It’s getting dark here, and I don’t mean because the days are getting shorter. At least in my crowd, the WhatsApp flow is just sad. I was looking for a message earlier today when I found myself staring at an exchange I’d had earlier this morning with a dear friend.
Still hadn’t found the message I was looking for, though, and more or less not focusing, came across this one, that I’d not noticed before Yom Kippur. It had been sent to our synagogue community:
Hi, friends. If anyone has a short or long weapon [DG—i.e., pistol or rifle] and is not yet in the security group and wants to sign up for a round of guard duty during Yom Kippur, you can sign up [on this Google doc].
Toto, we’re definitely not in Los Angeles anymore.
Back to the exchange at the top. People are in a “mood” because of yesterday’s news—that Hezbollah drone that had been spotted by the IDF and followed by planes and helicopters—until it, well, disappeared.
When the drone reappeared, it was too late. It hit a dining room on an army base, killing four 19-year-old soldiers, leaving seven others in critical condition, and a total of 67 wounded.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are far from hermetically sealed. As much as we’re pounding Hezbollah, they’re still killing our soldiers and civilians. The meaning of the news that the US is sending 100 troops to man THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) batteries inside Israel is lost on very few people here. If we hit Iran, the assumption is, Iran will strike back.
And neither Israel nor the US are certain that we can protect ourselves.
Responding to the drone attack that took such a horrific toll, Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman said, “The IDF has full operational control over the incident.” I heard more than one person wonder aloud what it would like if the IDF didn’t have control.
Gallows humor.
After the attack, Herzi Halevi, the Chief of Staff, went to the base where the horrifying incident had taken place. In this IDF-released photo, you see him talking to the kids (and yes, I use that word advisedly—they are really kids, and if they lived in the US, they’d be sophomores). I couldn’t help but wonder what they were thinking listening to him, fully cognizant that they’re nowhere near the front, they’re even on an army base, and still, they’re sitting ducks.
I haven’t seen a full transcript of Halevi’s remarks, but multiple sites did report that he said, “We have to provide better protection.”
Ugh, yes. That would be a very good idea.
It’s precisely because this war could go on for a very, very long time that we cannot lose sight of the fact that the war is not all of life here. We have to win the war so we can exist; we exist, though, not because we love having an army, because we have a vision of Jewish life renewed, deepened, transformed.
Today and in coming weeks, we’re going to meet people doing incredible work for form an Israeli political center, we’ll meet an incomparably courageous Orthodox theologian who has a radically new idea of covenant (and some fascinating things to say about same-sex marriage), we’ll meet authors of some of the other books that have recently come out about October 7. (More info about some of these upcoming podcasts is below, at the bottom of this post.)
Today … we visit a subject we’ve mentioned many times before—the Hebrew language.
Learning a language is not easy, but as we all know, every language is an entry into a whole universe. Just as someone who doesn’t speak English couldn’t possibly “get” America or England or Australia the way that they can if they do speak English, so, too, much of Israel is beyond our grasp without Hebrew.
“Yeah, but I tried learning Hebrew, and I hated the process and it didn’t work.” We all know many, many people who say exactly that. And they’re not wrong—lots of the old techniques didn’t work, but post Covid and the rise of remote learning along with new techniques, there are many new options for learning Hebrew.
Today we meet one teacher who’s doing it all in a whole new way, with great success, and hear from one of her students.
New Year’s resolutions aren’t really a Jewish thing, but for those who have said to themselves, “one day, I’m gonna do it,” maybe now is the time?
There are of course many avenues for learning Hebrew, including learning it remotely, these days. But I’ve known Revital Zacharie since she was a student at Shalem College, and have thus taken a personal interest in her development of her program. In future posts, we’ll look at other options, too.
Revital is a tour guide and an experienced Hebrew teacher. She is the founder of Ivrit Club. She is passionate about helping people learn Hebrew in an enjoyable way that is also proven by research to be the most effective for language learning. Revital also speaks English, French and Spanish.
