Comments (0)American Accents: Hendrix And Hasids
September 11, 2009Stuart Schoffman
Special to the Jewish Times
Late summer in the Holy City. Like shrinks and Parisians, I’m usually far away in August, but not this year. Windows wide open, dogs howling, mine included. (We have a new, large puppy.) I’m home alone with the dog. My son’s in the army. My wife and daughter with family in California, the goldeneh medineh.
When you spend a whole summer in Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel, you can sense in the air the way history and landscape and climate and state of mind converge in the hot summer months of Av and Elul. In these days Jews move from the memory of our ancient Temples’ destruction to Days of Atonement, and a fresh New Year. Across town, I am guessing, Muslim Jerusalemites sense something similar in their bones in their holy of month of Ramadan, which this year starts in August.
It’s a heavy season. Fortunately, comic relief from heat and history is available everywhere.
Haifa University released a study claiming that the pronunciation of Hebrew by Israelis for whom Hebrew is a second language is an index of their Zionism. This gem of linguistic phrenology suggests that English-speaking immigrants to Israel excel in speaking Hebrew with a proper Israeli accent because of their ideologically motivated aliyah and desire to become full Israelis.
“There is a question of linguistic ego involved,” one of the study’s three authors explained to the Ha’aretz newspaper. “An English speaker who identifies with the goals of the majority group will take on Hebrew accent characteristics more easily than someone who has difficulty parting from his or her own identity.”
Hebrew accents deemed less dedicated to the goals of the majority group were those of Russian olim and Israeli Arabs. All I can say, based on 20 years of experience, is that Israeli Arabs do have a different accent in Hebrew than American olim, but usually speak it vastly better.
As for Zionist goals, who is more Zionist than the Russians? In mid-August, a bunch of Russian guys organized a clever protest in front of the American Embassy on the Tel Aviv beachfront. Twenty-odd people, some dressed up like Indians, Boston Tea Party style, carried signs demanding that the U.S. give Manhattan back to the natives, having tricked them out of their land for $24. What’s fair is fair, no? You want us to go back to 1948 or ‘67? You go back to 1492!
Another reason the Haifa study is silly is that absolutely all my American friends and relatives who picked up and moved here out of sheer Zionism, sometimes to the astonishment (or even dismay) of loved ones, and often at great economic cost, speak Hebrew with strong American accents.
We sport flat Midwestern R’s and fudged gutturals, the telltale vowels of Baltimore and Philly, unalloyed Brooklynese—but still (in many cases!) actually speak Hebrew correctly, all those masculine and feminine nouns, and the numbers too. Even Americans who work hard to pronounce the words “Rosh Hashanah” or “Yom Kippur” as perfectly as Shimon Peres sound like impressionists, Anglos doing Borat. Then again, President Peres speaks Hebrew with a European accent. Does that make him less of a Zionist?
The experts’ assessment is mainly irrelevant because we Anglos in Israel, most of the time, speak English, not Hebrew.
Many of us speak English in our workplaces, which include Israeli firms doing international business. Those of us married to other Americans (I don’t have the stats nationwide, but this seems a widespread phenomenon) talk English at home, and hang out with similar families. We go to shuls that Anglos go to, and gossip there in English—but the service and the sermon, of course, are in Hebrew. We are Israeli, no less than the next person. (OK, maybe a little less.) And proud of it.
A true Zionist moment came on the evening of the 15th of Av, Tu B’Av. In Talmudic times, this was kind of a Sadie Hawkins Day, gals pursuing guys, and in modern Israel, it’s called “Hag HaAhava,” the Holiday of Love.
What better occasion for a 40th anniversary Woodstock tribute concert! The wonderful venue was a renovated, Astroturfed athletic field in the heart of Jerusalem, endowed by American philanthropists. The evening was a fundraiser for the non-professional Israel Football League, dedicated to promoting the sport in this country. That’s football as in the Chicago Bears, not guys in shorts kicking a soccer ball.
I arrived with my companions, the Rebbe and Rebbetzin of our Reform congregation, Kol Haneshema. We unrolled a blanket and kicked off our shoes, enjoying the soft Astroturf as we mingled with friends, and bought beers and franks, and grooved to local talent doing Crosby, Stills and Nash (albeit minus a Nash). The Dylan set, by a blues guitarist from Tel Aviv, was tremendous. What made it better was hearing the lyrics of a great American Jewish poet—our own Haim Nachman Bialik—while surrounded by a sea of fellow Anglos. OK, maybe more like a pond. But more than a thousand people, for sure.
What would Woodstock in Jerusalem be, without a Hasid doing Hendrix? This was a guy with an American accent as thick as oatmeal. An accent you want to trap in a jar and send to the Weizmann Institute for analysis. He talked in Hebrew about his previous lifestyle in the Old Country as a rock’n’roller, and how he had found religion. Now imagine the same thing at a rock or country-music concert in the States, the headliner talking about kicking bad habits and finding religious salvation. Here in Jerusalem, you can hear it and relax: we’re all mishpoche. Accent shmacksent—this is Zionism at its finest, a great Jewish jamboree, the ingathering of exiles.
We were Orthodox and secular and (being mainly Americans) Conservative and Reform and probably Reconstructionist. We were leftists and rightists and centrists politically; old-timers and newbies from Nefesh B’Nefesh; suburbanites from Gush Etzion settlements in tie-dyed T-shirts, young Carlebach types from the Nahalaot neighborhood. But tonight, the music ruled. There were no divisions. We were One: a laid-back Zionist love fest. Herzl would have adored the idea, but up in heaven I bet he avoids Hendrix.
Two weeks later, I went to the Gush Katif Museum near the Mahane Yehuda market, maybe five minutes’ walk from the Woodstock concert venue. This was another scene entirely. Since opening its doors a year ago, the museum has had 40,000 visitors, an amazing number for such a tiny, unassuming place. It’s tastefully done, and the story of the forced removal of thousands of Israeli Jews from the Gaza Strip, four years ago this month, is movingly told. The guest of honor that day, American presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, was clearly impressed. (As a bass guitar player, he would have enjoyed our little Woodstock too.)
Huckabee was on the last day of a three-day visit to the city, and had cheered many American Jews and Israelis by affirming the right of Jews to live anywhere they want in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem in particular. But he also drew fire back home for suggesting that the U.S. had no right to tell Israel what to do.
I raised my hand and asked him when he first became a Zionist. Because that’s what he is, it would seem to me: a strong supporter of Israel. But he caught me by surprise, and answered: “I’m not a Zionist, I’m a realist.” By which he meant, let’s not talk religion, God’s promise to Abraham, the Book of Daniel, any of that. Not today. Let’s just talk about freedom and liberty, values shared by America and Israel, the very basis of their founding.
This made good sense to me: A realist. It’s a word I plan to keep in mind at services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as we pray in Hebrew with American accents, and take stock of ourselves, and our realistic place in the world.
Stuart Schoffman, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and editor of Havruta: A Journal of Jewish Conversation, writes monthly for the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES.