ברכו את התלמידים.ות הנכנסים.ות לכיתה בשם העברי שלהם.ן, והוסיפו משפט חיובי בעברית, כמו “אני שמח.ה לראות אותך היום!” או “אני אוהב.ת את התיק החדש שלך!”. מחקרים מראים שברכות אישיות כאלו בדלת הכיתה מעלות את מעורבות התלמידים.ות בלמידה ב 27%.
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הציגו את עבודות התלמידים.ות בעברית על קירות הכיתה וברחבי בית הספר. כך תצרו סביבה עברית אופטימלית, תשפרו את מעורבות התלמידים.ות בלמידה, ותעלו את חשיבות השפה העברית בקרב קהילת בית הספר. לחצו כאן לרעיונות נוספים להצגת עבודות תלמידים.ות.Continue reading
פעילויות היכרות לפתיחת השנה חשובות ליצירת אווירה בטוחה בכיתה לכל תלמיד.ה, לחיזוק הקשרים החברתיים, וליצירת תשתית להוראה מותאמת וממוקדת תלמיד.ה. לחצו על הקישורים בעברית באנגלית למגוון רעיונות לפעילויות לפתיחת השנה, והתאימו לכיתה הספציפית שלכם.ן.
Getting-To-Know-You activities for the beginning of the year are important for creating a safe space for each student, for strengthening social ties, and for informing the design of student-centered tailored instruction. Here are Hebrew and English links for a variety of ideas for activities to start the year, and adapt to your specific class.
We are honored to welcome Milken Community School, a middle and high school in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles, as new Members! Enjoy reading (and watching a video) about the inspiring Hebrew language journey of Milken’s esteemed History Teacher, Maxime Gilbert, and his Hebrew tutor, Dr. Carmit Burstyn, who serves as Hebrew Instructional Leader at Milken Community School.
Maxime Gilbert, a French-born history teacher, came to the US to teach 11th and 12th grade history at Milken. When he accepted the position, Maxime was not even aware that Milken was a Jewish school, only that it was a private school in LA. Landing a teaching job at Milken turned out to be serendipitous in so many ways.
Since his parents are completely secular, Maxime grew up knowing the “linguistic codes” of Judaism but without any formal Jewish education. However, Maxime possessed a strong intellectual affinity for Judaism that existed in his soul as a void for over 30 years. At Milken, Maxime met many inspiring faculty members, including “Rabbi BK,” (Rabbi Gordon Bernat-Kunan), who Maxime describes as “an intellectual power-house” and Maxime began to fill that void. He devoured many books about Judaism but quickly concluded that without knowing the Hebrew language, there was a significant barrier to delving deeply into Jewish texts and knowledge. Maxime quietly let it be known in the Milken faculty room that he was interested in learning to read the Torah in Hebrew. In jumped Dr. Carmit Burstyn, Chair of the Hebrew language department, offering to become Maxime’s tutor.
However, Carmit rejected the premise of Maxime’s initial request to teach him to read Hebrew, with no regard for learning the other language competencies. Carmit shared that, “Hebrew is a living language and in order to read it, you need to really KNOW it, including how to orally comprehend, write, and even speak the language.” Carmit should know. Her doctoral research was on high school students’ motivation to learn Hebrew language, and for 90% of the 11th and 12th grade student participants in her study, connecting to identity, and specifically to Jewish identity, was a primary motivator.
Maxime accepted Carmit’s condition to learn Hebrew as a living language. Because Milken is in LA, outdoor spaces are used as classrooms. And because Carmit and Maxime had agreed to devote two of their prep-hours per week on Maxime’s studies, it soon became obvious to students and faculty members that Maxime had become Carmit’s Hebrew student. For Maxime, learning Hebrew is very personal, and very emotional. Doing so in such a public way has fueled the motivation of his students, and indeed, of the entire Milken Community.
