Holy intensive class! When I heard “intensive” I was just
thinking like a semester crammed into a month (like a summer school course). I
was not expecting an immersive course. First, I was taken aback, since in the
first hour and a half our professor maybe spoke 10 words to us in English.
However, since she was presenting us material in Hebrew it actually forced me
to learn these new phrases. I think I will enjoy this immersive course. It also
helps that the whole class exchanged a semi-panicked look when we realized just
how immersive it was; so it looks like we are all in the same boat.
Having taken Hebrew, the letters are familiar to me. But we
also learn the cursive form of Hebrew too, which is realty confusing. For
example, we went to the grocery store (which is about one block North of
campus) and the products will feature both the traditional script (It’s like
the normal print) and cursive (the print I don’t know). Having had such a
strong foundation in Biblical Hebrew made it hard. Our professor would have
write gibberish (as of now) words like: mat, tee, etc. but we would use the
cursive spelling, and I would instinctually go to the script writing. It is a
habit, and it will take some breaking.
We had an orientation party. Kind of like a gathering of
people to just get to know each other’s names and such (no booze for all the
skeptics out there). There are so many international students. I have met
people from Canada, Japan, Korea, Italy, Australia, South Africa, England, and
many others. Me and a few of my new friends were talking about how it is weird
that our home schools all have strong international programs (in terms of
people coming to our home schools), but it is weird being on the other end of
that equation for once.
But getting back to Hebrew (sorry, it’s been a crazy packed
day) it is essentially a conversation with the professor. She would say a
sentence and would pair hand gestures with words so we could understand their
meaning (such as “’ani” – “I”—she would gesture to herself as she said “’ani”).
We learned how to do about 10 of the letters of the alphabet in both script and
cursive form. Overall, I was very overwhelmed at first, but as I hinted at
earlier, the constant talk in Hebrew also forced (more like allowed) me to
think in Hebrew. Rather than simply storing it in the memory bank I actually
have to learn it (which also means I have to organize my notes and vocab—five
hours is a lot of time for notes to get crazy messed up).
In all honesty this day was much better than yesterday. You
could call it traveller’s anxiety or whatever, but I think it was sleep
deprivation. I know that this is a tactic to help people acclimate to new time
zones (which is did), but yesterday was kind of a terrible day. I had a
migraine, I was ridiculously tired, I hadn’t had food or water for about 10
hours, and I was in a new city being bombarded with a ton of new information. I
guess I was a little bit on the crabby side. However, after 11 hours of sleep,
copious amounts of water, and the purchasing of my Hebrew book, I was ready for
the day. Overall, it was a great day. Got to meet people in my class, and we
went to Aroma (a coffee shop with fantastic iced coffee—I know that for sure
since that is what I got), and then we went grocery shopping together.
So far, I know this trip is going to be an eye-opener. One
of my first thoughts (being from Fargo, where the Jewish population isn’t the
most prevalent) was, “There are so many Jews.” This is not meant to be racist,
but I have just never had the experience of being a religious minority. It was
a very humbling experience. I have met people with ties to the Christian
tradition, and we have attempted to explain the meaning of the umbrella term,
“Protestantism” to a few people in our Hebrew class who have asked, and they
attempted to explain the various understandings of the different sects of
Judaism.
Already, I can feel the hesitancy to discuss issues of the
West Bank and Israel, but it is very interesting. Here, I feel like I am in
America. As with many (not all) universities tend to be more liberal in their
education, to provide their students with a well-rounded education (bear with
me for a bit here). At Rothberg International School (at the Hebrew University)
I feel the same thing. The school itself (so far) seems to be pretty liberal.
However, I think this view is biased as of now, since I have mostly been
surrounded by international Jews, and not native Jews. I have had several
discussions about “pro-two-state solution,” but have had none opposed to it. It
gives me an idea of the people I am surrounded by. Of course, this is not to
demean them; but it is the recognition that we are foreign people coming into a
situation that has gone on longer than we have been alive. It would only be
natural that Jews (or any people for that matter) that grew up here and live
here permanently would have a different view.
So this first day has been filled with so many things. If
all the days are this packed with new things I don’t know what will become of
me. Also, next post I hope to have a picture of the view from my .window. It is
pretty breath taking—not going to lie. For now, I must sleep
Peace and Hebrew Studies
