LaShon HaTorah or LaShon HaKodesh: A Curricular Study of Biblical Hebrew and Chumash Instruction

• In Event: The Purposes of Hebrew: New Approaches to Understanding Hebrew Education in America

Abstract

From the earliest years of large-scale Jewish immigration to the United States, the American Jewish community has grappled with the question of Jewish education. Leaders have asked, “What knowledge and capacities do young people need in order to grow into full adult members of the American Jewish community?” Since the 1920s, educators have pursued a variety of approaches. But despite the many changes, American Jewish educators have agreed that the Hebrew Bible must be a central concern of Jewish education. Nonetheless, even within the teaching of Bible, educators have debated the role of Biblical Hebrew. Curricula have taken a wide spectrum of approaches ranging from abandoning Hebrew altogether and teaching the Hebrew Bible in English (see e.g. Cohen, 1934) to insisting that students of all ages must study the Hebrew Bible in its original language (see e.g. Pollack, 1934). Other perspectives fall somewhere between these two extremes. In this paper I will examine two recently written comprehensive curricula for teaching Hebrew Bible to young students, one produced by the Conservative movement and the other by the Orthodox movement. The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism published MaToK; and the Consortium of Jewish Day Schools (COJDS) published LeHavin U’LeHaskel. My exploration of how these curricula approach Biblical Hebrew will shed light on how different approaches to Biblical Hebrew reflect fundamentally different religious stances and in turn shape different conceptions of Jewish religious activity.

Author

• Ziva Hassenfeld, Brandeis University