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Thursday, May 7, 1992
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The Mother
Tongue Debate
NECHEMIA MEYERS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
I
he absorption of Ethiopi-
an youngsters has been
too successful in at least
one respect. Some of them
now speak almost only Hebrew.
So they are unable to communi-
cate well with parents and
grandparents, the majority of
whom are limited to Amharic.
To overcome this problem, a
new pilot program teaches
Amharic to boys and girls from
Ethiopian families in Afula, a
small town east of Haifa. Their
instructor is 22-year-old Adonia
Tarkai, who came to Israel five
years ago and will soon earn a
degree in social work at Haifa
University.
Shoshana, one of the girls in
his class, says that her mother
and father were proud of her
when she began speaking to
them in good Amharic.
A knowledge of the language
is also of practical importance.
"Many parents," Ms. Tarkai
points out, "take their children
along with them as interpreters
when they go to a medical clin-
ic or a National Insurance office.
But if the youngster can't ex-
plain in Amharic what he has
been told in Hebrew, the whole
exercise is almost useless."
While teaching immigrant
children their mother tongue is
appreciated, there is no interest
in Israel in the kind of bilingual
schools that exist in some parts
of the United States, places
where many subjects are taught
in a language other than Eng-
lish. The situation is more com-
plicated, however, in the
establishment of educational in-
stitutions that teach in Hebrew
but give pride of place to the cul-
tures that the immigrants
brought with them from their
countries of origin.
On the one hand, the Shas
party has created a highly suc-
cessful network of Orthodox
schools that highlight the reli-
gious traditions of Jews from
North Africa and the Middle
East. On the other hand, at-
tempts to set up a parallel net-
work of secular educational
institutions for Oriental Jews
have been an abject failure.
The Kedma School in Tel
Aviv's slummy Hatikva Quarter
is a case in point. Sami Shitreet,
the moving spirit behind the
school and its first principal,
took as his example the black ed-
ucational institutions created by
Afro-Americans in Harlem. An
Nechemia Meyers writes from
Rehovot, Israel.
opponent of integrated schools,
he wanted an institution where
Oriental Jews would learn to ap-
preciate their own culture and
also be exposed to progressive
political attitudes. In pursuit of
the latter goal, he decided that
Holocaust Memorial Day at Ked-
ma would be devoted not only to
honoring the memory of the 6
million Jewish victims of the
Nazis, but also to recalling the
fate of Armenians, gypsies, ho-
mosexuals and others.
As might have been expected,
this created an uproar because,
so critics argued, it downgraded
the significance of the Holocaust.
In atypical reaction, Limor Liv-
nat — then a Knesset member
and now minister of communi-
cations — declared: "This is the
state of the Jews and not of the
gypsies or the homosexuals, and
I'm not ashamed to say so."
How far should
Israel go to preserve
native cultures of
citizens?
More important to the school's
future, the residents of the
Hatikva Quarter made it clear
that they wanted nothing to do
with Shitreet's "leftist ideas."
Support dropped and the school
will probably close this year.
Professor Amnon Rubinstein,
who helped to create the Kedma
School while minister of educa-
tion, still believes that it was a
good idea. "[Israel]" should not
be a melting pot but a place
where a variety of cultures can
exist side by side," he said.
But that ignores that success
in Israel, as in other advanced
countries, depends on master-
ing "Western skills." While it is
good that Israeli youngsters gain
a knowledge of Ethiopian or Mo-
roccan culture, that is no sub-
stitute for a thorough grasp of
Hebrew and English, of genet-
ics and computers. ❑
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