Post by Norman Berdichevsky on May 17, 2015 16:01:29 GMT -5
Hebrew in Popular American Culture
Excerpt from Chapter One in my new book The Past and Future of Modern Hebrew,
A Revitalized Language
McFarland Publishing, 2014
Norman Berdichevsky
The popular film "The First Wives Club" opens with a telling scene in which Bette Midler, playing an American Jewish housewife, intrudes on her teenage son Jason, who is listening to some rock group on his Walkman, and triumphantly tells him that she was able to hire his favorite rock band for his bar-mitzvah ceremony. He is overjoyed, exclaiming "that's cool!" and kisses his mother, at which point she rips out the cassette he has been listening to and inserts another one. He listens for a moment and exclaims with a look of pained boredom on his face his surprise at the cassette's opening words of every traditional prayer which one can clearly hear on the Walkman, ".Baruch Ata Adonai..(sounds like gibberish to him) and asks "What's this?" She responds - It's Hebrew! Learn it! Your Bar-Mitzvah is in three weeks - It's the only thing your father will pay for- Don't embarrass me at the synagogue."
Somewhat later on in the film after the bar-Mitzvah, the three jilted wives are arguing in the kitchen berating each other for not having been in close touch during all their married years. Goldie Hawn accuses Bette Midler of not even having invited her to the Bar-Mitzvah. Diane Keaton attempts to pacify the angry Goldie by excusing that oversight ."But you wouldn't have come" to which Diane further excuses this behavior ."and, it was in Hebrew!"
(as if to say how could a non-Jew expect to make heads or tails of anything).
It is worth noting the striking contrast between "First Wives Club" and another movie dealing with an ethnic theme, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" that humorously deals with a Greek-American woman, Toula Poutakalos, in Chicago, her traditional family and the prospect of "intermarriage" with her Anglo-American boyfriend. Toula (an authentic Greek name) has been raised bilingually and without having to be bribed, is totally familiar with Greek history, philosophy, language and literature, the arts and the rites of the Orthodox Church to make her father proud.
The passive attitude of the present generation of American students in general towards foreign languages is prevalent in much of higher education today and for many of them appears to be of little use beyond the synagogue.
On visits to Israel, they usually feel intimidated by the much more linguistically proficient Israelis their age, using English to communicate.
Many Americans have the impression that Hebrew is an exotic Eastern language with no relation to European languages, a Semitic tongue with an unfamiliar vocabulary, grammar and alphabet.
This is by and large no longer so, and by 2030, a majority of the world's Jews will probably be Hebrew speakers living in Israel due to the substantial differences in the rate of natural Jewish population growth in Israel (trending towards 3 births per woman) and shortly reaching equality with the Arab birth rate there, dramatically greater than the meager American Jewish birthrate of only 1.86. This figure is even lower than in most West European countries. The rate of replacement for a population is
2.1
An example of how American Jews bring with them inherently American attitudes, assumptions and prejudices was the recent attempt to establish a professional Israeli baseball league in spite of numerous warnings in the Hebrew press and from Israeli sports journalists "in the know" that the game was too slow, too complicated and would never appeal to the Israeli People.
Nevertheless, the American promoters of the idea went ahead consistent with their preconception that "Jews" (i.e. Israelis) should love baseball because Jews in America do. The league barely survived one year (2007) and needed to import many non-Jewish players from Latin American semi-professional leagues in order to mount a full six teams who had to share three "home" stadiums, only one of which had originally been a real baseball diamond. Politically too, the two communities are moving apart. American Jews living in Israel favored the Republican presidential candidate, Governor Mitt Romney and his much more pro-Israel stance, but were outnumbered by American-Jewish supporters of the President at home by a huge margin. In the last week of October, 80 thousand ballots, weighing 500 lbs. were sent to the U.S.
embassy in Tel-Aviv. The respected Shaviv Strategy and Campaign service conducted an exit poll among the ex-pats. With a sample of 1,572 voters, and a margin of error of around 2.5%, the results were Republican Mitt Romney 85.0%, Incumbent Democrat Barack Obama 14.3%, and other write-ins 0.6%.
