Hebrew in Part-time Jewish Education in the US: Misalignment of Rationales and Goals as a Site of Opportunity

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how Hebrew is taught and perceived at American part-time Jewish schools, based on surveys of 519 school directors, classroom observations, and 376 surveys of parents, students, teachers, and clergy. We found misalignment of rationales and goals for Hebrew education among these stakeholders. Most schools emphasize Liturgical and Biblical Hebrew decoding and recitation without comprehension for ritual participation, especially b’nai mitzvah. Many schools infuse Hebrew, and a small percentage teach Modern Hebrew conversation. Findings are discussed in historical context and compared to language education and metalinguistic communities in immigrant and indigenous groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Hebrew education
• part-time schools
• supplementary schools
• decoding
• goals

Disclosure Statement

The third author is a co-founder of #OnwardHebrew and serves on its Leadership Team. The authors declare that there are no other competing interests.

Notes

1 The authors would like to thank CASJE for funding this project and our assistants for their research and editorial work: Jason Bronowitz, Evelyn Dean-Olmsted, Miranda Doremus-Reznor, Nancy Kober, Elaine Miller, Lian Partridge, Katie Light Soloway, Grant Tuioti, and Amanda Winer. The reviewers and editors provided helpful feedback on an earlier draft. Finally, thank you to our interviewees and the many students, parents, teachers, and clergy who completed surveys.

² For consistency, we refer to all education programs as “schools,” even though not all institutions use that label.

³ According to Pew’s (2013) study of Jewish Americans, 59% report having participated in part-time Jewish education (“other formal Jewish education”), compared to 23% who attended day school or yeshiva; 38% attended overnight Jewish summer camp.

⁴ Pomson and Wertheimer (2017) distinguish between “Classical Hebrew” and “Modern Hebrew.”

⁵ https://www.onwardhebrew.org/.

⁶ Although we asked about a wide variety of approaches to Hebrew education, we did not ask whether schools use workbooks as a methodology for learning Hebrew. As this may be one of the most common approaches, this would have been useful additional information for the study.

⁷ Identical responses to this question may reflect diverse realities. For example, one school that reports having a moderate amount of HTM might use only sporadic instructions in Hebrew, and another might have adopted the full program, carried out by certified instructors.

⁸ See endnotes in Benor, Avineri, et al. (2020) on differences among the school director, student, and other surveys.

⁹ Or perhaps some people who use this term see “Hebrew” as a proxy for religiousness or connection to Judaism.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE), which is funded by the Avi Chai Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Sarah Bunin Benor

Sarah Bunin Benor is Vice Provost, Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics, and Director of the Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion. Email: [email protected]

Netta Avineri

Netta Avineri is Language Teacher Education and Intercultural Communication Professor and Graduate Pillar Lead for the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Email: [email protected]

Nicki Greninger

Nicki Greninger is Rabbi of Lifelong Learning at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, CA. Email: [email protected]