Chana knows and loves camp. And Chana knows and loves Hebrew. Now in her seventh year at Ramah Darom in Clayton, Georgia, Chana is combining these two things she knows and loves as the camp Amita Ivrit – Hebrew Fellow – to ensure that campers and staff find new ways to connect to the language of the Jewish people! The Ramah camping system has always prioritized Hebrew language learning since the establishment of the first camp in Wisconsin in 1947. Informed by the Hebraic movement afoot at that time, and inspired by the Hebrew-speaking Camp Massad in the Poconos, the educators who created the Ramah approach wanted to ensure that Hebrew was a living language for the camp community as well as a key to the Jewish learning that took place over the summer. This tradition continues on in its own unique way at each Ramah site and program, with all of the camps building on the idea that campers and staff alike should learn at least meah milim – one hundred words – of Hebrew that become a part of their working language vocabulary.
At Ramah Darom, Anna Serviansky, the Camp Director, wanted to ensure that this goal was accomplished in a manner that was joyful, approachable, and lively. Working with her Assistant Director, Ayala Wasser, who had been introduced to Hebrew at the Center’s Amitei Ivrit program at Ramah Sport, looked to the long time staff member Chana Mayer, as the person who could embody this love for Hebrew and use her unofficial role as the “mother of the Israel delegation” to empower the entire, forty-plus Israeli staff at camp with strategies for Hebrew engagement. In April, Chana joined camp educators from camps across North America for a two-day intensive seminar run by Hebrew at the Center to better understand how language is used both for communication and to build a shared sense of meaning, the different types of activities that could make Hebrew come alive, and ways to make this approach effective for the unique goals of Ramah Darom.
Chana also works closely with the three Israeli scouts at camp to bring this programming to the campers each day in the dining hall and in creative programming that connects these young people to Israel, Hebrew culture, foods, games, and music. Each night, Chana sends out to the entire staff the next day’s milat hayom – word of the day – and the mishpat hayom – the sentence of the day – so that the entire staff can reinforce the language learning throughout the day and in every area of camp. One of the scouts dresses as “Hebrew Man,” and is accompanied to the front of the room each day by energetic singing from the entire camp as he teaches both the word and the sentence of the days, units of language selected specifically due to their usefulness within the camp community. Chana makes certain these words are then put up around camp so that campers and staff alike can see how they are written, pronounced, and used.
Camp culture is typically shaped by both the leadership of the camp and the energy and interests of the college-age staff. Knowing this, Chana and her team also run staff training programs to help each counselor, specialist, and unit head reflect on why Hebrew is important to them, or to create opportunities like an Israeli staff dinner to connect the language with culture and experience. During the activities with the campers, this sense of buy-in is obvious as the staff join in with their own Hebrew skills and model positive engagement. Anna could not be happier about what is happening at her camp, sharing “Hebrew has really come alive and is experienced by everyone at camp as an essential part of our community.”
Hebrew at the Center is excited to be working with Ramah Darom and looks forward both to the ongoing growth of the program in preparation for the summer of 2024 and looks to help campers and staff alike connect with Hebrew when home from camp as this initiative moves to year-round settings such as congregations and youth programs in the communities served by Ramah Darom.
“Hakshivu, Hakshivu” rings out clear across the beautiful grass field next to the Beit Am and weaves its way past cabins as the sounds reverberate off the lake’s dark blue water. It is another announcement designed to inform and engage campers and staff at Camp Kadimah, the Canadian Young Judaea (CYJ) camp in Barss Corner, Nova Scotia, a call to action that has been calling out since the camp opened in 1943, five years before the establishment of the Jewish state. The next day during a visit to their peers at Camp Shalom in Gravenhurst, Ontario, this same phrase comes across the speakers spread through the camp, leading the campers and staff to look up from the meal or an activity to see if a particular call to action is directed their way.
