Controversial language

‘This Is Not An Ulpan’ teaches Hebrew and Arabic using the vocabulary of conflict.

By LAURA KELLY
A Hebrew class at the ulpan. (photo credit: IRA ROZINA)
A Hebrew class at the ulpan.
(photo credit: IRA ROZINA)
At 62, Ada Spitzer finally had the time to learn Arabic.
After a 40-year career teaching Hebrew, she went back to university to understand the language of her neighbors – quite literally, as she’s a resident of the mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood of Abu Tor.
After stints at Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she’s now participating in a more open conversation course in her own neighborhood. The intermediate Arabic course, taught by 26-year-old Isawiya resident Ibrahim Yass, was a departure from Spitzer’s more systematic and academic approach to language learning.
“It was good for me; it was a kind of conversation, and it was open conversation, usually,” she says.
Spitzer’s Arabic class is part of a larger program called “This Is Not An Ulpan” – a play on the course of Hebrewlanguage study that most new immigrants enroll in.
“This is not a negative reaction to ulpan,” clarifies Karen Isaacs, an immigrant from Canada, who with a few friends, started the alternative Hebrew language course in Tel Aviv around two years ago. Describing it as a “critical pedagogy,” she explains that one difference between the course and traditional ulpan is class structure: While ulpan teaches from a textbook, the alternative focuses on the teacher’s own curriculum, conversation and listening, and less on grammar.
“We started with a few classes that just involved learning about a topic, then learning the language through learning about that topic.”
Isaacs has a background in alternative education and community organizing, so proposing a class where students engage in their surroundings to learn a language was not such a far stretch. Yet the name is also meant to counter the traditional ulpan system, where topics can be seen as following a more Zionist narrative.
“When I moved here, I started studying Hebrew in a regular ulpan for my language-learning needs,” Isaacs recalls. But for her understanding of the history, culture and conflict of her new home, “it left much to be desired.
“In this country, a lot of the time, Hebrew-language class is also a way to assimilate newcomers into a certain narrative of what this society is,” she asserts. In contrast, the goal of This Is Not An Ulpan is to create a space where people can feel comfortable questioning and challenging some of the more dominant aspects of this narrative.
For example, in the Jerusalem Hebrew class, the book 1929: Year Zero of the Jewish-Arab Conflict by Hillel Cohen was a focus of study. Cohen, a respected scholar and journalist, uses the 1929 Hebron Massacre as a starting point of conflict, not only between Arabs and Jews, but between Jewish communities themselves. The stories and themes of the book are heavy on Jewish selfreflection, exploring the transgressions and hypocrisies, as well as the rifts between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities in pre-state times.
Hebrew teacher Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s course is heavy on this idea, and another topic of study for the class was the poetry of Sami Shalom Chetrit. A Moroccanborn poet, Chetrit is outspoken in his works about the schism between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews in Israeli society, and what he sees as the oppression of the latter by the former. A typical ulpan, meanwhile has a chapter that introduces the history of Ethiopian aliya, but has little time to explore both the successes and failures of it.
As the Tel Aviv classes grew in popularity and size, students from Jerusalem who were tired of commuting decided to expand the project to the capital. It had the added benefit – with the right manpower – of Arabiclanguage classes for beginners through advanced.
The whole operation is volunteer-based; students are asked to pay what they can and teachers are rewarded a small compensation.
The Willy Brandt Center in Abu Tor, designated for “international encounters,” hosts the Jerusalem groups at no cost.
The neighborhood of Abu Tor is one of the few truly mixed Arab and Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem – and has been since the early years of the Mandate. It was divided from 1948 to 1967, with the border between Israel and Jordan running through it.
Today it’s a mix of new apartment buildings, renovated Arab mansions and middle-class homes. If one is lucky to live on either Ein Rogel or Abu Tor streets, there is a breathtaking view of the Hinnom Valley; only a few hundred meters away is the refurbished First Station Complex.