Gary Wexler is a student of Revital’s at Ivrit Club. He is the founder of The Global Jewish Communication Alliance and an Adjunct Professor at The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo. He was a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, teaching Creativity and Advertising, as well as Nonprofit Advocacy in the Masters in Communications Management program.
Prior to academia, Gary was a copywriter and creative director in major advertising agencies, producing award winning work for clients ranging from Apple to Coca Cola.
For those who might wish to follow up with Revital and Ivrit Club, there’s an option for a 30 minute trial session, and a summer program.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read. Today, we’re making the recording and the transcript accessible to all.
We're going to turn our attention today to a bright spot in Jewish life. And that bright spot in Jewish life is part of the story of Israel. It's part of the story of Zionism. It's the revitalization of the Hebrew language. It's actually not an exaggeration to say that in 1897, when Herzl gathered a couple of hundred people together in a hotel in Basel, you could have taken all of the Jews in the world who spoke Hebrew, all of the people in the world who spoke Hebrew and put them into what is today a medium-size hotel. And a lot of them probably would have had their own room. There was just virtually nobody on planet Earth who spoke Hebrew in any kind of meaningful way as a working language. And if you fast forward now, 120 something years, which is really not all that long when you think about it, there are nine, almost 10 million people in Israel who speak Hebrew, and there are millions of people across the world, in addition to them, who speak Hebrew.
I always find that when I walk into an Israeli bookstore, I feel like I'm in the presence of literally a miracle. Just meter after meter after meter after meter of books written in a language that 100 years ago, nobody spoke. And its great literature written in Hebrew. Its great literature written in other languages that's now translated into Hebrew. It's terrible fiction that's translated into Hebrew and terrible fiction that's written in Hebrew. It's scholarship, its poetry, it's everything.
And for a very long time, Jews, I think, have thought that there's just one way to learn Hebrew, and it wasn't very much fun. And the reason we're going to have the conversation that we're having today with two good friends, Revital Zacharie and Gary Wexler, is because Revital was actually once a student at Shalem College many years ago when I was working there, more full-time, and she and I connected then, and we totally accidentally reconnected in Israel not all that long ago. And I found that she is one of a cohort of new people, about whom I've known some, who are teaching Hebrew in a completely different way. The teaching of Hebrew as a language, as a living language, has been completely revitalized in the last number of years. And I thought it would be wonderful for our listeners, who I'm always encouraging to learn Hebrew because it gives you access to Israel in a way that nothing else can, to know that there's these new opportunities.
So, I asked Revital if she would come on the podcast and tell us about how Hebrew is being taught in general, and then how she herself is teaching Hebrew. Then she mentioned, well, I actually have a student. It might be fun to bring one of my students on and have them talk with us, too? I thought, great. She said, I have in mind a guy named Gary Wexler. I said, The one from LA? She said, yeah. I said, the one that I've known probably longer than you, Revital, have been alive? And yes, and so it goes. Gary and I have known each other for many decades. A dear friend, an incredible leader of the Jewish community in Los Angeles and beyond.
So, it's great to meet with two friends from all across the world. One of you is in the north of Israel. One of you is in the west of the United States. I'm here in Jerusalem. Thank you both for taking time. We're not going to post this right away, but I'll just say that we're at a difficult week in Israel with the loss of the six hostages. This won't go up for a few weeks until after that, but it's a terribly difficult, painful week in Israel, which makes it all more meaningful, I think, to talk about revitalization and rebirth of the Jewish people, of the Jewish state, of the Hebrew language. Thank you both.
Revital, let's start out by having you just, first of all, tell us a little bit about you. People don't know anything about you, so your story a little bit. And then how does somebody like you come to end up teaching Hebrew? It's not what I think you were planning to do when you were a student at Shalem. And once you tell us how you came to start talking about teaching Hebrew, tell us how the teaching of and the learning of Hebrew has changed so much in recent years.
