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Aug. 16, 2013
How to keep Hebrew alive
Day school programs help Jews gain language, religious fluency.
VICKY TOBIANAH AND BASYA LAYE
It doesn’t get simpler than ordering a coffee in Israel, but sometimes a simple three-word sentence is difficult to master for some Canadians – even ones that have been studying Ivrit (Hebrew) throughout their lives.
“My Hebrew was tragically minimally functional,” said Meir Balofsky, 36, who went through the Toronto Jewish day school system and taught at day schools in Toronto for four years before making aliyah. “Like any language taught at any school, it’s a very textbook language, it’s not something people use, so we weren’t taught a useful vocabulary.”
He’s entering his 10th year as the director of informal education of the Israel Experience program at Bar-Ilan University, and has worked with nearly 600 North American students who have come to Bar-Ilan for the one-year program. He said he would rate their Hebrew as “functional-competent to pathetic” but better if they have an Israeli parent or some other Hebrew context outside the classroom.
“I can’t tell you how many times my former students have visited me in Israel and told me that they can barely order a coffee,” said Balofsky.
He said the reason is because in most Jewish day schools, Hebrew is taught just like any other subject. “How many times do you study for a math test and then forget everything you learnt the next day,” he said. “It’s the same thing.”
About 50 percent of students at the Anne and Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (CHAT) Kimel campus are in the second out of two levels for Judaic subjects (called intermediate classes, formerly referred to as applied). This option only became available in the 1990s. Prior to that, all students were placed in “academic” Judaic courses. Though CHAT, like many other Jewish day schools across North America, maintains that the students graduate fluent in Hebrew, that’s often not the case.
“It’s a phenomenon going on all around world,” said Dr. Martin Lockshin, a humanities and Hebrew professor at York University in Toronto. “There’s a de-emphasis on foreign languages, particularly in English-speaking countries. People feel that if they can speak English, they can thrive and survive anywhere in the world and so there’s no reason to learn another language well.”
He’s also involved with York University’s teacher education program, which trains teachers for careers as Jewish educators. One of their main challenges is producing teachers that have Hebrew fluency, he said.
According to the 2006 Educators in Jewish Schools study conducted by the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA), half of the administrators reported that hiring capable Judaic studies teachers was difficult. The study interviewed 1,546 educators and 145 administrators from day schools in North America.
“It’s no question that a graduate of a Jewish high school who came to York 20 years ago had much better Hebrew skills than a graduate who comes here now,” said Lockshin.
Professionals like Lockshin say it’s time for a dramatic change in Hebrew education in Jewish day schools. That’s what NETA, a new Hebrew language educational program for students in grades 6-12, aims to do. It creates curriculum and learning materials for students and educators, provides teachers with professional development to enhance their language-teaching skills and aims to create specific standards by which to measure Hebrew language acquisition.
Prior to its foundation, it conducted a study of Hebrew instruction in 14 Jewish day schools in the United States. The study found that the majority of students in grades 7-12 achieved a beginner or advanced-beginner score in Hebrew. It also found that only a small minority of Hebrew teachers had any formal training in second language teaching or in Hebrew language teaching.
As a result of the study, the Avi Chai Foundation founded NETA as a pilot project in 12 schools. This year, it is available in more than 100 schools in the United States, Canada and around the world, including Vancouver’s King David High School and Richmond Jewish Day School.
“We started it because of the worrisome situation in North America,” said Hilla Kobliner, who worked in Jewish educational instruction for 12 years before becoming the director of NETA.
“At first, we though maybe the problem was the material,” she said. “Then we realized that even if we write interesting and structured material, it won’t solve the problem since the majority of teachers had never learned how to teach Hebrew as a second language. Since then, we have turned to mostly working with the teachers.”
So far, she’s found that teachers are very open to learning about the program. “The problem, and what continues to be the problem, is that we can’t ask principals to send teachers to retrain. It’s a daily struggle.”
Abba Brodt, principal at RJDS, said the school implemented NETA for grades 6 and 7 last year. “I had a chance to meet with a NETA consultant at the Federation-sponsored community professional development day in February 2012, and attended a meeting about NETA with other heads of Judaic studies and Ivrit from the other schools in town. I came away very impressed with the program’s structure and delivery; I believed that it could transform how our children experience learning Ivrit.”
