Image: The beginning of the story of Joseph in the Torah Scroll.
The Joseph story has its own place in my heart. I have always felt a strong connection to the powerful novella that closes out the book of Genesis. That connection was strengthened when my rabbi chose it to use as our text for learning Biblical Hebrew.
Like most adult learners in the US, my Hebrew studies had started with “Prayer Book Hebrew,” the prayers in the synagogue service. There’s a giant step from knowing what the prayers say to reading the Torah, and Rabbi Steven Chester chose the Joseph story to carry us across that chasm.
Each week we had a short passage to translate, divided among the members of the class. We were supposed to translate the whole thing, but each of us was responsible for “our” verses, meaning that each of us knew ahead of time which verses we, personally, would translate aloud.
Rabbi Chester was patient and kind, never shaming anyone. That was good, because I had no natural gift for it, and my translations were often a mess. I would go to class thinking “this CAN’T be right,” and sure enough, it wasn’t. But he always knew if we’d cheated, so it was better to bring what I had translated, even if it was obviously wrong. He’d use our mistakes to review grammar or review how to break down a verb to find it in the dictionary.
Our glacial pace through the text meant that we studied it deeply, noticing the choices about grammar and the repetition of certain words in the text. It was my first taste of learning a text on that level, word by word in Hebrew.
Sometimes our teacher enriched our study by showing us a midrash on a particular scrap of the text. This was also his sneaky way of introducing us to the glories of midrashic texts and rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic, since he always gave us those texts in both the original and translation. We’d read the translation, but the original words would wink at me, promising more: more meaning, more depth, more nuance.
That class marked the beginning of my love for text study. It met Wednesday at lunchtime for years, and now as a teacher myself I marvel at his chutzpah and patience in leading us into that tangle of grammar and vocabulary. It was an unusual and bold way to teach Biblical Hebrew. It was also a brilliant choice, because the powerful current of the narrative kept us going. Who could quit, halfway through that story?
By the time we came to the end of Genesis 50, my translations were less ridiculous, and I felt confident enough to tackle other parts of Torah on my own. I learned the most important lesson for Hebrew study: stick with it long enough, and it will begin to sink in.
Foolish, feckless Joseph grew up to be a tzaddik, and I had begun to grow into a rabbi. And every year, when we read this narrative again, it stirs old memories of sitting around a table, munching our lunches and puzzling out the mysteries verse by verse.
Thank you, Rabbi Chester.
power ful your article, inspiring
Thank you!
Oh, I have such fond memories of my years in Rabbi Chester’s Hebrew classes! I kept at it until we got deep into the rabbinic stuff, but I threw in the towel when we started focusing on texts written in Rashi script, which I just could not learn to decode. I’d spend hours searching the dictionary for words that didn’t exist, because I’d mistaken one letter for another. Combining that with the infuriating shorthand that the rabbis use when they’re writing for one another just was too frustrating.
But before hitting that (personal) wall, yes yes and yes to everything you said about his marvelous and patient teaching style. One of my favorite learning experiences ever!
If ever you want to get the Rashi script, I recommend an “app” that makes a game of it. There used to be a couple of those floating around.
The roshei teivot (abbreviations) and shorthand are a big challenge. I never got that far with Rabbi Chester; before then, I was off to HUC where the teachers were excellent but the setting entirely different.
Do you still read, Patti?
I don’t do any formal classes any more, not since before Rabbi C retired. I still do chant Haftarah (mostly) and Torah (occasionally) for the monthly minyan, so I have to decode those and do some translation, although mostly I rely on others’ translations for that. And of course I’m still wrestling with the weekday Shacharit several days a week for the next few months. I’ve had to scale back my initial expectation that I’d be somewhere close to fluent in that by the end of the year…
If you’d like to, we could put together a study group to read texts together. I would need to clear it with Rabbi MM.