The Place of Hebrew in Jewish Life

May 20, 2008

by Daniel E. Levenson

One of the educational goals of all Jews who care about their history and culture should be to learn Hebrew, and I don’t mean just enough to become bar or bat mizvahed, either. As my parents would no doubt be able to attest, Hebrew School was not exactly my favorite activity as a child, in fact, I would guess that I probably spent more time figuring out ways to avoid having to go, than I actually spent in class. I stuck with it just long enough to become a bar mitzvah, and after that I drifted away from it, except for a short stint in Hebrew high school and one disastrous semester of modern Hebrew in college. As an adult, however, I am coming to realize more and more the importance of not only being able to read the Hebrew aleph bet, but of being able to understand the words I am saying. I think that real Hebrew literacy is important for three main reasons, one spiritual, one cultural and the other practical.

From a pragmatic standpoint, we in the Diaspora need to maintain and strengthen our ties to the people of the modern State of Israel. If we cannot read the news in Hebrew, and cannot speak to Israelis in their own language, we create a barrier. This is especially true if one looks at the relationship between Anglophonic Jews and Israeli Jews, the two largest populations of Jews in the world today. Although we in the English-speaking world benefit from the linguistic hegemony of English, and many Israelis and other Jews around the world speak English, this does not exempt us from the need to strengthen the connection between all Jews by having a common language rooted in our own religious and cultural traditions. At one time, Yiddish certainly filled this gap in the west and Ladino and Judeo-Arabic did the same in other parts of the world, but these languages do not have the same breadth and depth of speakers anymore (although I am very encouraged by the Yiddish revival of the last 15-20 years). From an Israeli perspective, it seems as though they also want Diaspora Jews to become more conversant in our common tongue – I can recall very clearly seeing graffiti in Jerusalem on Emek Refaim that welcomed American Jews, but entreated us to speak Hebrew while in Israel.

From a spiritual standpoint I think it makes little sense for Jews to go to shul to pray in a language which is totally foreign to them. While many siddurim also have English translations of the prayers, how many people actually take the time to read both? Furthermore, Hebrew, and especially biblical or liturgical Hebrew, is highly poetic and demands a deeper level of attention than simply mouthing the words without intent or understanding. Transliteration may be useful to those who do not yet know how to read Hebrew, but if we stop there we do our community and ourselves a great disservice.  We must remember that all acts of translation are acts of interpretation, and when we allow others to wholly interpret for us the meaning of our prayers, we relieve ourselves of any agency in these conversations with the divine; we become merely actors saying lines scripted by someone else. Even a basic understanding of Hebrew can help to set us on a road to greater understanding of the prayers and sacred texts of Judaism.

Finally, on a cultural level, American Jews need to be able to understand that Hebrew is a living language, not only in its modern iteration in Israel, but in the discourse of the rabbis and commentators throughout the ages. If it had not continued to breathe, grow and change over time, then the Jewish people itself would have stagnated as well. When one studies the Torah or the Talmud, multiple shades of meaning can be found in the same place, depending on how the language being used is understood and perceived in the given context. This is not to say that certain things do not have fixed meanings, but it is to say that this flexibility is reflective of Jewish cultural life. If we want to know where we have been and where we might be going, we need to be able to read, understand and discuss the central texts of Judaism in the language in which they were conceived and communicated.

I am encouraged by such things as the spread of adult b’nai mitzvah classes as well as after-work Hebrew classes for adults in major US cities, but I think we need to take it a step farther by expanding the funding for these kind of educational initiatives and encouraging more American Jews to participate in them. When I attended a conference on Israel studies at Brandeis in April, the Israeli writer Hillel Halkin spoke about the importance of Jews learning Hebrew, and he wondered aloud why this conference, one that focused on Israel studies, we being held in English and not in Hebrew. The obvious answer to his question, of course, is that there are many Jews who either speak no Hebrew or whose Hebrew is not advanced enough (and I would put myself in this latter category) to participate in such a conference if it were held completely in Hebrew. This is the simple answer, but I also saw this question as a challenge to us here in the Diaspora/exile to step up to the plate, if I may borrow a uniquely American metaphor. To this challenge I would give a slightly different answer, which is that we are trying, but we need to try harder.