Specifically, Brodt explained, “At RJDS, we stop teaching the Hebrew-language TaL AM program after Grade 4. I was looking for a comprehensive upper-grades Ivrit curriculum that would take our students to the next level in how they a) spoke Hebrew and b) understood and related to modern Israel.”
Brodt said that the school immediately began the teacher retraining process. “Once we signed with NETA, things moved quickly. Our upper-grades Hebrew teacher, Morah Riki Oirechmann, was selected as the school’s NETA coordinator and lead teacher, and we sent her to a one-week NETA seminar in Boston in the summer of 2012 to immerse herself in the NETA methodology and philosophy. And we began using NETA as our curricular platform for grades 6 and 7 in the 2012-2013 school year. Our students have really responded well to NETA, and Hebrew classes have become really exciting for them.”
He continued, “There have been many benefits of adopting NETA for our upper grades. 1) the curriculum specifies clear goals and measures of achievement, and is accompanied by standardized tests written by the NETA curriculum development team – we get a clear sense of how are students are progressing; 2) the lessons themselves are interesting to the students – they are centred on themes of interest to [youth], ranging from computers and sports to friendship and freedom; 3) it has offered a strong platform for native Hebrew-speaking students (i.e. Israeli students) in which to study; and 4) it serves as a terrific bridge to King David High School, which also uses NETA – as more and more of our students go on to KDHS [where NETA is also in use], they are able to enter life in the high school with a stronger sense of mastery of Hebrew.”
Alex Monchamp, deputy head of school at KDHS, agreed. “The NETA program creates solid sequential learning across the grades and allows our students to develop their Hebrew fluency based on their abilities,” he told the Independent. “The NETA program, with its interactive, multi-media components, engages our students and helps them develop the confidence to express themselves in Hebrew. Over the past seven years that we have used NETA, our students graduate with a strong foundation in Hebrew and connection to Israeli culture, which is vital as so many travel to Israel for school or a gap year.”
There are other factors, however, that could impact the future of Hebrew literacy in the Diaspora, including rising tuition costs and decreasing enrolment in some cities. Based on the 2012-2013 census of enrolment conducted by the Avi Chai Foundation, the Conservative movement lost almost four percent of students this year, while Reform day schools lost almost five percent of students. For the Orthodox sector, enrolment dropped by just 0.1 percent. While the numbers may not seem like much, according to an analysis conducted by the Jewish Daily Forward last year, looking at the bigger picture, the numbers are painting a picture of Jewish day school enrolment decreasing sharply. They note that the Schechter Network of Conservative Judaism has lost 20 schools, and 35 percent of enrolment since the 1990s.
If the numbers continue declining – a fact to which the trend points – then the number of people who speak fluent Hebrew will decrease as well, especially since (depending on the school) the majority of graduates don’t leave school with a working knowledge of spoken Hebrew.
Incorporating Judaism into the home may not be enough to ensure the survival of Jewish traditions – after all, serious study of Jewish texts and traditions often requires a working knowledge of the Hebrew language. In order to do this, Hebrew must be made a priority in day schools, stressed Kobliner, especially among educators themselves.
“We need to change the thinking, to make Hebrew a serious subject with high standards,” she said. “Schools should demand serious work from Hebrew teachers. Principals search hard for better English and math teachers but they don’t look as seriously for Hebrew teachers.
“We realized that we have to wake up or else, in a few years, there won’t be anyone who will understand Hebrew texts.”
That’s what worries Lockshin as he works with student teachers. “I just don’t buy into the theory that people can acquire a sophisticated understanding of Judaism without mastering the Hebrew language,” he said.
This problem isn’t unique to the Jewish community. In fact, many communities lose their native tongue as fluency decreases in younger generations. It’s a problem that faces many immigrant groups, as new generations focus on learning the language of the land rather than their traditional ethnic or religious language.
“It’s typical among immigrant groups for a language to become less useful over time,” said Sheila Embleton, distinguished research professor of linguistics at York University. “If the language is just learned in an artificial setting, like a school, and students don’t use it in their daily lives, it loses meaning until people stop learning it altogether.”
To prevent that from happening to Hebrew, Lockshin says educational professionals need to revive the language in day schools. “People who care about this have to keep making noise and perhaps those in charge of the educational institutions will come around to understanding the importance of this,” he said.
Vicky Tobianah is a freelance writer and editor based in Toronto and a recent McGill University graduate. Connect with her on Twitter, @vicktob, or by e-mail to [email protected].
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