ulpan

[cellio]

First, on a not-very-related note, xiphias has an interesting post on a hidden meaning of the number of the beast -- 616, he asserts.

Tonight's Hebrew class went better than Monday's. I also noticed something: I know more than it sounds like I know, but I'm very slow on the uptake when it comes to generation (speaking, as opposed to listening). If I can have some time to properly form an answer, I think I usually do ok -- but I can't do it in real time yet. I hope that comes with practice. It's also something I can work on with individual tutoring but that doesn't work well in classes; when I hesitate the teacher assumes I don't know a word and starts prompting me, but that's not usually what's going on.

On a more positive note, though, the teacher for the second class complimented me on my Jewish (as opposed to Hebrew) knowledge. While teaching (from a dialogue about Shabbat) she asked several easy questions -- why are there two challot (loaves of bread), why two candles, who are the angels referred to in Shalom Aleichem, stuff like that. After answering the first I deliberately held back on the others, but ended up answering them when others didn't. (Personally, I'd kind of figured that the guy in the black hat and tzitzit would know more than I did, but he was being awfully shy. And English isn't his first language, so that could be it.) So the teacher asked me (in English) where I learned and -- missing an opportunity -- I just named my congregation. Thirty seconds later I'd formed a better reply in Hebrew, but the moment had passed.

Comments

[cellio]

I would have expanded the answer, along the lines of "ravi ha-chacham lamad li v'lomeid li". If she was really asking for a specific location/rabbi, she could always ask that. :-) ("Where did you learn X?" could be a general question, after all.) Or if I wanted to clarify the connection further, I might have said (this didn't occur to me until later) "asahti li rav kakatuv b'pirkei avot".

I haven't checked books to see if any of this would have been right, by the way, but I think it's close. More importantly, I would have learned a lot more from the experience than just answering her question in English. :-)