opinion
Learning Hebrew Brought Me Closer to
Judaism — and Alienated Me From Israel
S Joel Swanson
peaking to the media in the
United States before and
after his latest election as
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu reassured American
Jews and other supporters of
Israel that their widely expressed fears of the undem-
ocratic nature of the new Israeli governing coalition
were overblown and would not, in fact, come to pass.

Netanyahu told the New York Times that he was
still at least notionally committed to a peace deal
with the Palestinians and told journalist Bari Weiss
that policy would be determined by him, and not
cabinet ministers like the self-described “proud
homophobe” Bezalel Smotrich and convicted crimi-
nal Itamar Ben-Gvir, or the haredi Orthodox parties.

Then he returned to Israel and promptly tweeted,
“These are the basic lines of the national govern-
ment headed by me: The Jewish people have an
exclusive and indisputable right to all areas of the
Land of Israel. The government will promote and
develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel
— in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and
Samaria.” Netanyahu was asserting absolute Jewish
sovereignty over the entirety of the West Bank, with
no room for Palestinian statehood — as those politi-
cians want and as his many American Jewish critics
feared he would do.

That last tweet, despite reflecting the official position
of Netanyahu’s newly inaugurated government, did
not attract nearly as much attention in U.S. media
as Netanyahu’s previous press tour. Because unlike
Netanyahu’s fluent English-language interviews with
numerous American press organizations, this tweet was
in Hebrew — a language in which only 22% of American
Jews possess an even minimal degree of fluency.

Like many non-Orthodox American Jews, I was
once one of those other 78%. I was brought up attend-
ing a Reform synagogue, and I learned how to read
enough Hebrew phonetically to have a bar mitzvah
ceremony, reciting my Torah portion by rote memori-
zation. I learned the aleph bet, and a few basic words
here and there, but not much more. If I read Torah or
Talmud at all, it was entirely in English translation.

But unlike many non-Orthodox American Jews, I
became interested in learning Hebrew as an adult,
as part of a broader interest in learning more about
Jewish history, and I enrolled in courses starting
in college to study Biblical, Mishnaic and modern
Hebrew. Eventually, after years of study, I enrolled in
14 JANUARY 19, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
a doctoral program in Jewish history at the University
of Chicago, where I had to pass a rigorous Hebrew
proficiency exam as a prerequisite to advance to
doctoral candidacy status.

In many ways, this should have made me an ideal
American Jew. After all, numerous commentators
have opined on the need for more American Jews
to learn Hebrew, to bring us closer to both Israeli
Jewish culture and Jewish history as a whole. As one
Israeli educator stated, “Once you have Hebrew, all
Israeli culture can be injected into your life.”
A wide array of American Jewish philanthro-
pists and charities have identified funding Hebrew
language education for American Jews as a priority.

They should see someone like me — who went from
knowing barely enough Hebrew to get through my
bar mitzvah to now reading Haaretz each day in
Hebrew — as a success story.

Israeli Jewish politicians often spoke in different
terms in English and in Hebrew, tailoring their appeals
for different audiences. Netanyahu’s recent sojourn
to the United States is only one example. Take Ayelet
Shaked, who sounded moderate notes to English-
speaking audiences on a trip to Britain, while also
telling Hebrew audiences that the “Jewish” character
of Israel should supersede the notion of “equality.”
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with
code-switching. Politicians of all kinds do that. But
the fact that some Israeli politicians think they have
to sound more moderate in English than in Hebrew
is telling. And when I opened myself up to what
some Israeli politicians say in Hebrew, such as
when Netanyahu falsely spread allegations of Arabs
stealing votes in the last Israeli elections, something
he did in Hebrew and not in English, or when new
coalition partner Itamar Ben-Gvir put up a billboard
A wide array of American Jewish philanthropists and
charities have identified funding Hebrew language
education for American Jews as a priority.

Except that this call for more American Jews to
learn Hebrew often comes with an embedded polit-
ical assumption: that if more American Jews learned
to read and speak Hebrew, we would feel more
closely linked to Israel and reverse the declining
support for Israel among young American Jews.