RZ: Okay. So, I'm very happy to be here, Danny. Thank you for the invitation. And thank you, Gary, for joining to the mission. I am a tour guide in Israel, and I teach Hebrew for almost 10 years, I think. I really enjoy doing it in an alternative way, let's say. I love making connections between people. I love making a connection to the Jewish heritage, Jewish history, human history, and I love traveling also. So, I combined everything together and I created a Hebrew program that is really focused on speaking, exactly because what you said, because there are so many people that I met that told me, “Look, I've learned Hebrew for years, but it was so boring, and I still can't really talk the way I want to”. And I thought it's such a shame. My mother made Aliyah also from Paris, and I know this story of making Aliyah from my home and how important it is to feel at home in Israel and how Hebrew is a big part of feeling at home here. Even if you don't live in Israel, but if you want to feel a big connection to Israel and to the Jewish heritage, you have to learn Hebrew, to speak Hebrew. Maybe Gary can say more about that later as a Jew that lives in the United States, how many doors it opens to you, to Jewish life.
And also, as a student that didn't really like to study in the, as you said, the traditional way of studying of sitting in a classroom for hours and hours. I had to find my way of learning myself and teaching others. And I was very happy to see that many people really connected to this method and really got so much out of it and really got to improve their Hebrew significantly. I found out also many researchers that support this approach of learning by actually doing and not just learning theory and trying to memorize words again and again and again, but actually speaking and using them. And yes, this is what I do. I actually have today two different programs. One is on Zoom that people can do from wherever they are in the world. And we practice Hebrew conversations. Another one is in Israel, a traveling program that people who visit in Israel and they want to see their family or friends, and at the same time to really improve their Hebrew, we travel together, we speak Hebrew the whole day, and it's like an immersive into the Hebrew language that is both enjoyable and efficient at the same time.
Before we come back to exactly how you, and it's not just you, you have a staff now. This is a big project. It's not just Revital teaching, it's Revital and her students about how to teach and are all teaching. This is actually not entirely new. I first began to hear about it probably, I don't know, maybe six, seven years ago, there was what was called Ulpan Or here in Jerusalem, which was the first place that I heard about it, where people were coming and getting taken around. Then I think COVID changed a lot of it because a lot of people who had been in person couldn't come. So, they were instead of meeting in somewhere in Jerusalem, they were doing it over the Internet. But then once it was on the Internet, if it was from three blocks away, it could also be from 10,000 miles away. So, this is a kind of shift in general. Is it not? I want to talk a lot more about what you and your colleagues do in your company. But in general, this has been a change throughout the Jewish world of learning Hebrew, I think, right? Or is that not exactly right?
RZ: Definitely. And not only in Hebrew learning, but generally in language learning. Because actually in ancient times, the reason to learn a language was to learn the texts. This was the first goal, to be able to read the Bible or any other, Mesopotamian or Egyptian text. So, the focus was on grammar. But as people started to travel more, started to have business all over the world, and people needed the languages for other reasons. So, the focus of the language learning was also about being able to express yourself and not only on grammar. So, it's a change that happened in the whole world. And also, we feel it in Hebrew and in the Jewish world.
You mentioned before that there's a lot of research supporting the way that you're approaching this. Without getting into all the technicalities, because you know a lot about this that most of us wouldn't understand. But fundamentally, what is research showing about language acquisition as adults that we didn't use to understand?
RZ: So, basically, let's say the traditional way of learning a language is very focused on listening. The learning by doing method is really focused on making the student active, play games, do things, speak to real people. There was a research made, many researches, that was made about this language learning methods. It was proven that between 30% to 50% of the results were much better when students actually spoke and used the method of learning by doing and were not passive and only listening. Their memory of the words were much better, both to long term and short term. Their grammar was even better, even though they didn't learn the grammar, but their results were better, even on grammar. They made much less mistakes when they spoke. They had much more confidence when they spoke. Almost 50%, it's a lot. When you have only two hours to invest in your Hebrew, you make almost a double...
