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Home
and Family
Speaking From the Heart
by Menucha Levin
As a writer, poet and English teacher, I am always precise
with words. Ever since I learned how to read at the age of
five, I have been captivated by them. As a child, I remember
poring over the dictionary, discovering all those fascinating
words I had never heard of. Later I encountered the
thesaurus, whose very name made me think of some exotic
dinosaur, stuffed with words of every shade and meaning. How
marvelous to be able to choose: instead of ordinary red, you
could select crimson, ruby, scarlet, cherry, vermillion . . .
And insead of being just plain scared, you could be
frightened, alarmed, terrified, startled or panic-
stricken.
When I write a poem or story, I can spend hours selecting the
perfect word with the precise shade of meaning I want. But
only in English, of course. Although I studied both French
and Hebrew in school and picked up a smattering of Yiddish
from my Lithuanian-born father, I was never adept in any of
those languages. English is my mother tongue and the only
language in which I am totally fluent.
Then, eight years ago we moved to Israel. Although I started
learning Hebrew at the age of five, I had always found
loshon hakodesh difficult. But I discovered that I
could get by with very little Hebrew by drafting my children
into becoming my instant translators. (They became virtually
bilingual overnight and I am jealous of how they can switch
from one langauge to another and speak either without a trace
of an accent.)
Once, when a phone call got too complicated for me to
understand, I woke up my oldest son to come and translate,
but he was too sleepy at the time to make much sense. Since
we lived in an English- speaking community and had only Anglo
friends, getting by with minimal Hebrew was not impossible,
although far from ideal. By the way, only in Israel can an
American Jew whose ancestors came from eastern Europe be
called an `Anglo-Saxon'!
About a year ago, a Russian family moved to our community.
Since they were new and the only Russians here, we tried to
befriend them. Galina and I both struggled along in our
broken Hebrew and because we both made mistakes (her Hebrew
was better than mine, even though she'd been here for only
two years compared to my seven). I was not embarrassed to
talk to her. Soon enough, we began to really communicate. Our
Hebrew was imperfect, ungrammatical and our accents would
grate on the ears of any real Israeli, but still, we
persisted. Sometimes, we resorted to making up words to
convey our meaning. For example, if I did not know the word
for nephew, I would say `the son of my sister' [I've got news
for you, Menucha --- that's what Israelis say, ben
achoti, even though there is a dictionary word for
it -- achyan].
Pretty soon, we became quite fluent in our own way and I
would astound myself at hearing this torrent of Hebrew
pouring from my lips. As our friendship grew, we talked about
everything, serious matters like our mutual worries over
finances, her pending gall bladder operation, how I had to
return to America for my mother's funeral. And then, too, we
often laughed at our mistakes in our struggles with Hebrew. I
told her how I once went into a toy store to buy my daughter
a skipping rope. Since I did not know the word in Hebrew and
did not see one on any of the shelves, I asked for "the thing
that little girls use like this," with a pantomimed
demonstration. Galina told me how she had once purchased a
few items in a grocery store and asked for a bag to put them
in. The storekeeper looked puzzled, almost alarmed. Instead
of asking for a bag, sakit, she had asked for a knife,
sakin.
One morning, Galina came by with an old English- Russian
textbook she had dug up somewhere. "Good morning," she read
in precise articulated English. "I want a map."
I grinned at her. "Why?"
"I want a map and a pen," she replied, carefully pronouncing
the strange words.
As they say in Hebrew, something had fallen between the
chairs [though I didn't know that musical chairs was an
Israeli concept]. Yes, Galina was speaking English but the
words were meaningless. The laughter we shared, however, was
very real.
A few months later, another Russian family moved to our
settlement. I thought Galina would be delighted to be able to
speak her native tongue again and would have a friend to talk
to. But when I suggested it, she smiled and replied, "But
you're my friend. I speak to you."
I realized she was right. Imperfect as it was, we were
communicating. They were not the precise words I would use in
English. But we were speaking -- from the heart.
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