Last week I decided to invest a significant amount of my budget for the Israel component of my year-long adventure in a twelve-week ulpan, or Hebrew language immersion course. I have done ulpan once before, last summer in a very intense program at Hebrew University, and came away with what Rebecca called a very Buddhist knowledge of Hebrew: I knew only the present tense of every verb, so I was only able to talk about what was happening now. Enlightened, but not always so helpful...
Over this past year, as bilingual as I want to be in Third Grade, I have used my Hebrew less than I hoped and as a result came to Jerusalem three weeks ago having forgotten much of all I toiled to learn in summer school. Realizing my day-to-day interactions with the woman behind the cheese counter at the grocery store across the street or the men who own the falafel restaurant down the road were not going to significantly boost my literacy I decided to join the evening ulpan at Hebrew Union College, and now every Monday and Wednesday I am a student in Kitah Alef-Ploos, not just First Grade as I was in before but First Grade PLUS this time--mitzuyan!!
Yesterday, however, the single most significant boost to my language acquisition came when Debby's mom Roz installed a set of 1950's-era rabbit ears in our living room. Now I can learn Hebrew the way visitors and new immigrants across the globe acquire language: from television. Of course one of the only things on this evening was a press conference with Ehud Olmert, Tony Blair, and Condoleeza Rice in which after the Israeli spoke ever-poetic Hebrew and the Brit addressed the assembly in the Queen's English, the diplomat from Washington apologized via a translator for "speaking American." Sigh.
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