The use of Hebrew is found throughout the culture of both of these camps, whether in the naming of buildings, the various periods of the day, or on the beautiful flags decorating the ceiling of the “Hadar,” or dining hall, from the camp-wide Maccabia events from years past. However, these camps are hoping to further increase the use of Hebrew and a general enhancement of the intentionality of how Hebrew is used at camp as participants in Hebrew at the Center’s Amitei Ivrit program. Through the training of an Amit/a Ivrit¸ a Hebrew Fellow, along with the training of a senior camp professional to assist in implementing the Fellow’s work, a new approach to Hebrew engagement and infusion is enhancing the presence and use of Hebrew at these camps and bringing a more intentional approach to how Hebrew advances the camps’ educational and communal goals. Interactive language games, exposure to Hebrew and Israeli culture, the expansion of Hebrew language signs and songs throughout camp, and discussions about why Hebrew is important as the language of the Jewish people are the key methodologies underlying this initiative.
At Camp Kadimah, the Amita Ivrit also runs the Sababa program as a regular activity that each of the camp groups visit, an opportunity to engage with Hebrew as a part of connecting to Hebrew. Food, art, discussions, and games provide opportunities to integrate learning, language, and fun. Dr. Ilan Danjoux, the camp’s educational director and a professor of education, is hoping to work with the Amita and the camp leadership to add additional Hebrew place names to each location and new building at camp so that it creates a physical map of camp that links directly to the land of Israel.
Becca Unterman-Somer, Associate Director of Camp Shalom, works closely with her Amita to offer informal opportunities for campers and staff to play with Hebrew, whether through an impromptu group of campers putting on a brief Hebrew play for the entire camp one morning or the labeling of various groupings of items in the lost and found with Hebrew titles. For movement camps with a long history of wanting to make certain Israel and Israeli culture comes alive, the Amitei Ivrit program is a perfect combination of approach, activities, and materials to make Jewish and Hebrew learning compelling and fun for all.
by Dr. Jeremy Benstein
Trying to follow the ups and downs of Israeli politics is hard enough at the best of times. And these are hardly the best of times. The rift in the nation is deep, pitting supporters of the democratically elected government and its projected legislation to redress perceived imbalances, against opponents who see that legislation as changing some very basic rules of the game thus making Israel a demonstrably less democratic society. My task here is not to adjudicate this dispute (though, like most Israelis, I do have strong opinions on the topic); readers who want explicit political punditry are directed to the news sources of their choice.
Rather, I would like to explore some particular Hebrew terms in the current political discourse that may shed some light on the nuances of recent developments. Of the many reasons for acquiring familiarity with Hebrew, one main one is to try to gain more insight into Israeli life and culture than is normally afforded by exclusively English-language media. For instance, the differences between the two sides are apparent from the get-go, i.e., the words each camp uses regarding what’s going on. The government claims it is promoting a רפורמה משפטית reformah mishpatit, “a legal reform” (from משפט mishpat, law). This indeed sounds innocent enough, and quite legal and on the up-and-up. But in the eyes of the millions who oppose the government plan, this is nothing less than a הפיכה משטרית hafichah mishtarit – משטר mishtar meaning “regime” and הפיכה haficha, meaning “coup”, from ה-פ-כ h-f-ch, reverse, or backwards (see here for more on that Hebrew root in politics and elsewhere).
Perhaps ironically, the two main words that are seen on t-shirts and signs, and heard at demonstrations and government press conferences, are actually not (originally) Hebrew at all: דמוקרטיה demokratiya and דיקטטורה diktatura, words which need no translation. One could claim that since the terms are non-Hebrew, the ideas themselves are foreign as well. However, the idea of the limited will of the majority with safeguards for the rights of the weak is well-established in Jewish tradition (see e.g. Ex 23:2). There is a (modern) Hebrew word for dictatorship (רודנות, rodanut, רודן, rodan, “dictator”, from the Biblical root ר-ד-ה, r-d-h, “rule over,” see e.g. Gen 1:28 and Lev 25:53), though it is less used in common parlance. And Eliezer Ben Yehudah himself proposed a new coinage to replace democracy, עַמּוֹנוּת amonut (from עם, ‘am, “people”), but it never made it out of the starting gate.
