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Slicha, Lo Midaber Ivrit (Sorry, I Don't Speak Hebrew)
By Micah Gurard-Levin
Growing up as one of the few Jewish kids in my school, and even now amongst my peers, people are often confused by my answer when they ask, “Can you speak Hebrew?” Having been raised in a Conservative synagogue community, I respond, “No, but I can read it…aloud. I can pronounce it, but I can’t understand it.” People wonder how that’s possible. How can one read such random looking characters, dots and lines, but not know what they mean?
Since announcing at my confirmation that I didn’t believe in God, I have identified as a cultural Jew. A Jew who loves Shabbat services in Hebrew, even though I don’t understand them. A Jew who cringes at spoken English during services, even though I do understand it. A Jew who, while traveling in Israel as a NEXT Fellow on a Taglit-Birthright Israel bus, acted more like a three year old child while sitting next to the Israelis in the group, pointing at billboards and bus advertisements, sounding out words even though they had no vowels. A Jew who was discovering an ability to read Hebrew like an Israeli, but still couldn’t understand. Ironically, the Israelis on the bus [is that a new verse to The Wheels on the Bus song?] would ask me the same question that my non-Jewish friends asked: “How can you read that if you don’t know what it means?”
Why don’t I understand Hebrew? Why can’t I speak Hebrew? Why, as a cultural Jew, do I lack the ability to participate in one of the most obvious cultural practices of the Jewish people—the ability to speak the language of the people?
I haven’t discovered why, all of a sudden, I have a burning desire to learn to speak Hebrew, but I can’t help but draw a parallel between my evolving Jewish identity and the development of modern Jewish culture that took place seven decades before Israel became a state in 1948. When Jewish people began immigrating en masse to Palestine in the late 1800s, they didn’t speak Hebrew, but rather spoke their native languages, as well as Yiddish. Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, a Lithuanian Jew who moved to Israel in 1881, felt compelled to revive Hebrew as a daily spoken language, giving new life to a language that had been relegated to use only in prayer and the study of Torah.
The rebirth of Hebrew as a modern language served as a unifying cultural practice which allowed Israel to become a nation, and not just a land of Jewish people of disparate European origins.
Perhaps my desire to speak Hebrew is that simple—it’s about unification and a sense of belonging, about wanting to identify as being ‘just Jewish.’ The more involved I become in the Jewish community, and the more time I spend in Israel, the more I, oddly enough, feel like I don’t yet belong. My struggle isn’t about religion—it never has been. My struggle isn’t about keeping Kosher—I don’t and probably never will. My struggle is about wanting to meet an Israeli, in Israel or elsewhere, and rather than say in English, “I’m Jewish and I’ve been to Israel,” to speak in Hebrew and share the inherent bond of being Jewish. But it’s not just about proving that I belong—I want to feel like I belong. I want to be able to eavesdrop when I’m in Tel Aviv on the beach. I want to read Ha’aretz in Hebrew and not in English. I want to know what the heck I’ve been reading for eighteen years. No longer do I want to look at Hebrew the way a non-musician looks at an orchestral score. I want meaning. I need meaning. I want to be ‘just Jewish.’
Photo by JP Puerta, licensed under Creative Commons
I am ×לזה
By Ally Iseman
Hebrew. Jew. Jew. Hebrew. For me, the two have always seemed inseparable. Perhaps that belief was the initial reason I saw myself as alienated from the Jewish community. As a young girl I always felt like I was sitting on the sidelines of something, like everyone who spoke Hebrew was privy to a delicious little secret that I could never understand.
I’ve never had a head for language. Perhaps because of the way in which I was taught: translation through memorization. Or perhaps I just never had as powerful a passion for French and Spanish as for Hebrew. My only exposure was once a week at my Reform Synagogue’s Saturday school, these muddled sounds we had to memorize in the form of prayers. The reason and passion behind those prayers, along with the meaning of the words that comprised them, never having fully been explained to me, were simply chores with no deeper meaning, a means to a grade. Here began the process of dissociation from my Jewish identity.
Being raised by parents who barely had a grasp on their own Jewish identities let alone the language, I had no ties holding onto me, no warm, fuzzy feelings anchoring me to the bosom of my Judaism. So I lost it. My Jewish identity fell away layer by layer over the course of my adolescence. My heart wasn’t in the preparations surrounding my Bat Mitzvah. I couldn’t fake a connection to all these words I didn’t understand. So I did the unthinkable. I forfeited the party, the money and the ridiculous amounts of attention and I did not have my Bat Mitzvah. I denounced all connection, never really spoke about it among my friends (although I always remained “The Jew” to them) and began playing hookie during Hebrew school.
The one thing I never lost, however, was my pride in my Hebrew name, ×לזה (Aliza.) Not the story of the Jewish people, not the history nor the food, but my name through the filter of the Jewish culture, however much of a mystery it was to me at the time. We picked our own names in French class. We chose pseudonyms in writing class and nicknames in clubs after school, but these were all so arbitrary. Aliza was different, felt different. This name had roots.
