The first thing any Jew has to know to be able to Learn or Daven is Hebrew. The Torah, Nach, practically all meforshim (Rahi, Tosafos, etc.), all of davening and everything else are all written in Hebrew. The gemara is written in Hebrew/Aramaic and if you know Hebrew it will be easy to learn the gemara's language. And yet many Jews are not fluent in Hebrew! They don't understand parts of davening and chumash and can't learn gemara-rashi-tosafos-etc. because of the language barrier. Its ridiculous! And the yeshivas don't even teach them Hebrew, instead they try teaching them Gemara, etc. even though it's in a language the kids don't understand. If someone didn't know Chinese would he be able to study Sun Tzu's Art of War in Chinese?!
Before beginning any Torah-learning a Jewish child obviously has to know Hebrew fluently. This isn't so easy if you try starting to teach Hebrew when a child is older. It's boring and hard to learn a whole new language when older.
The solution is to send all kids when they're one-to-four years old to a Hebrew-only playgroup. The morah there will speak Hebrew and they could watch Hebrew videos at playgroup and at home. As long as they continue watching, speaking, reading or hearing Hebrew they will retain the language throughout their life and be able to learn and daven.
1 comment:
Great post. First I learn all the Arabic once, but them i was told that in Tel aviv they speak Hebrew so I began to learn them :) I hope you can teach how to say Good day, good evening and good night. I'm going to Israel in June and it would be really great to learn these words :)
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pimsleur hebrew
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