There’s even a claim that American Jews do not
have the right to criticize Israel without being able
to follow Israeli political discussions in the origi-
nal language. Daniel Gordis of Shalem College
in Jerusalem complained that left-wing American
Jewish journalist Peter Beinart should not be taken
seriously as a commentator on Israeli affairs, as
Beinart apparently “cannot read those [Hebrew]
newspapers or Israeli literature until it is translated.”
The assumption is clear: If American Jews do not
know Hebrew, we cannot be connected to the state
of Israel, nor can we truly understand the Israeli
politics we might wish to opine about. If we learned
Hebrew, one Israeli-American advocate wrote, we
would “be more united and support Israel in spectac-
ular ways.”
Except that in my case, the exact opposite
happened. As I learned more Hebrew, I saw how
reading, “May our enemies be gone” in Hebrew
next to the pictures of three Israeli left-wing politi-
cians, two Palestinian and one Jewish, it opened my
eyes to a lot of aspects of Israeli politics that some
American Jews would rather not hear.

So yes, it would be good for more American Jews
to learn Hebrew. It would be a positive step for more
American Jews to engage more heavily with Jewish
culture and history. I certainly have no regrets about
my time spent studying Hebrew.

But we should be honest about what the effects of
that Hebrew language education would be. It might
not be to simply make more American Jews “defend
Israel” against its detractors. It might mean a more
honest engagement with Israeli politics as they truly
are, rather than how they are presented abroad to
English-speaking audiences. And for some of us, that
might even push us further away. ■
Joel Swanson is a doctoral candidate at the
University of Chicago, where he studies and teaches
undergraduate courses on modern Jewish intel-
lectual history. He is working on a dissertation on
Jewish alienation in early 20th-century France.




nation / world
Tennis Champion Dick Savitt Dies at 95
Dick Savitt, the Jewish tennis
champion who won both the
Australian Open and Wimbledon
Championships in 1951, died
Jan. 6 at 95 at his home in New
York, JTA.org reported. He was
the fi rst Jewish athlete to win
either tournament.

Savitt won both champi-
onships in 1951 when he was
only 24. He was the second
American man to win both
competitions in the same year.

Dick Savitt at the Wimbledon Championship
The New York Times ranked him
on July 6, 1951, in London
the No. 1 player in the world.

That same year, the 6-foot-3
righty also reached the semifi nals of the U.S. National Championships and the
quarterfi nals of the French Championships, now called the U.S. Open and French
Open, respectively.

Savitt became the fi rst Jewish athlete to appear on the cover of Time Magazine
on Aug. 27, 1951.

In 1952, Savitt retired from tennis. He returned part-time to competitive tennis a
few years later and in 1961 won gold medals in men’s singles and doubles at the
Maccabiah Games in Israel.

Savitt is a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, the National
Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Number of Russian Jews Down Sharply in Last Decade,
Pre-Ukraine War Census Reveals
Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images via JTA.org
An exodus of Jews from Russia since President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring
Ukraine has drawn widespread attention over the last year. But according to statis-
tics released recently by Russia’s statistics bureau, the country’s Jewish population
had fallen sharply long before the tanks began rolling, JTA.org reported.

The statistics, published last month by Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service,
showed that just 82,644 people identifi ed themselves as Jews on the national
census, conducted in 2021.

In contrast, Russia’s previous census, conducted in 2010, showed nearly 160,000
people who identifi ed as Jews or belonging to related groups — suggesting a
decline by more than half over the last decade. During the same period, Russia’s
total population grew by 3.5%.

The numbers don’t account for the mass exodus of Russian Jews since the onset
of the war in Ukraine, estimated to be more than 20,000 in the fi rst six months
after the invasion. The exodus suggests that Russia’s Jewish population could total
fewer than 60,000 people.

First 7-Eleven Opens in Israel
Israel has its fi rst 7-Eleven convenience store, Globes reported.

The store opened on Dec. 11 in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center, a year after Electra
Consumer Products announced a 20-year franchise agreement with the U.S.-based
convenience store chain.

By the middle of 2023, seven more stores are scheduled to open, most of them
in Tel Aviv with one in Hod Hasharon. Thirty stores are set to open by early 2024.

The Tel Aviv store will sell about 2,000 products, including 80 that are 7-Eleven
brand products made in Israel. International brands such as Slurpee also will be
available. ■
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
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