When they ask about… learning Hebrew

The shapes are difficult, the sounds foreign and its relevance variable, depending on how and where one lives one’s Jewish life.

At the very same time, the shapes are imbued with significance, the sounds are that of lashon kodesh (the holy tongue) and its relevance is such that it serves as the gateway to a full expression of Jewish life, however one understands this – spiritually, culturally, intellectually and practically.

Learning a foreign language, any foreign language, is difficult. It requires years of application to develop ease and fluency, ideally begun from a young age. Knowing more than one language makes it easier to learn another and there are certainly people, polyglots, who demonstrate particular aptitude in the acquisition of languages.

For most of us, it’s a hard slog. And if your native tongue is English – the dominant lingua franca (common language) in an increasingly global world – the need and incentive to learn another language are minimal. It's little wonder that the number of students graduating from the Australian school system with a second language is woefully low.

Why then, when they ask if they have to learn Hebrew, should a parent answer with an unequivocal ‘yes’?

There are a myriad of reasons for this. The starting point is that Hebrew is the fundamental building block of a Jewish life and, interestingly, a parent’s obligation.

In what is arguably Judaism’s central prayer, the Shema (Hear Israel) with the Vehavata (And you shall love), the instruction to love God with all one’s heart, soul and might is immediately followed by the injunction to take these words to heart, and to impress them on and talk about them with one’s children (Devarim/Deuteronomy). Here the words themselves (dvarim) and the instructions (mitzvot) are intermingled. The implication is clear: to learn about the nature and content of Torah, one must have the words to do so.

There is no study of Torah itself, no following it in shul, no participation in Jewish rituals – prayer, welcoming in Shabbat, immersing in a seder, becoming bnei mitzvah, aliya to Torah, marrying Jewishly, burying Jewishly, the list goes on – without Hebrew. Raising our children to be literate, historically boys more so than girls, has been an expectation of parents and communities for more than 2,000 years.

Another reason for saying yes to learning Hebrew, the spoken everyday contemporary form, is to have some degree of access to Israeli people, society and culture. Hebrew is the only ancient language to have been revived into a living one. Not spoken on the streets for more than two and half millennia, it re-emerged initially as a far-fetched idea for the future Jewish state.

Eliezer Ben Yehuda insisted upon it and is credited with being pivotal to its actualisation through famously raising his child in Hebrew when no one else spoke it and eventually completing a 17-volume dictionary. Theodor Herzl, on the other hand, opposed it: ‘How do you buy a train ticket in Hebrew?’ he asked.

With almost half of the worldwide Jewry now living in Israel, if we want to be part of the story experientially, whether from afar or up close, we need Hebrew proficiency. The more, the better.

The list of reasons for Hebrew or Ivrit (even the choice of word is making a statement here) goes on. It enables us to communicate with Jews from other countries in our common language. It sharpens our minds. It illuminates. The Hebrew language, its words and letters, do not just signify concepts, they are concepts in and of themselves.

One famous example of this is the Hebrew word for human, adam, which is linked linguistically to adamah (earth), dam (blood) and a-dameh (I will be like You). Hence we derive that to be human is to be a bodily creature of blood and earth, but also to aspire to resemble whatever of Hashem’s attributes lie within our limited reach. This insight is accessible only in the original language.

According to the Kabbalists, the world came into being through God’s use of the Hebrew language and bet was given the honour of being the first letter of the Torah (bereshit, in the beginning). This is the subject of a beautiful story in which each letter comes before God and argues for why it should be given primacy of place.

Hebrew is a difficult language to learn. Resolving to teach our children is the first commitment. Then there are decisions to be made about how we will go about this: will we teach it ourselves as parents? Send them to a Jewish day school or Hebrew school? Seek private tutors or go online? How much Hebrew constitutes fulfilment? Reading? Speaking? Writing? Basics or fluency?

In Mishlei/Proverbs we are told we should educate a young person according to their way (or in the way that they should go). Our decisions must be sensitive to our own child’s nature, ability and context. At the same time, we are aware that this decision, as with so many we make as parents, impacts our children’s future directions and choices.

Before we were known as the Israelites or even later as the Jews, we were known as the Hebrews, Ivrim. Avraham ha’Ivri (Abraham the Hebrew) is the first of our people. When Yonah is asked his identity by the sailors on the stormy sea, the account of which we read on Yom Kippur, he answers Ivri anochi (a Hebrew am I, note the word order).

Ivrit, Ivrim, Ivri, la’avor – to be a Hebrew, to speak Hebrew, to root oneself in Hebrew is literally to connect with the other side. It is to claim difference and distinctiveness. It is to assert identity.