Illiterate Literacy
The Double-Edged Sword of the Holy Language
One of the educational crimes our community has committed against itself is diligently training our children to read Hebrew without understanding what they’re reading.
A Pew study from 2013 reported that while half (52%) of American Jews surveyed responded that they were familiar with the Hebrew alphabet, only 13% said they understood most or all of what they read.
Given that 20% of American Jews are “shul-goers” (ie attend a synagogue service at least once a month), it is safe to say that about half a million American Jews are spending significant amounts of time, on a regular basis, saying words in an ancient language they don’t comprehend. They do so with the hope that this activity of articulating Hebrew words possesses enough mystical and religious significance to justify their investment of time, energy and expectations.1
I can personally relate (i.e. commiserate) with this experience. I’m an American-born Jew who went to shul as a child catching less than ⅓ of the words I read (after a decade of day school education, mind you). We must admit, though, that this is objectively odd behavior. Can you imagine Chinese American children being guilted and forced by their parents to learn to sound out Chinese characters, for hours every week, at a great expense, without them ever really knowing what they’re saying, and being somehow complacent with the outcome of functional illiteracy? I can’t. Why would otherwise rational parents subject their children to such a relatively pointless form of torture?
In normal written language acquisition, children practice by reading words, sentences, paragraphs and books that employ vocabularies that they possess, for the most part, in spoken form. This allows them to use context clues as they sound out and string together the words they’re trying to read. Compare this with how we teach Hebrew in the Diaspora, where we nearly completely unlink the practice of reading from meaning.
Let’s allow ourselves to ask a fairly basic question:
What’s the point of language if not to convey meaning?
And the more aggressive form of the same question:
By perpetuating the practice of meaningless reading are we not tacitly signaling to our children that Judaism is not meant to be understood?
Welcome to a new series called “Language of Life,” here at theexpressionoflife.com, fondly known as “XL.”
XL was named “the expression of life” based on a tradition that the Hebrew language, as used in the Torah, is “the Holy Language - לשון הקודש” — God’s way of communicating with humankind. Since God created human beings, our planet and the universe which we inhabit, and all of the dynamics of human life, it stands to reason that if He were to create a language, its vocabulary and grammar would perfectly mirror the the world it is describing. This is why we will be referring to it as the “Language of Life.”
In this series, we will explore the far-reaching implications of this notion.
We will begin with a partial justification for why Diaspora Jews insist on training their children to possess only a nominal familiarity with Hebrew, and a call to action to “fight the good fight” of teaching people to actually understand what they are reading.
We will demonstrate how the Hebrew alphabet (“Aleph Bet”) is simultaneously pictographic (like Chinese), phonetic (like English), and numeric (like Arabic numerals).
We will suggest how Hebrew’s unique system of vowels helped ancient Israelites rapidly become the most literate people in the ancient world.
We will introduce readers to the elegant system of roots that allow readers to put small vocabularies to work on a massive body of Hebrew text by recognizing different permutations of the same 3-letter roots, and how these interconnected roots rewire the brains of those familiar with them to understand deep conceptual connections.
We will discuss the Torah’s unique and mysterious notion of past, present and future tenses, and their intimate connection with God’s Ineffable Name.
Lastly, we will wade into the deep waters of the Torah’s multi-layered form of communication known as “Pardes” or “Paradise.”
Have no fear. XL is not becoming a weekly column on Hebrew grammar. The ideas you will learn in this series can change your life if you really take them in.
If we understand that every language is a crystallization of a culture, and every culture is a fabric of beliefs and values, then immersion in a new language can certainly challenge and evolve our beliefs — one notion at a time.
Please give me feedback by posting questions or your insights in the comments, “Liking” when you feel so moved, and sharing the posts you think others can gain from.
Lastly, I know some people joke that “XL” stands for “Extra Long” 🤪 I’m consciously going to try to break down these lessons into smaller, more digestible little chunks. Please give me feedback on the format as well!
I’m looking forward to going on this journey with you.
I’m saying this a bit harshly here to make a point. In the next post, I will explain why this emphasis on “just saying the words” is better than not saying any words at all, while trying to inspire readers to invest in their Hebrew fluency and understanding.
I'm glad I read to the end!
And interested
In the beginning I was thinking, well, historically, the system of Hebrew letters was used for numeracy also, and phonetically to 1. write the language spoken every day (yiddish, ladino, judeo Arabic) 2. to read out loud from the Torah/nach during services, and recite prayers 3. read rabbinic sources including from other countries 4. and the Talmud.
So being able to just read sounds out loud was an okay foundation for all of the above. But it's only a basement, not the whole house, so to speak.
I remember being kind of shocked and appalled that one of my siblings who went to a more right-wing day school than I had still lacked some basic grasp of the language in early high school and was frustrated in shul. I mean, when I did not understand stuff I looked at the English?
But there was some kind of mental block / learning difference with foreign languages including Hebrew (this person was very good at English language everything).
I never really considered that different people need different approaches--for me Middle School covered how to break down those really big biblical verbs, and how to use dictionaries for Hebrew and Aramaic when you're not sure of the root.
Are there different approaches to deeper literacy/grammar/ understanding?
What a great resource—just subscribed to 'The Expression of Life".
I'm Christian, not Jewish, but I've always wanted to learn Hebrew, to help reading and understanding the Bible. You've already taught me two Jewish phrases-—
Lashon HaKodesh לשון הקודש and
Pardes פרד״ס - I knew about the
four levels of Torah interpretation, but didn't know what it was called.
Really looking forward to the next lesson!