Religious Circles in America and Their Attitude to the Study of Hebrew

Translated from the Hebrew

 by Goldie Wachsman

 

So said Rav Yehuda in the name of Rabi: “The Sons of Judah were careful in their speech; thus, their Torah was perpetuated through their actions. The sons of Galilee were not careful in their speech; their Torah was not perpetuated”

                                -Eruvin 53a

 

One would have expected the study of Hebrew to serve as the cornerstone of Jewish education in today’s Orthodox schools. After all, if the bedrock of Jewish education is Torah she-bikhtav and Torah she-be’al peh (Bible and Talmud), which are taught from the original Hebrew, then acquiring the skills to facilitate such study — a thorough grounding in Biblical and Rabbinical Hebrew across the ages, from the Sages to the present — has to be a priority.

Yet against all logic, the study of Hebrew is relegated to a corner and some religious institutions even consider it a hindrance. True, the study of the Hebrew language had its heyday, in particular, right after the establishment of the State of Israel. At that time, even Jewish day schools that did not excel in the “Ivrit be’Ivrit“ system (Hebrew-only total immersion) tended to reinforce the study of Hebrew, and many switched to Ivrit be-Ivrit.

Israeli instructors were hired, and principals and teachers began to perfect and deepen their knowledge of the language. Nevertheless, after only the briefest honeymoon, signs of a lengthy withdrawal process became apparent, one that reduced Hebrew to the status of a marginal Regents course. Gone was any identification with the language; instead there was capitulation to and exploitation of regulations issued by secular state authorities, who required the study of a foreign language.

Moreover, as Hebrew assumed the role of a “lowly Egyptian maidservant,” Jewish educators and leaders developed an ideological-conceptual justification for their attitude. None of the above is ever publicly discussed in the panels, symposia, and “Yemei Iyun“ (intensive day-long workshops or study groups) so typical on this continent. Usually the issue is raised unofficially in conversations among the teachers themselves, in informal contexts that lend even greater credence to the opinions expressed.

The professional Jewish educator whose expertise transcends the PR hype fed to Anglo-Jewish media is fully aware of the negative attitude in some circles toward the study of Hebrew. The dichotomy “we teach/they teach” is trumpeted with satisfaction and pride, as in “We teach Yiddishkeit and not Ivrit“ — the final “t” exaggerated to mock a Sephardi Hebrew accent. The tone faintly echoes that of the Old Yishuv in Palestine, an era in which young halutzim (pioneers) during the early waves of aliyah were dismissed by some as “Hebrew- speaking goyim.”

The claim “we teach Yiddishkeit“ clearly implies that the Ivrit be-Ivrit approach — with its emphasis on Hebrew and its systematic study as an autonomous discipline — is inimical to the study of sacred texts (limudei qodesh). Thus, an antithetical relationship is struck between the study of Hebrew and the study of Judaism. Liberate yourself from Hebrew and you fortify the ranks of the Torah army.

To be sure, there are a good number of Orthodox schools that stress the study of Hebrew and integrate it into the Jewish curriculum, but of late, these institutions have been placed on the defensive. For the decisive vote belongs to those who regard Hebrew as deterring the growth of Yiddishkeit, better known in English as Torah-true Judaism. These circles view themselves as the guardians and watchdogs of Jewish education — and their influence in restricting the study of Hebrew is considerable.

 

B.

 

Reservations concerning the study of Hebrew reveal a strange paradox and reflect the anomaly of Jewish cultural life in the United States. On the one hand, this milieu vaunts the fact that its schools teach “real Judaism,” rather than courses about Judaism. In other words, texts in the original Hebrew are examined, as opposed to lengthy introductions and surveys (in English) surrounding Judaism. They declare with pride that the Bible is taught in their schools from Genesis to Deuteronomy as the genuine Hebrew article, in contrast to other schools where the Hebrew writ is dwarfed by lectures on the Bible’s historical antecedents or by comparative analyses with ancient Eastern cultures and their impact. As for the students themselves, they may never even get to see or read Hebrew Scripture with their own eyes.

The success these religious circles can claim in educating students to remain fully committed Jews is the source of their pride and open militancy. Undoubtedly, graduates of institutions with a “right-wing” agenda possess a profound religious awareness and identify viscerally with the Jewish people. One rarely finds radical leftists or disseminators of pro- Palestinian propaganda in their midst, which is far more common among “alienated” Jews. This point is often raised as proof that “Look, we don’t teach Ivrit but our graduates are far more Jewish than their peers who are enrolled in schools that invest heavily in teaching Hebrew.” Yet that argument misses the point. Learning classical Hebrew text without the fundamental and systematic study of Hebrew is self-defeating. If Orthodox Jews had supported the ideological premise that religious texts can be studied in translation, the problem would be solved.  Instead. of shenayim miqra ve-ehad targum (lit. , reading the Scriptural portion of the week twice in Hebrew and once in translation), everything would be translated, which is the practice in some circles to this day. Such was the case for the Jews of Alexandria de facto if not de jure, who managed to create an impressive exegetical and cultural monument on the basis of translated text. The irony is that these institutions of Jewish education see themselves as the heirs of Slabodka and Volozhin, basing their educational philosophy upon the “Ivri“ and the thorough preparation of a page of Talmud. Consequently, even studying from a Soncino Talmud is tantamount to heresy.

