talk about values, rituals and prayers.
While Hebrew literacy dwindles, Jewish education overall is thriving. Day schools are growing, summer camps are well attended, and many young Jews are engaged in activism and service that are rooted in Torah ideals.
And while Hebrew is still being taught on more than 100 U.S. college campuses — and religious services are usually dipped or doused in Hebrew, depending on the synagogue — teaching Hebrew in the after-school setting is challenging, as today’s kids are increasingly over-programmed, educators say.
Congregations have adapted by having classes only once or twice a week, and trying to maximize that time.
“Very few congregational schools are able to pull off a program that grounds students in tefillah [prayer] and biblical Hebrew, while also being able to instruct students in modern conversational Hebrew,” said Ghert-Zand. “So for the most part, schools have ended up, either by default or deliberate choice, deciding to focus on the prayer aspect for their Hebrew-language instruction.”
So exactly what is this mysterious Hebrish with which Kol Emeth is experimenting?
It uses Hebrew letters to spell English words. The literacy program is designed to teach kids how to read biblical Hebrew and translate simple Jewish texts.
At Kol Emeth, students in grades four through seven are assigned a partner who is at their reading level, regardless of grade. The partners work together independently of their classmates — Montessori-style — reading Hebrish mixed in with Hebrew words, while the teacher roams the classroom and answers questions, checking students’ progress and keeping them on track.
Because students work at their own pace, no one is ever ahead or behind. Some pairs might finish a unit in a day, others might need a week or two.
Rabbi Booth and Schneider believe Kol Emeth is the only Bay Area congregational school trying the Hebrish approach.
“The really talented, bright kids can chew through the material, while the kids who struggle more can slow down without feeling like they’re wasting class time,” Booth said. “Everyone sets his or her own goal with the teacher and tries to meet that goal. It lifts up everybody.”
As the units get harder, students read less Hebrish and more Hebrew, including excerpts from Torah portions and prayer books.
The ultimate goal is to increase their Hebrew vocabulary so they can study Torah.
Rabbi Michele Sullum designed the curriculum about 10 years ago. She currently works at a Conservative synagogue in Dallas, but first implemented Hebrish lessons while working as education director for a Reconstructionist/Conservative synagogue in New York.
Booth and Sullum are former colleagues, which is how he learned of the approach.
Sullum observed that few students at her congregation could read Hebrew, and that the older students weren’t progressing over the years. She broached the topic with her teachers, who told her there wasn’t enough time to make students proficient Hebrew readers.
“But when I added up hours” students spent in religious school, she said, “I couldn’t accept that.”
Sullum sought out a reading specialist and asked: What makes kids successful in learning to read English?
The specialist gave a two-part answer. One, children need to have that “aha!” experience that letters strung together make words. And two, they must be able to self-correct as they read.
“When children read in English, there is a context and a meaning to what they’re reading — they’re not just reading random sounds or letters. They know what the words mean,” Sullum said.
But most U.S. students don’t have that context when learning to read Hebrew, because they don’t know the language, and are therefore unable to correct their mistakes, she explained. That matters, because self-correction sparks the kind of empowerment and excitement that helps students learn to read.
So Sullum pitched the idea of Hebrish to her board. She talked with parents and teachers, got their support, then spent weeks designing flash cards and worksheets ranging from beginner to intermediate to advanced. She tested students’ Hebrew literacy before introducing the new curriculum.
“After a month of using Hebrish, we tested the students again, and everyone’s reading level went up,” she recalled. “And I decided this is how we’d teach Hebrew reading.”
Schneider of Kol Emeth said her students showed similar improvement.
Sullum says that to her knowledge, her Hebrish curriculum is still being used in the New York school where she launched it, as well as in a handful of other congregations in New Jersey and Virginia.
But “the reactions I get from everyone but teachers and kids is: This is too weird,” she said.
“People believe kids won’t learn to read real Hebrew, but I haven’t found that to be the case.”
Not all educators bemoan the shift away from intensive Hebrew education.
Susan Simon, director of education at Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland, said that although she sees value in learning Hebrew, she does not think it’s the most important element of after-school education.
