Vocabulary Gains in Bilingual Narrative Intervention

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effect of bilingual narrative intervention on vocabulary gains in Hebrew (school language) and English (home language) among English–Hebrew bilinguals, using a block design (one language at a time), and to determine whether there was cross-linguistic transfer to the language that was not receiving intervention. Method Sixteen English–Hebrew bilingual children participated in the study using an adaptation of the Puente de Cuentos intervention. Vocabulary was examined using a word definition task before the intervention, post English intervention, post Hebrew intervention, and 4 weeks after the interventions ended to examine maintenance of skills. Results Repeated-measures analyses of variance revealed that children made significant gains in vocabulary in the language of intervention as expected. In addition, children made cross-linguistic gains in Hebrew during the English intervention, but made no gains in English following Hebrew intervention. Conclusion These results underscore the need to provide language support in the home language to ensure growth and that intervention in the home language does not hinder growth in the school language.

The Dialogical Dimension in the Diary of Chaim Kaplan: 1935–1942

Chaim Kaplan (1880–1942), principal and owner of a private elementary Hebrew school in Warsaw, wrote a personal diary from 1933 to 1942. So far, only the WWII years have drawn scholarly attention. However, the interpretation of the diary also requires reading his available unpublished entries. An internal dialogical structure dominates his diary where he engages “the other” that interacts with his own inner voice. His pre-war identity is constructed of different and contradicting facets of Zionist ideology, traditional Jewish value system and way of life, and Polish citizenship. When the war broke out, the diary’s range of voices decreased with Kaplan’s position. His rhetoric displays a clear split between “we” and “them” following the ‘dichotomy’ of congregation and segregation. He expresses a greater empathy toward the Jewish “other” as a fellow sufferer, yet his concern with representing truth remains. To maintain this duality, Kaplan developed a literary ‘alter ego.’

Interchapter V Bildung and Built-ins

Hebrew school from the childhood years in New York City. Dickens and Tolkien, the social protests of 1968, experienced at eleven years of age in the Bronx. In the 1970s, liberal arts college, where mentors in music theory and composition and, later, literary studies, were teaching. Friendship with peers and teachers who were adolescents at the time of the Rosenberg affair, a vision, dazzling for a newcomer, of a fellowship that professes the Humanities and of a vocation to which one can attach oneself by spirit and heart as much as by training. A stay in the 1980s on the West Coast, and an apprenticeship in teaching composition. Harvard, Stanley Cavell. The theoretical ...

Hebrew School in Nineteenth-Century Bombay: Protestant Missionaries, Cochin Jews, and the Hebraization of India's Bene Israel Community

This paper is a study of cultural interaction and diffusion in colonial Bombay. Focusing on Hebrew language instruction, it examines the encounter between India's little-known Bene Israel Jewish community and Protestant missionaries. Whilst eighteenth and nineteenth-century Cochin Jews were responsible for teaching the Bene Israel Jewish liturgy and forms of worship, the Bene Israel acquired Hebrew and Biblical knowledge primarily from nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Bene Israel community was a Konkan jati with limited knowledge of Judaism. However, by the end of the century the community had become an Indian-Jewish community roughly analogous to other Jewish communities. This paper explores how this transformation occurred, detailing the content, motivation, and means by which British and American missionaries and, to a lesser extent, Cochin Jews instructed the Bene Israel in Jewish knowledge. Through a critical examination of neglected English and Marathi sources, it reconstructs the Bene Israel perspective in these encounters and their attitude towards the Christian missionaries who laboured amongst them. It demonstrates that the Bene Israel were active participants and selective consumers in their interaction with the missionaries, taking what they wanted most from the encounter: knowledge of the Old Testament and the Hebrew language. Ultimately, the instruction the Bene Israel received from Protestant missionaries did not convert them to Christianity but strengthened and transformed their Judaism.

The Subversion of Arabic Instruction in Jewish Schools in Israel

Arabic instruction in Israeli government schools in the Jewish sector is unsatisfactory by both subjective and objective measures. The general consensus among educators, academics and other interested parties, most notably the security apparatus—the main employer of Jews with knowledge of Arabic—is that not enough students study Arabic, and that those who do fail to achieve proficiency in the language (Uhlmann 2010, Ben-Rafael and Brosh 1991, Spolsky and Shohamy 1991, Spolsky et al. 1995, Lustigman 2008, State Comptroller 1996:367). Dissatisfaction with Arabic instruction has been an integral feature of the field since the very inception of the modern, secular, public Hebrew school system in the days of the British Mandate over Palestine (see especially early papers in Yonai 1992 and Landau 1961). This enduring educational fecklessness is remarkable given the available resources and the powerful stakeholders that drive for deepening and broadening Arabic instruction in Jewish schools.Previous analyses of the problems of Arabic instruction have focused on language ideology and Jewish pupils’ attitudes towards Arabic and Arabs (e.g. Ben-Rafael & Brosh 1991, Ben-Rafael 1994, Kraemer and Olshtain 1994, cf. the comprehensive overview by Spolsky et al. 1995). However, language ideology is but one aspect of the broad political and institutional structuring of Arabic instruction in Israel, and it is this complex as a whole that is responsible for the state of Arabic instruction.

Identity versus Peace: Identity Wins

In this essay, Zvi Bekerman reveals the complicated and dynamic negotiation of individual and group identities for communities engaged in peace and reconciliation education. By looking closely at the experiences of students, teachers, and parents at one integrated bilingual Arabic-Hebrew school in Israel, Bekerman finds that while children are often able to reach beyond the boundaries of ethnicity and religion,adults struggle to negotiate their sociohistorical positioning with their goals for peace. Everyday practices—from recognizing the exceptionality of students who participate in religious practices outside of their ethnic background to segregating national ceremonial events—promote static and nationalistic notions of identity that limit the potential of these schools to advance authentic and meaningful change for peace. Bekerman calls on us to teach our students to become artists of design who can help construct new ways of living together.