Willy nilly, a covenant is stuck with the Hebrew language as a result of this guiding educational philosophy. Nevertheless, misgivings about Hebrew —- dating back to the days of the Berlin Haskalah — which one would have thought had dissipated by now, resurface from time to time. Rather than grapple with Hebrew and adopt it wholeheartedly because it is the sacred tongue in which the holiest texts were rendered, some educators ‘hung it. It is hard to imagine how depth or mastery are attainable in limudei qodesh without a solid linguistic base. So long as Orthodox education is modeled on the “Ivri“ and “shenayim miqra,” those schooled in that system cannot do without a proper linguistic background. Lamdanut, or real scholarship, is impossible if the linguistic foundation is systemically flawed.

Religious educational institutions that minimize Hebrew often justify their approach with the theological argument that they are not in the business of teaching modern secular Hebrew, which they deem an indulgence or at best an amusing distraction. Words like gelidah and kadur regel (Hebrew for ice cream and soccer) and the lexicon of everyday Hebrew are of no interest because the primary subject matter is limudei qodesh. Even those who would reject this approach because they identify with Hebrew and the Zionist dream that adopted Hebrew for practical use, will admit, if only out of respect for democracy and freedom of choice, that everyone is entitled to an opinion, including the foregoing one. But the reality is that the discomfort with secular Hebrew leads to the suppression of language study as a discipline crucial to the comprehension of the written word, a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because the Hebrew of gelidah and kadur regel is suspect, administrators of some schools have built a wall around the language and neglect their dual obligation to impart strong language skills to students and to simultaneously and unconditionally insist upon the study of text in the original tongue. Hence, the paradox: How can one achieve real depth in a genre of Torah learning seeped in traditions of hakha garsinan, ve-doq, and tzei u-lemadⁱ when the students lack the tools to comprehend, deduce, or extrapolate meaning from the words of the argument? If the fury has been unleashed against the parparaot, why the attack against the miqraot?ⁱⁱ

 

C.

 

The dismissal of careful reading and interpretation necessarily lowers the standard and the lomdus prized by leaders in Jewish education. It’s difficult to take the self-congratulatory “we teach” posture seriously if what’s being taught is sacred text with classical commentary and novellae and when any greenhorn knows that the students’ ability to decipher unvocalized, rabbinic text is poor.

The scores on a single surprise quiz generally suffice to expose this self-congratulation for what it is. The achievements, such as they are, are meager. There is no yeshiva that can honestly bask in the glory that its graduates know how to translate a Biblical verse properly and read Rashi adequately. Nor should the failure of the after-school Talmud Torah network be used as a comparison to measure the success of the yeshiva world. Those who boast that their students know how to translate a verse of Biblical Hebrew after twelve years of study are virtually advertising the bankruptcy of the system. Such accomplishments are the fruit of rote and repetition, a professionally useless education. A decline of standards in Jewish education is consequently inevitable because the method is at fault, much like the deterioration in the public school system, primarily in major cities.

The worst part of the deficit is that it prevents students from learning on their own. Effectiveness, albeit hard to measure, is the very touchstone of Jewish education. Academic achievement is assessed first and foremost by the ability of students to study independently, i.e., to read, analyze, and comprehend material at the proper level. Would anyone deny that textual comprehension is one of the aims of a yeshiva education? Yet how many high school graduates meet that criterion? How many can read a book in halakhah in the original and understand it well, let alone a more esoteric text of piyyutim?

There seems to be no correlation between the quantity of hours or years devoted to studying religious texts and the level of linguistic achievement. Small wonder that the translation industry is booming. Yet despite the industry’s loyalty to tradition and the best of intentions, its results are highly questionable.

 

D.

 

In discussions of an informal nature about the level of Jewish day schools, when administrators are pressed to the wall they attribute their problems with Hebrew (the gap between reading and comprehension) to the ubiquity of English. In other words, children are immersed in a corrupt, alien culture that includes television, radio, newspapers, etc, etc. This makes it extremely difficult to overcome the language hurdle, especially since Hebrew is a Semitic tongue that differs from English in structure and form.  In fact there is some truth to this claim, since even students in Torah institutions are exposed to the influence of American culture and lifestyle.

