Hebrew? More like BETRAYBREW!

So I went to my second SuperHardHebrew class on Tuesday and everything was SO GREAT. I remembered EVERY SINGLE WORD I studied this past week and some words I DIDN'T EVEN STUDY and my two fellow students were looking at me the whole time with shining, impressed eyes and my Hebrew teacher didn't look at me like I was the biggest JewIdiot that had ever lived.

No, that's not what happened, this is what happened. The opposite of all that. Imagine everything that is opposite. It was all that.

This is the Problem of the Week with learning Hebrew. I make flashcards to learn vocab but as it turns out I've been memorizing the FLASHCARDS not the words. Like, in my limited number of flashcards I know the approximate combination of sounds for each word, so when that approximate combination of sounds comes up, I'm like "Oh, totally, "carpet", I've got this." But then when "carpet" is surrounded by a bunch of Hebrew words I don't know, I become the dictionary definition of "flummoxed" and "befuddled" because I've basically been cheating myself by memorizing the vocabulary in relation to the OTHER FLASHCARDS not in relation to the HEBREW LANGUAGE THAT ISRAELI PEOPLE SPEAK.

My brain, without me knowing it, basically found a really complicated way of cheating. Nice going, brain, I knew you could do it.

Here's a recap in pictures.

"Oh, Flashcards, I love you SOOOO much, I know you would NEVER betray me."

"HOW COULD YOU BETRAY ME! I THOUGHT WHEN I WAS MEMORIZING YOU I WAS ACTUALLY LEARNING HEBREW!"

(Despair, despair, despair, despair, despair, despair, despair, despair, despair)

"Now I know what I must do...."

"MURDER YOU ALL MOST VICIOUSLY!"

So even thought I'm by far and away the worst person in my Hebrew class (Two people transferred one level up so now we're down to three people, being the worst out of three people is no great shame, to semi-quote "Fiddler on the Roof", which I plan to semi-quote at least eight hundred more times over the course of this blog) even though I'm the worst person in the class, the fact is that I'm able to construct sentences in Hebrew, tiny, baby, two-year-old grammatically-not-correct sentences, BUT they are sentences, and that's something I couldn't do two weeks ago.

Even if progress is teeny-tiny-super-eensy-small, it's still progress, and that deserves an exclamation mark!

Plus, here's all the Hebrewcabulary that I learned this week. With commentary!

Heebie Words I Didn't Know Last Week That I Now Know This Week:

Bag, Library, Village, Economics, Now (which is easy to remember because it's ach-shan, so I always remember it like "ACTION!" which is a word that could be used if a director wanted to start filming a scene "NOW!"), newspaper, letter (Meek-tav, which I remember because it sounds like "missive"), Papers, homework ( ahvohdaht bayeet, literally translates as "papers for in the house"), book, on, about, e-mail (this is adorable, it's Do-ehr Electronee, which means "Electronic Post Office", and also I think "Electronee" is such a cuter word than electronic, I'm going to start using it in my daily life because people that slip foreign phrases into casual conversation aren't annoying and obnoxious at all) man, woman, people, why, because,good, new, old, big, small, pretty, interesting, nice, red, blue, white, black, green, yellow, city, place, room, goodbye, there is/are, there is/are not, shopping mall(Kanyon, I remember this like "There's a CANYON of clothes I can't afford to buy right now in the shopping mall!), tired, popsicle, quiet, want, buy, drink, see/watch, party, birthday, gift, things, money, still, maybe, first, how, world, street, floor, soldier, apartment,bed, chair, flower pot, dresser, shelf, table, sofa, carpet, closet, fridge, toilet, shower, AND MOST IMPORTANTLYdiaspora, synagogue and Judaism

Next Post: Something, I don't know yet.

Plagues of Egypt- Water Turns to Blood, all the First Borns Die, and I get a the Worst Cold Germs Ever Made

So today's entry was going to be about the second week of my crazy-hard Hebrew class, but that will have to wait til tomorrow, what I'm going to write about today takes major precedence.

The Hebrew God is supes mad at me for lightly mocking Judaism in a public forum and so he's sent down to me the one plague he didn't use when he was pissed with the Egyptians. A really, really, really bad cold.

The discerning reader is like, "How is a cold anywhere in the ballpark of the rivers turning to blood and locusts and frogs and everything gross plus all the lights going out and people bumping their heads and stubbing their toes all the time plus more bad things?"

Reader, have you ever balanced a small country on your brain while projectile sneezing snot like you're in an Exorcist straight-to-video sequel? Because that's basically what this is like.