American Jews are at least 95% Ashkenazi (Central and East European) in origin, and many of them have not been to Israel. They retain an emotional attachment to Yiddish and the associated cuisine, music, and folklore of Eastern Europe. This memory of nostalgic Yiddish fragments, food preferences , smoked salmon ("lox"), herring, bagels and borscht and klezmer melodies outweigh any similar set of attitudes towards Israel and its Levantine setting, language, music and cuisine, perceived as "foreign."
During the pre-statehood period, Jews in the Diaspora sympathetic to Zionism regarded it as the most productive part of the new and dynamic largely secular Hebrew culture being created by the generations of pioneers. Today by and large, it lacks even the attraction and fascination for Diaspora Jews that it held for many Christian theologians and clergymen who felt the power of the language they believed God first used to speak to man. This feeling of reverence and majesty was beautifully expressed by the great German writer Hermann Hesse writing in his largely autobiographical novel Beneath the Wheel.
It is a frequently lamented fact that in American academia, Jewish Studies and Hebrew courses offered at universities across the country have entered into what appears to be a period of long term decline. These conclusions match my own teaching experience. These are the prevailing views among many educators and examples of political correctness in both the United States and the U.K. where multiculturalism ironically seems to have initially benefited both ethnic studies and demands for wider use of foreign languages so that immigrants no longer are required to become immersed immediately in English language courses. This seems to be the case for all languages dear to ethnic and religious groups, except Hebrew. Modern Hebrew suffered the steepest decline among all major foreign language course enrollments at American colleges and universities (while Biblical Hebrew showed only a modest decline and Arabic was in first place among the languages that gained students!).
Interview "The Past and Future of Hebrew in Israel and Beyond" by Manuel Langendorf, Middle East editor of The Fair Observer.
<http://www.fairobserver.com/culture/the-past-and-future-of-hebrew-in-israel
-and-beyond-64612/>
www.fairobserver.com/culture/the-past-and-future-of-hebrew-in-israel-
and-beyond-64612/
Comment in The Jewish Daily Forward by "Philologos" November 29, 2014....A newly published book, Norman Berdichevsky's "Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language," is an excellent survey of its subject. In just 200 pages, Berdichevsky manages to touch succinctly but informatively on nearly every aspect of Zionism's successful revival of Hebrew as the spoken language it had not been for two millennia.....a feat unparalleled in human history.
About the Author
Norman Berdichevsky is a professional translator, freelance writer and lecturer of history and culture for several major cruise lines. Formerly a lecturer of Judaic studies at the University of Central Florida, he is the author of several books and lives in Orlando, Florida. Author available for hour long power point assisted talks with 50 slides. See website at nberdichevsky.com
Table of Contents: 1 Modern Hebrew in American Popular Culture 2 The Magnificent Heritage of Biblical Hebrew Prior to the Modern Language 3 Modern Hebrew's Influence on "Minor Language Revivals and Esperanto" 4 The
Three Thousand Year Old Treasury 5 How Hebrew Became a Modern Language 6
Do the Israelis Speak Hebrew or Israeli? 7 The Great Yiddish-Hebrew Rivalry
8 Negation of the Golah (Exile); Hebraization 9 Baltic Training Grounds for a Hebrew State 10 The First Modern Hebrew Textbook With Real National-Cultural Content 11 Soviet Persecution of Hebrew 12 Israeli Arab
Use of Hebrew 13 Towards a Hebrew Republic? 14 Slang and Profanity 15
The Current Assault on Hebrew at Home; Competition from English. 16. Outlook for Hebrew in the U.K. & U.S. 17 Epilogue
KENNETH L HANSON on September 1, 2014 Amazon Books
This brilliant and insightful tome on the Hebrew language is unique in its class. The author has adroitly produced a concise volume written equally for those who have familiarity with Hebrew, having studied it to some degree, and those who have no background whatsoever. Even those who know or have endeavored to know the language are often unaware of its "trajectory" of development, over the course of the last 130 years. Dr. Berdichevsky adroitly presents the remarkable progress made by modern Hebrew in the face of determined opposition by the ultra-Orthodox and the power of intimidation as well as outright persecution by Soviet authorities to retard and eradicate the instruction of the language. The study of Modern Hebrew became a dynamic movement that projected hope and gave inspiration to a generation of Jewish youth encouraging them to look towards the future during the desperate years of the 1930s when many Jews were paralyzed by despair and the fear of growing Nazi power.
