language

HEBREW ON CAMPUS: WHY A TOUGH SELL?

by ARI L. GOLDMAN

I n the late 1700s, Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale, urged his students to study Hebrew lest they get to Heaven and not understand the Psalms that the angels are singing to God. He would be “ashamed,” one of Stiles’ students wrote, “that any one of his pupils should be entirely ignorant of that holy language.”

The argument of Stiles, a Christian Hebraist, did not carry much weight back then. Students complained so much about Hebrew that it was soon dropped as a requirement at Yale, and most everywhere else.

Ever since then, it seems, educators have been trying to come up with reasons for the academic study of Hebrew. While its popularity has waxed and waned on campus, it seems to be facing a special challenge today. “Hebrew in academia, much to my sorrow, is in a crisis,” said Gilead Morahg, Executive Vice President of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew. “It is really dangerous because this is where the future leadership of the American Jewish community is forged.”

“Keeping Hebrew alive on campus is critical,” Dr. Morahg added. “This is the last stage of identity formation.”

The numbers are troubling. According to the most recent figures from the Modern Language Association, 8,245 students are studying Modern Hebrew on American campuses, a drop of 14 percent from three years earlier. Biblical Hebrew is faring somewhat better, with 13,807 students, but these numbers too are in decline.

Of the students enrolled in Hebrew courses, there are nearly twice that number studying Arabic and three times that number studying Chinese and Japanese, all of which have experienced record growth. Spanish, French and German topped the MLA list.

Not everyone is pessimistic about Hebrew on campus, however. “If you define crisis by numbers there’s a crisis,” said Dr. Vardit Ringvald, Director of the Middlebury Hebrew at the Center Institute for the Advancement of Hebrew Language. “But it’s not a crisis in that there is less interest in Hebrew. Interest in Hebrew remains high.” It’s just that universities have been cutting back on the humanities and liberal arts, “and the first place they cut is in languages.”

“I don’t believe there’s a lack of interest” in Hebrew, she said. “There’s a lack of opportunity.” Last summer, for example, she said she had almost 100 applicants for programs in Middlebury’s Hebrew at the Center Institute.

According to the Hebrew professors’ group, Hebrew is taught at 175 American colleges and universities, including many state schools, Christian colleges, elite private universities and, of course, rabbinical seminaries. But professors in many schools report that the programs in Hebrew are often underfunded, do not attract many students and cannot find a secure footing at the school. They are sometimes placed in Classics departments, sometimes in Oriental Studies or Middle Eastern and Asian Studies, sometimes in Religion.

Last year, the World Zionist Organization (WZO), working with Israel’s Education Ministry, established a Hebrew Language Council dedicated to the promotion of Hebrew among Diaspora Jewry. The council’s mandate is to upgrade the state of Hebrew everywhere, from pre-schools to Jewish summer camps to adult education. Among its most difficult challenges are university campuses, said Simcha Leibovitch, the WZO Executive’s representative in North America.

“There is a great deal of anti-Israel sentiment on American campuses,” Dr. Leibovitch said. “And people identify Hebrew with Israel.” While Israel is not beyond criticism, he added, campaigns to isolate and punish Israel, such as the BDS Movement, are misguided. They take an unfair toll on Israel as well as on Hebrew language on campus.

At the inaugural conference of the Hebrew Council, held last year in New Jersey, organizers asked a group of university professors to come up with ways to improve the teaching of Hebrew on campus. Several professors said that Israel, which has one of the world’s leading high-tech sectors, has not developed the best technology for the teaching of Hebrew. The materials, labs and sites for teaching more popular languages, such as Spanish and Chinese, are far more sophisticated. They called for more development in this area.

But more important than the technology, several said, is the rationale. They are trying to take the argument for Hebrew beyond Ezra Stiles’s invocation of the angels in Heaven.

Certainly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was making a pitch for the importance of Hebrew when Pope Francis visited the Holy Land in May. “Jesus was here, in this land,” Netanyahu told the Pope when they met in Jerusalem. “He spoke Hebrew.”

“Aramaic,” the Pope interjected with a smile.

Netanyahu, more professorial, stood his ground. “He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew.”

That cordial exchange may not send college students rushing to study either language. Why take Hebrew today? Dr. Leibovitch, who is based in New York City but prefers to speak Hebrew to anyone who will understand him, gave several reasons.

“Hebrew is not just a language,” he said. “It is a culture, a key for Jewish history. It is the connection to Israel. The importance of this language for keeping our nation alive cannot be overemphasized. For me, the revival of Hebrew is a miracle no less than the establishment of the state of Israel.”

In fact, the revival of Hebrew preceded the establishment of the state in 1948, said Alan Mintz, Chana Kekst Professor of Hebrew Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Hebrew was a primary goal of Zionism and represented “a portable part of Jewish nationalism,” he said.

In his book Sanctuary in the Wilderness (Stanford University Press, 2011), Dr. Mintz traces how Hebrew in America moved from the province of Christian educators in the 18th Century to the province of a small band of American Jewish Hebraists in the early 20th Century.

On the American college campus, interest in Hebrew arose after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of 1967 and grew as other groups, such as African-Americans, feminists and later the LGBT community, began to establish programs that reflected their interests. It took decades for programs centered on Israel, Hebrew and Jewish studies to take root. These programs especially flourished in the 1990s, in part fueled by philanthropic and foundation support, but they’ve taken a hit in recent years, corresponding to the declines in the study of the humanities and the liberal arts.

Dr. Mintz said one of the problems with Hebrew instruction on campus is that it often focuses too much on the spoken word. “The expectation of oral fluency is the greatest stumbling block,” he said. Understanding the building blocks of the language is more important than speaking it, he added.

“Once you show them a word stem, the shoresh, like [the letters] bet tet chet — and demonstrate that its permutations create the words for security, insurance, religious faith and bodyguard — you can see the neurons light up and down the whole chain of Jewish historical knowledge.”

But Dr. Ringvald said that both fluency and understanding are within the reach of students. In fact, she said, there are those who relate better to the spoken word than they do to concepts. “The shoresh approach is very narrow,” she said. “I am surprised to see how many people are interested in learning the language. They want to communicate with Israelis. They want to understand the Hebrew culture, both past and present. They know that if they want to be connected to this culture, language in the key.” ■

Ari L. Goldman, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is an editorial consultant for CONTACT. He is the author of four books, including The Search for God at Harvard and The Late Starters Orchestra.