HEBREW ENCODES JEWISH CULTURE—AND ELUDES MANY AMERICAN JEWS. CAN THE 50-YEAR DECLINE IN HEBREW LITERACY BE REVERSED?

BY MICHAEL KRESS

In Hebrew, there are any number of ways to refer to God, each divine moniker carrying a unique connotation, exemplifying a distinct way that Jews think of God. In English, we use three letters—G, O, D—for what in Hebrew would be rendered as YHVH, Shekhinah, Harahaman or Elohim, among other terms.

Likewise, the Torah uses numerous Hebrew alternatives—het, avon, pesha—each with its own subtle shade of meaning, to denote what is invariably referred to in English by another three-letter word: "sin."

Today, however, many American Jews are likely not to know their Shekhinah from their Harahaman or their avon from their pesha. With an abundance of English translations of classical texts and a flagging commitment to Hebrew language, educators and scholars worry that a powerful tool of Jewish continuity could be lost if a serious effort is not made to reverse the trend.

"American Jews have never been as ignorant as they are today when it comes to Hebrew," says Dr. Lewis Glinert, linguistics and Hebrew studies professor at Dartmouth College and a member of Hebrew College's online faculty. "Americans have lost their attachment to Jewish languages. They've lost Yiddish, and they are well on their way to losing Hebrew."

Concern about the decline comes at a time when Jewish education is soaring. No one expects a return to the days when Hebrew was the language of Jewish summer camps and colleges, but the education boom puts the Jewish community in an ideal position to stem the slide. And indeed, positive signs are beginning to hint that American Jews have not spoken their last words of Hebrew.

"I think there's a strong hope for reversing the decline," Glinert says, adding that he is seeing "something extraordinary" in the renewed interest among American Jews in learning traditional Jewish sources in their original language.

Time was, in the 1920s and 1930s, when Hebrew thrived in America, with books and periodicals regularly produced by a devoted group of Hebraists. These mostly secular Zionist devotees founded colleges and summer camps committed to the language. The institutions—including Hebrew Teachers College (now Hebrew College) in Boston, Gratz College in Philadelphia, and Camps Yavneh and Massad—were "extraordinarily Hebraic," in the words of President David Gordis. He notes that at one time, a visitor to Hebrew College would not have heard English even in casual conversation in the hallways.

"American Jews have never been as ignorant as they are today when it comes to Hebrew," says Dr. Lewis Glinert.

After the Second World War, this sort of zealous Hebraism began a slow, steady decline, punctuated only by a brief renewal of interest following the 1967 Six Day War. Hebrew is no longer the spoken language of the Hebrew colleges and the Jewish camps, while most periodicals have ceased production.

Hebrew, of course, is far from dead in America.

It remains alive in synagogue prayers, Jewish schools—especially day schools—and on college campuses. But the commitment to Hebrew as a spoken, everyday language in America is long gone, surviving only in subtle reminders, such as the fact that children attend Hebrew school, not Jewish school or Talmud Torah.

Growing up in Newton in the 1950s, Dr. David Jacobson P'63, HC'73, remembers fondly the Hebrew school education that gave him a solid Hebrew language foundation. Then, Hebrew "was still a value in and of itself," he says. His language skills were reinforced through summers at Camp Yavneh—where Hebrew still was the mother tongue—and prepared him well for studies at Hebrew College.

"On an intellectual level, [my Hebrew school education] was much less sophisticated than the public school education that I got," Jacobson says. "But intensive instruction in Hebrew was a much more important contribution to my education than any intellectual discussion could have been because it gave me the language skills that allowed me to explore Jewish culture on my own."

Now an Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University and a Me'ah instructor, Jacobson says that his experience, once typical, is a thing of the past. "Here and there, you see programs encouraging people to learn how to read Hebrew, and Hebrew still plays a role in Jewish education. But generally speaking, I don't see a lot of energy being put into learning Hebrew." Today, by and large, he says, "we've thrown up our hands."

That's not to say everyone has surrendered, and many people are working to see Hebrew thrive again in the United States. Jacobson points to a small but determined cadre of college students who focus on Hebrew, while others commend Ulpanim and similar adult-education language programs. More than 100 colleges and universities teach Hebrew as a foreign language, and the National Jewish Outreach Program claims that more than 165,000 people have taken its Hebrew "crash courses." Day schools are, to varying degrees, oases of Hebrew, and projects such as the NETA Hebrew secondary school curriculum initiative, based at Hebrew College, aim to ensure that the commitment to Hebrew grows and strengthens, in hopes of returning it to the center stage of the American Jewish consciousness.

