Let my people know!: towards a revolution in the teaching of the Hebrew Bible
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Abstract
Acquiring knowledge of the Hebrew Bible and comprehension of the language are major aims of the Israeli education system. Yet for most students, it fails on both counts. This article proposes that these failures are closely connected: both are rooted in an erroneous linkage between Biblical Hebrew and the language spoken in modern Israel. Modern Hebrew – or more appropriately: “Israeli” – is a hybrid of Hebrew, Yiddish and other languages. Its grammar is distinct from that of Hebrew, and it has been the mother tongue of most Israeli-born Jews for about a hundred years.
There is a fundamental difference between the acquisition and usage of mother tongues and those of any other language. Since Biblical Hebrew is a foreign language for modern Israelis, it ought to be taught as such. Israeli should be acknowledged as a legitimate, distinct tongue.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Lessons from Judezmo about the Balkan Sprachbund and contact linguistics
- The problem of Judeo-French: between language and cultural dynamics
- Let my people know!: towards a revolution in the teaching of the Hebrew Bible
- Nathan Birnbaum's The tasks of Eastern European Jews
- Unity of the German component of Yiddish: myth or reality?
- Slavic influence in Eastern Yiddish syntax: the case of vos relative clauses
- Veiling knowledge: Hebrew sources in the Yiddish sermons of ultra-orthodox women
- Home language usage and the impact of Modern Hebrew on Israeli Hasidic Yiddish nouns and noun plurals
- Bare participle forms in the speech of Lithuanian Yiddish heritage speakers: multiple causation
- A pragmatic and idiomatic Yiddish substrate of Modern Hebrew: insights from translations of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye
- The Folkshuln of America
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Lessons from Judezmo about the Balkan Sprachbund and contact linguistics
- The problem of Judeo-French: between language and cultural dynamics
- Let my people know!: towards a revolution in the teaching of the Hebrew Bible
- Nathan Birnbaum's The tasks of Eastern European Jews
- Unity of the German component of Yiddish: myth or reality?
- Slavic influence in Eastern Yiddish syntax: the case of vos relative clauses
- Veiling knowledge: Hebrew sources in the Yiddish sermons of ultra-orthodox women
- Home language usage and the impact of Modern Hebrew on Israeli Hasidic Yiddish nouns and noun plurals
- Bare participle forms in the speech of Lithuanian Yiddish heritage speakers: multiple causation
- A pragmatic and idiomatic Yiddish substrate of Modern Hebrew: insights from translations of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye
- The Folkshuln of America
