Learning

Two nights a week I go to Hebrew class in an ulpan at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement's institution for training clergy and Jewish educators. I am in Kitah Alef Ploos, First Grade Plus, not Kitah Alef where they are still practicing the alphabet and just got their textbooks last week and not Kitah Gimel where they have to accurately read and animatedly discuss long texts. I am right in the middle.

My teacher's name is Leah and she is wonderful. The class had already been meeting for a few weeks when I joined and in the first session one of the students, now a friend of mine, had a very bad cold so Leah was instructing us on what to say when someone sneezes. It is not what most people do say because it seems that what most people do say is grammatically incorrect and so Leah was teaching us the correct construction. "But what you're teaching us sounds wrong. NO ONE says it that way," a woman in the class complained.

"What? The whole world is wrong. That means I have to be like them?!" Leah asked in disbelief. What a fabulously teacher-y thing to say. I fell in love with her immediately.