Return on your investment.
RZ: Yes. So, it's very important. And you know, it's more fun. For me, I cannot stay passive for hours. It's not me. I'm an active person. I need to be active. I think many people are like me. We have to be in movement. We have to feel alive. And part of the method is to leave people active, and it's very interactive.
Well, you actually have experience learning a language that way yourself, right? I mean, obviously, you grew up in Israel, so your Hebrew is native. But you mentioned before that your mom is from France, Paris, right? And you did not grow up speaking French at home, right? I mean, like most Israeli kids, you resisted at all costs having your mother teach you a language. But there came a certain point that you wanted to know French because you realized that every language opens up a whole world. So, you actually experience this. Tell us more about that.
RZ: Yes. Actually, as you said, I resisted to any other language. I wanted to be an Israeli, but my mother did something very smart. She sent me to a summer camp in France. I enjoyed so much this summer camp, even though I didn't speak more than three words. I didn't know anything, really. I came back from there and I said, “wow, Mom, I enjoyed much”. The experience was just amazing. I wanted to return there again and again. I went six summers to the Jewish summer camp in France. And in the end, I spoke very good French. And after that, I also realized that it's such an important thing for me. I wanted to invest even more. I went to Belgium and France, and I stayed there for a while because I really wanted to improve my French.
And actually, I started Ivrit Club at the beginning with French people because I felt it was so important for them. But yes, I could have start a whole small business of Ivrit Club in French just by going back again and again to France and speaking with people. And I've never spent an hour in a classroom, in a regular French classroom. And yes, I felt it on myself how efficient it was. That's why I decided to make something similar to my students.
So, Gary, let's come to you for a sec. You've been around the block. You've been involved in Jewish life for many decades. Hebrew has obviously always been something on your mind. So, give us a little bit of a sense of what you've done before, what worked, what didn't work, and what's been different about learning Hebrew with this new methodology that Revital is doing, but others are doing as well.
GW: So of course, I went to Hebrew school where I learned nothing, really. I learned to read, I learned to write, I learned “b’bayit”, and things like that. Actually, in high school in LA, I went to a public high school in a Jewish neighborhood where they taught Hebrew. I took it because I thought, well, I know Hebrew. I'll get an A in this. This was with the old habet ushma series that the teacher used. But it was the first time that I actually started learning Hebrew as a living language, and I learned a bit more. They were trying to be creative in those days. I don't want to tell people that this like was the late '60s when I was learning it.
Then I actually spent time in Israel. Never long, but I spent time on a kibbutz, and I learned more Hebrew there working. And then I actually worked in an ad agency in Tel Aviv one summer in my 20s, and I learned a lot more then. But I aside from that, the Hebrew was not extraordinary at that point. But then I began to get a lot of clients in Israel working with all these different Israeli nonprofits. And I thought, I want to start doing my work more in Hebrew. I want to understand more. And so, I went to a private ulpan, a one-on-one series, which actually improved my Hebrew quite a bit. I was able to speak more and to understand more.
But still not to the point where I was understanding what was going on television, where I was able to listen to the news, where I was able to pick up a newspaper. And still today, the newspaper is difficult for me, but to understand enough of what was going on. So, when the pandemic was over and I thought, I want to go back to Israel and spend some time. And I thought, what am I going to do? I thought, I'm going to improve my Hebrew. What am I going to do? This is what I'm going to do. So, I started looking being around for something that would be really interesting and a different way to be able to do this. And I found Revital.
