Question 2: What do we do about Hebrew?

This morning I went to church.

I was at West End Collegiate on the upper west side of Manhattan, a few blocks north of West End Synagogue, as part of the “Freedom Rising” conference with Middle Collegiate church. The two collegiate church communities combined with conference attendees for celebratory worship. And oh was it celebratory. Joyful music, a powerful sermon from Rev. Jacqui Lewis, thoughtful interfaith inclusion, and accessible, inviting prayer.

In a little over an hour, we attendees were able to engage with one another, with inspiring clergy and lay leadership, with sacred text, and with our own heart space. I left feeling connected and full.

When I attend meaningful Shabbat services, I often have that same sense of connection and fullness. Obviously others do too— in halakhically-progressive Jewish spaces (meaning, spaces where Jewish law is viewed as malleable), attendance at services is typically driven more by religious desire than by religious demand. And people show up! But many, many Jews also don’t show up in shul.

I could (and will in future posts) write a lot about what drives people to and away from services. There are many reasons that synagogue membership is down, that sanctuaries are less full than they once were, and that young adults in particular are reticent to affiliate with religious communities. But today I want to focus on 1 question in the midst of all of this: what do we do about Hebrew?

See, at church this morning, everything was in English. The bulletin handed to each attendee at the door had all the important English written down on 3 pages— lyrics for hymns, a couple of short prayers, and the names of those officiating each part of the service. I could walk in, sit down, and immediately participate even as a first time guest.

When a guest comes to my synagogue during Shabbat services, chances are high that they will walk into the middle of something being sung or chanted in Hebrew. My congregants are kind and friendly, so someone will undoubtedly be happy to show them what page we’re on. The page might or might not have transliteration— the Reconstructionist siddurim (prayerbooks) have a lot but there’s plenty without too. If a guest is familiar with Jewish services, and is a Hebrew reader, they’ll be able to jump right in and hopefully access that sense of fullness and connection. But if not? They’ll be a little lost at best and alienated at worst.

Now, there are plenty of non-Jewish guests to services who might be just fine with not being able to fully follow along— who might be happy just to experience a different religion’s worship. I’ve very much enjoyed visiting Mosques, Buddhist temples, and various Christian churches with no intention of anything more than respectfully observing. But what about when Jews can’t fully partake?

Let’s get some very, very general context about why there even are Jews who don’t have much (or any) Hebrew literacy.

A long time ago in a Middle East far, far away from today’s, most Jews (perhaps better called Israelites back then) spoke Hebrew, and those who could read and write were doing so in Hebrew. But, for most of Jewish history, Hebrew wasn’t the main language of daily life. For centuries, לשון הקודש (lashon hakodesh), the holy tongue, was mostly spoken as part of religious observance. It was the language of synagogue and of text study, not the language of the marketplace. Even today, well over a century after the revitalization of modern Hebrew, Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities reserve Hebrew largely for sacred purposes. They speak Yiddish and other tongues for their day to day needs. Still, many Jews over the centuries learned at least enough Hebrew to pray. It was part of the culture, the passing down of tradition from parent to child.

When over the last few centuries emancipation allowed Jews to more fully assimilate into the nations in which they were living, Jews had a wider array of choices about the role they wanted Judaism to play in their lives. Some chose to attach themselves firmly to Jewish practice and to draw a sharp boundary between themselves and the non-Jewish community. The theological descendants of those folks are today’s Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews. Other Jews chose to make Judaism something of a condiment in their lives— their particular flavor of religious observance just like the Lutherans and Catholics had theirs. The theological descendants of those folks are today’s Reform Jews. The rest of us are somewhere in the middle.

Over time, while some Jewish communities drew further and further away from mainstream (Christian-dominated) society, other Jewish communities wanted to assimilate as much as possible, even if they didn’t want to convert. In the service of this goal, some Reform synagogues moved away from teaching much Hebrew. They told both clergy and lay leaders to put away their kippot and tallitot (prayer shawls). They replaced the Bar Mitzvah with Confirmation, paralleling the confirmation process practiced in many Christian churches. They started doing much of their praying in English instead of in Hebrew. What had been a mixed home-and-synagogue practice became, often, a mostly synagogue practice partaken in once or twice a week if that. And, of course, today many families are no longer involved in organized religious life at all, which usually means no Hebrew education.

Between the shifts in Jewish education over time and the wide array of affiliation (and disaffiliation) choices available to Jews today, it’s not unusual now to come across families where children, parents and grandparents all struggle to read Hebrew. It’s not anyone’s fault per se. It’s just where we are. At the same time, Jews raised with religious education and/or in more religiously observant homes do continue to learn Hebrew and to center it in Jewish prayer spaces. Hence, the Jew at Shabbat with no idea what’s going on, and the Jew next to them who wants to davven through Shacharit (morning prayers) without interruption.

So what do we do?

Obviously, those who wish to learn Hebrew can take on the challenge at any age. Especially now, there are a plethora of resources for adult Hebrew learners, from community classes to Zoom tutors to Duolingo. (There’s a piece I’ll write at some point about how we might look at educating our kids.) But learning Hebrew takes time, and energy, and usually money. A lot of Jews, and folks interested in Judaism, don’t have one or more of those things.

There’s also been a lot of effort in certain communities to increase the amount of transliteration available, with some providing siddurim that are entirely rendered in transliteration. But transliteration is also an imperfect solution, with many Hebrew sounds easy to misread and difficult to get right.

Then, there are communities where English continues to be a primary prayer language. I actually think that this is a nice idea for every community once in a while— a chance for those praying largely by rote to really see the meaning of the words that they’re uttering. But extensive, scripted prayer in English instead of Hebrew doesn’t feel like the solution in a religious tradition that’s used Hebrew for millennia.

What many communities do is what my own synagogue currently does: pray mostly in Hebrew, use a lot of repetitious song and chant, offer context and explanation when possible, and warmly invite those who don’t read Hebrew to sing along on whatever syllables they’d like. This works well in some ways, but it still feels like a subpar solution.

I wish this was the moment when I could share the perfect way forward, but I don’t have one. It’s something I’ve been wrestling with for years and will doubtless continue to turn over and over. But I do have some basic thoughts to leave us with:

We should provide transliteration for any prayers in our siddurim that we’re doing out loud, and use siddurim with English translations.

We should have a list of Hebrew learning resources for those who’d like to study. We should always call out page numbers.

We should encourage folks who visit on Shabbat to come back over and over until the prayers begin to feel familiar to them.

We should include English readings in our services.

And both clergy and lay people should take care not to stigmatize those who weren’t offered the privilege of Hebrew and prayer education, or who were as children but have forgotten over the years. It may not be possible for non-Hebrew readers to feel the same sense of ease as those of us who are familiar with our liturgy, but everyone who comes to our services with a desire to engage should be honored for that desire.

Look, I like Hebrew. I like the feel of speaking it and of hearing it spoken and sung around me. I like the liturgical throughline to my ancestors I feel when I pray in it. I love the idea of a community in which everyone has the ability to read and to sing in Hebrew with me. But I also love the Jewish community as it is today, with all of its newcomers and old timers, its scholars and its students, the Hebrew-proficient Jews and the Jews who don’t know aleph from bet. Ultimately, I want each of us to leave services on Shabbat as I did this morning: connected and full, and — maybe — with one more Hebrew word than we knew when we walked in the door.