(This is me being sad because I have a cold and therefore I am dying. This is also me hiding my face from the world because my infirmity has turned my into Quasimodo meets More Ugly Things)

So in the past when I've gotten sick, Adonai has not been a part of the equation. Like I'll get the flu and I'm like "Well, that makes sense, I got the flu because my boyfriend has the flu and I was kissing him, mystery solved." But now I get a cold and I'm shaking my fist at the sky yelling "God, why have you forsaken me?"

(This is the Hebrew God being like "Hey, next time you decided to joke about divinity on your blog, why don't you try mocking Jesus. What's he going to do, turn the other cheek? Make you not blind/dead? LOVE you some more?)

The thing is, getting nose deep into all this Judaism has made me, if not one hundred percent believe in "What's Going Down, Dude Upstairs", at least be a lot more conscious of the possibility of His existence.

Coincidentally, I recently finished this book "Phantoms in the Brain", a book about neuroscience. No one get scared about the word "neuroscience", this book is basically Malcolm Gladwell/Freakonomics/This American Life of brain shenanigans.

(Click here to buy! I am Amazon.com's good little salesgirl!)

So in the book, there is talk about the God Module, a section of the temporal lobe (that's in your brain, duh, you guys) that activates when you are having a religious experience (like epilepsy, apparently, according to the book). And some people's God Modules don't light up under examination because they are agnostics/atheists/ whatevericsists, and people that are religious, that part of their brain is consistently active.

So here's what I'm wondering--- by making this concentrated effort to be more Jewish, have I inadvertently started poking my own "God Module" with a brain stick?

OR am I just really grouchy about being laid up in bed and am looking for an All Knowing and All Powerful Someone to blame as opposed to having to blame the probable suspect ME for not Stay-Well-Use-Purell-ing my hands enough?

Mysteries!

Next Post: My Second Hard-Ass Hebrew Class. I'm not even hanging on by my fingernails. I'm hanging on, by, like, one. One fingernail

The Verb that was ALMOST the Best Hebrew Word There Ever Was

So I got really excited when I was studying Hebrew this week. No, it wasn't because I'm becoming a better and better Jew and Hebrew God is becoming less and less likely to create a Hell for Jews just so I can be in it.

No, this is why. I found the HOLY GRAIL of Hebrew vocabulary. No, no, no, that's Jesus imagery. Um.... I found the LOST ARC from the INDIANA JONES MOVIE THAT WAS GOOD of Hebrew vocabulary. Much better!

Check it.

It's backwards, because of photography, but I'm guessing 98% of the readers (what's 98% of three people?) don't even read Hebrew PLUS PLUS PLUS as it just so happens ALL Hebrew is backwards, so no worries, scurries. But for purists, here it is again in typey-type print....עלות!

But WHAT DOES IT MEAN? According to my HeebTexBoo "Ohlay" as it is pronounced, means "Cost Rise" Holy, Holy Holy Day, textbook are you telling me that there is a HEBREW WORD for the PRICE of something to GO UP? That is the most Jewish thing I've ever heard and I love it, I love it, I love it so much!

And I was so excited all day long, humming and skipping to myself, "I found a Jewy verb, the Jewiest verb in all of Jew-laaaaand!" So that night I go back to study in my book and I realized I missed something pretty crucial in my translation. Specifically, a comma. Between "cost" and "rise." Oh, עלות ,once so cool, you don't mean "cost rise", you mean "cost" AND "rise" the way "row" can mean what you do with a boat or a bunch of planted vegetable you don't want to eat. Or "dick" means "male sex organ" or "any individual that has been my ex-boyfriend" You're not the best verb there ever was. You're nothing but a dumb old homonym!

Still holding out hope that there will be silly Hebrew vocabulary that exploits Jewish stereotypes. If you know of any, this is what the comment section is for. That and yelling at me. But just remember, only Jews can laugh at their own stereotypes just like only black people are allowed to read the old version of "Huckleberry Finn" with the N word still in it.

Next Post: Way Too Hard Hebrew Class II- The Final Eyeball Melt.

I get that Moses Leading the Jews Through the Desert was Hard but Hebrew Beginning II is Hard too

So I studied like a Crrrrrazyjew for the five days between me peace-ing out of Beginning Hebrew I on Thursday evenings and peace-ing in to Beginning Hebrew II on Tuesday evenings. I took my doorstop-sized Hebrew textbook everywhere with me, which prompted a lot of "Shaloms" and "L'Chaims" from random Jews, making it clear those were the only two Hebrew words they knew.

Suckers, I've been studying my ass fat off, I know TWENTY.

And I made FLASHCARDS. That's when you know you mean business. Or when you know your comprehension/retention rate is hovering pretty close to zero.

Hebrew I learned between Thursday, January 13th, 2010 and Tuesday January 17th, 2010.

