HEBREW LANGUAGE GOES GLOBAL VIA HCO

BY JILL SUZANNE JACOBS
Illustration by Robin Jareaux

In the past century, as Jews have returned to the Land of Israel and revived Hebrew, that ingathering has had an interesting and complementary effect: the dispersion of the Jewish ancestral language back out to the four corners of the earth. Throughout the Jewish Diaspora and in other communities globally, interest in Hebrew has surged.

People of all backgrounds are buying Hebrew language learning books, attending Hebrew classes—and now they're even meeting in cyberspace in a quest for Hebrew language proficiency. They're logging on from as far away as Nepal, Pakistan and Hawaii and from all over New England. And the portal for this virtual learning is Hebrew College Online (HCO).

HCO's language courses replicate the high educational standards of the campus-based program for those who aren't able to attend a live Hebrew class. The courses, which use the same textbook as that used for on-campus classes— (Hebrew from Scratch), co-authored by Hilla Kobliner, Sara Israeli and Shlomit Chayat, Hebrew University curriculum specialists—is based on an immersion and incremental approach to learning language. (Kobliner's team is also developing NETA's new high school Hebrew language curriculum—see HCT Winter 2003.)

Using text, sound and graphics, the highly interactive learning experience offers students an opportunity to work on their Hebrew reading, writing, comprehension and conversational skills. Instead of working with a long list of vocabulary and grammar rules, students are incrementally given discrete vocabulary and grammatical concepts, which are then built upon in subsequent lessons. Except for phone-based class discussions, participation is asynchronous—students can log on at any time to complete their assignments.

In a typical scenario, students roll their cursor over the Hebrew text and hear the words pronounced. They may check their comprehension with an online quiz that provides instant results or participate in a web-based asynchronous audio class discussion. For added enrichment, they may click on links that take them deeper into a given subject area, such as Israeli restaurants or Israeli music.

Students' assignments reach instructor Shira Ruderman at her desk at Hebrew College, located unobtrusively behind the Alumni Dining Hall. She receives students' handwritten homework via fax or email from all over the world, then sends handwritten corrections and comments right back via email. Patiently she listens to her students' oral exercises—posted on the course website or sent via voice email—and corrects their pronunciation.

"This is an added benefit of online learning that you don't have in a live classroom," says Nathan Ehrlich, Dean of Hebrew College Online. "Often when someone is learning a language, they can't hear themselves. And that's part of the problem. The teacher will correct the student, and the student will say, 'but that's what I said.'

"This technology enables students to actually hear themselves and hear the teacher's corrections," he continues. "We're still evaluating how this mode of studying Hebrew impacts on the learning process, but for some people, particularly those who find the fast pace of a live classroom overwhelming, online study may be the way to go."

While a new lesson is posted each week, earlier lessons are not lost in time but are conveniently waiting in cyberspace.

Ruderman explains that this method helps students who need to review earlier materials, a feature that campus-based courses don't provide. A veteran of language instruction—she taught Hebrew and Arabic at Ulpan Akiva in Netanya, Israel—Ruderman is teaching online for the first time.

Among this class's students are a Presbyterian minister in Ghana, a Jewish professor of Oriental studies living in Japan, a teenager in rural Virginia and a mother of four in Maine. For many of them, the virtual class is their only opportunity to study Hebrew.

"I've been trying to find a way to learn Hebrew for the past five to six years," says Bethamy Weinberger, a mother and frequent shlihat tsibur at her temple in Peabody, Mass. She is unable to attend a more traditional class because of health considerations that require a great deal of rest as well as flexibility in scheduling. But, she notes, even without geographical or physical impediments, many people are simply strapped for time, and this program allows them to fit Hebrew learning into their hectic lives.

People of all backgrounds are buying Hebrew language learning books, attending Hebrew classes—and now they're even meeting in cyberspace in a quest for Hebrew language proficiency.

Many students live in regions of the world where there are no large Jewish communities—they simply do not have access to resources for learning Hebrew. One such student is Yakov Zinberg, a native of the former Soviet Union and currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at Tokyo's Kokushikan University.

Growing up in the former Soviet Union, Zinberg never had the opportunity to learn about his Jewish heritage. While doing an online search for a Jewish publishing house, Zinberg inadvertently found Hebrew College Online and jumped to enroll in the Hebrew class.

"I've always wanted to learn Hebrew and this means a great deal to me," he says. "I live in a place that is detached from Jewish life. Studying Hebrew through the Internet enables me to feel close to my people and my origins. I'm very happy about it."

Now in its third year, the online Hebrew language program is still evolving. And students, administrators and instructors agree that not only is there a lot of Hebrew to be learned but a lot to be learned from the process as well. Adaptations are constantly evolving to meet students' needs: Whereas students used to download Hebrew fonts and type in Hebrew, they now submit their written work either via fax or as an email attachment, sparing them the added burden of learning to type in Hebrew.

In March, the semester's first phone conference was a decided success. "We had a 45-minute session with Shira, me and three other students—one in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and one in Merrick, New York," says Weinberger. "It really helped us work on our conversational skills. What an experience!"

In addition to meeting and studying by phone and online, students from around the world will soon be able to hear and see one another via desktop videoconferencing. Inquiries for online Hebrew have already arrived from nearly every state in the usa and from 20 foreign countries, including Algeria, China, Greece, Nepal, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates—proof that this ancient language, with roots in the Fertile Crescent, is finding a worldwide voice in cyberspace.

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