Although I was told by one of my Israeli friends that it is a “grandmother’s name,” my connection to it never failed. Aliza means “joyful” in Hebrew and I’ve recently discovered that Aliza is also another name for Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish people and the capital of the state of Israel. Aliza has become my heart, as well, and the center of my Jewish identity.
My Birthright Israel trip was the catalyst for beginning my journey. Even though I felt the language barrier with my Israeli counterparts on the bus, there was something even deeper, even truer of an understanding that went beyond words. It was in Israel where I got my first taste of Kabbalah. The way every part of every letter of every word expressing every Jewish idea has a hidden importance and a much deeper meaning. Suddenly these Hebrew letters, which had up to this point caused me so much confusion and strife, now seemed to make things in my universe come into alignment and make sense. This part of me that had been dormant for so long was now awake and it was hungry! Not speaking Hebrew was no longer enough of a reason to deny such a huge part of myself. No reason ever really was, nor will ever again be enough for me to do that.
I’ve come back from Israel with a fire, a craving desire to know more, to explore the Judaism within myself and within the world around me. Hebrew is no longer an obstacle I feel I must work through despite my lack of comprehension, but rather my impending study of the language will open up yet another avenue in which I can explore my innate Judaism.
I am Aliza. That is my name, and more. I now know what it translates to in English, but I am now also beginning to understand what it means to me; that identity, that sense of belonging, and I am joyful.
Photo by rogerimp, licensed under Creative Commons.
Hebrussia
By Vicki Boykis
The first day of my first Hebrew class on my first semester of college, I figured out that Russian and Hebrew were exactly the same when I saw that the letter “shin” (ש ) looked exactly like the letter “sheh” (Ш) in my first language – Russian. I was tremendously relieved knowing I’d be able to slack the whole semester with Hebrew and Russian much closer than I’d first believed.
I’d spent the summer feverishly, hungrily trying to learn Hebrew with the zeal of the members of the first aliyah. I went on my second emotion-filled leadership trip to Israel in the August before I started school. On the trip, I decided it was embarrassing that I didn’t know any Hebrew beyond b’seder (”Alright”), sababa (”cool”), and the urgent eifo sherutim (”where are the bathrooms”). I was also sure that Israelis were constantly talking about me. Why else would they be laughing?
I zealously self-administered the alef-bet that summer, watching the way the unfamiliar, uncomfortable letters moved in the wrong direction on my laptop screen and trying to memorize ways to write them. It never occurred to me that this was the same path my fellow Russian Zionists had taken a hundred years earlier: going from Russian, and sometimes Yiddish, to Hebrew. In their wake, and in the wake of the early 1990s post-Soviet aliyah to Israel, they had left imprints of Russian on the Hebrew that I had also hoped to make my own.
On my first day in Hebrew class, watching the teacher, Ruti, scrawl curly-scary cursive across the board, I didn’t expect that in a few short months she would use the word balagan in a sentence and I would snap to attention. Balagan means mess in Russian, a pandemonium. In Hebrew, I would find out, it meant the same thing, and was used to describe messy situations, from the Middle East peace process to a traffic jam in Jerusalem.
During those first couple weeks, we ventured beyond shalom. This was when we paddled into those uncharted territories of kal, pa’al, and piel- the phantasmagorical verb structures. But then, jobnik, nudnik, and other –niks would somehow pop up, from the Russian ending “nik” which means doer of whatever the “nik “is attached to. Shkolnik (the last name of Levi Eshkol before he went Sabra) means schoolboy in Russian.
We crept deeper and deeper into the jungle of Hebrew verbs and everyday objects I didn’t know -kiseh, ofanayim, miklat- and I without latching them on to any other European languages I knew, I felt small and completely detached from a connection to the Hebrew language and to my own Hebrew culture.
But every now and again, a small beacon of Russian would light my way. Every time my Israeli friend said, “Nu,” I would be reminded of the same Russian word, what my parents said when they were impatient with me. After I procured a mangal during my internship in Tel Aviv, I was happy that I was able to do so with the knowledge that mangal in Russian, just as in Hebrew, means a small portable grill.
At the end of my formal learning of Hebrew in college, I finally became comfortable using the language, speaking it out loud to myself. I’d even begun to dream in Hebrew (dreams that, for some reason, included Moshe Dayan 90% of the time.) As I was penetrated this strange and wonderful language-my peoples’ language, I finally realized that Russian-my other peoples’ language- already had. As I wandered into shin, I wasn’t alone, because sheh was there right along with me.
Judaism en Español
By Margaret Boyle
Most people are generally surprised when I explain that I first started studying Spanish in order to connect with my Jewish roots. While this confusion is often remedied by a brief rundown of my family history, what I find interesting about these conversations is the cultural importance we attach to the language of our childhood and the tremendous privilege we are afforded as speakers of that language.