So, I had gone through this ulpan system in Israel, and I thought, naturally, I'll go back to them. But what I found out was it was all online with recordings, and it wasn't going to be personal interaction. And I thought, I want personal interaction because I want to build relationships in Israel, too. And so, somebody said to me, when I was talking to all my friends in Israel, they said, well, you need to know about Revital. And I said, who's Revital? So, they introduced me to Revital, and she explained to me that she took people on tours in Hebrew. And the first thing she did was before anything, she said, speak to me. Let me assess your Hebrew. And I told her, I said, It's probably like at a medium level or whatever. She said, actually, you would do really fine on these tours. So, I came to Israel, and we met the first morning in Neve Tzedek, and she started taking me on this tour. There was another person on it as well, and I thought, oh, my God, I can actually do this.
And it just, first of all, Danny, we've never spoken English together. This is only the second time I've ever heard Revital speak English. The first time was in our prep call for this. So, it's like we've never had a word of English between us. And so, what I realized on the tours was not only was it fascinating, but I had to be in Hebrew for 6 to 8 hours the entire day with her. And doing that where you had no choice, you had to be able to learn the language.
I just have to tell you a really funny story. She takes me to the tunnels in Jerusalem, to the shilohah, and I'll never forget that day. Okay, I'm 70 years old, and she's taking me into these tunnels, bent down. I mean, I had been there when I was younger, up down and everything else. And I'm thinking to myself, this 70-year-old man is going to collapse in this tunnel, and she's going to have a death on her hands in here. And I think she thought she could sense what I was thinking. I wasn't going to say it because I was too embarrassed. So, she just kept talking to me and asking me questions and talking about life and all these things. And finally, I said to her, Revital, I know exactly what you're doing. I said, you're trying to keep me from collapsing in this tunnel.
RZ: Gary, it doesn't sound very fun like that when you describe it that way.
GW: It was a lot of fun. But it was like I realized at the end of that tunnel, I thought, okay, I can live in this language. I'm doing just fine here.
But there's a way in which this experience in Hebrew was a breakthrough, right? I mean, in a way that nothing else had been
GW: 100%. Okay, so let me talk about breakthroughs that I have had with Revital in her system that I don't think I could have with anything else. So, at the end of the two weeks of her touring me, I turned on the TV to listen to the news in Hebrew, which I didn't do because I knew I couldn't understand. And all of a sudden, I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God, I'm understanding the news in Hebrew. Speaking of that, Danny, let me tell you, even today or this week, this week. One of the things Revital had me do first was she had me get on text with her in Hebrew. I had to download Hebrew to be able to text in it because all of our back and forth had to be in Hebrew. I learned so much from having to text in Hebrew, not only just the back and forth, but the spelling, because it would show you when you were spelling wrong. And also because then she had me also download a translator, words I didn't know, I'd have to look up to them, spell them and use them in the texting. So, it began to really raise my level of Hebrew to the point, I just want to talk, you said this is a hard week. So, Saturday night, motzei Shabbat, I where my Channel 12 in Israel ring on my phone, and I got to look at it, and it identified who the hostages were that had been killed. And I read the whole article in Hebrew as to what had just come out, and I knew this, and I thought because of this, I am so deeply connected. I'm not waiting for CNN to tell me this. I'm able to actually be in touch with what's going on. Or yesterday, when Netanyahu gave his speech in Hebrew, I mean, I understood 98% of it. I thought, thank God for Revital and her system and what I've learned because it has connected me at such a visceral level to Israel and to the Jewish people and to what's going on, particularly during these days, that I'm able to read the Hebrew media and be able to understand what's happening and be informed as you are at the moment.
So, Revital, let's say somebody's hearing this and they say, okay, you know what? He's 70. He didn't collapse in the tunnel. I could survive this, too. I'm going to actually do this. They send you a text, they send you an email, they do whatever, they get in touch. What does it look like? What's the process? Let's say they say, I'm going to try this for six months. I'm going to really throw myself into this. They're not going to come to Israel right now because they've got work, they've got family, they've got commitments. So, we're not doing the touring around and you're not throwing them down any tunnels. But you're going to meet with them online. What are we talking about here? Are we talking about an hour a week, two hours a week? What are they going to actually do? Are they doing work between sessions? What's this process look, sound, and feel like?