Dr. Alan Mintz P'64, the Chana Kekst Professor of Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary and a former Me'ah instructor, says he sees hope in projects like these and in the large increase in Jewish high schools in recent years. But whether these developments will create a generation—or even a leadership—comfortable with Hebrew is "an open question," he says.

"It's a kind of good-news-bad-news picture," he says, with the good news being the renewed concern and commitment to Hebrew and the bad news being that most students are not progressing past an elementary level.

Even in Jewish high schools, which aim to take students past basic Hebrew, commitment to the language is more compartmentalized—one subject among many—and is not an "ethos" pervading the school's culture (a challenge the NETA initiative seeks to reverse).

There are many reasons for the waning of Hebrew in America. For one thing, Hebrew has become the victim of a trend that extends far beyond the borders of the Jewish world: Americans simply do not see foreign language proficiency as valuable.

"The phenomenon of being monolingual is an American affliction," says Dr. Gila Ramras-Rauch, Lewis A. and Selma Weinstein Professor of Jewish Literature at Hebrew College. "Jews for centuries have been multilingual."

Hebrew has also been affected by changes within the Diaspora Jewish world. The notion of Jews as a secular, national minority is not a prevalent one anymore, replaced by the emphasis on Judaism as a religion, Jacobson says. Mintz adds that as synagogues assumed control of most Hebrew schools, they began emphasizing religion more and Hebrew language less.

The good news, says Dr. Alan Mintz, is a renewed concern and commitment to Hebrew. The bad news: most students are not progressing past an elementary level.

In addition, the proliferation of English translations of classical Jewish texts—what some scholars refer to as the "Artscroll effect," after the publishing company that produces many English-language Judaica works—has reduced the need for a working knowledge of Hebrew.

"For thousands of years, most Jews who participated in Jewish rituals were able to read the text in Hebrew," Ramras-Rauch says. "Now, of course, that's not accurate in many communities across the world. With the exception of Israel, bilingual editions are necessary for the siddur, the machzor and other canonical texts." Such translations increase accessibility for the non-Hebraic reader. But the tradeoff is a loss of nuance. Glinert cites the Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik to illustrate the point: Translating a text, Bialik said, is like kissing one's bride through her veil.

To a large extent, Hebrew has been a victim of its own success. In the first half of the 20th century, Hebraists had a "sacred sense they were preserving Jewish culture in its wholeness," Gordis says. But with the Jewish state's independence in 1948, Hebrew became the language of a modern nation, and with that, Diaspora Jews no longer felt the pressure of being the sole guardians of the Hebrew language. Without that sense of crisis—and with many of "the most committed zealots for Hebrew" moving to the new nation—Hebrew lagged outside Israel, Gordis says.

"It is particularly ironic," Glinert says, "since Hebrew in Israel has been going from strength to strength."

The situation today, however, is not historically unique. No one would quibble with Glinert's contention that "Jewish history is filled with a radical commitment to Hebrew," but Gordis cautions that there is another side to the story as well.

"There has always been a tension between the development of 'Judeo-hyphen' languages and the preservation of Hebrew," Gordis says. "I don't buy the idea that the only authentic engagement with Judaism is in Hebrew."

This was true, he continues, at every point that can be considered a "golden age" of Jewish literature. The Hebrew Bible is in Hebrew, but not entirely—the books of Daniel and Nehemia contain Aramaic. And the Talmud, Gordis says, often displays a "seamless transition between mishnaic and tannaitic Hebrew and discourses in Babylonian or Palestinian Aramaic."

In medieval times, Jewish literature, including a wealth of poetry, was written in both Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew. Maimonides wrote his Moreh Nevuchim (The Guide of the Perplexed) in Judeo-Arabic, though he chose Hebrew for his Mishneh Torah. And in modern times, in Berlin, academic Judaic studies thrived in both German and Hebrew.

Still, with Jewish leaders and educators deeply concerned about Jewish continuity in the 21st century, they point out that the commitment to Hebrew has helped ensure Jewish cultural survival thus far in history.

"One rabbinic dictum has it that Jews were able to preserve their identity [in exile] because they didn't change their names and didn't change their language," Gordis says. "The notion of having a distinct language and literature is a sine qua non of having a culture. Absent that, there is no culture."

A bridge between Jews from disparate corners of the globe, Hebrew has been the primary language of prayer, but that's not all. Jews have always used Hebrew to communicate—through letters, or in person when traveling—with Jews whose vernacular is different from their own.