Yet this alibi begs the question. If the diagnosis is that Hebrew is the source of the problem, then the treatment needs to address the illness, or act upon the logical implications of the diagnosis: Either eliminate the problem or make your peace with it. Assimilated Jewish theologians have always seen Hebrew as a hindrance whose disadvantage outweighed its benefits. Hebrew, they maintained, prevents those who don’t need it from understanding the text on a deeper level, which makes for an “impoverished religious experience.” In truth, this conclusion was consistent with the observation that Hebrew is an obstacle. Thus, in order to reinforce the religious experience, a new ritual based on the lingua franca of the time, usually German, was established.

The fruits of this “non-Hebrew Judaism” and the poverty of its religious experience are a lesson that Jewish history has been learning since the close of the eighteenth century, both in Europe and the United States. To their credit, let it be said that at least they were consistent. In contrast, the Orthodox milieu rejects “non-Hebrew Judaism” and its lifestyle and cleaves to the kotzo shel yod, the Hebrew letter of the Law. That being the case, why do they insistently remain betwixt and between? Those who predicate Jewish survival on the dictum ve-shinantam le-vanekha — the Biblical command that requires parents to speak, teach, and verbally drill their children so that they will love G-d — must transmit the verbal skills, or the darkhei shinun, that inform the fully committed Jew.

The paradox of Torah education is that it ridicules the assimilated Jews who can’t read a word of Hebrew at the same time that it mocks the study of Hebrew, owing to the fear, dating from the Mendelssohn era, that language is an untrustworthy child, the idolatry of maskilim and grammarians. Apparently these misgivings persist to this day. But rather than shun semantics and syntax, it would be wiser to embrace them and apply them to the study of sacred texts.

Sometimes another excuse is used, one that lays the blame on the shoulders of young teachers — the yeshiva graduates and “field workers” who interact with the real world of Jewish pedagogy — who, it is claimed, are unable to teach students the basics of Hebrew. They are not trained to think linguistically because the yeshivas will not validate linguistic study of Hebrew sources.

Textual comprehension in this milieu is usually gained by reading the text over and over during many long hours at the desk, which is an admission of failure. Yet that’s the way it is and it is up to the prime movers in religious education to do something about it — to train teachers how to teach Hebrew. Just as English instructors shouldn’t be allowed in class unless they know the language, and math teachers shouldn’t teach unless they know their algebra and geometry, instructors of limudei qodesh should not teach the subject unless their mastery of the sacred tongue is thorough.

A paradoxical attitude to the study of Hebrew characterizes a significant segment of the Conservative movement as well. Strangely, their rationale is similar to that of the yeshiva world, although the terminology differs. The yeshiva world favors expressions like Torah-true Judaism and Yiddishkeit, whereas the Conservatives prefer the expressions “Jewish Heritage” and “Jewish Ethical Values.” These educators likewise maintain that Hebrew gets in the way of teaching and absorbing Jewish values. They claim that with the limited time at their disposal, not only can’t they devote hours to the study of Hebrew as a language but they can’t teach limudei qodesh in the original either. For the most part, that is the argument of after-school Talmud Torah teachers. Although their time is certainly limited, the perception that Hebrew is some technical or decorative fixture is a complete distortion of the basic values of Judaism. Anyone who has tried to teach Jewish values in any context other than the right one — in Hebrew garb — ends up teaching neither Hebrew nor ethics.

So long as translation served as a bridge between the Jewish experience and the external world, the Jewish framework was not weakened. Without a doubt, when translation ceased to be external but was internalized as an organic part of the religious experience, it became a factor in the forces of assimilation.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, leaders of Reform Jewry have spoken from the lofty peaks of justice and prophetic morality. Their speeches, however, end on the other side of the mountain, sans Jewish ethics, sans prophecy, and in distant, alien pastures. All that is left of their intellectual and historical opus is the dry bones of ideology. The religious and social history of European Jewry bears this out. What happened in Western Europe has been happening in the United States in the last few generations.

One cannot transmit Jewish values by making noble speeches about “Judaismus” in German or even in new English translations (notwithstanding their innovation and fine technique). Similarly, one ignores the essentiality of Hebrew at one’s own peril. At the very least, it behooves the decision makers and policymakers in the world of Jewish education to face the facts.

 

 

 

Dr. Shmuel Schneider is the head of the YC Hebrew Department

 

 

*This article was originally published in Bitzaron 9-10 (Winter:Spring 1981), pp. 80-83

ⁱ ‘Talmudic terms that mean “this is the way it should be read,” “examine” and “corroborate for yourself.”

ⁱⁱ  Parparaot, literally “dessert”; by extension, something sweet but insubstantial. Miqraot, literally the “texts to be read.”