RZ: So, first of all, it's really tailored to people's availability and needs and goals. Gary didn't mention it yet, but actually, he managed to do something quite amazing this year, he became a professor in Israel in Hebrew. This was his goal. He came to me, I think, three years ago with this goal, I want to teach in Hebrew in the college, and he's actually doing it today. So, we tailored a program for him. We made him make his sessions and his lectures in Hebrew so he can feel more comfortable teaching it in Hebrew, and the teacher would correct his mistakes, will give him more important vocabulary for him. I think that Gary, maybe you can I can say about that also from your side, but I think that was very helpful.
The same we do with every student. I have a small team of teachers, and we sit together, we plan a program for each student individually. We think what are the subjects that can be interesting for him to speak about, what are the grammar rules that he doesn't really know yet, and how many hours he has to invest in his Hebrew now. We just tailor something for him that usually combines, of course, the speaking classes, and in between the lessons, we have some repetition on different vocabulary and stuff like that. This is generally the method.
So, when somebody signs up, typically, I mean, obviously everybody's different, but What's average? The typical person does how many hours a week with you and your team?
RZ: Two hours. This is usually what I say as a minimum to invest two hours a week in your Hebrew because having a whole week in between sessions is less efficient, let's say. For me, I say the minimum is twice a week for 45 minutes each time. I also want to mention that, of course, depends on the level of the students, but I really encourage students to watch Hebrew videos in between the sessions. In each session or lesson, the students speak about a specific subject or topic that they watched a video before the class. I think Gary also got used to watch the news in Hebrew because he had small pieces of it through the year that he did it with a teacher, guided, that he translated the words that he didn't know, and then he enriches his vocabulary.
GW: Let me jump in here. You had me also watching television series in Hebrew. And what I learned from watching the television in Hebrew, also because there's the words on the screen, the subtitles underneath the screen in Hebrew. So, it gave me a chance, when I didn't understand something, because you're reading it as well as listening to it, to stop it and look at the word that I don't know and look it up and write it down. But the everyday language that I learned from watching Israeli television and then having to talk about it afterwards in my Hebrew session has been extraordinary.
And it sounds like it's created a connection between you and this country that is just different than anything you felt before, even though I've known you forever and you've been devoted to this country forever. But it sounds like it's just taken your level of engagement, involvement, and feeling for what's going on here to a whole different place.
GW: So, let me I'll talk about that for a second. It's very emotional as you ask me this. I have been to Israel. Okay, I don't want to brag, but I've been to Israel more than 60 times because of my work and because of my interest and involvement. What it is for me now, being a fluent Hebrew speaker, is a completely different experience than it's ever been before. You think you know the place because you have been there so often and because you've been involved and engaged in things. But to be able to be there now, to hear the news, to listen to the conversations in restaurants around me, to have the confidence to know that I can navigate absolutely any situation in anything. But there's something else. There is the Jewish aspect of this. When you learn the language to the level that it's been taught to me, you learn expressions like, “me'agra'rama la bira amikta”, which is actually Talmudic and it’s Aramaic, meaning from a high roof to a hole in the ground when you're speaking about something. And realize this is Talmudic. These everyday expressions are deeply Jewish in some way. They carry a Jewish soul in them.
When did I learn this expression? I was at dinner in Tel Aviv with a friend of mine who's a kibbutznik, who is telling me how she does not feel Jewish, but she feels Israeli. And I think this was all before October 7th. I think a lot of that has changed. But at that time, the typical thing I'm proud is being a kibbutznik is Israeli. I don't know how Jewish I'm feeling. And then she throws out that expression in the middle of a conversation. And I look at her and I say, you’re telling me you're not very Jewish, and you're describing your life in Talmudic terms.
So, I began to realize, we as Americans like to judge Israeli's Jewishness based on our standards. You don't realize that living your life in Hebrew and speaking the language is a daily Jewish expression and identity in a way that we don't get in America. So, it opened up a deeper understanding to me about Israelis and their relationship to Judaism and their culture that even they may not be that conscious of, but how deeply Jewish it all is. So that was a real learning.