Hebrew also ties contemporary Jews to their ancestors through the texts that define Judaism. Jewish literary works have always drawn on, quoted from, alluded to and played on traditional texts, creating a conversation between modern writers and classical works.

"The best hope for keeping Hebrew alive in America is to push the study of classical texts," says Dr. David Jacobson.

Ramras-Rauch points out that works of the great Hebrew poets and novelists of modern times remained tied to their Jewish religious heritage. These writers created Hebrew literature out of their yeshiva backgrounds, directly connecting their writing to the texts on which they were raised.

"The ability, through allusions, through what we call intertextuality, to bring ancient texts to the foreground is an illuminating thing, and you can only do this once you know the language," Ramras-Rauch says.

But Hebrew's significance—its power—is not just in the way it is used to bind Jews together across time and place. Hebrew, in its very letters and words, embodies Jewishness itself.

In Kabbalah, the shape of each letter has special meaning, as does its numerical continued on next page value (gematria). God created the world, traditional sources tell us, with letters and words, and Hebrew itself is known as Leshon Hakodesh, the Holy Tongue. "Hebrew has powerful mystical and spiritual value that absolutely defies translation," Glinert says. "Even though most American Jews have no inkling of it, this was traditionally an extremely important part of Jewish knowledge."

And in the words themselves, Judaism and its values are evident, as in the many names for God (which Jacobson says show "much more depth than just the word 'God'") and numerous words for sin (which he says exemplify "a moral sensitivity that is at the heart of Judaism"). Jacobson adds another example: tzedakah generally is translated as "charity." The English word implies pity or mercy, while the Hebrew root tzedek means justice, a very different way of looking at the concept.

Gordis says the issue calls to mind a conversation recorded in the Babylonian Talmud: Which is more fundamental: "midrash" (study)? or "ma'aseh" (deed)? Each of those words, midrash and ma'aseh, defy straight translation because they carry a wealth of associations that are unique to the original language, he says.

Midrash, Gordis explains, implies a particular way of looking at the Bible. Often translated as "interpretation," midrash also is a genre of Jewish literature. "It has a history up to the present," he says. Today, many Jews speak of creating "modern midrash." Why don't they call it "modern interpretation?"

"Midrash has all these associations and resonances that can't be translated," Gordis says.

"Ma'aseh," he continues, likewise "resonates in the Jewish mind with all sorts of associations." "Ma'aseh bereishit" is the way the Rabbis referred to the creation; "ma'aseh merkavah" refers to the mystical secrets of the "chariot," with origins in Ezekiel; "ma'asim tovim" is the phrase for "good deeds." On the High Holidays, we recite a piyyut contrasting "ma'aseh Eloheinu" (the deeds of our God) with "ma'aseh enosh" (the deeds of humans). The word ma'aseh, then, embodies "the sense that in Judaism performance of mitzvot is central," Gordis says.

"Each of these things draws on a tapestry that is part of the culture," he concludes.

Preserving and embellishing these layers of meaning that encapsulate millennia of Jewish thought is central to efforts to revive Hebrew in America today. And despite the uphill climb, there are reasons to be optimistic that the language will see something of a rebound.

"I don't think we're ever going to have masses of Jews committing themselves to Hebrew as a spoken language," Jacobson says. The idea of Hebrew as the foundation of a national, ethnic identity is no longer tenable, except in Israel, he says.

"The best hope for keeping Hebrew alive in America is to push the study of classical texts," Jacobson says. "We need to design a curriculum that teaches people enough Hebrew to understand what they are saying when they pray from the siddur, to be able to read the weekly portion from the humash in the original."

Similarly, Mintz says that success may lie in shifting the American-Jewish definition of Hebrew proficiency away from emphasizing spoken Hebrew, which "for American Jewry is not the most realistic thing." Instead, he says, "We have to revise our idea of what Hebrew literacy is, to focus more on culture and understanding texts."

Gordis offers a mixed prognosis.

"On the one hand, one can't help but be concerned about the enormous gap that separates the level of cultural literacy among most Jews with their Hebrew literacy," he says. "On the other hand, one can't fail to notice the growth and revitalization of high-quality Jewish educational institutions."

When he was a college student, Gordis says he and his roommate would read aloud from Tehillim, the book of Psalms, "just for the sheer beauty of the language." It is something that can't be conveyed in translation, but he believes that the investments being made in Jewish education today can lead a new generation to appreciate the language as he and his roommate did.

"Part of continuity ought to be Hebrew literacy," he says. "We have more of a shot at it than 20, 30 years ago."

Michael Kress is the editor-in-chief of MyJewishLearning.com and writes frequently in the media about religion and spirituality.

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