Countering the many pleasant surprises of Israel, is the rude awakening as to the state of foreign language instruction. Hebrew is the only language I know of that has its own special term for language instruction - Ulpan. The famous Ulpan. You figure if they have their own term and method, then they take it quite seriously.
With Hebrew being the #1 obstacle to aliyah, and with a government that will literally pay you to come here, you'd think you'd see Ulpan dripping from the walls. However, I have yet to sit in an Ulpan class. They are not offered in the Summer at least not in my town. And when they are offered, it's in one place at one time with a small night offering for those who can't make it. How rigorous will it be? I have no idea because it hasn't started yet.
Not offered in the summer? Do all Israelis switch to English in the summer? How can language instruction ever stop?
In New York, one sees posters for English language instruction on every corner. I can't tell you how many schools NY has for this sort of thing but I'll put it's in the 100s or 1000s. I knew immigrants of every type and stripe that attended ESOL classes - Brazilians, Russians, Chinese, Israelis.
That's not how it works over here in this land where education is allegedly valued so much. Between the yeshiva world's fanatical aversion to language instruction and grammar and the Israeli neglect of those topics, the Charedi oleh gets stuck in quite a pickle. Perhaps this is part of the reason why so many Americans come here and never learn Hebrew.
To some extent it's their fault. To some extent its the fault of the educators. It's reminiscent of why millions of Jews left the fold over the last century. Was it all their fault? Didn't rigid and out of touch leaders - and I don't necessarily mean top leaders but local leaders - carry some of the guilt - cheder rebbes that beat kids for example without ever explaining Torah principles to them as say Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch did with great success.. The utter incompetence in language instruction throughout the Jewish world is a kind of beating unto itself.
I went to a baal teshuvah yeshiva that refused to teach not just conversational Hebrew but grammar of any kind. They didn't even teach us the letters. They employed a bizarre phrase, "break your teeth on it." That was the way we were supposed to learn Hebrew. As if any of them could learn Vietnamese if I dropped them in Ho Chi Min city for a year. Rebbes would read from Messilas Yesharim and somehow you would learn Hebrew by hearing the translations that interrupted every line. I can tell you from the stories of scores of classmates that Hebrew is not acquired that way.
Many Jews rely heavily on tradition, on an assumption that you will pick up most of the most important elements of Judaism from your parents. Elements such as faith, principles of faith, basic halacha, and language - these weren't taught any of the BT yeshiva's I attended. The rebbes went straight to Gemara pilpul as if faith is inborn in the age of atheism. This seems a little off topic but it's another example of how poor we are at teaching basics formally. And outsiders need that.
Orthodox Jews don't deal well with outsiders, even when those outsiders are Jews. One has to exit the dogmatism and enter the mind and life experience of the other person in order to help him. In this day and age, we are terrible at that, just terrible.
Every other religious group or ethnic club I know of - whether it be Hindu Temples or Greek clubs or Armenian clubs - they all teach language in a formalized way with grammar, simple sentences, exercises. Break down the material, teach patterns and rules. This is education the intelligent way.
Then there's education the brute way. It will be hard for the first year they will tell you about your children in school as they offer them a measly 1/2 hour a day of Hebrew. Then they'll cite examples of kids who "picked it up." But their Hebrew is broken Hebrew and the kids seem a bit broken to me.
In the Jewish world, particularly the Orthodox world, we rely way too much on the willingness of our courageous members to bear pain. Situations that don't need to be painful are kept that way or made that way as if somehow we are doing God a favor by torturing His people.
The way its supposed to work is that you do what you can to avoid pain then you endure what you can't avoid. An educator or leader of any kind who just allows the people to suffer and decries as failures those who break - what's the word for him or her? A tyrant perhaps. A crackpot.
Now the entire Jewish world is rarely ever one thing. And to me, non-observant Jews in the universities are part of the Jewish world. I'm not just saying that they are Jews but that we have something learn from them. On this topic, they occupy the higher ground for language instruction there is substantive and effective. So too, there are a few Mizrachi schools, like the Yeshiva of Flatbush that put proper focus on Hebrew language instruction.
And Rabbi Ari Shvt tells me that Rav Ovadia Yosef encouraged formal Hebrew instruction for olim. If only more frum people in this land would listen to him.
Judaism is the only religion I know of that requires people to live in a particular land. And since Hebrew is the language of that land, Hebrew instruction should be required in the schools as an adjunct to the mitzvah. And let us not fail to mention how expertise in Hebrew would aid Torah study and Tefillah. As we say in English, duh!
