Creative writing

Everyone who ever learns the meaning of the rhythm and the structure of the Hebrew language knows how crucial pronunciation is in the Hebrew language and in understanding the complete sentence. 

"Just a second, he said Aleph with a kamatz or tzerei (two of the Hebrew vowel sounds)?"

"He said that his daughter has the colour Adom (red) or Ademet (rubella)?"

Also we, as Hebrew teachers, often encounter things that surprise us in their wisdom and simplicity. Furthermore, sometimes we even surprise ourselves. It was not long ago that a revelation surprised me and changed the way I viewed teaching the Hebrew language. 

It began when I paid attention to the fact that on the one hand we tell students how simple Hebrew is and yet on the other hand we enthuse about the brilliance of the language and its depth. Truthfully, who else apart from us Hebrew teachers can really see this "simplicity" which causes so many of you to run from all your previous Hebrew classes as if someone had let a bear into the room! Never had I thought about this in depth until a student, a very special one, searched for the "soul" of the Hebrew language. "Soul, what soul", I thought. "Hebrew is pure, pure mathematics, sublime beauty, but a soul? Are you going to search algebra also to find this soul?"

The search for a soul puzzled me, but honestly, if we stop for a moment and think about this, there is a soul. There are ideas. There is a wonderful world of culture, wisdom and philosophy that can be found within the simple mechanics of the roots and the rhythms of the language. 

So what did I discover this week? Why am I so excited? Simply, I explained to her the significance of the structures of the language. I explained the correct verb conjugations and "Pa'al" the simple verb, "Pial" the intensive verb and "Hifil" the causative verb. "Simply", I said, "pure mechanics". But this was just the beginning (I said she was a special student). She immediately asked me to show her why "L'lamed", to teach, was not in Hifil. 

What could I say, it was an excellent question! And so I took a moment to think. The problem was that in the same moment I was in the middle of a class, midsentence and that question hung in the air, "really why?" I wasn't able to take enough time to think about this and so, my mouth begun to speak before I could think about what I was going to say: "You know when you are learning for a very hard test with friends and you ask your friend to pay attention to what you are teaching him; why do we do this? Because teaching is in its essence intensive learning- it is a two way process."

SCORE!

What was most beautiful was the journey that that question took us on and the thoughts that it inspired. Did I not say that Hebrew is a simple and brilliant language?

Until the next blog,

Best wishes,

Osnat