Blog

by Dr. Gil Graff

“Your people (nation) is my people (nation); your God is my God.” With these words, the Biblical Ruth, a Moabite-born woman who was to become the grandmother of King David, indicated to her mother-in-law Naomi that she wished to join the Israelite community. The words bespeak a folk and a religious dimension of Jewish identity.

By Harry Bloom

By Dr. Gil Graff

By Arnee R. Winshall

Admittedly, I am a language junky. I find nothing more exciting than being able to go to a foreign country and talk to people in their own language instead of their having to talk to me in my language. (I have always been bothered by the measure of arrogance and inherent limitation associated with the view we, as Americans, have developed that the whole world should and will learn to speak English.) Of all the languages I can speak, understand, and read none share the status and importance of Hebrew.

Writing in 1904, Solomon Schechter—President of the fledgling Jewish Theological Seminary of America—described Hebrew as the “great depository of all that is best in the soul-life of the Congregation of Israel.” He observed that, historically, Hellenistic Jews had experimented with abandoning Hebrew: “The result was death. It (Hellenistic Judaism) withered away….”

Admittedly, I am a language junky. I find nothing more exciting than being able to go to a foreign country and talk to people in their own language instead of their having to talk to me in my language. (I have always been bothered by the measure of arrogance and inherent limitation associated with the view we, as Americans, have developed that the whole world should and will learn to speak English.) Of all the languages I can speak, understand, and read none share the status and importance of Hebrew.