I, You, He, She, Teacher, Student, From, Live, Good, Very Good, Okay, Excellent, Okay, Bad, Very Bad, Not Good, So-So, Thank You, Everything, Nothing, As Usual, But, Also, To Haifa, What's New, What's Up, What's Happening, What's Going On, Excuse Me, It's Confusing, Learn, Kids, Bag, Village Now, Economics, Library, Class, A Little, Letter, Homework, Papers, Newspaper, E-mail, Book, Read, Write, The, There, Here, Yes, No, Also, And, The.

Hey, I sold myself short, there's like a good forty Hebrew words bouncing around my left temporal lobe, that's the part of the brain where language is kept, duh, you guys are so stupid.

I'm so smart at Hebrew, guys, I'm basically ready to move to Israel, start a constitutional monarchy, and be their queen, right?

So I get to the new, hard class (only having learned 70 of the 120-something pages I was supposed to have caught up on, but give me a Torah-sized break, I'm a JewHuman not a Jew2001:ASpaceOdysseySpaceshipRobot*) and I ask a blondish-but-still-Jewish-looking-ish middle aged lady student what page she was studying in the book, and she's like "127", and I'm like "Awesome. Then I look at page 127 and I'm like "Oh, wait, I said awesome too soon."

It was not awesome at all. It was anti-awesome. It was awesome-less, devoid of all things awesome, awesome לא טוב

(Translation. Not-Good-Awesome. Does it make sense? No. Did I have to throw it in there to prove that I know a modicum of Hebrew after my five days of studying my butt mass off only to have achieved so little. Apparently I thought so)

So the class begins with מה חדש

This means "Mah Chadash" (you got to get that mucus-hocking chhhhh in the back of your throat) which means "What's new?" and you have to answer something new that happened in the past week in HEBREW, constructing a sentence in HEBREW, what do I do I only know like thirty words in HEBREW.

Right before class I had learned the verb "to read", and I knew the word for "book" and "I", so when it got to me I tentatively tried out קראתי ספרי

And instead of Leeenda being like "You can't speak Hebrew, get out of class right now before I demolish your left temporal lobe with my Hebrew Hammer Fist", instead of that, she nodded and moved on to torture... I mean teach...no I do mean torture, another student.

So I'm feeling okay about my Hebrew at this point and then we continue on in class, where I realize that everyone else knows more than one sentence of Hebrew, because everyone else actually knows Hebrew and I actually really, really don't.

Then Leeenda has to go to the bathroom and I'm like "I'm going to wait outside for her and tell her I can't do this class and it's too hard and then I'll go home early and eat something shitty," which, if you've been reading the blog thusfar, you will know is an activity I'm basically an Olympic athlete at.

Leeenda comes back and I'm outside almost in tears like " I'm having a lot of trouble breathing from all these foreign words I don't know, is it possible to die from feeling stupid?"

And Leeeenda reminds me that the Thursday class is too easy for me (and I remind myself that I basically learned everything I didn't already know in that class in three and a half days) and that there's no failing in this class, because we're no longer in Kindergarten-through-Undergrad "You can get an A, B, C, D or F for Failure Forever, those are your choices" school, we're now in Adult-Ed "Just pay a lot of money and try your best" school. She also adds helpfully that she will "pick me up and drag me along" if I'm lagging behind and I have this image of me tied to the back of Leeeeenda's back bumper, thumping along the pavement as Leeenda zig-zags across the five lanes of the freeway without using her turn signal and I'm like "Okay Leeenda, I'll give it my best shot!" with a very scared smile on my face.

So I follow her back into the classroom and struggle through the rest of class but I learned something SIGNIFICANT AND MEANINGFUL. And it wasn't even Hebrew. It was the only thing BETTER than learning Hebrew and that is learning a LIFE LESSON.

I realized that I learned a lot in five days and I can learn a lot in the next week and the one after that and even if I'm the worst person at Hebrew in this class for the rest of the 6 week term, even if I'm the worst person in every Hebrew class I ever take, at least I'll be learning something, and learning is not about being the winneriest winner or the bestiest best or the Queen of Israel, learning about LEARNING!

And THAT is SOMETHING I can DO! I LOVE CAPITALIZING WORDS FOR EMPHASIS.

So after class, I'm like, all victorious, "Leeenda, I've decided to stay!" And she basically shrugs and is like, "It's your money," which is a very Jewish thing to shrug. And I nod, with a wild-tiger-fierce look in my eye that says "I'm going to do this thing that is hard for me even though almost everything I choose to do in my life is hard for me, because I LIKE PAIN WITH LITTLE TO NO REWARD" which is a very Jewish look to have in your eye.

Next Post- Week Two of Cram-o-Rama.

