INSIGHT

ANDREW S. CARROLL

Special to The Jewish News

B

y most accounts,
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
was slightly mad
when he set out 100 years
ago to revive Hebrew as the
Jewish national language.
Why else would he have
insisted, in 1881, that his
family converse with one
another only in Hebrew,
making his the first Hebrew-
speaking home in modern-
day Palestine?
Why else would he have
bucked a powerful Orthodox
establishment, which in-
sisted that Hebrew was the
loshen hakodesh — the holy
tongue not to be soiled in
everyday discourse?
Would a sane man have
dreamed that a polyglot
community of Polish-, Ger-
man-, French- and Yiddish-
speaking Zionists would
eventually agree to speak a
single language — one that
h. tdn't been used conversa-
tionally for 2,000 years?
Yet, compared to 100 Heb-
rew and Jewish studies
scholars who gathered re-
cently in College Park, Md.,
Ben-Yehuda had it easy. The
scholars, after all, had come
together to discuss ways of
getting American Jews to
learn and use more Hebrew
than they do (or, more accu-
rately, don't).
"We are a people of the
book who cannot read the
book in its original lang-
uage," complained Deborah
Lipstadt, author and adjunct
professor of religion at Oc-
cidental College in Los
Angeles, at the close of the
three-day conference at the
University of Maryland.
"Hebrew in America:
Perspectives and Prospects,
sponsored by the univer-
sity's Meyerhoff Center for
Jewish Studies and the Na-
tional Foundation for Jewish
Culture, was planned as part
of celebrations marking the
100th anniversary of the es-
tablishment by Ben-Yehuda
and other Hebraists of the
Committee of the Hebrew
Language, the forerunner of
the present-day National
Academy for the Hebrew
Language in Jerusalem.
The Israeli government
has proclaimed 1990

I

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda: By comparison, he had it easy.

Lost In
anslation

At a conference marking a Hebrew-language
anniversary, scholars ask why American
Jews remain tongue-tied.

"Hebrew Language Year,"
and has called for contests,
seminars and ceremonies in
Israel and the United States.
For the American and
Israeli scholars at the
Maryland conference,
however, any celebration of
Ben-Yehuda's achievements
in Israel are tinged with
regret for opportunities lost
in the United States.
For, except for a brief
flurry of Hebrew literary ac-
tivity in the years between
the world wars, and despite
the learning that goes on in
day schools, yeshivot and
universities, conference-
goers agreed that Hebrew
education in the United
States falls far short of what
it could be.
Enrollments in campus

Hebrew courses are down
despite the burgeoning of
university Jewish studies
programming, and now more
than ever, Hebrew school is
the place where Hebrew
isn't learned.
According to a much-
quoted survey by Queens
College sociologist Steven
M. Cohen, only 41 percent of
Orthodox Jews, nine percent
of the Conservative and five
percent of the Reform de-
scribe themselves as having
a minimal competence in
Hebrew.
For conference-goers, the
study of Hebrew meant
much more than knowing
the language of Israel. It is
the original language of
Judaism's sacred and
historical texts, and for

millennia it was the one
language that Jews have
always had in common.
As Lipstadt described it,
Hebrew is what "helps
define who and what we are
as a people and a commun-
ity."
But in their rush to assimi-
late into gentile society,
American Jews abandoned a
centuries-old "diglossia," or
multilingualism, and began
to know their religion only
in translation.
"The Reform and Conser-
vative movements, in the in7
terest of democratization
and bringing Jews closer to
the service, introduced Eng-
lish into the prayer service,"
explained Ruth Wisse, pro-
fessor of Yiddish at McGill
University in Montreal.

"But the effect was just the
opposite. If people are
reliant on English, then they
can never fully be par-
ticipants. They become
dependent on others' inter-
pretations of sources. In Or-
thodoxy, at least everybody
is in part a participant."
Gershon Shaked, professor
of Hebrew Literature at
Hebrew University, said
that by becoming monol-
ingual, American Jews had
lost a tension that "created
the Jewish cultural and
historical uniqueness."
As a result, said Shaked,
who described himself as an
intense cultural pessimist,
American Jews run the risk
of reducing their cultural
heritage to a "stomach
Judaism" of bagels and lox.
"A culture in translation
is not simply a kiss done
through a handkerchief,"
said Shaked, in a speech he
delivered in Hebrew. "It is
destructive. The danger of
retreat is real . If English
becomes the common lang-
uage, we might as well close
the business."
For "business," Shaked
used the English word.
The American picture was
not always as bleak as some
at the conference described
it. On the first day of the
conference, presenters spoke
with nostalgia about the
Tarbut Ivrit, or Hebrew Cul-
ture movement of the 1920s
and '30s. Immigrant in-
tellectuals imported a
dedication to living Hebrew
and were responsible for an
entire movement of Hebrew-
speaking summer camps,
day schools and teachers'
colleges.
They also created a sur-
prisingly lively American
Jewish literature in Hebrew.
Writers and critics like
Reuben Brainin, Y.D.
Berkowitz and Benjamin
Silkiner wrote poetry and
prose not only about immi-
grant life, but about their
encounters with such
uniquely American
phenomena as black and In-
dian culture.
But if Yiddish, which was
the mother tongue of tens of
thousands of immigrants,
was to die a slow death in
America, then Hebrew, the
language of an elite, was
doomed to a quick one.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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