Haskenfeffer

After nine years in Israel, my wife and I transitioned back to North America. Here are my thoughts about the whole business, especially the difficulty of learning Hebrew:

1) Israel has made unbelievable strides, building a modern, thriving, pluralistic state. And it’s done so with both hands tied behind its back. Israeli infrastructure, particularly its growing railway system, is wonderful; Israeli skies are crowded with construction cranes and Israeli medical, scientific and high-tech research often leads the world;

(2) But after 77 years of statehood, the country remains poleaxed between the frum and the frei. Shabbat and Yom Tov desecration, especially in Tel Aviv, is catastrophic, while the abandonment of modesty by most Israeli women is mind-numbing;

Indeed, until we made aliyah, I didn’t know women could sport green, pink or blue hair. And the number of piercings worn by some Israeli girls reminds me of the joke comedian Don Rickles told years ago on a Dean Martin celebrity roast:

“My lovely wife Barbara,” Rickles cracked, “would have been here with us this evening, but she swam in our pool this afternoon with her jewelry on and she drowned.

And then there are the tattoos: hideous, ugly, disfiguring and all too prevalent on both men and women. It’s so bad that at Beer Sheva’s central bus station, one of the shops is a tattoo parlour, well situated to prey on the hoards of young soldiers who don’t know any better.

(3) It’s a good bet HaShem doesn’t like his holiest city tainted by a massive Pride parade. He can probably live with the one in Tel Aviv because Tel Aviv is well Tel Aviv. And although he’s likely not happy with that city’s dyke marches and slut walks, he can once again chalk them up to Tel Avivians’ self-conscious mishagas. But Jerusalem?

(4) Israel’s secular intelligentsia is hip, creative, publicity-smart, iconoclastic, musically, artistically and theatrically talented, up to date on the latest artisanal coffees, beers and cheeses and au courant about which night spots are hot.

But its knowledge of normative Torah Judaism could be extracted, condensed and placed on the head of a pin with three-quarters of the space remaining. Getting this demographic to embrace mitzvot is as about likely as getting Rashida Tlaib named keynoter at the next Hadassah dinner;

(5) Just because Israelis are bold, unconventional, innovative and often brilliant doesn’t mean they’ve come up with a quick way of learning Hebrew. Trying to master Ivrit is just as challenging, if not more so, than trying to learn French which I not only studied as a native Canadian, but attempted to learn in an immersion program at Quebec City’s Laval University in the summer of 1980. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t).

Stripped of all the boilerplate about being able to sip espresso with sabras at trendy cafes, or in the words of the Jewish Agency, “having the time of your life,” language learning comes down to drill, drill and more drill. Not only is it drudgery, it’s bloody hard work. And progress, at least for me, was agonizingly slow;

(6) Notwithstanding the “success” stories of olim who started with nothing and who became fluent in Hebrew, most anglo immigrants who end up mastering Ivrit are likely graduates of Jewish day schools where, unlike yours truly, they got a good grounding in the language — even if they eventually went off the Derech, which a lot of them did;

(7) Despite the come-ons of Citizen Cafe and kindred outfits, trying to learn Ivrit with Ulpan Ha Inyan, I found, proved just as challenging as trying to learn it in a basic ulpan. I always dreaded those exercises when we had to answer questions in mere seconds. I always conjugated verbs incorrectly. And don’t even get me going about smikhut;

(8) Although Nefesh b’Nefesh has done a superb job of smoothing the way for anglos, it hasn’t come clean about the difficulties of learning Hebrew;

(9) Advising prospective olim to build their Ivrit skills by listening to Hebrew-language newscasts, or watching Hebrew-language television is useless — at least, in my experience. No sooner had I picked out a Hebrew word or phrase than I had to drop it because the narrator is already 10 words ahead.

Israel, as one of my friends observed last spring, is a work in progress. Much has been accomplished. But much remains to be done.