The Chatting Class

            The goal in my new online Hebrew class is to get us to talk as much as possible, and one of the exercises we do a lot is a game called Ze Mazkir Li (That reminds me…), where the teacher or someone else starts telling a story, something mundane like what they ate for breakfast yesterday, and as the timer gets closer to zero someone else has to interrupt with “that reminds me,” in order for the clock to start over again. The idea is to push us to speak up, even when there’s nothing profound to say, and to teach us to listen carefully enough to our classmates to know when to jump in. I almost never volunteer when we play this in class, until the teacher insists, but when we were assigned the game for homework, I did a little better. I was paired up with a young Muslim woman from Jerusalem, and we sent voice messages back and forth, about the chocolate cake her sister made, which reminded me of my chocolate chip cookie recipe, which reminded her of how little she likes to cook, or clean, which reminded me of how little I like to cook and clean too.

            We do all kinds of games like this in class, and some are more fun than others. For example, the teacher will share a picture on screen and call on someone to describe what they see (usually something very silly), or he’ll announce that he has an “unpopular opinion,” like, store-bought baked goods are better than homemade, and we’ll start to argue, or he’ll ask for advice, like, how do I learn how to cook after many failed attempts, and everyone shares their ideas. He generally stops each speaker at thirty seconds, both to limit the stress each of us is under to come up with something brilliant to say, and to make sure everyone gets a chance to talk. But instead of saying “Stop,” when someone has talked enough, he says “Avocado,” to make it a little softer. The power of “Avocado” was obvious from the first day of class and is probably the biggest difference between Fluency and every other level I’ve been in, because everyone gets the chance to talk and no one (including me) can hide in the background.

            This class, the format of it and the teacher running it, is so much more fun and productive than my last class, even though we aren’t trying to learn new vocabulary, and even though I still feel self-conscious every time I’m called on. The goal is to get us to use the words we already know and to, eventually, talk without thinking. It’s challenging, and often uncomfortable, but I can see that I’m talking much more in this class, and I’m getting to know all of my classmates, instead of just the extroverted ones.

            To be fair, I did skip one homework assignment so far. We were supposed to record videos of ourselves doing some kind of household chore and speaking Hebrew at the same time, and even if I could have handled the pat-your-head-and-rub-your-stomach complexity of the task, I couldn’t make myself record a video. I can’t explain why that’s my limit, since I spend an hour and a half on screen during each class, and I don’t mind doing (short) voice messages for homework, I just know that trying to do a video paralyzed me. And the teacher won me over by not making a big deal out of me being the only one who didn’t do the homework that day.

            The lucky thing is, we never stay very long on any one exercise, so even if something is particularly difficult for me, I know it’ll be over soon. My favorite activity, by far, is listening to songs and learning the lyrics – literally repeating the lines over and over again and then being tested to see if we can remember the words hidden behind black boxes on the screen. I love that there are still so many Israeli songs I’ve never heard before, and that each one gives me a new window into what life in Israel is, and was, like, but most of all, I like the break from having to come up with something to say.

            One of the most difficult things we’ve done so far was watching an animated video and taking turns narrating the events on screen. The action went so fast and I was missing so many words to describe what was happening in the story that I felt like I was hopping and flipping and ducking my way through my thirty seconds. It helps that these exercises are difficult for all of us, though, so we can commiserate when words fail us, and happily toss the hot potato to the next poor soul when it’s their turn.

            The surreal part of all of this, of course, is that our zoom classes are taking place while half of the people on my screen are receiving missile alerts on a regular basis, including our teacher. At the beginning of each class the teacher has to remind the students in Israel that safety is the priority, so if they get a missile alert, they should close their computers and go straight to a shelter, and then he tells the rest of us that we can stay on the zoom and just keep chatting until the alert is over. We’ve only missed one class session so far, when the missile alerts first started, and the teacher hasn’t had to run out of class, yet, but we’re learning the most Israeli lesson of all: just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and make it into a dance if at all possible. It also helps that we avoid discussing politics and focus instead on the very serious subjects of snacks and music and nature and movies. The light tone of the class is also what makes it possible for us to meet people we’d never have had conversations with anywhere else, and to find out that we have a lot in common. One of my best friends in class is a Christian nursery school teacher in Germany, who decided to learn Hebrew after falling in love with the language on a vacation in Tel Aviv, and the young Muslim woman I was paired with for the homework assignment fits right in, with stories about how her family celebrates Ramadan and how she leaves most of the food prep to other family members, thank you very much.

            I can’t promise that I’m making great strides forward with my Hebrew, but I know I’m in the right place for that progress to happen, and most likely I will be too busy arguing over which Star Wars movie is the best one to even notice when the words start to flow more smoothly. It’s still not easy, and I still hear the nasty voice in my head telling me how stupid I am and how much money and time I’m wasting, but that voice tends to get drowned out by all of the voices from class arguing about the best way to cook a hard-boiled egg.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?