Words that Speak to Your Psyche

The Mystery of How Hebrew Speaks to Your Subconscious

We opened this new series on the language of the Torah with the disconcerting reality that we’ve trained generations of young Jews to feel complacent with a mechanical reading of Hebrew that is largely devoid of understanding of what they are saying.

Picture the many proud Jewish parents and grandparents whom you’ve witnessed beaming at their children and grandchildren at their bar- and bat-mitzvah as they read out loud from the Siddur and Torah scroll, despite the fact that they could not translate the vast majority of what they just read.

It’s certainly strange to standardize the proficiency to stumble through an ancient language without grasping its meaning as an educational benchmark, is there any rational justification for our insistence on our youth reaching the point of “fluent illiteracy”?

Is there any rational justification for our insistence on “fluent illiteracy” as a benchmark of Jewish education?

Although this series was intended as an open polemic against Jewish illiteracy, not apologetics for our current state of the union, I want to provide two reasons as context for why reading Hebrew is meaningful even when people don’t understand its meaning:

• a basic, sociological reason, and

• a deeper, spiritual-psychological reason.

  The Basic, Sociological Reason

Nominal familiarity with Hebrew is no doubt a frantic, emergency measure to keep Jews at least feeling literate, even if they could hardly be considered actually literate.¹ This entry-level literacy allows them, as a minimum, to “play the part” in synagogue environments (if they happen to find themselves in one).

A purist might consider this somewhat of a farce, but consider that the 2020 Pew survey reported that 36% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 responded that what keeps them away from synagogue services is their sense that they "don't know enough to participate." I’ve been told by highly intelligent and educated young people that although a part of them would like to attend services more often, they are terrified of “standing when everyone else is sitting, or sitting when everyone else is standing.” Being able to mouth the words along with everyone else allows them to be “in the game.”

Although I find this reason a legitimate motivation to encourage children and adults to know the Hebrew alphabet and learn how to read, it’s by no means sufficient. We have not preserved three and a half millennia of Jewish identity through mouthing words alone. Knowing how to say the words might be enough to get a Jewish person to no longer be afraid of walking into a synagogue, but it likely isn’t enough to keep them coming back for more.²

The Deeper, Spiritual-Psychological Reason

A deeper explanation for the insistence on Hebrew is that the Hebrew language is so densely packed with meaning that even if a person reads it without much conscious awareness of its meaning, her subconscious registers part of it.

To illustrate, let’s look at this phenomenon in Jewish law (halacha).

The Shema is the mantra of the Jewish people. Its opening line is one of the first Hebrew sentences that is taught to children, is meant to be recited with them just before they go to sleep, then twice daily as adults, in times of danger, and just before passing to the next world.³

The question is raised in the Talmud if a person can read the Shema in translation, in a language he better comprehends. The Code of Jewish Law (Shulchan Aruch) rules that a person can recite the Shema in any language that he understands. The Talmud derives this allowance from the Shema itself, since the word “Shema-שמע” simultaneously means “hear” and “comprehend,” meaning that one is meant to understand what he is saying.

This permission to pray and make blessings in one’s mother tongue is applied virtually across the board. Take, for instance, how counterproductive the Passover Seder would be if the Haggadah would be read exclusively in Hebrew, and those at the table didn’t understand a word. If the purpose of the night is to convey the experience of leaving the slavery of Egypt, understanding what is being read would obviously be a requirement. This is indeed the the ruling of Rabbi Moshe Isserles in his glosses on the Shulchan Aruch.

What about Hebrew? If one so chooses, can a person read the Shema or Birkat Hamazon (blessing of thanksgiving after eating a meal) or the Amida (prayer) in Hebrew even though he or she doesn’t understand the language?

Although there was debate throughout the ages, the conclusion of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, perhaps the foremost authority on Jewish law in the 20th century is that:

• As we mentioned, praying in a foreign language that you understand is permitted,

• Praying in a foreign language that you don’t understand defeats the purpose, and therefore would not be permitted, but

• Praying in Hebrew, even if you do not understand is permitted.

Why? Didn’t we mention that the Shema must be understood, hence the instruction to “Shema — Listen”?

Hebrew, it turns out, is a language that hacks the human psyche. It speaks to the soul even if when it doesn’t yet register in the mind.

Your soul can hear it, even if your mind cannot comprehend it.

This is a bold claim that needs to be explored. And we will as our Holy Language series continues. Stay with us, and spread the word.

1. I made this point in my last point. Even though one might think that “literacy” means “the ability to read,” as in the ability to sound out words on a page, an immigrant schoolchild in the United States in fourth grade who can merely sound out words in English, but does not speak English, and therefore does not understand what he is reading will not be successful in school and therefore cannot be considered literate.

2. Unless the person has a sentimental connection to the language and tunes as a child, or comes to shul for social reasons.

3. Just over a year ago, I wrote about how Rabbi Yitzchak Halevi Herzog, the chief rabbi of Palestine used the Shema to jog the memories of Jewish children who had taken refuge during the Holocaust in convents. Many of these children had no conscious memory of having Jewish parents, but when Rabbi Herzog pronounced the words of the Shema in Hebrew, children would emerge from their rooms, and he would know why. It was etched into their subconscious beneath their conscious awareness.