Letters to the editor

Solid Hebrew advice

To the Editor:
Aviva Rizel assures one letter writer, a recent college-age oleh, that those educators and influences who preached to him aliyah - but still haven’t done it themselves - most likely still cherish their core values, but have legitimate concerns that are keeping them right here in the diaspora (Follow Me to Israel Dec. 16).
Finances, the ability to integrate into Israeli society, and the difficulties of being remote from family in the States are known factors that hinder aliyah plans, but so is language acquisition, which Aviva references briefly in her column.
But there’s an area we can work on. True, ability with a second language, and language ability in general, will vary from person to person, but shouldn’t we feel a bit sad that fluency in Hebrew, or at least a solid proficiency, has still eluded so many day school educated Jews. Ivrit b’Ivrit curriculums, where they exist, have helped significantly, but without additional in-school opportunity to practice, and bereft of conversational opportunities for adults, it’s unrealistic to expect many to feel comfortable in a Hebrew speaking environment, even if they are regular shul-goers and can recite pages of liturgy by heart with total comprehension.
A post-high school year of study in Israel is a great place to improve one’s Hebrew skills, though it comes late in the educational trajectory. My year was spent at an Israeli yeshiva, Kerem B’Yavneh, and I was assigned to a Hebrew shiur for bnai chutz l’aretz (students from other countries), as opposed to the English one down the hall. Our teacher spoke using a level of Hebrew that we could for the most part grasp. But back in the dorm room, listening to news reports on the radio, I had trouble keeping up. Understanding the jokes was even harder. Fortunately, things got better during the year, and I achieved a fluency in Hebrew in the years that followed, through conversational use of the language and with reading involvement as part of regular Torah study.