Tales from the Shark Tank

Some months back, our temple started adult Hebrew language classes. They were far more basic than I’d anticipated, but I figured a review couldn’t hurt me. What I wanted from it was comprehension – vocabulary, grammar, that sort of thing. When I was a kid, we were taught the alphabet, and how to sound out words, and that was all. It remained meaningless phonemes. To me, that was pointless. It’s not supposed to be an incantation to be recited without any understanding.

But somehow even with the Titanic-sized holes in my knowledge, I turned out to be far ahead of the others. So rather than sit there and be politely bored, (a thing I have never done gracefully) I started helping the woman who was struggling the most, pointing to each syllable (sometimes each letter) and reminding her of the sound of it when she asked. The rabbi, teaching the class, worked with the other five people and mostly left H. to me. I thought it made perfect sense. H. needs more than all the rest of us put together, and even if it isn’t saying much, I’m still the most advanced of the group.

It seems teaching is teaching. The rabbi took me aside this morning, said she’d been watching me with H. and that it was clear I knew how to teach, and asked me to take the intermediate Hebrew class for the Hebrew School. She’d thought of everything, including arranging someone else to take the class once a month so that I could go down to Indy when I needed to. So I’ll be doing that, and teaching the kids the songs as well. Not a thing I ever envisioned myself doing, but here I am. It’s a good thing J. is going to be in the bar mitzvah prep class as of this coming year, because he really doesn’t want to be in Mom’s class. And the real challenge? Staying one jump ahead of my students. At least I won’t forget my Hebrew again.