Excerpt from Chapter One in my new book The Past and Future of Modern Hebrew,
A Revitalized Language
McFarland Publishing, 2014
Norman Berdichevsky
The popular film "The First Wives Club" opens with a telling scene in which Bette Midler, playing an American Jewish housewife, intrudes on her teenage son Jason, who is listening to some rock group on his Walkman, and triumphantly tells him that she was able to hire his favorite rock band for his bar-mitzvah ceremony. He is overjoyed, exclaiming "that's cool!" and kisses his mother, at which point she rips out the cassette he has been listening to and inserts another one. He listens for a moment and exclaims with a look of pained boredom on his face his surprise at the cassette's opening words of every traditional prayer which one can clearly hear on the Walkman, ".Baruch Ata Adonai..(sounds like gibberish to him) and asks "What's this?" She responds - It's Hebrew! Learn it! Your Bar-Mitzvah is in three weeks - It's the only thing your father will pay for- Don't embarrass me at the synagogue."
Somewhat later on in the film after the bar-Mitzvah, the three jilted wives are arguing in the kitchen berating each other for not having been in close touch during all their married years. Goldie Hawn accuses Bette Midler of not even having invited her to the Bar-Mitzvah. Diane Keaton attempts to pacify the angry Goldie by excusing that oversight ."But you wouldn't have come" to which Diane further excuses this behavior ."and, it was in Hebrew!"
(as if to say how could a non-Jew expect to make heads or tails of anything).
It is worth noting the striking contrast between "First Wives Club" and another movie dealing with an ethnic theme, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" that humorously deals with a Greek-American woman, Toula Poutakalos, in Chicago, her traditional family and the prospect of "intermarriage" with her Anglo-American boyfriend. Toula (an authentic Greek name) has been raised bilingually and without having to be bribed, is totally familiar with Greek history, philosophy, language and literature, the arts and the rites of the Orthodox Church to make her father proud.
The passive attitude of the present generation of American students in general towards foreign languages is prevalent in much of higher education today and for many of them appears to be of little use beyond the synagogue.
On visits to Israel, they usually feel intimidated by the much more linguistically proficient Israelis their age, using English to communicate.
Many Americans have the impression that Hebrew is an exotic Eastern language with no relation to European languages, a Semitic tongue with an unfamiliar vocabulary, grammar and alphabet.
This is by and large no longer so, and by 2030, a majority of the world's Jews will probably be Hebrew speakers living in Israel due to the substantial differences in the rate of natural Jewish population growth in Israel (trending towards 3 births per woman) and shortly reaching equality with the Arab birth rate there, dramatically greater than the meager American Jewish birthrate of only 1.86. This figure is even lower than in most West European countries. The rate of replacement for a population is
2.1
An example of how American Jews bring with them inherently American attitudes, assumptions and prejudices was the recent attempt to establish a professional Israeli baseball league in spite of numerous warnings in the Hebrew press and from Israeli sports journalists "in the know" that the game was too slow, too complicated and would never appeal to the Israeli People.
Nevertheless, the American promoters of the idea went ahead consistent with their preconception that "Jews" (i.e. Israelis) should love baseball because Jews in America do. The league barely survived one year (2007) and needed to import many non-Jewish players from Latin American semi-professional leagues in order to mount a full six teams who had to share three "home" stadiums, only one of which had originally been a real baseball diamond. Politically too, the two communities are moving apart. American Jews living in Israel favored the Republican presidential candidate, Governor Mitt Romney and his much more pro-Israel stance, but were outnumbered by American-Jewish supporters of the President at home by a huge margin. In the last week of October, 80 thousand ballots, weighing 500 lbs. were sent to the U.S.
embassy in Tel-Aviv. The respected Shaviv Strategy and Campaign service conducted an exit poll among the ex-pats. With a sample of 1,572 voters, and a margin of error of around 2.5%, the results were Republican Mitt Romney 85.0%, Incumbent Democrat Barack Obama 14.3%, and other write-ins 0.6%.