Or is all that too logical for a people that can be as illogical as any on the planet earth.
With Hebrew being the #1 obstacle to aliyah, and with a government that will literally pay you to come here, you'd think you'd see Ulpan dripping from the walls. However, I have yet to sit in an Ulpan class. They are not offered in the Summer at least not in my town. And when they are offered, it's in one place at one time with a small night offering for those who can't make it. How rigorous will it be? I have no idea because it hasn't started yet.
Not offered in the summer? Do all Israelis switch to English in the summer? How can language instruction ever stop?
In New York, one sees posters for English language instruction on every corner. I can't tell you how many schools NY has for this sort of thing but I'll put it's in the 100s or 1000s. I knew immigrants of every type and stripe that attended ESOL classes - Brazilians, Russians, Chinese, Israelis.
That's not how it works over here in this land where education is allegedly valued so much. Between the yeshiva world's fanatical aversion to language instruction and grammar and the Israeli neglect of those topics, the Charedi oleh gets stuck in quite a pickle. Perhaps this is part of the reason why so many Americans come here and never learn Hebrew.
To some extent it's their fault. To some extent its the fault of the educators. It's reminiscent of why millions of Jews left the fold over the last century. Was it all their fault? Didn't rigid and out of touch leaders - and I don't necessarily mean top leaders but local leaders - carry some of the guilt - cheder rebbes that beat kids for example without ever explaining Torah principles to them as say Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch did with great success.. The utter incompetence in language instruction throughout the Jewish world is a kind of beating unto itself.
I went to a baal teshuvah yeshiva that refused to teach not just conversational Hebrew but grammar of any kind. They didn't even teach us the letters. They employed a bizarre phrase, "break your teeth on it." That was the way we were supposed to learn Hebrew. As if any of them could learn Vietnamese if I dropped them in Ho Chi Min city for a year. Rebbes would read from Messilas Yesharim and somehow you would learn Hebrew by hearing the translations that interrupted every line. I can tell you from the stories of scores of classmates that Hebrew is not acquired that way.
Many Jews rely heavily on tradition, on an assumption that you will pick up most of the most important elements of Judaism from your parents. Elements such as faith, principles of faith, basic halacha, and language - these weren't taught any of the BT yeshiva's I attended. The rebbes went straight to Gemara pilpul as if faith is inborn in the age of atheism. This seems a little off topic but it's another example of how poor we are at teaching basics formally. And outsiders need that.
Orthodox Jews don't deal well with outsiders, even when those outsiders are Jews. One has to exit the dogmatism and enter the mind and life experience of the other person in order to help him. In this day and age, we are terrible at that, just terrible.
Every other religious group or ethnic club I know of - whether it be Hindu Temples or Greek clubs or Armenian clubs - they all teach language in a formalized way with grammar, simple sentences, exercises. Break down the material, teach patterns and rules. This is education the intelligent way.
Then there's education the brute way. It will be hard for the first year they will tell you about your children in school as they offer them a measly 1/2 hour a day of Hebrew. Then they'll cite examples of kids who "picked it up." But their Hebrew is broken Hebrew and the kids seem a bit broken to me.
In the Jewish world, particularly the Orthodox world, we rely way too much on the willingness of our courageous members to bear pain. Situations that don't need to be painful are kept that way or made that way as if somehow we are doing God a favor by torturing His people.
The way its supposed to work is that you do what you can to avoid pain then you endure what you can't avoid. An educator or leader of any kind who just allows the people to suffer and decries as failures those who break - what's the word for him or her? A tyrant perhaps. A crackpot.
Now the entire Jewish world is rarely ever one thing. And to me, non-observant Jews in the universities are part of the Jewish world. I'm not just saying that they are Jews but that we have something learn from them. On this topic, they occupy the higher ground for language instruction there is substantive and effective. So too, there are a few Mizrachi schools, like the Yeshiva of Flatbush that put proper focus on Hebrew language instruction.
And Rabbi Ari Shvt tells me that Rav Ovadia Yosef encouraged formal Hebrew instruction for olim. If only more frum people in this land would listen to him.
Judaism is the only religion I know of that requires people to live in a particular land. And since Hebrew is the language of that land, Hebrew instruction should be required in the schools as an adjunct to the mitzvah. And let us not fail to mention how expertise in Hebrew would aid Torah study and Tefillah. As we say in English, duh!
Or is all that too logical for a people that can be as illogical as any on the planet earth.
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