... and yes, I have been cooking.
The reason is that we're having guests, jblogger guests. That's right! tnspr569 will, G-d willing, be here for Shabbat, with a friend. How he gave himself a name like that.... maybe I should ask him. We only know each other from jblogging. He saw my post about the stuffed freezer and volunteered to help empty it. So I did cook with a few things that have to go before Pesach. Let's see if he can guess which tasty dishes!
There are all sorts of special "activities" here this Shabbat. I hope his Hebrew is up to par for participating. It's outrageous that graduates of Jewish Education aren't totally fluent in Hebrew. After three years of high school Spanish, I could converse fairly fluently, and I'm not good at languages. Israeli students, who get much less English than the American kids' Hebrew studies, are able to converse more easily in English. I teach the lowest level in my high school, and I've tested the higher level in others.
I'm totally convinced that it is intentional. American Jewish parents, even the religious ones, do not want their children to be fluent and comfortable in Hebrew! The more fluent and comfortable one is, the more one feels at home in Israel. That is something that American Jewish parents don't want. They want their kids to feel like tourists, condescending tourists.
For the past few decades, more and more American Jewish high school graduates have been coming for a year in Israel, but they don't spend it with Israelis. They don't have to function in Hebrew. They live in English-speaking ghettos. The programs used to be in Har Nof, Jerusalem, and now many are in the Ramat Beit Shemesh area. Conversational Hebrew and Religious Textual Studies in Hebrew are not required elements in their curriculum.
Reports from the states say that even Orthodox Rabbinic students are studying from translated texts. It's predigested, second-hand knowledge.
I didn't plan on ranting about the state of American Jewry and their Hebrew knowledge, but just like chulent, you throw in the ingredients, and it comes out how it wants to come out.
I hope that I'm pleasantly surprised by tnspr569 .
6 comments:
enjoy your jblogger shabbos :)
thanks m'dear
how fun to have a blogging friend over for dinner!
Well, we know each other only via the blogs, and he's younger than our kids, of course. And Shabbat by us is 25 hours.
and we had a wonderful time!
I don't know if I buy the argument that American Jews don't want their kids to be fluent in Hebrew.
Now it may be that I come from a different sort of household. My parents met in the Peace Corps and are both fluent in Spanish and English.
My father took college level Hebrew as did I.
The biggest problem I see is that many do not spend enough time using their Hebrew. It is too easy to get by without it.
Studying Hebrew as a language will give better knowledge than what the day school graduates have.
Yes, it's easy to function on a superficial level in English in Israel, but then one never truly becomes part of the country.
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