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.

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. 

   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. 

Hebrew to follow לעברית, אנא ראו בהמשך

At JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School in Watertown, MA, Hebrew is a window into Israeli culture, and it is with this understanding and focus that it is taught to their students; Hebrew language IS at their center! When JCDS founder Arnee Winshall was recently asked why Israel was integral to the founders’ original mission of the school, her response was: “Our entire approach was to connect to Israel through creating a dual language and a dual culture environment, where the spirit of Israel would be in the air. A place where we sing Israeli songs, learn Israeli dance, celebrate holidays, cuisine, and  history: find ways to integrate Hebrew and Israel throughout the curriculum, and even make it so on some days you wouldn’t know whether you were in the US or in Israel”.  

Coupled with this vision, and as a pluralistic, 21st century cutting-edge bicultural institution of learning, JCDS has always recognized that exposure to foreign language is crucial in developing its students’ global awareness and appreciation for interconnectedness.  At JCDS, Hebrew extends well beyond the classroom. It is heard in the art room, the hader ochel (dining hall) throughout the hallways, on the playing fields, and it is seen in displays and on bulletin boards. As Head of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Dorit Zmiri told us, “Through Hebrew, our students are exposed and organically acculturated to the land of Israel and its people”.  

How does JCDS manage to sustain and maintain such a strong Hebrew program?  

A deliberate decision was made early on in the school’s development, that each Lower School classroom would be home to two full time teachers: an English speaker and a native Hebrew one who would consistently speak their native tongue throughout the day. Within this natural language environment, children are exposed to authentic parlance, speech, and everyday dialect. Be it conversations, stories, talk of feelings and emotions, humor, or the simple giving of directions, the children hear it all in genuine language. As well, the fine arts at JCDS: their music, art, and dance programs are taught entirely in Hebrew (with an occasional English translation if needed). 

Hebrew learning begins in Gan Nitzan and culminates in 8th grade, but at the core of JCDS is that Hebrew language acquisition is assessment based. Every student is evaluated annually through OPI, the Oral Proficiency Interview, and based on progress monitoring, placed at an appropriate level to maximize their learning.  With Sharona Givol at the helm of their Hebrew program for nearing two decades, she developed marvelous units for the learner according to their Hebrew proficiency level and age appropriateness.  

As a result of the Corona pandemic, two major changes transpired at the school. Early on came a 25% increase in students arriving from local public schools with little to no Hebrew background. Conversely, the following year, on

ce some of the restrictions were lifted, several Israeli students arrived at once, speaking almost no English. To address these two opposing challenges, JCDS expediently developed, out of necessity, and in keeping with their original mission, classes to accommodate and meet every student at their individual level, including, for the very first time in its history, an entire year’s unit for 8th grade native Hebrew speakers. Throughout this sophisticated unit, students create a website in which they explore  giving tours around Israel that include information about history, environment, geography and the demographics of its citizens. As well, they create a complete marketing package for schools from abroad wishing to tour The Israel Trail, a hiking path that extends across the country from north to south.  

JCDS students, from Gan Nitzan through 8th grade, live and breathe Hebrew in an authentic bicultural, bilingual environment that was, and will always remain, at their center.