Ulpan is one of the most fascinating, challenging and awesome environments I’ve ever been in. Everyday, my brain explodes between the hours of 8am-12:30pm. Not counting the hours of homework.
I’ve been in Ulpan now a little under two months. I started from the beginning, in level aleph with a class of about 12 people, many of whom where from Central/South America, but also from Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Most had background knowledge of some conversational Hebrew as well as the letters. Since starting, many have dropped out due to various causes, mostly because they were lost, some because they started work. We go fast, and you have to be “on” the whole time; there is nothing casual or “drop in when you can” about the class: if you miss more than three days, you’re in trouble. And while we did lose many, many new folks come in each week. These are folks that have been in Israel for a while now, or have studied Hebrew elsewhere, and thus have a basic (or in some cases, more than basic) knowledge and therefore can start up right where we are. So, while there is a bit of a transitory feel to the class, there is also a core group, and we have a close rapport. The class is welcoming and warm, and I find it pleasant to be there (unless I’m extra confused or miss something, than I get pouty).
Our teacher, Eti, is fantastic. Logical, clear, predictable, fun. She speaks to us only in Hebrew (sometimes translating a word into English, Spanish or Russian), and follows the workshop model almost to the T, whether or not she knows it. She scaffolds everything so well that even if I can’t follow all of her spoken Hebrew (I can’t), I can understand simply by examining the board and/or her models.
I love meeting everyone and slowly getting to understand their stories and backgrounds. We all come from different worlds, with different experiences of Judaism, the diaspora, and society. We all have different ideas of what Israel is, and we all came here for different reasons. Some left because of increasing feelings of insecurity, oppression and lack of opportunity in their old homes. Some came to be closer to family they have here, while some felt the pull of a Jewish homeland. We are all wildly different, and while I won’t even go so far as to say that our common bond is our profound connection to Judaism, although I do relish the connections we have in this arena, we do share the common bond of being here together, and stumbling through this new country and tongue together, and this, I think, is pretty powerful.
On a final note, and to be perfectly transparent for my own sake and sanity, I do not agree with many of the beliefs, mostly “political” ideas (although, to me, it’s not about politics, it’s about being human) that some of my peers have. In fact, I am sometimes extremely disturbed by comments I hear them make. It’s been challenging for me, to spend so much time with, and to care for, someone who can make comments that are so abhorrent to me, yet this is one of the reasons I want to be here. I didn’t come here to fight with, or feel hatred/anger towards my own people (or to anyone else for the matter.) I came here to experience and to come closer to an understanding of them, both on a personal scale as well as on a larger, world scale. And everyday, as I sit and struggle with the benyanim (verb families), I am reminded that Israel is a place brimming with contradiction, nuance and confusion and trust me, I feel it.
