The recently arrived Ethiopian immigrants in Rina Rosler’s Hebrew ulpan classroom showed one sign of having adjusted quickly to their new life in Israel: most of them had cell phones sitting on their desks.
The technology-savvy image of the class in the Mevaseret Zion absorption center belies the true circumstances of most of the newcomers, trickling into the country at a rate of about 100 a week in recent months.
Many of the recent arrivals are Falash Mura, said to be converts descended from Jews. The vast majority take a long time to adapt to Israel, and most Ethiopian immigrants don’t find jobs, due to their failure to master Hebrew, says Meir Peretz, who, as head of adult education at the Education Ministry, teaches Hebrew to the immigrants.
About 90 percent of the more than 40,000 Ethiopians who have immigrated since the 1990s are illiterate, says Peretz. Because they lack reading skills and any formal education in their native language of Amharic, teaching the Ethiopians Hebrew is a special challenge, Peretz explains.
The Ethiopians started arriving in the mid-1980s when thousands came as part of the dramatic Operation Moses, followed by the 1991 airlift known as Operation Solomon.
Israel’s experience of combating illiteracy with such a large group of immigrants is unique on an international scale, says Peretz, who has recently been cited by UNESCO for his efforts.
Few countries spend the effort on such a task or are faced with the problem of having to integrate such a large group of immigrants from such a vastly different culture, Peretz adds. In several African countries where literacy efforts are underway, the pupils are learning in a familiar environment. In Israel, he says, they are in totally strange surroundings.
“They have to cope with an entirely different cultural realm,” he says, noting that “to many of them, the walls and blackboard of a classroom are unfamiliar.”
Without language, it’s difficult to tap into knowledge and skills that many of the Ethiopians have acquired, whether in farming or other tasks which they learned informally, he explains.
If they don’t learn Hebrew, according to Peretz, the immigrants’ chances of finding a job in Israel are close to nil. The adults also need to know Hebrew so they can remain connected with their children and help them integrate into Israeli society.
These are reasons the government invests about $28 million a year on ulpan classes for immigrants. The Ethiopians get a good chunk of that sum since they are entitled to nearly twice as many classes as other groups, or 10 months of study. However, less than a year isn’t nearly enough time to teach them the language, Peretz says.
There is also a huge cultural divide to cross. “If I’m speaking with a native English-speaker and he doesn’t know what the Hebrew word is for glasses, then I can say what the word is. When a person doesn’t know what glasses are, then I have a cultural problem,” he says.
After realizing several years ago that traditional Western methods of teaching the language to the Ethiopian immigrants simply weren’t working, Peretz came up with a new plan.
He introduced a new method of teaching Hebrew, best summed up as trying to make it “relevant,” to try to bridge cultural gaps while imparting some knowledge of the language at the same time, he says.
Peretz has sought to put Amharic-speaking veteran immigrants into ulpan classrooms for at least a quarter of the 25-hour-a-week lessons.
Isayas Hawaz, 25, who immigrated four years ago, and helps translate for teachers at the Mevaseret ulpan, says Peretz’s method made all the difference in learning Hebrew when he was a newcomer.
“At first all I wanted to do was run away from class. I couldn’t make any sense of the alphabet lessons we were getting. My self-confidence plummeted. Then when they started translating, it all made sense,” Hawaz says.
The program also seeks to pique pupils’ interest by peppering language lessons with discussions of current events or cultural issues. “It is not a good idea to wait until someone knows Hebrew to explain what is happening in the country,” says Peretz.
This curriculum targets mainly the 18-to-40 age group, those who have the best chance of eventually joining the job market.
Mandefro Mengistu, a 20-year-old immigrant who arrived a few months ago from the Gondar area of Ethiopia, seemed captivated by a lesson in Rosler’s class, as she used Tisha B’Av as a theme for her Hebrew lesson. Rosler read a midrash about how God chose as the site for the first holy temple the place where two brothers had expressed familial love. She asked for volunteers to translate as she jotted down key verbs in the story on the blackboard. Most of the time at least one pupil succeeded in figuring out what the verbs or nouns meant in their native tongue.
According to Peretz, this is an example of how culture shock can clash with intelligence.
Teachers also note how the tendency for the immigrants to be isolated — even ghettoized in lesser developed or poor towns and neighborhoods — also holds many back from gaining an adequate knowledge of Hebrew.
Aside from financial constraints which prevent the extension of classes, Peretz suggests many of the Ethiopians are too distracted to continue with ulpan, anyway.
Many are preoccupied with adjusting to Israel, taking care of children, or overcoming the grief and anxiety of missing close relatives they have left behind.
Zemedi Kasa, 25, minding her three small children, explains in halting Hebrew how she is struggling to get along after two years in Israel. She can only seem to manage a sentence or two of Hebrew conversation. She and her family have actually overstayed their period at the absorption center, but her husband hasn’t yet found a job to support them so they can rent an apartment.
“It is hard for me here,” she says.