Beta Yisrael's Language and Values

We focused our attention during the past weekday sessions on becoming familiar with the sounds and "feel" of Amharic in our ears and on our tongues. Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. It is the second-most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic. This is the everyday language of the Beta Yisrael community. We also explored the Ge'ez language, used by the Beta Yisrael exclusively for ritual purposes (their Torah - the Orit - is written in Ge'ez). I gave the students a worksheet with the Amharic words and phrases for simple greetings (Hello, Good Morning, How Are You?, I am fine, What is your name?, etc.), and after going over them, I asked the students at each table to carry on a simple conversation in Amharic, in pairs. We had a lot of fun with this activity!

We are also beginning to build an Amharic vocabulary from words used in "The Storyteller's Beads," the novel I'm currently reading to the class.

Notice the partial view of the map on the right - the red outline on top is Israel, the red line on the bottom left is highlighting the name Gondar (the province where the Beta Yisrael lived in northwest Ethiopia), and the red arrow crossing over the Red Sea shows the route many historians believe the Beta Yisrael ancestors took from Yemen on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula to Ethiopia.

Yesterday, we used a good part of the session to discuss the idea of values. I defined a value for the students as "a person's judgment about what is important in life," then asked the students to share their values as I wrote them down. We developed a pretty long list. Then I introduced the word "meedot" to them - the Hebrew word for Jewish values, literally meaning "measures," and I asked them to look at the list we had just generated and consider which values would be important to a Jewish community. Together, we checked off "education," "family," "health," "caring," and "earning a good living."

At this point, I shared a 25-minute film with the class, called "Gesho," filmed by the National Film Board of Canada in 1996, which focuses on a 13-year old Beta Yisrael boy, who had immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia during the 1991 Operation Solomon. As they viewed the film, I asked the students to jot down those values reflected in the interviews and conversations in the movie. At the end of the film, we reviewed our own list, and realized that except for one value, we had listed all of Gesho's and his family's values - the one we missed was Torah and its study.

And, of course, what's a week without Hebrew Through Movement exercises! This week, I continued to introduce new Shabbat-related vocabulary as we reviewed and reinforced our foundational vocabulary. The more words I introduce, the more fun we can have getting familiar with them!

Sammy, la'seem challah al ha'rosh shel Maya, v'la'seem pamot shel Shabbat eem ner shel Shabbat al ha'rosh shel Tobias. (Sammy, put challah on Maya's head, and put the Shabbat candlestick with the Shabbat candle on Tobias' head.)

Ben, la'seem pamot shel Shabbat eem ner shel Shabbat al ha'rosh shel Sammy; v'achshav, Ben, Sammy, Maya v'Tobias, na la'lechet mee'saveev la'keeta l'at, l'at. (Ben, put the Shabbat candlestick with the Shabbat candle on Sammy's head; and now, Ben, Sammy, Maya and Tobias, please walk very slowly around the classroom.)

I've also been slowly introducing some important safety vocabulary for when we go downstairs to recess. We have to cross over the driveway (road) to get to the stairs to go up to the lawn outside the Sanctuary where we hold recess (hafsaka) every weekday session. 

Y'ladeem, la'atzor al yad ha'kveesh. (Children, stop next to the road.)

And once I can join them at the bottom of the stairs, I stand in the road to stop any cars, and when it's safe I say, "Achshav, y'ladeem la'avor et ha'kveesh." (Now, children cross the road.)

  Interestingly, part of the "Gesho" film described how Gesho had to learn Hebrew through immersion techniques as soon as he arrived in Israel. They showed how he learned new vocabulary and a few students commented on how similar the technique was to our Hebrew Through Movement activities. Then they asked me how soon it would be until they could speak Hebrew fluently like Gesho. Ah, if only we could have five days a week, two hours a day of Hebrew like Gesho had, not to mention having the opportunity to live in Israel and hear the language every day, I could have an answer for them!