American Jews are at least 95% Ashkenazi (Central and East European) in origin, and many of them have not been to Israel. They retain an emotional attachment to Yiddish and the associated cuisine, music, and folklore of Eastern Europe. This memory of nostalgic Yiddish fragments, food preferences , smoked salmon ("lox"), herring, bagels and borscht and klezmer melodies outweigh any similar set of attitudes towards Israel and its Levantine setting, language, music and cuisine, perceived as "foreign."
During the pre-statehood period, Jews in the Diaspora sympathetic to Zionism regarded it as the most productive part of the new and dynamic largely secular Hebrew culture being created by the generations of pioneers. Today by and large, it lacks even the attraction and fascination for Diaspora Jews that it held for many Christian theologians and clergymen who felt the power of the language they believed God first used to speak to man. This feeling of reverence and majesty was beautifully expressed by the great German writer Hermann Hesse writing in his largely autobiographical novel Beneath the Wheel.
It is a frequently lamented fact that in American academia, Jewish Studies and Hebrew courses offered at universities across the country have entered into what appears to be a period of long term decline. These conclusions match my own teaching experience. These are the prevailing views among many educators and examples of political correctness in both the United States and the U.K. where multiculturalism ironically seems to have initially benefited both ethnic studies and demands for wider use of foreign languages so that immigrants no longer are required to become immersed immediately in English language courses. This seems to be the case for all languages dear to ethnic and religious groups, except Hebrew. Modern Hebrew suffered the steepest decline among all major foreign language course enrollments at American colleges and universities (while Biblical Hebrew showed only a modest decline and Arabic was in first place among the languages that gained students!).
Interview "The Past and Future of Hebrew in Israel and Beyond" by Manuel Langendorf, Middle East editor of The Fair Observer.
<http://www.fairobserver.com/culture/the-past-and-future-of-hebrew-in-israel
-and-beyond-64612/>
www.fairobserver.com/culture/the-past-and-future-of-hebrew-in-israel-
and-beyond-64612/
Comment in The Jewish Daily Forward by "Philologos" November 29, 2014....A newly published book, Norman Berdichevsky's "Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language," is an excellent survey of its subject. In just 200 pages, Berdichevsky manages to touch succinctly but informatively on nearly every aspect of Zionism's successful revival of Hebrew as the spoken language it had not been for two millennia.....a feat unparalleled in human history.
About the Author
Norman Berdichevsky is a professional translator, freelance writer and lecturer of history and culture for several major cruise lines. Formerly a lecturer of Judaic studies at the University of Central Florida, he is the author of several books and lives in Orlando, Florida. Author available for hour long power point assisted talks with 50 slides. See website at nberdichevsky.com
Table of Contents: 1 Modern Hebrew in American Popular Culture 2 The Magnificent Heritage of Biblical Hebrew Prior to the Modern Language 3 Modern Hebrew's Influence on "Minor Language Revivals and Esperanto" 4 The
Three Thousand Year Old Treasury 5 How Hebrew Became a Modern Language 6
Do the Israelis Speak Hebrew or Israeli? 7 The Great Yiddish-Hebrew Rivalry
8 Negation of the Golah (Exile); Hebraization 9 Baltic Training Grounds for a Hebrew State 10 The First Modern Hebrew Textbook With Real National-Cultural Content 11 Soviet Persecution of Hebrew 12 Israeli Arab
Use of Hebrew 13 Towards a Hebrew Republic? 14 Slang and Profanity 15
The Current Assault on Hebrew at Home; Competition from English. 16. Outlook for Hebrew in the U.K. & U.S. 17 Epilogue
KENNETH L HANSON on September 1, 2014 Amazon Books
This brilliant and insightful tome on the Hebrew language is unique in its class. The author has adroitly produced a concise volume written equally for those who have familiarity with Hebrew, having studied it to some degree, and those who have no background whatsoever. Even those who know or have endeavored to know the language are often unaware of its "trajectory" of development, over the course of the last 130 years. Dr. Berdichevsky adroitly presents the remarkable progress made by modern Hebrew in the face of determined opposition by the ultra-Orthodox and the power of intimidation as well as outright persecution by Soviet authorities to retard and eradicate the instruction of the language. The study of Modern Hebrew became a dynamic movement that projected hope and gave inspiration to a generation of Jewish youth encouraging them to look towards the future during the desperate years of the 1930s when many Jews were paralyzed by despair and the fear of growing Nazi power.