Accent on Learning: Teaching Text in Hebrew

An American-born lover of Hebrew, middle school teacher Elana Goldberg sets a strong example to her students. By modeling both the struggle and the joy of learning Hebrew, she empowers her students to see language not as a barrier, but as a gateway to deeper connections to Jewish texts and life.

Like a fair number of graduates with an MA from the William Davidson School, Elana Goldberg teaches Tanakh, in her case at the middle school of the Leffell School in Hartsdale, NY. What’s somewhat unusual about Goldberg, who grew up Kansas City with English as her first language, is that she convinced the school to let her teach in Hebrew.

Goldberg had developed a deep love for Hebrew early on at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and then as an undergraduate at Boston University, where she minored in Hebrew language. She took advanced courses at BU in Israeli music and Israeli media, all taught in Hebrew, and she gained fluency through immersive time in Israel, including a semester during her junior year at the University of Haifa.

While living in Haifa, Goldberg switched her phone’s language to Hebrew and has not changed it back since. “All my apps are in Hebrew, and as a result I have learned a lot of technical words,” she joked.

After graduating from Boston University in 2014, Goldberg staffed United Synagogue’s Nativ gap year program in Israel and found herself for the first time in situations where she “had” to use her Hebrew. During her semester abroad she had strengthened the language skills she learned in the United States, and as a counselor on Nativ, she negotiated day-to-day living in Hebrew.

Goldberg’s decision to attend Davidson stemmed from her experiences teaching at Herzl Camp in Wisconsin, where she served as assistant rosh chinuch (head of education) and discovered she really liked education. “I was not sure I would pursue a career in day school education,” she said (her mom has taught middle school at Hyman Brand for many years), “but I decided that even if I continued in camping or campus work, having day school credentials would be a bonus.”

At Davidson, Goldberg’s text-based classes—Bialik with the late Dr. Alan Mintz z”l, Shir HaShirim with Dr. Benjamin Sommer, Kohelet with Dr. Stephen Garfinkel—deepened her own learning and solidified her commitment to Hebrew. Being a student in Mintz’s class, which was taught in his American-accented Hebrew, gave her a confidence boost for her own teaching.

“I love the challenge of unpacking a Hebrew text,” said Goldberg. “You have to use your brain on multiple levels—decoding, identifying word roots, discovering allusions to other texts, recognizing how grammar can influence meaning,” she said.

For her practicum at Davidson, Goldberg was placed at the Luria School in Brooklyn. She loved the school setting and the intellectual process of teaching. She greatly enjoyed teaching text in the original, which is rarely possible at the elementary level. Luria did not have an opening in their middle school, so when it came time for a permanent position, Goldberg expanded her search and was hired by Leffell.

“When I came to Leffell directly after Davidson, I knew that the school had a great reputation for Ivrit B’Ivrit, for teaching in Hebrew,” she said. “I did not want to teach in Hebrew right away, though when they asked me in my interview about it, I realized that it was something I might actually be able to do.”

After her first year at Leffell, Goldberg felt that her skills were up for the challenge, and she was excited about the prospect of teaching a classroom of motivated students who chose to study in an immersive setting. She conducted a model lesson in Hebrew in front of the school’s administration, and she was assigned a 6^th grade Tanakh class.

Goldberg believes it can be instructive for students to hear Hebrew spoken by nonnative teachers. Her first Hebrew teacher at Hyman Brand was actually from South Africa. “As the language of the Jewish people, Hebrew is spoken in all sorts of accents, and when students hear me speak, they get that you can be conversant in Hebrew even without an Israeli accent,” she said. “That removes one barrier to learning.”

When Goldberg is teaching in Hebrew, she knows that her students are choosing to work hard. “In middle school, you need to let them know that you are also choosing to be there, that this is not something you are doing against your will,” she said. “It seems silly, but kids are surprised to find that teachers actually like what they are doing!”

Goldberg’s approach to teaching is all about content and meaning, and Hebrew is a means to that end. She knows that a lot of grammar comes up in text-based courses, and she works in close coordination with her fellow Judaic studies faculty to meet students at their levels. In 2018-2019 she piloted a course for students who struggle to learn Tanakh in Hebrew. Goldberg also collaborates with Leffell’s all-Israeli Hebrew faculty in areas of cross-curricular learning.

At the same time, as a non-native Hebrew speaker, Goldberg can find herself uniquely qualified to address some cultural components inherent in learning a foreign language. Before the school’s eighth-graders head to Israel, for example, she helps prepare them for conversations they might encounter.

One of Goldberg’s favorite cultural conventions she likes to share is the use of “titchadesh” when buying new clothing in a store. “Kids usually recognize the root of ‘chet-dalet-shin,’ meaning ‘new,’ and once they understand the grammar of the phrase, they can smile knowing that the salesperson is wishing them a kind of self-renewal alongside their new purchase.”

Teaching in Hebrew, for Goldberg, is an act of humility combined with confidence. “Speaking in a second language means knowing you might not be perfect,” she said. “As a teacher, though, I have mastery of the content, and I know what it will take for my students to gain understanding.”

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Accent on Learning: Teaching Text in Hebrew