As teenagers in the early 1920s, my great-grandparents were forced to leave their families behind in Eastern Europe. After a series of arduous detours, they made their way to Mexico where my great-grandfather – Elias Poplawsky – went from selling neckties on the street corners of Veracruz to becoming a founding member of the Mexico City JCC (El Centro Deportivo Israelita). Native Polish and Yiddish speakers, my great-grandparents had to overcome both the hardship of leaving behind family to the fate of distinctly hostile cities, and the plight common to all immigrants who must learn new languages and adapt to cultural norms. Their incredible story is, of course, not unique – Mexico City is today home to more than 40,000 Jews.
Although my Mom was born in Mexico City, she moved with her family to Los Angeles in the 1960s. A generation later, I found myself proud of my Mexican-Jewish roots, but also somewhat disconnected – I was unable to speak or understand Spanish, Yiddish, or Hebrew. As my California public school didn’t offer Yiddish or Hebrew language classes, I was driven to learn the language that seemed most practical for my cultural quest. Learning Spanish meant I could more easily navigate family visits to Mexico City, as well as engage the thriving Spanish-speaking communities of LA.
During my freshman year in college my passion for Spanish language blossomed into a love for Spanish literature. To my surprise it turned out that, while Spanish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews weren’t the most common products of the Diaspora Spanish-speaking Sephardic Jews had a longstanding presence in the Hispanic world. In 1492, for example, as part of the Spanish Inquisition, Jews, and later Muslims, were expelled from the Spanish Empire in order to protect Old Christians of “clean blood” (limpieza de sangre). Over time, aggression gradually escalated, and interestingly, language itself became the second target for attack. In 1562, Philip II issued a royal decree that forbid the use of languages other than Christian Spanish. If the Spanish Empire wasn’t completely successful in its attempt to “cleanse” itself with the first expulsions, the monarchy’s attack on language clearly points out its cultural and political importance.
And yet, despite persecution, Jews and Muslims continued resisting the dominance of the Inquisition through the protection of their languages. They covertly used Aljamiado – manuscripts which utilize Hebrew or Arabic alphabets to transcribe Romance languages like Spanish. As my Eastern-European family shared the common language of Yiddish, the Jews of Spain shared Ladino, a romance language influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic. The history of Jews in the Hispanic world, with its repeated lessons on the importance of language as a social and political tool, continues to inspire me.
I was lucky to spend time with my great-grandmother until my early teen years when she passed away at the age of 95. Although she wasn’t able to see me finally master Spanish language, I think often about the ways we would piece together conversations around shared experiences. We could bless Shabbat candles together. We could watch telenovelas together and come away with completely different plot lines (me, because of my language skills; her, because she refused to wear her hearing aid at night). We could make babkas, latkes, and matzah enchiladas (but not at the same time!). When I tell people how I learned Spanish in order to connect to my Jewish roots, what I really mean is that I learned Spanish so I could know my Baba Malka. And what could be more powerful, and a better motivational tool, than language’s ability to connect us with each other and with our histories?
Photo by Thelmadatter, licensed under Creative Commons.
Judaism through Cholent
By Briana Goldman
Having recently been plunged into a world of Judaism previously unknown to me, I have struggled to grasp many of the defining terms in the culture and religion. Everyday life was a world where words like mencsh and cholent, unfamiliar holidays, like lag b’omer and yom hashoah and prayers like the birkat hamazon and modeh ani are foreign. As a result, I thought my lack of knowledge of Hebrew and yiddishisms excluded me from being in the club, made me think that maybe I wasn’t Jewish enough, made me feel as though I wasn’t part of the Jewish “inner circle.”
But then, something amazing happened. In a courageous leap of faith, I decided to declare my ignorance over a plate of cholent. Timidly, and slightly abashed, I asked “what is that?”
Much to my surprise, that question, (which comes out in various iterations multiple times a day), evoked an unexpected response. No one asked how it was that I had never tried cholent. No one burst out laughing and I wasn’t shunned. Instead, the people sitting closest to me smiled and explained that cholent, is a Jewish stew, usually eaten on the Sabbath.
“Oh,” I replied, as I smiled and took a bite. “It’s good.”
I have learned that some people connect to their Judaism through a shared culture. Lighting the Sabbath candles, holding Passover seders, making latkes…these are all parts of our shared heritage. While my house sang the kiddush, but didn’t do havdallah, and while we had bacon with breakfast on the weekends, but never had cholent, I now realize that what I do or don’t do will not make me any more or less Jewish. But asking the questions will. You see, when I asked my fellow diners what cholent was, we shared one of the strongest Jewish traditions there is – the passing of knowledge.
Photos by Aoife city womanchile and rusvaplauke, licensed under Creative Commons.
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