“Can we make someone fluent in conversational or biblical Hebrew? Nope,” she said. “And really, is that what it means to educate a child Jewishly — to make sure they can speak and understand Hebrew?
“That isn’t the goal of most religious schools that I know,” she added. “Our goal is to provide a strong and solid foundation from which to continue Jewish learning, to instill a sense of Jewish identity and community … and to ensure that they never feel like strangers in a synagogue.”
However, many Jewish institutions are alarmed by the declining use and knowledge of Hebrew — modern or biblical — and they’re directing time, money and resources to reversing the trend.
The Reform and Conservative movements recently developed new Hebrew curricula, and several Jewish communities have launched citywide projects that bring together a range of synagogues to re-examine and reinvent their Hebrew programs.
Philadelphia has gotten a lot of attention for its citywide education initiative called “Nurturing Excellence in Synagogue Schools.” The effort is a comprehensive, in-depth response to “the crisis of escalating student drop-out rates from synagogue schools,” according to the initiative’s Web site.
It’s been so successful that the BJE hopes to adapt the approach to the Bay Area.
“The synagogues that are succeeding are the ones
making clear decisions about what their mission is with Hebrew, what their goals are with Hebrew language and finding successful way to meet those goals, rather than delivering all things to everyone,” Ghert-Zand said.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Eva Kahan decided she was ready for the Unit 7 test. The charming, willowy 10-year-old put down her pencil and rushed over to her teacher, Noya Adler-Abramitzky.
Her thick frizzy ponytail bounced as she skipped back to the table and plopped down next to her friend Rebecca Goldgof, who would also be tested.
“Do you really think we know this Torah portion well enough?” Rebecca asked uncertainly.
Of course, Eva said, punctuating her enthusiasm by clasping her hands together under her chin. Rebecca, her learning partner, was convinced and agreed to taking the oral Hebrew test.
They smoothly read a paragraph that was a mixture of Hebrish and Hebrew. Next, albeit at a slower pace, they read a section from the Torah, completely in Hebrew.
The Hebrew teachers at Kol Emeth — two Israeli women — said they were initially “very skeptical” of Hebrish.
“As Israelis, it’s really weird to see Hebrew as Hebrish. I was skeptical [of the design], and also about how the kids would work on their own,” Adler-Abramitzky said.
“But I’ve changed my mind. It is working,” she added. “I don’t know that it’s for every child, but it’s working beautifully.”
She congratulated the team on being ready to move on to Unit 8, rewarding the girls with small American flag erasers.
The girls then signed a contract promising they’d be ready for their next quiz in two weeks.
“The students are engaged,” said Adler-Abramitzky. “They feel accomplished. They feel responsible for one another.”
Congregation experiments with modern Hebrew
While a majority of synagogues focus on teaching biblical Hebrew, Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills scrapped its curriculum in 2006 in favor of a modern Hebrew program.
It targets the 200 students in grades three through six during twice-weekly religious school. The weekday session is devoted to modern Hebrew, and the weekend session focuses on Jewish studies, with 20 minutes spent reading Hebrew prayers to reinforce the previous lesson.
Ellen Lefkowitz, who heads Beth Am’s Hebrew program, said she’s noticed that students are more engaged, while still learning the skills necessary to prepare for their b’nai mitzvah.
“The big challenge right now is connecting kids to Israel,” she said. “That was a primary focus in helping us shift to modern Hebrew … We’re introducing them to the idea that Hebrew is a living language, not just a language of prayer.”
She finds herself reminding parents that the intention is not fluency; there is simply not enough time. Nonetheless, parents have been excited about the shift. “This is setting a foundation, so that hopefully when kids are in high school or college they’ll want to learn more,” Lefkowitz said.
Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto — which teaches biblical Hebrew during the week — is experimenting with teaching conversational Hebrew via distance learning.
The synagogue recently purchased materials from Rosetta Stone, a language program designed for business travelers, in an effort to engage families in learning modern Hebrew. Twelve families volunteered, each signing a contract to commit 45 minutes a week to Hebrew as part of the pilot program. A staffer checks in with families periodically.
Education Director Deborah Schneider said distance learning could be an alternative for families who find it difficult to commit to Kol Emeth’s three-day-a-week religious school.
cover photo | joyce goldschmid
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California