Here are a few more key terms to help parse the debate:
רוב – מיעוט – Rov, “majority” from the root ר-ב-ב, r-b-b, as in הרבה, harbeh, “many, a lot.” This is what the coalition (קואליציה, koalitziya) claims they have, since they do, after all, hold 64 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset (53%). However, protesters and members of the opposition (אופוזיציה, oppozitziya), by definition in the מיעוט, mi’ut, “minority” (from מ-ע-ט, m-‘-t, “few, a little”) point out that the proposed reforms were not central planks in the parties in the coalition (and the ruling Likud party, with only 32 seats is not a majority in its own coalition), and currently polls show a clear majority of the Israeli public oppose the controversial legislation.
In brief, the main issue under discussion is a proposed change in the balance of power between the judiciary (הרשות השופטת, hareshut hashofetet, literally – “the judging authority”) and the executive/legislative branches (הרשות המבצעת והרשות המחוקקת, hamevatza’at vehamechokeket) , giving more power to the latter, and reducing the scope of judicial review (among many other things, including changing the selection process of judges, the question of legal oversight in government ministries, and more). Confronting these proposals have made these last six months quite a civics lesson for many Israelis, for it gets to the heart of what a democratic society is. In response to claims of government supporters that it is the protests themselves that are undemocratic (since the government was elected it has a right, and a duty, to govern as it sees fit – majority rule – the רוב, rov), the protesters emphasize that a democracy is the rule of the majority coupled with strong safeguards that protect the rights of the minority (מיעוט, mi’ut), to prevent the rule of the majority from becoming a dictatorship of the majority. The claim is that for Israel with no constitution or bill of rights (as in the US), or long tradition of a democratic culture (as in the UK), a strong and independent judiciary is the only thing standing in the way of an ideological government – whether right-wing or left-wing – from enacting legislation that might infringe on basic rights. The word for rights is זכויות, zechuyot, as in זכויות אזרח, zechuyot ezrach, “civil rights” and זכויות אדם, zechuyot adam, “human rights.” An interesting curiosity is that zechut also means “privilege” which is almost the opposite of a right, making it a contranym, a word that means a thing and its opposite, like “sanction” or “cleave.”
סבירות – sevirut, “reasonableness.” This seemingly innocuous idea is the basis of the first piece of government legislation: preventing the courts from using “reasonableness” as a criterion for adjudicating issues like government policies or appointments. But what could be unreasonable, or objectionable about reasonableness?
First the word. If something is סביר savir, it is reasonable, makes sense. This root has many expressions in Hebrew, both ancient and modern:להסביר , lehasbir, “explain” (make understandable), הסברה, hasbara, Israeli governmental PR (“explanation” in the sense of “making the case for”), סבירות, svirut, “likelihood,” and also, traditionally, סברה, sevara, a (talmudic) claim or opinion, and סברי, savri, as in סברי מרנן, savri maranan, “with the gentlemen’s permission,” asked before making a public blessing over wine.
Traditionally, the Supreme court has used עילת הסבירות, ‘ilat hasvirut, the reasonability clause, to evaluate whether the government or its several ministries are being, well, reasonable. But given the less than precise definition of this term, the government’s claim is that the gut sense of reasonableness of a group of unelected officials, such as judges, should not take precedence over the sense of the democratically elected parliament. The opposition’s response is that this is what checks and balances (איזונים ובלמים, izunim ublamim) between the branches is all about, and the greater the majority, the greater the temptation to wield power in all sorts of fundamentally self-serving ways, if there is no one to stop them. Which would be, in a word, unreasonable.
There is of course much more that can be said and explored, both linguistically and politically. I will conclude with a section of Israel’s מגילת העצמאות, megillat ha’atzma-ut, Declaration of Independence. The Hebrew word for independence, עצמאות, ‘atzma-ut, from a root ע-צ-מ, ‘-tz’m, meaning “strength” and also “self” was coined by Eliezer Ben Yehudah’s son, Itamar Ben Avi. The fact that the word עצם, ‘etzem, also means “bone,” alludes to Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones (Ch. 37) as a prophecy of revival and return. Like the flag, the Declaration is used by the protesters to express their values. But also like the flag – can’t we all identify with what is written here?