I have to tell you one other funny story. So, the day that classes are beginning last spring that I'm teaching, the first time I'm going to be teaching in Hebrew, I'm teaching at the Academic College of Tel Aviv Yafo.
Is this by Zoom or in person?
GW: No, in person.
RZ: In Hebrew.
In Hebrew.
GW: So, the person that Revital had me working with for this, Inbal, who is incredible. Anyway, Inbal is rehearsing with me. I came to Israel a month before classes begin because I wanted to be in Hebrew every single day and working extraordinarily with Inbal to get myself ready for all this. So, she's preparing me, and she's having me give her my lessons in Hebrew and everything else, and I'm doing it all. And so, the day that class begins, I'm walking. It's night class. I'm walking through Tel Aviv, and I am practically having a nervous breakdown, thinking to myself, what makes me think that I can possibly be doing this? I am kidding myself. This is going to be embarrassing. I get to the classroom, and I start in 10 minutes into it. I think to myself, I'm actually doing this. This is actually working. I am capable because of Revital's whole program and the way she's approached this of actually doing this. And what I also learned was there's words you think you don't know. All of a sudden, all the stuff just starts flowing out of my mouth. And I'm thinking to myself, if you asked me five minutes ago, did I know this? I'd say no. But it's like, this is how the methodology works. It just came out and came back and just flowed right out of me.
Yeah, it's I'm finding it a very moving thing to listen to. It's bringing back memories of my own Aliyah. I spoke Hebrew when we came here because I'd been here for a few years as a kid, but my wife didn't really, and my kids certainly didn't. And sort of watching them begin to get the language and embrace the language and so forth. It's just bringing back a lot of those memories. It's very powerful.
And I want to just take this to where we are as a Jewish people and as a Jewish state now. We're in a history-making moment here. We don't know what this is going to look like five years from now. It could be the beginning of a really glorious period. It could be the beginning of something very, very bad. None of us really knows. But it's clear that this is different than anything we, as Jewish people, have ever experienced before. And there's lots of people all across the world who are hanging on Israeli news and Israeli updates and Israeli websites, even if they're in English or French or whatever they're in, in a way that they didn't used to.
The reason I wanted to have both of you on now was to say, we got to listen to Bialik here. And one line of Bialik only, which is that he said, “doing anything in translation is like kissing the bride through the veil”. Yeah, it's a kiss. It's a kiss. But it's not the kiss that people dream of. You lose something every time it's in translation. And of course, if you're not a native speaker, you're not going to get 100%. But there is something about hearing the Israeli news in Hebrew that is fundamentally different than hearing the best update from any of the many excellent websites that there are in English. They just say different things, and they say it in different kinds of ways.
And we've been, over the course of the years that we've been doing Israel from the Inside, begging people to understand that Hebrew, I'm not going to say fluency, but Hebrew comfort is just an undeniably important part of being connected to this country. And knowing the work that Revital is doing and knowing the experience that you have had and knowing this pivotal moment in Jewish history that we're all in, felt to me like this moment to bring you both on and to say to people, it's just not too late.
Gary's in his 70s. There's probably people older than Gary who are studying with you, Revital, and I'm sure there's people who are way younger than Gary and me studying with you. It's not too late. And this is the moment when you can make your own life be part of the life of this country by beginning to experience it and its news in an unmediated way. And obviously, we have Revital on today, but she would be the first to tell you that there's lots of people all over the country, doing lots of creative things in Israel. But this is the time to give learning Hebrew another chance.
