Let me admit – thank you.
About Y D H – to thank, to admit.
As I cycled home after my last class of the year, balancing chocolates and flowers on the handles (I left the excellent beers in the office so they wouldn’t break on the way), I was thinking back to all that happened this year. It was supposed to be the year in which the war ended, and growth and healing began. We thought Israel hit rock bottom, only to find that once you hit the bottom you can start digging a hole. As a teacher of Hebrew, I could not ignore it. How can I tell apart the language I teach from the way it is used these days? Do I choose to hide the real world and shelter myself behind old textbooks that have very little relevance to our everyday life but offer the comfort of transcendental approach to grammar? I never use textbooks anyways. Half the fun in my work is making up my own curriculum. But do I burden my students with six hours a week of gloom and doom? Can I face that?
After all, I spend my day with a sensitive, intelligent group of young people. They don’t need me in order to know what is happening in the Middle East. In some areas they are better informed. For one, they DO listen to the professor of Israel Studies when he talks, and I tend to tell him to just pass the salt and “not in front of the kids.” They respect me enough to ask for my opinion. I worry that they do so at times when I am visibly shaken, which tends to happen more often than I would like. I think that they worry about me just as I worry about them.
the fears of a global war were too hard to cope with for me, unlike British people, who’s memories of war are a third generation hand me down, I lived me war my whole life. thinking of a global war starting from my little corner of the world is terrifying.
I started the year worrying for the lives of young man I know in Israel, boys that will be enlisting soon, if not already in uniform. Now I worry for my own students. Oxford churches are full of plaques – names of former students and faculty that went to fight the big wars and did not make it back home. They had teachers worrying for them just as I worry now. I think of the brilliant young men in my class, bright, kind, caring lads. God help me – I cannot write the next line of what is in my head. All I can hope for is for my fears to remain just that - fears, not an actuality, this is indeed a glimps into a Jewish Israeli psyche - the constant fear of “the end”.
Because of my students’ questions, I prepared materials about Hebrew culture. We learned about the Canaanites and their contribution to Hebrew literature and science fiction. We considered the dybbuk, the golem, great Israeli rock albums, Sephardi poetry and music and much more. We compared poems written in 1923 and 2023, translated Jewish mysticism as well as science fiction written in English under the influence of Hebrew. Avoiding the news brought us face to face with fascinating texts (with the help of the resources of Israel’s national library).
My students.
I am very proud to call them that. It says something about me more than it does about them.
A rabbinic saying goes like this. “I have learned from all my teachers, but from my students I’ve learned the most.” And oh, how much they taught me this year. Admitting that is making me a better teacher.
They ask me the best question a teacher could ask for.” Why? Why does language work like that? Why dose Hebrew work like that?” This ripple effect builds layers of knowledge, like a pebble flung into a pool – always creating additional meanings. If you sit at the shore of the lake, you can only see a little wave at your feet, nothing significant. You cannot see that the wave started deep in the lake when a fish jumped to get away from a fisherman. So do linguistic stems. They travel from a slab of stone with no vowels, no spaces between words, no vocalizations, and over the millennium they reach the stars. For example, a bull pulling a wagon in the Sinai dessert became an Olympic champion receiving a medal, through the letter alef – the stem A L F travelled to create meanings that no Canaanite traveller could ever imagine.
My students are funny (at least when they are not facing exams) and fun to be with. They made my days so much more bearable. They are just healthy, normal youngsters - nothing like Israelis their age. Nothing like I was at their age, dreaming of a six-hour sleep while patrolling the checkpoints of the sister army base of the one that was saw bitter battle on October 7th. My students cannot tell a rifle apart from a gun, but they argue about Homer and Hegel. Arguments that end in a friendly visit to a pub. They brought normality to my days, the only piece of normality. They acknowledged what Israel is going through (and inflicting) while at the same time they are alive, and look at the world with open eyes, not allowing anyone to decide for them what is right and what is wrong. I did not find this balance anywhere else in my day to-day.
I set down to write about the word thank you in Hebrew. Toda, to thank, comes from the same original stem as “to admit.” I find it beautiful that to thank someone or something entails admitting the contribution they have had on your life. I admit that my teaching has a lot of room for improvement. I thank the students that made me realize that.
Modeh is a verb that can be read in two ways, “I thank” and “I admit,” the context clarified by the preposition that follows, as in the song of one of Israel’s most famous rock poets – Meyir Ariel:
Modeh ani – before you, and to you
For all the grace and truth
And the good, and the bad, and the good,
That you have done to me, and my household.
And with my relatives and friends
With the people of my nation and my country
With the whole world and man
That you have created
This poem reminds us that to thank someone, you must first acknowledge what it was that they really did for you. So, to all my dear students, thank you, thank you for your questions, your patience with me when my explanations were lacking or when I went down one of my rabbit holes into the etymology of some obscure word.
Since it is the time of year to look back, admit and thank it seems like the perfect opportunity to tell you how this substack came to life, and kept going, despite all my short comings.
This blog is only possible because of the immeasurable support of my friend Suzanne Schneider - AKA Dr Small Talk. Perhaps she was fed up with listening to my rants about language but this substack was her idea, she literally held my hand as we set it up and edited every post but one since I started writing it. Suzy – TODA RABA – thank you so much. I couldn’t have done this without you.
On a different note:
Every summer some of my students ask for summer classes, which I am happy to offer. These sessions are done in a group online. If you wish to join the groups – I offer several levels, depending on student’s numbers – please send me a message.
Whishing us all a quiet, peaceful summer.