SARIEL MOSHE – a 28-year-old student in intermediate Arabic – had previously only studied the language on his own, teaching himself the basics and learning to read.
This Is Not An Ulpan “widens my vocabulary a lot, to things I never thought I would talk about.”
Moshe says the class also gave him the opportunity to meet Arabs from east Jerusalem. Despite being part of a dialogue group at the Hebrew University, he says this is the first time he got to know Arabs on a personal level.
With Yass as his teacher, Moshe felt he was able to step away from general prejudices or ideas he had about “the other.”
During a cigarette break outside the Willy Brandt Center, the trust and closeness Yass and Moshe have developed over just one semester is evident. The two laugh at the confusion between the words “mista’arvim” – a Hebrew/ Arabic mix for undercover police in Arab neighborhoods – and “muta’assibun” – Arabic for religious fanatics. When Moshe says he grew up in Ma’aleh Adumim, Yass doesn’t miss a beat: “We talked about settlements a lot.”
But both concede that the best lessons of the class have focused on Arabic poetry and conversations about Palestinian life and family.
In the previous semester, Yass was active in organizing field trips for the group, bringing them to the east Jerusalem village of Silwan, where students could practice their Arabic with the locals, or converse in English or Hebrew. But 2014 was a trying year – even for well-meaning proprietors of coexistence.
On October 22, Abdel-Rahman Shaloudi intentionally drove his car into pedestrians at the Ammunition Hill light rail stop in east Jerusalem. Two were killed, three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and 22-year-old Karen Jemima Mosquera; seven others were wounded.
The following week, on October 29, right-wing activist Rabbi Yehudah Glick was shot at point-blank range outside the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, a stone’s throw from where the language lessons take place. Rarely does negative press come out of Abu Tor, but the day after, the neighborhood had the sad distinction of being the setting for the police chase of Glick’s assailant – Muataz Hijazi, confronted and killed on the roof of his home.
Then, on the morning of November 18, the massacre of four men at prayer in a Har Nof synagogue shocked the world, in one of the worst acts of terrorism Jerusalem had seen in nearly a decade. The perpetrators – two Arab men from east Jerusalem, cousins who worked at a nearby grocery store – also killed a responding Druse policeman.
For both Rothman-Zecher and Yass, class attendance suffered during this time.
“Sometimes Ibrahim and I would talk [about] whether we should cancel the classes,” Rothman-Zecher recounts, explaining that people were hesitant about traveling to Abu Tor.
“It was frustrating,” Yass says of not being able to get the class together. “Even though we were really good friends, the mentality was not right.”
He says people didn’t want to talk about what had happened when it was so fresh, but eventually, the class acted as a sort of catharsis for the trouble Jerusalem was seeing. In Arabic, the students opened up by talking about what they did over the holidays, moving on to how they felt about the attacks. “We had chats, long chats, that helped everyone understand the situation here while also learning the language,” notes Yass.
Rothman-Zecher adds that coming to class felt like an important act in itself, “the act of overcoming fear and coming here… to talk about language and politics, not divorced from the context but right in the middle of it.”
The next semester of This Is Not An Ulpan Jerusalem is set for the beginning of March. Isaacs says the goal is to keep the program accessible for all; while they ask people to pay, they offer a range of options and a sliding scale.
“If people say, ‘I just can’t pay but I really want to learn,’ we try not to turn them away.”
The composition of students is also of a wide range: from Palestinians learning Hebrew and Israelis learning Arabic to internationals learning both; from those on short-term programs to Israel to people working for NGOs or traveling for a few months.
“I think we have a lot of hope, and believe this is a very powerful tool for bringing people together that feels meaningful,” Isaacs enthuses.
But in general, the format of This Is Not An Ulpan – both in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – is to break down walls between students and teachers – with content, curriculum and method not set in stone, but something fluid that is able to adapt to the needs of each class. This is the heart of Isaacs’s work in alternative education.
“When you are able to create a space where people can say what they actually need in terms of learning language – which is one of the most basic tools for being able to actively participate in the place you live – it is a very empowering experience.”