Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Hebrew Enough for Me

By Danielle Selber

“Oh, you were in Israel? How’s your Hebrew?”

A simple question, deserving of the simplest of answers. Yes or no, Danielle – do you speak Hebrew?

Yet all I could manage was to sputter, “Sort of. I mean, yes! But not perfectly, I mean, pretty well, I can speak it and understand it, but reading is a challenge, my handwriting is atrocious, and really it depends on…” I trailed off as my well-meaning neighbor inched slowly away from me, sorry he had asked.

Hebrew, my first language, my mother tongue, my mother’s tongue, my many thousand year old link to our biblical fore-bearers, a language resurrected after centuries of dormancy, the language of the country one passport says I call home…and yet, I can never quite remember how to say “frying pan.”

Growing up, my Israeli mother did her best to infuse my plushy brain with Hebrew from the start. My first word was “garbayim” – “socks” (a strange first word in any language, really), and before I was six I had already been to Israel four times. My mother is one of eleven siblings, all of whom live in Israel except her, and none of whom speak more than elementary English. I spent my childhood summers in my uncle Yosi’s shuk (market), always finding the best pomella in his endless fruit stands; hearing Hatikvah as a lullaby each night; being lifted onto my Uncle Masud’s shoulders to pick lemons on his farm; singing along with Kippi Ben Kippod on Rehov Sum Sum, Israel’s versions of Big Bird and Sesame Street respectively. With all those years of “immersion,” Hebrew should come to me like water to the vine. But, as my family trips to Israel became less frequent, my Hebrew fell away and wasn’t missed. I took four years of French and one year of Latin, and by the time those endless conjugations made their home in my head, Hebrew was barely a memory.

In college, I rediscovered my Judaism and connection to Israel, and naturally tried to stir up emotions with my old flame, Hebrew. But she wasn’t having it. Wronged and abandoned, every Hebrew word I tried to relearn wrestled itself out of my wanting mind like a cage fighter on crack. I remember sitting in the car with my mom one winter break, pondering nothing at all, when I suddenly asked, “mama, how do you say ‘seatbelt’ in Hebrew?”

“Chagura betichut,” she answered absentmindedly.

I looked at her in horror. ALL those syllables, just to say SEATBELT?

“I’ll never learn this stupid language,” I muttered, silently cursing my mother for allowing me to forget the language I once knew with such ease.

Four college-level classes, three dictionaries, one intensive summer ulpan, a year in Israel, and countless Israeli CDs, movies, and children’s books later, I am happy to report that yes, I finally speak Hebrew. Inflected, colloquial, well-meaning, outdated, accented, error-ridden, jumpy Hebrew. I speak in tumbles of verbs and idioms, always slightly misused and never quite meaning what I was trying to get across. My handwriting is illegible, a testament to having lost Hebrew before I actually learned to write it, and let’s not even talk about my reading comprehension. I always speak too quickly, tripping over tenses, sometimes accidentally branding myself a boy, to the delight of my little Israeli cousins.

And yet.

I fall over laughing at Hebrew You Tube stand-up comedy clips. I teach Hebrew school and almost never mix up the letters ‘khaf’ and ‘kaf.’ I have spent extensive time with my Israeli family, going weeks without speaking a word of English because there was no one there to understand it. My boyfriend and I drift from Hebrew to English, sometimes pausing to look up words that evade us. When I’m out and catch Hebrew floating through the air, I whip my head around and follow the voices, listening to a Yemenite mother scold her children in delicious Hebrew and Arabic blends, or an Israeli couple argue vehemently over the price of tomatoes.

I am proud to be able to say I speak Hebrew – not flawlessly, not fluently, not articulately, not perfectly – but just enough for me.

Photos by David55king and naama, licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: Hebrew, Israel, Tongue Tied

Posted by Rafi, Thursday, December 10th, 2009, 3:49 pm, Tongue Tied.