מתוך מגילת העצמאות – מדינת ישראל…תשקוד על פיתוח הארץ לטובת כל תושביה; תהא מושתתה על יסודות החירות, הצדק והשלום לאור חזונם של נביאי ישראל; תקיים שויון זכויות חברתי ומדיני גמור לכל אזרחיה בלי הבדל דת, גזע ומין; תבטיח חופש דת, מצפון, לשון, חינוך ותרבות...
From the Declaration of Independence – THE STATE OF ISRAEL … will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture….
At the very least, words like חירות, cherut, “freedom,” צדק, tzedek, “justice,” שלום, shalom, “peace,” שויון, shivyon, “equality,” and חופש, chofesh, (more) “freedom,” are good words to add to our vocabulary.
Dr. Jeremy Benstein is a senior consultant at HATC and author of Hebrew Roots, Jewish Routes: A Tribal Language in a Global World, (Behrman, 2019).
Anyone who has been blessed with a Jewish summer camp experience knows that there is no better place to have joyful Jewish identity seared into one’s soul than at camp. For the next few issues of the HATC Newsletter, we’ll be taking a break from Member School Highlights of formal Hebrew instruction and turn our attention to Amitei Ivrit and informal Hebrew learning at Jewish summer camps.
Amitei Ivrit is Hebrew at the Center’s signature program to infuse Hebrew into the culture of Jewish Summer Camps in North America and Europe. By designating and training one or more members of the staff as the official Hebrew Fellow (Amit Ivrit for masculine singular, Amita Ivrit for feminine singular, and Amitei Ivrit for plural) and utilizing the games, user guide, and materials designed by HATC for this purpose, Jewish summer camp staff can intentionally and consistently infuse Hebrew terminology and phraseology into the culture.
The HATC leadership team recently had the pleasure of visiting “In The City Camp” in Atlanta, Georgia, where the Director, Eileen Price, has devoted significant effort and corralled tangible and financial resources to amplify the Jewish identity by infusing Zionism and Hebrew language into the lives of over 700 campers and 150 staff members per season. “For 75% of the campers, In The City Camp IS their primary Jewish experience,” Eileen shared. “I believe that the future of Jewish connectivity in America IS Jewish camping.”
With the support of the staff’s senior leadership, the designated and trained Amitei Ivrit enlist the efforts of the other Israeli Shlichim and American staff members to utilize Hebrew throughout the day. There are 9 Israeli shlichim at camp this summer, some brought to camp in partnership with the Jewish Agency, such as Yael Shapira and Noa Kobo, and some who are already embedded as educators in the local community. Last year’s Amita, Ofri Katzap, will be joining them in July, bringing her extensive experience implementing the HATC Hebrew materials and resources. Other Israelis find their way to In The City Camps by word-of-mouth. Price mines her connections to find Israelis with American citizenship who can come to work in the summer without the need for a special visa. By example, Shahar Newman, 23, is working at In The City Camp before beginning her studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem this fall. Shahar was born and grew up in Los Angeles, until at age 11 she moved to Jerusalem, completed her army service, and spent this past year travelling through South America.
Price points out that it cannot just be on the Israelis to infuse Hebrew, Judaism, and Zionism. “It’s just not fair,” Price notes, “so we need more counselors and staff members who are day school graduates and who have done a gap year in Israel, who know Hebrew and Israeli culture and are also natives of the American mindset.” This year Price successfully recruited 5 post-gap-year students to the staff and is figuring out how to best leverage them to meet her goals for Hebrew infusion in support of Zionist and Jewish identity building. It is also by design that the Site Director, Sydney Harlow, spent 3 seasons of the year on staff at Georgia Tech Hillel and that the camp photographer, Abbie Frankel, is on the staff of Emory University Hillel. “The Jewish community has to wrap itself around each other more, so that everybody utilizes the available services.”
