Hebrew Lesson Gives Prayers New Meaning

This year, when Doris Rodilitz lights the Hanukkah candles in her Anaheim home, she will be able to read the age-old Hebrew blessings for the first time, rather than listening as her husband and son recite them.

Rodilitz, 60, regularly attends Temple Beth Emet in Anaheim on Friday nights and holy days, but until now she has missed one crucial dimension of the Conservative congregation’s service. Instead of praying aloud in Hebrew with the others, Rodilitz has followed along silently, reading the prayer book in English.

Jack Lieberman, 70, of Anaheim has gone to Temple Beth Emet every Friday night for 10 years. And for the last nine months he also has gone Saturdays to say the kaddish, a prayer said for a year after a family member’s death. Lieberman’s sister died last December. In the past, he memorized the prayers because he couldn’t read Hebrew.

Rodilitz and Lieberman are among 60,000 adults who have studied Hebrew in a national campaign that has gained momentum recently with a renewed interest in Judaism.

The 12-week course taught by lay members of the temple concentrates on decoding Hebrew for the Friday night service, rather than teaching conversation and reading comprehension.

Jewish leaders say the campaign, sponsored by the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, is one outlet for Jews with busy lives who are seeking their ancestral roots and a sense of community.

“What has happened is that for years people still had very strong

family memories that carried them along,” said Rabbi Sheldon Dorph of Los Angeles, executive director of United Synagogues of America-Pacific Southwest region. “People now realize that they can’t stand on the memories of their grandparents and great-grandparents. There is a tremendous need to find meaning beyond . . . this two-parent, working world.”

At Temple Beth Emet, Rabbi Irvin Brandwein said: “Everywhere I’ve been, people want more of a spiritual life, more spiritual feelings. . . . The source of our spiritual feeling is all in learning Hebrew.”

Bonnie Greenberg, 39, of Irvine, is taking the Hebrew class at Beth Emet, although she belongs to a Reform temple, to study for an adult bat mitzvah.

“Certainly I have the knowledge of my religion to call myself a Jew, but I want to know more about what I am,” she said, adding that she did not have a bat mitzvah as a child. “My parents felt that Judaism passed through the umbilical cord.”

The campaign is the brainchild of Rabbi Noah Golinkin, who was a rabbi in Washington, D.C., in 1963.

The members of his congregation were highly educated but few could read Hebrew, Golinkin said. Many would read the English translation or skip to the transliteration--from Hebrew characters into the Roman alphabet--located in a separate section of the book.

“It occurred to me that if this condition were allowed to continue, (the Jewish community) would face a spiritual catastrophe,” said Golinkin, who is now Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Beth Shalom in Columbia, Md. “Hebrew would become a forgotten language, and the people would have to have their prayers either in English exclusively or read it in transliteration. I came to look at transliteration as a fraud, a joke and a threat.”

Campaign Spreads

When Golinkin began the campaign, 200 people in his congregation signed up. Four years later, he introduced the campaign to synagogues throughout Washington. Then, in 1978, the Men’s Club asked Golinkin to write the textbook “Shalom Aleichem,” and the campaign spread across the United States and Canada.

Rabbi Charles Simon, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, said book sales have “increased markedly” in the last two years. Since 1978, about 60,000 of the primers have been sold, he said.

Golinkin said his royalties go into a fund to produce more books.

Ida Marks-Meltzer, executive director of the Orange County Bureau of Jewish Education in Costa Mesa, said there has been a “renewed desire for roots and belonging among young families.”

That desire, she said, also is demonstrated by the opening of three Jewish day schools in Orange County, as well as by the success of the Chabad movement, an Orthodox Hasidic group.

Five synagogues in the Los Angeles area now offer Hebrew literacy classes. In Orange County, only Temple Beth Emet does.

Rodilitz, 60, who has lived in the county for 25 years, said she tried to learn Hebrew two or three times before and never got beyond gimmel, the third letter of the alphabet.

“To stand between my son and my husband on next Rosh Hashanah and be able to read the prayers with them will be my crowning glory,” she said.

Volunteers teach the 22 students the letters of the alphabet and key words and verses of the Friday night prayer service, beginning with the song “Shalom Aleichem,” “Peace Be Upon You.” This week, the class will light the Hanukkah menorah and read the prayer together.