Ulpan: 20 Hours a Week I can’t Get Back
Part of learning Hebrew is dealing with the ulpan system (אולפן). Ulpan literally means “studio” and is used both for tv studios as well as for the places where Hebrew is taught to new immigrants (as well as those who come to learn Hebrew). My naivety about the ulpan system was staggering; I had these innocent doe-eyed ideals about how after I left the ulpan I would be speaking Hebrew like a native and intergrated Israeli.
As it turns out, my naivety was a shared naivety. And while a good number of my classmates thought Hebrew could be learned through osmosis and skipping class, I at least made the effort through mountains of flash cards and regular class attendance.
I went to ulpan in Jerusalem for 5 months with classes 5 days a week for 5 hours a day. Each day was spent learning new grammar and vocabulary, reviewing homework and some actual Hebrew conversation. It was repetitive and boring. Little time was actually devoted to speaking Hebrew and the pace of the class was dreadfully slow.
At the end of the five month period I was burnt out and while my Hebrew vocabulary was actually quite good, I could barely handle even the most basic conversation. It was tremendously disheartening to have spent so much time and energy trying to learn Hebrew (I knew almost no Hebrew when I arrived) and to have actually learned nothing.
Two years later, my Hebrew is dramatically improved; my level of comprehension is very high and my vocabulary has expanded further. My conversational skills, however, are still wretched and that has prompted me to return to ulpan. I now know enough grammar and vocabulary to be placed into one of the highest levels where Hebrew conversational skills are supposed to be developed.
I went to the first class earlier this week. I had mixed feelings, somewhere between dread and a strong desire to learn Hebrew. The dread proved to be the correct intuition. The teacher showed up 25 minutes late and the class atmosphere was indifferent. I think I spoke for maybe two minutes and it was only to answer a question; my answer was construed as boring. The teacher asked what had happened in the news today and I said that Lieberman was likely to become foreign minister. I guess she was looking for something more sensational. The rest of the class was spent reading a terribly simple text about Einstein; the teacher only called on the Swiss-French contigent in the class and ignored the rest of the class.
I left class crestfallen. It’s hard to describe the sentiment exactly; one wants to feel part of society and an essential component of the belonging is a common language. No matter what one’s legal status is or what passport one carries, it’s the language that most readily identifies and entangles one with a place or group. American English is distinct from British English and the mechanically perfect Scandinavian English; the language itself is what defines the person because it is through that more than anyhing which a person defines himself and relates to others.