Florida’s Ben Gamla Charter School may be America’s only Hebrew charter school — with another on the way in New York — but the fledgling movement to create more such schools across the country is spurring vigorous debate within the Jewish community. At issue are the relative merits of publicly funded charter schools and private day schools, questions pertaining to the separation of religion and state, and the relationship of American Jews to the public school system. Even as it has raised these thorny questions, the Hebrew charter school movement has already made one incredibly important contribution to the communal discourse about Jewish education: It has put the oft-neglected issue of Hebrew literacy back on the agenda.
In the not-too-distant past, Jews typically lived in a bilingual environment. Within the family and the community, Yiddish was the spoken language of Ashkenazic Jewry during the course of the last thousand years. For contact with the non-Jewish society, one would communicate in the local non-Jewish language. By and large, the immigration to America brought an end to this historical reality: Instead of replacing Russian or Polish (one’s second language), English replaced Yiddish (one’s primary language), and Jewish bilingualism came to an end.
The loss of our own language was not without precedent. In the quest for full integration in Western and Central Europe throughout the 19th century, the Jewish public chose to adopt the territorial languages as their vernacular. In the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, many Jews vacillated between the German language of the crown and the Czech or Hungarian languages of the local nationalism. Often there were those who protested the abandonment of Yiddish, claiming that the Jewish people would lose its unique content, its very soul, with the loss of its own language — but it was all to no avail. The eagerness to take on the American identity overwhelmed even the Yiddish-language Forward, which urged its readers to adopt English, an editorial position that would seem to negate its own best business interests.
Many would argue that the Americanization of the Jews has been a tremendous success, while perhaps a few still express pain and mourning over the loss of an irreplaceable cultural uniqueness. It is obvious that both these perspectives are true. Indeed, together with its sense of pride in many realms of endeavor, American Jewry seems to have given up on the possibility of any Jewish creativity in a Jewish language. In so doing, it has turned its back on the legacy of an ancient civilization that had almost always expressed itself in Hebrew characters.
In many places around the world, school systems produce high school graduates who are comfortable in two or even three languages, including the ability to read good literature in these languages. In Israel, for example, we often hear harsh criticism about the achievements of the school system — and justifiably so — and, yet, it has always been self-evident that an educated Hebrew speaker is also literate in English. If a society attaches importance to language skills, there will always be results.
That is the historic failure of American Jewry: So very few understand that language is the central carrier of culture, and so very few are aware of the power of a Jewish language in establishing individual and collective identity.
If there were a Jewish public in North America interested in the re-establishment of a Jewish identity that would include a living Jewish language as a mark of distinction and definition, it could be done. It is a matter of motivation.
Surely, a Jewish day school or charter school system in which Hebrew is the language of instruction for all subjects and activities from the very first day of kindergarten until the completion of school would bring about the desired result: bilingual graduates whose cultural point of reference would be the natural familiarity with the Jewish text. The Tarbut Hebrew school system of pre-Holocaust Poland and Lithuania is an outstanding example of such an immersion education. Similarly, a movement that would encourage substantial numbers of American Jewish students to do their academic studies at the Hebrew language universities of Israel could also create a significant public in the American Diaspora that would be culturally expressive in a historically Jewish language.
American Jews are a well-to-do group that claims to value education, and yet Jewish identity remains an uphill — and too often a failing — battle. The return to a situation in which a spoken Jewish language is a self-evident fact of life would re-create a reality in which Jewish self-awareness is likewise self-evident. The challenge of Jewish educators is to aspire for the very best, and not to be resigned to a Jewish cultural reality as it is. The Hebrew language, the very key to the world of Jewish sources past and present, is the very best. It is both the symbol and the tool of Jewish continuity.
Reuven Kalifon teaches Jewish history at the North American Federation of Temple Youth’s Eisendrath International Exchange High School in Israel.
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I think bilingualism would be a boon to America Judaism. Hispanic Americans cultivate a bilingual culture. Why can't we?
