IMMERSED IN HEBREW, ULPAN STUDENTS LEARN THROUGH ABSORPTION

BY JILL SUZANNE JACOBS
Photo by Ben Harmon

Holding up a picture of Hollywood celebrities Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, Instructor Anat Green-Ragen speaks s-l-o-w-l-y and deliberately: Jennifer u'Brad.

Then another picture. This time, of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Again. Slowly. Deliberately: Ben v'Jennifer.

Welcome to another lesson in the Hebrew College Ulpan where the chief rule is, whatever you do, do not translate into, and certainly do not speak English or any other language besides Hebrew.

Green-Ragen keeps repeating the words and urging her students to join in. Pretty soon the six students assembled in the beginner's class that Monday night—ranging in age from 10 to 72—grasp the meaning and are using the Hebrew word for "and" in their own sentences.

These six are among the hundred or so students who enroll in Hebrew College's nine-level, beginner-through-advanced Ulpan each semester. Immersed in Hebrew language, popular Israeli culture and the cycle of Jewish holidays, students draw on contemporary Hebrew readings about Israeli news, politics, social commentary and culture as they learn to understand, speak, read and write modern Hebrew. Taught by native-speaking Israelis, grouped by ability, they learn through a process akin to throwing mud at a brick wall: If you keep throwing enough of it, some of it will stick.

And stick, it does.

"If you are in an immersion program, it's kind of like playing a game," says Daniel Katz, a student in the class and a software engineer living in the Back Bay. "The teacher keeps using a word over and over again. Your job [as a student] is to abstract out the meaning."

Students meet either twice weekly for a two-hour block on Monday or Wednesday evenings, or once a week Friday morning for a three-hour stint.

They attend these classes—often at the end of a long day's work—for a multiplicity of reasons: to learn to communicate with an Israeli boyfriend's family, to read the Hebrew books languishing on their shelves, to gain greater understanding of Hebrew prayers or to connect with generations past and future.

They learn the same way that olim—immigrants to Israel—have been learning Hebrew for more than half a century. Then as now, the goal of Ulpan is to surround the student with the sounds and associations of Hebrew language until the connections click.

Lessons in that intensive learning environment have traditionally focused on the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Israeli immigrants were subjected to a barrage of Hebrew every day in the Ulpan classroom. They read the newspaper, listened to the radio, sang Israeli songs and learned to say key words in phrases important to everyday life, such as, "Mah ha'Sh'ah (What time is it)?" and of course, "Eifo HaSherutim (Where's the bathroom?)"

"It was quite successful," says Shai Nathanson, director of Hebrew language programs and Ulpan at Hebrew College. "People really did arrive in Israel and immediately went out into the street and read the newspaper in Hebrew, or listened to the radio in Hebrew, and spoke with their neighbors in Hebrew, who were also from other lands."

Here in the Diaspora, the Ulpan classroom immerses students in both Hebrew language and Israeli culture.

Teaching slang, jokes and even jingles to popular Israeli commercials are all part of the Hebrew College Ulpan curriculum. To get the meaning across, the energetic Green-Ragen, who also teaches in the Prozdor, uses gestures, facial expressions, photos, music, drama, you-name-it. From the get-go students are watching Israeli film and television, listening to Israeli pop and folk music, telling Israeli jokes and learning the best of Israeli slang—hand gestures included.

For example, Green-Ragen taught her students the infamous Israeli expression "Rak Rega" (one moment). The emphatic words are accompanied by cupped fingers that shake back and forth in the face of the person being told to wait.

The method works.

"They were amazed," Green-Ragen remarks in Hebrew as her eager students listen in before their fourth lesson officially began. "In their Hebrew schools they went for years without ever really learning the language. But here we've got them reading, writing and speaking right away. After only three days they know more than 24 words."

For students immersed in Ulpan, the three to four hours they spend each week in Hebrew is sacred time—a time to absorb the sounds and cadences of the ancient yet modern Jewish language.

The ultimate goal, of course, being that the Hebrew College Ulpan students—like their counterparts in Israel—will eventually take that Hebrew out of the classroom and into the street.

Which is exactly what Katz intends to do.

"By the end of the Ulpan I'd like to be in Jerusalem," he says, "Reading a Hebrew newspaper and discussing it with someone in a café."

Jill Suzanne Jacobs is a freelance writer and the author of Hebrew for Dummies (Wiley and Sons, Inc.; May 2003).

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