The World is in the Words

In the past two days I have embarked upon a voyage, a ‘journey’ if you will, to learn Hebrew. I am in Haifa, a beautiful and mountainous city in Northern Israel, full of beaches and hills and now about 190 students of all ages and nationalities who want to learn to read, speak, and write the national language all in the next month. It’s one of the best programs of its kind in the country and people really have come from all over to learn here. I already have friends and/or acquaintances from Denmark, Finland, France, Holland, Germany, Czech Republic, Egypt, Italy, and the list goes on. One of the main reasons I decided to come to Haifa is that it is one of the only parts of Israel where Arabs and Jews live in relative peace and even sometimes camaraderie. The University I’m studying with, the University of Haifa, is known as a leading University in studying and working for peace. This is a part of Israel that I have really wanted to see because considering all of the doom and gloom in the papers and around some parts of Israel, I wanted to see a different situation. In the dorms I’m staying in, there are both Jewish and Muslim students, and there are no dirty looks or angry shouts…there seems to be no tension at all. Everyone is just off to learn as themselves. It seems so easy to coexist in this peaceful microcosm, but it’s as if most of the rest of the Middle East is blind to such possibilities. More on that can be found at nytimes.com, cnn.com, jpost.com, etc. You don’t need me to tell you.

What I can tell you though, is about what I’ve experienced so far in my intensive language classes, and outside of them. We have five hours of Hebrew classes five days a week. I am in level 5 out of 15. Basically, this means that I know very little, but I know more than 4 out of 15 people here, or less than 10 out of 15 people here (for the glass half-empty people). The classes are good and I’m comfortable in my level. There are people who are struggling more than me and a few who are doing better, so I think I’m a good fit. Though it is a very different situation for me than in Jerusalem, where I am constantly taking the religious and the spiritual into account.

Haifa is a relatively secular city, and although of course there are religious people, it lacks the overwhelming visual references to Judaism and Orthodoxy. Gone are the wigs, long skirts, and long sleeves from the women and off are the black hats, black coats, and long sideburns (called peyus) from the men. It is a city just like any other city in America, just all of the signs and conversations are in Hebrew. And the toiletries are more expensive. But anyway, the point is that I’m not having mystical experiences by just being here as seemed to be the case in Jerusalem. I’m working much harder for my divine revelations.

Really, so far, nothing major has happened. I have not gone all the way up the mountain, but I have not gone all the way down it either. I am just concentrating on my studies and cramming as many words and phrases as possible into my head. This is where my most interesting thoughts come from: words. Tonight I took a walk just outside of the university gates just as the sun was setting and I sat down on a bench to try to digest all of the knowledge, people, and words that I have encountered in the last few days. And I was thinking about how little Hebrew I know, about how little I can communicate in this foreign, very confusing, tongue. And it dawned on me how much we take our words for granted. How I can say, usually, what I’m feeling and what I want and need without great effort or aggravation. With words, the world is at my fingertips. At least the English-speaking world. And this is where it stops. When I need something or feel something, I many times cannot express that need or feeling in Hebrew. I can say “I want,” and “I feel,” but I simply do not know the rest of the sentence. And so I must pantomime and improvise, but cannot at this point convey almost anything important in Hebrew. I rely on the kindness of strangers who have already taken the time to learn my language to get along. And it is the words that I am missing, the words that I know in English and (usually) even in Spanish, that hold the most power. Because I do not have them. And how can you learn all of the words in a month? A few months? Most likely I can’t, no matter how highly acclaimed the program may be.

In Judaism as well as in Yoga (Hinduism) and other religions and belief systems, there is great attention paid to our words and the ways in which we use them. It is a truth universally acknowledged that words hold great creative power. And that I cannot use mine in many situations is debilitating and isolates me from the world I live in and the people who surround me.

Not to worry though, I am not being paralyzed by my fear, I have not become incapable of receiving information or memorizing, I have just become keenly aware of how vast the world is, and how, by having the words, we have the ability to pare it down, to make sense of it all. And how, when we don’t have the words, there is less sense, less understanding, less comfort, less peace.

So, as I slowly begin to gain the words over this month and the months to come, I hope that with these words come all of these things that in many ways I feel that I lack here. I hope that once these words become my own, this place and these people will become my own, too. That I will be able to express my needs and thoughts and feelings, and equally importantly, that others will be able to express themselves to me.