Shortly before Shavuot, and inspired by the holiday, the Mandel Leadership Institute held a one-day seminar on the role of the lashon ha-kodesh ["the holy tongue"] in the secular Hebrew language spoken today: Should it have any place at all? What does that kind of Hebrew sound like? How should it be learned by and taught to infants, adolescents, and adults? Is there anything like this concept in Arabic or other languages?
 
The fellows of the Mandel Leadership Institute—the School for Educational Leadership, Jerusalem Fellows, and the IDF Educational Leadership Development program—and members of the Mandel faculty were asked to approach these questions based on personal reflection and learning experiences that introduced them to a Hebrew that combines the holy with the secular.
 
Challenging the obvious
In the introduction to the seminar, such reflection was presented as especially challenging, since the participants were being asked to think about an alternative to the language in the same language as they were speaking. According to Dr. Eli Gottlieb, director of the Mandel Leadership Institute, “This is a kind of studying meant to illuminate the latent, hidden aspects of daily life, to challenge the obvious, and to think deeply about seemingly trivial phenomena.”
 
The Hebrew we speak is one of many
“Just as the language we speak can empower us in our conduct in the world, it can also limit us,” claims Dr. Daniel Marom, director of Mandel’s Visions Unit, which organized the seminar together with fellows and faculty members, based in part on the Unit’s work on developing a vision for the Hebrew language in Israeli education.
 
In a historical survey of the evolution of the Hebrew language in the twentieth century, Marom noted that when people discuss the “language war” in the early years of Zionism, they sometimes forget that the debate was not only between proponents of Hebrew and proponents of other languages. The proponents of Hebrew argued among themselves about the nature of the Hebrew language that they were proposing as a basis for life in the Jewish community in Palestine and in the future state. This debate delved into philosophical issues regarding the role of language in the lives of individuals, society, and the nation; the position of the language on the scale of educational priorities of the “new Jew”; the uniqueness of Hebrew; and the challenges of life in Hebrew in the modern world.
 
Accordingly, Marom believes that the conception of Hebrew that won reflects the circumstances at the time—circumstances that emphasized the immediate tasks of laying the foundations for a sustainable, sovereign Jewish state. It is a very goal-oriented, economical, practical, easy Hebrew- a work tool, a language that allows for the joint accomplishment of tasks without needless complications. The achievements of this form of Hebrew are well-known, impressive, and still vital, but its victory was at the expense of other elements whose time may have come, elements that cultivate a spiritual-cultural attitude toward the world, insistence on laws about listening to and speaking with people who are different, and an Israeli identity built on interaction with the classical Jewish texts. Almost all of these elements are nourished by the version of Hebrew known as lashon ha-kodesh.
 
Experiencing a Hebrew that combines the sacred and the secular
Prof. Ariel Hirschfeld of the Hebrew University started the seminar by reading and teaching S. J. Agnon’s story “Three Sisters.” Agnon’s use of the Hebrew language connects elements of the sacred and the secular, both in its subject matter and in the experience that it gives the reader. According to Hirschfeld, such a Hebrew could not have existed at any other time in history.
 
Afterwards, the participants watched Nurith Aviv’s film Langue sacre, langue parle, which had inspired the title of the seminar. In this film, 12 prominent figures in Israeli cultural life present their views on the sacred and the secular in Hebrew, combining these elements in many different ways in their words. Among the respondents to the film was Avi Katzman who claimed that the Hebrew that is spoken is one single language that cannot be divided into a holy language and a secular one. To illustrate his argument, he cited the familiar phenomenon of soccer fans proclaiming, “There is a God” when their team scores a goal. Is this holy or secular language? “Hebrew is one language with many uses,” he concluded.
 
Hebrew as a Practical Language
As in all learning experiences at Mandel, participants were given an opportunity to address the issue being studied from a practical perspective. To do so, they split up into small groups to hear presentations about various practical efforts to promote the integration of the sacred and the secular in Hebrew. The “Lexicon of Life” project—a dictionary of various kinds of Hebrew—was presented by linguist Ruvik Rosenthal. The “Jerusalem Babylonian” project—an international program that enables American and Israeli Jews to study together despite their different languages—was presented by Naama Shaked and Moshe Lorberbaum. Daniel Marom and Dafna Yizrael presented the “Word of the Week” project, a curriculum unit developed by the Visions Unit to teach small children lashon ha-kodesh.
 
A special session was devoted to Arabic, in recognition of the fact that every language has its own unique features and in order to reflect on the opportunities that Israelis from diverse linguistic and religious backgrounds have to cooperate in promoting language education in all sectors. “A Dictionary of Written and Spoken Words in Arabic,” a project developed at the Center for Educational Technology, was presented by Dr. Michal Schleifer and Hawala Sa’adi.
 
Finally, everyone took part in interactive theater, watching segments of the play Ha-mevin Yavin (Those who understand will understand), led by Jerusalem Fellow Amichai Lau-Lavie and the members of the Israeli Storahtelling troupe that he founded. The play attempts to take the weekly Torah portion out of the synagogue to cultural centers and addresses the central motif of Shavuot—the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. Because this is a work in progress, participants were asked to share their comments on the segments performed with the performers.