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'Lovers of the language are silent'

Betraying our immigrants

Decision to close down immigrant language schools like cutting off someone’s tongue

Ever since the first reports about the decision to close down ulpans (language schools for immigrants), I have been waiting for them: Authors who write in Hebrew, men of letters, great lovers of the language.

 

I am waiting for their furious petition, or even a demonstration outside the Education Ministry. I am waiting for them to say in a loud and clear voice that closing down ulpans is like cutting off someone’s tongue; like forced silence; like spiritual death forced upon thousands of people.

 

Yet the authors and the lovers of the language are silent. And what about the silent protest of our immigrants? Who can hear it, when they are barely able to buy something at the grocery store, using this ridiculous language of theirs, which immediately marks them as unequal, unintelligent even; great material for comedy shows on television.

 

Speak Hebrew, my parents were told when they immigrated here, and then they were given the tools to speak. Not sophisticated or perfect tools, but at least the required minimum so they can speak with natives of this country.

 

Nobody was there to help them out

Those born in Israel will never know how difficult the local language is for someone who just recently arrived here. I know: It took me at least 10 years to get rid of my incriminating accent, to pronounce words as they should be pronounced, and to push back the contempt of the children who were born here and found my foreignness so amusing.

 

But how will they speak Hebrew without language schools for adults? They will speak a little, mumble even, with pain, and complete alienation, and despair. They will feel the incredibly justified sense that they were betrayed, and that nobody was there to help them out when they did not understand what is going on around them, because everyone around them uses a language that had been blocked to them.

 

And how will they be reading books in Hebrew? They will not be reading, unless the speakers, authors, and teachers of this beautiful and stubborn language stand up and insist that it belongs to everyone, every single person - to the last immigrant who is getting off the plane right now and staring at the old-new homeland, not knowing yet that he has been sentenced to silence.

 


פרסום ראשון: 01.13.08, 09:27
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