This is a control alt delete moment for the State of Israel. It's a control, alt, delete moment for the Jewish people. We are rethinking everything. And many of us are rethinking our assumptions about Jewish history, about American Jewish life, about Zionist life. We're all thinking very deeply. And I wanted to suggest to our listeners and our readers that this is also a moment for rethinking my engagement with Hebrew. We can really do this. We can all learn this. We're not going to become fluent tomorrow, and we may not become native Israeli speakers as long as we live, but we can take ourselves from wherever we are to a degree of much greater, not only fluency, but of much greater, I would say, having our finger on the pulse or feeling the breath, feeling the air, feeling the breeze, having that real genuine kiss in a way that we can't when it's mediated by translation.
It felt to me that at a moment like this in Jewish history and in Israeli history, when so much seems to be dark, there is moment of light here to say, I want to make that story my story. I want access to that people in an unmediated way. I want to be part of this telling the story and learning the story, the state of the Jewish people, in a way that I never thought that I could before.
And so, Gary, for the story that you’ve told about how successful it's been with you and how powerful it's been with you. And Revital, for doing this, I guess, in your third language, not your first language, not your second language, but your third language. Highly impressive, I must say. But for also sharing with us the work that you your team do, and for inspiring us about the possibility of learning this language in a way that we never did before. My thanks to both of you. And I'm deeply grateful to both of you for taking the time and telling your story and for giving people the inspiration to make the Hebrew language their language, too. So, thank you guys very, very much.
RZ: Thank you, Danny.
GW: Thank you. We should see better days. Thank you.
Amen.
RZ: Amen.Thank you very much.
Music credits: Medieval poem by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gvirol. Melody and performance by Shaked Jehuda and Eyal Gesundheit. Production by Eyal Gesundheit. To view a video of their performance, see this YouTube:
In Israel, there’s a phrase much used this time of the year, אחרי החגים. Acharei Ha-Chagim. “After the holidays.” Nothing much happens here between now and the end of the holidays (Simchat Torah, its own unbearable anniversary), so as is true every year, we’ll be on a reduced posting schedule, too.
Later this week, before Sukkot, we will share two podcasts. One, with Revital Zacharie and Gary Wexler, is about a quiet revolution taking place in the world of learning Hebrew—for those who’re thinking of perhaps making that this year’s project. The second, in our series on people doing extraordinary things to transform Israeli society, is with Polly Bronstein, Founder and CEO of “The One Hundred Initiative,” designed to create a political center in Israel.
In coming weeks, we have, among others, podcasts coming with
RABBI IRVING (YITZ) GREENBERG, one of the most daring and insightful Orthodox rabbis and theologians of our era, who nows lives in Jerusalem and who will be sharing thoughts on his newly released book, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism.
LEE YARON, a reporter for Haaretz, speaks with us about her new book about the events of October 7, a book that’s different in approach from many of the others, 10/7: 100 Human Stories
DANI STEINER — Dani is a veteran Israeli educator who has also done extensive research on the very, very early Israeli “shelichim” (emissaries, like today’s Shin Shin’im) to the States. Turns out that Louis Brandeis’ Zionism, Ben-Gurion’s political acumen and much more emerged from this.
AVIVA KLOMPASS AND DYONNA GINSBURG— Many people have spoken about Israelis’ resilience during this war. What is its source. In her new book, Stand-Up Nation: Israeli Resilience in the Wake of Disaster, Aviva Klompass (and Dyonna Ginsburg (who has been on our podcast in the past), who the book’s forward) point a long-standing Israeli tradition of helping other countries that now came home to roost in the best possible way.
ARIEL LEVINSON—What in the world is a “secular yeshiva”? Ariel should know, since he founded one. He explains how, having grown up in the religious world, he came to create such a place of learning, and what he hopes it will do for Israeli society.
AVI DABUSH—There’s a secular yeshiva and a new rabbinic ordination program for “training a diverse group of visionary Israeli leaders to advance a vibrant, pluralistic, values-based Judaism.” We hear from Avi Dabush about the program, which he just completed.
And more …
"This isn't your father's Ulpan anymore" ... a quiet revolution in how people are teaching—and learning—Hebrew