Cultivating a bilingual culture would mean having to admit that something has gone wrong in American Jewish sociology. This above article uses the concept "historic failure". It is very rare indeed to read any article in the American Jewish press that speaks in terms of failure. Generally, the description of American Jewish life in the Forward is uncritical, simply accepting reality as it is. Another difficulty in cultivating bilingualism would be in the realm of self-image. You will find many, many American Jews who have visited London and Paris, but they have not been to Jerusalem. It's not because of safety concerns or because of the longer and more expensive flight - it's because Jewish identity is not prestigious. Hence, ironically, it might be that a Jewish family would prefer a French immersion school over a Hebrew immersion school if such a choice of charter schools would exist. Hebrew literacy should really be placed at the very top of American Jewish agenda, but it will necessitate tremendous promotional efforts.
I completely that language is absolutely essential to identity. We would not have the problems we have in the American Jewish community regarding assimilation if there was a language that people would not have to hide in the way they hid Yiddish. Hebrew is something to be very proud of, its a 3000 year old language that started again out of scratch, if only more people realized this and saw the beauty of the language.
It appears that among all the worldwide Jewish communities, the North American Jewish community is the only one that remains monolingual. For millenia, Jews have been bilingual at least, oftentimes, trilingual and more. I think it is this American fear of anything not English and the drive to become less Jewish that led to this unfortunate language loss. This week I was at seders where the only person who could read and understand the Hebrew text was a child. A sad state of affairs for American Jews...
Great article. A common language keeps a people together wherever they may be. They can always communicate between each other. Its annoying to go into a store and here someone speaking in a foreign language(spanish).
Walter, I see benefits of a nation having a common language so that all citizens can communicate with each other. That's why I supported the program at my local library which teaches English to people. However, I don't see any reason to be annoyed at people speaking a non-English language near you. Hopefully they are bilingual. If not, it's their choice.
This was a truly wonderful article, advocating a cause very dear to me. My wife and I are trying to raise our two young sons bilingually here in South Florida, but it is an uphill struggle to say the least. I am the only fluent Hebrew speaker my sons get to hear on a regular basis; while other family members know some Hebrew, they never got to study it systematically or to experience extended "quality time" in Israel. Unfortunately, I can't locate other Hebrew activities for families with young children in our area. Day school is the only really serious option (we don't live near Ben Gamla), which start too late in life (after the kids have already developed fluency in one language) and cost too much for the middle class. In my opinion, the sub-community of Hebrew speakers within the larger American Jewish community must organize better so that our children, as well as other Jewish children, will have the chance to develop Hebrew fluency from as early an age as possible.
This was a truly wonderful article, advocating a cause very dear to me. My wife and I are trying to raise our two young sons bilingually here in South Florida, but it is an uphill struggle to say the least. I am the only fluent Hebrew speaker my sons get to hear on a regular basis; while other family members know some Hebrew, they never got to study it systematically or to experience extended "quality time" in Israel. Unfortunately, I can't locate other Hebrew activities for families with young children in our area. Day school is the only really serious option (we don't live near Ben Gamla), which start too late in life (after the kids have already developed fluency in one language) and cost too much for the middle class. In my opinion, the sub-community of Hebrew speakers within the larger American Jewish community must organize better so that our children, as well as other Jewish children, will have the chance to develop Hebrew fluency from as early an age as possible.
For a non-native language to be learned and retained, it has to be used continually. The reason the Sunday-school format of Hebrew education rarely yields competent Hebrew speakers is because its boundaries are the classroom. There is little or no use for it in the home or in the community setting. Generating interest in Hebrew literature offers students an incentive to be linguistically active. It introduces them to a world where the language they are learning is an asset, and it allows them to engage with others with whom they share a common appreciation.
A month or two ago, an Israeli website (http://www.milayomit.co.il) was launched with the explicit aim of enhancing communication between Hebrew speakers. The internet can make language-learning a family experience, rather than one on the individual or classroom level alone. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, gramps and grandkids can make learning words a daily or weekly occasion. In the same way that Mila Yomit capitalizes on the internet to be hip and exciting, interfacing between Hebrew and literature is a promising idea.