arbah echad echad

aviyah has been speaking hebrew really well, lately.  she is probably well behind a native speaker, and for sure she gets tongue tied sometimes when she is trying to speak really fast.  when she really doesn't know what a word is she'll definitely say the phrase in heblish.  but, for the most part, now she's speaking to me 95% of the time in hebrew.  she's even picking up on some grammar things, like the "et" and gender stuff.  

one major major thing that i did do that i think that's really really helped is that i only only speak to her always in hebrew.  i've only ever said one real thing to her english ("just so you i make sure you totally understand i am going to also say this in english:  it is never ever never okay to push or hit mommy or daddy or anybody!"), and i started over the summer to only only respond to her if she said something to me in hebrew.  it seemed really kind of harsh at first, maybe, but it is definitely the thing that pushed her to have to start speaking in hebrew to me, i think, because we do spend a lot of time together, and we are close, and i think anyways it helped her want to talk in hebrew. 

i'm also still working on improving my hebrew because i'm definitely only okay.  i feel like sometimes i've gotten a lot better, and i know that i've come a really long way, but sometimes i still get discouraged too.  i have a really hard time listening and following, and i know i still make a lot of grammar mistakes that are probably simple but that i don't know.  for the most part, i can feel like i can find the right words that i want to say.  every once in a while i have to dumb down a word because i can't find the one i wanted, but we actually don't use a crazy big range of verbs or adjectives in normal conversation.  

i do feel like i maybe i stalled for a little bit because it was hard with starting school last semester and also teaching and also the girls.  now, i'm starting to try to get better again. i started a subscription for sha'ar la-matchil, a hebrew language newspaper, and also i started trying to listen to israeli news.  it's crazy hard to follow the israeli shows yet, but hopefully if i keep trying it will get a little easier.  it's definitely one thing that people have _always_ tried to encourage me to do: watch israeli tv.  

hopefully, it will help.  maybe it's kind of like when i think back to moments when i didn't know how to say the shapes in hebrew when i first started.  isn't that crazy?  (i mean, sometimes i think about what i knew when i actually started to talk to aviyah in hebrew, and it's really really crazy.  i mean, it's genuinely nuts.  i didn't know anything, really.)  you don't know what's going on, and then, hopefully, you do.

when i was talking with my friend, i realized that i really need to keep improving.  he was saying, well where does this all go?  what is the end goal?  when do you want to stop talking with her in hebrew?

i said that i think probably i always want to speak to her in hebrew, but i hadn't really thought about it like that.  i'd gotten some pushback from some people about why was i speaking hebrew in the first place, but i think that's a little more silly.  first of all, people across the world are bilingual or more, and research is pretty clear:  second language fluency is a huge positive.  but, mostly, i decided to speak hebrew because i want to teach a more intimate and more direct connection to judaism and jewish culture.  

i feel like it's really hard to pass down theology, and i feel like it's not crazy essential that my girls grow up to be observant, whatever that means.  at the same time, it is important to me that they have a strong identity and a strong jewish identity.  so much of how this is done sometimes is not sustainable, and i just feel like language is a real clear way to make connections.  

still, i don't think i'd thought so far down the road.  i mean, i kind of just decided to do it really quickly without a really huge background.  i didn't even start speaking to aviyah in hebrew, we discovered, until around 10 or 11 months.  i think i said my first things in hebrew to her when we so it's been less than two years since i started.  (of course, she wasn't talking so much then either.)

in the end, i've actually done a lot a lot of programs and study to learn the hebrew that i am learning.  i mean, it really is possible to do.  at the same time, i've really spent a lot of time and given a lot of effort to figure it all out.  i've always said that if a monkey spent as much time learning hebrew as i do, the monkey would speak better than me.  and, still, my listening to hebrew is way way behind.  because i speak all the time in hebrew, i'm pretty good at saying what i need to say.  alhtough i'm sure my vocabulary is much smaller than i'd normally use, i can find the words to describe the things i need to say.  i'm sure that to really get better now i ned to have more fluent conversations and more practice listening.  

b'ezrat ha-shem.

ps.  a new hebrew language charter school in brooklyn got approval to approval to open this fall.  yesh!