This is the third summer that In The City has participated in Amitei Ivrit program, and the increased Hebrew infusion through all five senses is palpable throughout the camp. Hebrew vocabulary is supported by signage that was once all in English and is now in Hebrew and transliteration to be inclusive of those who need to navigate the camp facility but do not (yet!) know how to read Hebrew. Music blasting in the counselor break room that was once American hits is now Israeli/Hebrew hits, and Chef Howard, overseeing Bishul (cooking class) peppers his explanations with a heavy hand of Hebrew. Some Hebrew vocabulary is taught with camp-wide intention, while other vocabulary is organically infused through free-choice activities, in which campers are most personally invested. “The Hebrew language materials from Hebrew at the Center are great and very accessible,” says Eileen Price, “but you must pick the right Israelis and Hebrew-literate Americans to implement Amitei Ivrit. For those who are not natural-born teachers, it is a godsend to have the designated Amitei Ivrit to gently guide the rest of the staff.”
Everywhere one looks at In The City Camp, campers are happy and engaged, but perhaps the biggest impact of Amitei Ivrit at In The City Camp has been on the young adult staff. This is true at the best Jewish summer camps that make life-changing impressions on the lives of 18–20-year-olds. No one is more in tune with this responsibility and opportunity than its director, Eileen Price.
Nily is a veteran Hebrew and Judaic Studies teacher at Temple Beth Am in Pinecrest, Florida, in both the religious school and the Rambam Day School. A native of Tel Aviv, veteran of the IDF, and graduate of Beit Levinsky (Elementary Education) and Tel Aviv University (BA in Bible and Art), Nily’s career in Hebrew language education began in Venezuela in the 1970’s. Nily’s husband was sent on Shlichut by his employer, Solel Boneh, to Caracas, where Nily put all of her talents as a teacher, artist, and student of TaNacH to good use. Arriving with no Spanish language background to a community where no one spoke English, Hebrew was the common language between Nily and her students. She had been warned that without Spanish, she would fail, but the school needed a teacher and Nily needed a job, so both took a chance on each other.
Nily set out to speak, pantomime, and love her way into the hearts and minds of her Venezuelan-Jewish students, a group of students she will never forget and who never forgot her. Until this day, Nily corresponds with many of her first students, who are now in their forties and parents of their own adolescent children, and those correspondences continue to flow in written and spoken Hebrew.
Due to political turmoil, most of the Venezuelan Jewish community has since disbursed. Nily’s students relocated to other destinations in the Western Hemisphere and in Israel. After 14 years of living and working in Caracas, Nily’s family moved to Miami in 1989, and ever since, Nily’s career has continued to flourish at Temple Beth Am.
One turning point and highlight of Nily’s career was spending a summer studying Hebrew language acquisition and teaching at Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s School of Education, in a cohort of teachers that gathered from all over Latin America. Professor Shlomo Haramaty became Nily’s Hebrew language hero, and his methodology grabbed and captured her heart. Based on Haramaty’s system of language acquisition, Nily wrote a textbook, בלון של צבעים,, that became the foundation of her Hebrew language teaching for years to come. With persistence, the book was finally published in 2015. It’s charming stories are timeless and introduce a wealth of vocabulary and grammatical structures that lend themselves to Hebrew language proficiency. Beginning with simple line illustrations and two-word sentences, the characters develop, vocabulary grows, sentences become longer, and students learn to read and speak Hebrew. Nily resisted creating a “workbook” to accompany the text. She always preferred teaching from self-made materials that she created for her students, and strongly believes that each teacher needs to do the same, based on the needs of their students at each particular moment in history.
Nily Katriel is one of the thousands of heroic Israeli teachers whose partners’ careers led them to successful Hebrew language teaching careers in the Diaspora. Nily has dedicated her entire adult life to sharing her love of Torah, Israel, Hebrew and Israeli culture, and Hebrew language with Jewish children in Caracas and Miami. Today, Nily is proud to call her beloved daughter, Shelly Rauchwerger, a respected and valued colleague at Rambam Day School Temple Beth Am. When asked for advice for young Israelis beginning careers as Hebrew teachers in the Diaspora, Nily said, “teach with love, love, and more love.”
At Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy, a Modern Orthodox and Zionist Jewish day school for children in ECE through grade 8 based in Beverly Hills, California, Hebrew education is fully and seamlessly integrated with Zionism, Israeli culture, and Jewish and world history. The school’s philosophy is that Limudei Eretz Yisrael and Hebrew language are completely intertwined, and the chief implementer of this philosophy is Dalia Golan, Director of Harkham Hillel’s Ivrit and Israel Education Department.
Years in the making, Harkham Hillel created its own in-house, spiraled curriculum for grades 1 through 8. The academic year is divided into 5 thematic units, with spiraling and layered content each year, so that over the course of years, students have learned a large body of facts about Israel’s geography, history, government, foundations, culture, and people. The entire Israel curriculum is taught in Hebrew by Israeli teachers, in an immersive environment supported by experiential education led by young Israeli emissaries, over the course of the entire academic year. However, the focus is not on teaching Hebrew language, rather, it is about teaching the content of Limudei Eretz Yisrael. No one at Harkham Hillel refers to Hebrew as a second language or as a foreign language, rather they speak of Hebrew as “S’fat HaAm,” the language of the Jewish people.
The younger the child is when language acquisition begins, the better, and most students at Harkham Hillel get an early start. Harkham Hillel has its own pre-school with Israeli co-teachers in every class from the 2’s through kindergarten. Classic Israeli children’s literature and musical standards, which are filled with sophisticated vocabulary and grammatical structures, are part of everyday learning. By the start of 1st grade, Harkham Hillel early childhood graduates can recite by heart dozens of classic Israeli stories and can sing מאה שירים הראשונום “The First 100 Songs.” Since the vast majority of Harkham’s elementary school students rise the ranks from their own pre-school, it is possible to conduct school in Hebrew in a natural and authentic way. The elementary and middle school spiraled curricula are revised and updated every year to ensure that that Israeli culture in the school remains current. Veteran Israeli teachers who have been living for a long time in Southern California rely on the authentic and contemporary cultural knowledge of the youngest members of the Harkham Hillel faculty: 4 young women who come to work at Harkham Hillel for one year as part of their 2-year Sherut Leumi, National Service. These 19-year-old women enthusiastically educate the students at Harkham Hillel, through informal and experiential education that carefully aligns with the school’s formal curriculum.
The eighth-grade curriculum has two unique foci – Masa Culinary: A journey through Israel’s Culinary Culture, and Israel education with the lens of Israel’s achievements and conflicts – both culminating during the 8th grade trip to Israel at the end of the school year. Harkham Hillel’s leadership believes it is essential to focus on Israel and its conflicts, both external and internal, so that their graduates understand that Israel is a modern, democratic, Jewish, yet imperfect nation. Says Dalia Golan, “it is essential that prior to beginning high school, our graduates understand that not all is well in Israel. Our goal is for students to love ‘the real Israel’ for all that it is.” Before Israeli elections, the positions of all political parties are presented, and the resulting makeup of the Knesset, coalition, and opposition are studied after elections are concluded. Teachers present the broad scope of ideological beliefs in Israel without sharing their own political opinions.
Masa Culinary is a powerful and delightful organizing theme, after many years of studying the multiple layers of “Israel and its people.” The multitude of influences that converge in Israeli cuisine are delicious. They are also a powerful metaphor for Israel: a complex, nuanced melting pot of the Jewish people. While travelling through Israel, the 8th graders love taste-testing and perusing the aisles of Israeli supermarkets, processing through their senses the layers of Jewish history and Israeli culture.
Between visiting the sites of Israel about which they have learned throughout their lives and eating the polyglot of Israeli cuisine, the Harkham Hillel 8th graders can be heard singing Israeli hit songs, in Hebrew, at the top of their lungs. They are not singing along with the radio of their tour bus in a second language, nor in a foreign language. They are singing, with love and joy, in S’fat HaAm, the language of the Jewish people.