*If I was going to be a Jewish Robot I would want to a combination of the sultry blonde and the feisty-pants Asian girl robots from rebooted Battlestar Galactica with the underwear selection of the Sexbots from 1960's hot-girl-robot-classic "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine." But for all my newfound android attractive-times-ness I would still have to keep my schnozz-ma-tozz, otherwise how would people know I was a Jewbot? They wouldn't! Compromises!

A JewGirl and Her Jewbrew Classes

I've been saying I'm going to learn Hebrew for years now.

But I've been saying I'm going to do A LOT of things for years now. Stop eating shit. Go to the gym. Stop crying about things that are stupid. Stop eating shit.

And then had the novel idea of actually DOING what I kept telling people I was going to do. I say I'm going to learn Hebrew, ergo I go learn Hebrew!

(See the Latin I just threw in there?)

( That's the only Latin word I know)

So I signed up for Hebrew I Thursdays Jan-Beginning of March at the Beverly Hills Language Institute, which sounds like I'm learning a foreign language in a secret golden,bejeweled palace with lots of famous people and Oprah Winfrey gives us all Volkswagens and flat screens when we conjugate our verbs correctly and after class we all gather around the open bar to laugh about poor people and also there are palm trees.

Actually it's something a little more like this.

Community college meets the boring office you work at meets more boring. Yeah!

I squeeze myself into a walk-in closet sized room... where I meet my three non-celebrity-or-famous-or-rich-looking classmates, and Leeeenda, our teacher, because there are no Lih-nda's in Hebrew, there are only Leeeenda's.

Leeenda is American (or possibly Canadian, you never know until you get a person to say "I'm sorry" or "About that") but she grew up in Israel during... a war in Israel. She said which one it was but I didn't make a point to remember and now I forget. The Yom Kippur War? The Six-Day War? One of those Lebanon Wars?

Note to Self: Put "Knowing Which Israeli War is Which" on the long list of "Ways To Stop Being an Embarrassment to the Chosen People."

So we start Hebrew 1 and I realize two important things.

Important Thing One is that I basically know everything we're going to be covering for the eight week course, which is the alphabet, which I learned for my Bat Mitzvah twelve year ago. Don't do the math! I said don't dooooo iiiiiit!

And Important Thing Part II: The Return of the Important Thing is that I have spent $275 on this course and $85 on the textbook and if you're good at math like when you were figuring out how old I was you will have figured out that is $360 dollars and that is a lot of money to spend to take a class where you basically know all the material*

I had a Bat Mitzvah, dude, I go to High Holidays every year (sometimes kicking and screaming, usually kicking and screaming, but I still go) I KNOW how to read Hebrew and that's basically what level 1 was. How to read Hebrew. And how to say hello. Shalom, Shalom Raav, get it, got it, done. So after class I'm like "Um, Leeenda, Todah and everything for a great lesson on the first three letters of Hebrew but I think I know everything that's going to be taught in this class, so.... can we dialogue?"

And Leeeeenda's all Jew York snappy and to the point and says "Just review the next 125 pages of the textbook and come check out the Hebrew II class on Tuesday."

And I was like "Leeenda, totally, I've got this one," because apparently the number "125" and the plural noun "pages" and the fact that the only thing I did know in Hebrew WAS the alphabet were all things that were not computing in my brain.

So I was kind of in a bit of a jam here, a JewJam if you will, because I was all up on the Aleph-Bet and everyone else in Hebrew I all... wasn't. But everyone in Hebrew II was conjugating verbs and structuring sentences without frantically flipping to the dictionary for every single word because most of those words are already in their brain. I was basically like a first grader being told "Well, if you don't want to repeat Kindergarten, I guess you can move on up to 6th grade, they're studying the Declaration of Independence and dissecting pig's eyeballs, you know how to read, right?"

So I was like, okay, for the next week all my free time that I like to use to click refresh a lot on Facebook I'm going to STUDY HEBREW, this is going to be great, I'm so glad I'm learning and growing and enriching my life!

This is exactly as stupid and frustrating and "Why do I make such poor choices for myself?" as it sounds.

Next Post: The Worst JewStudent in Hebrew 2! Or.........me.

* Okay, there was one thing I didn't know in Hebrew 1 and it was a big thing. So I never realized there were 2 Hebrew alphabets--- one for reading (the one you learn when you have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah) and one for writing, the one you write when you... write. I was like "Wait, I can just write my approximation of the print alphabet, I have to learn twenty-two unfamiliar symbols in addition to all the unfamiliar vocabulary I'm cramming into my brain?" And the Hebrew Alphabet is like "You thinks this is difficult, baby, baby, baby, watch what happens when you have to read real Hebrew books and newspapers and shit where the DON'T PRINT THE VOWELS because Israeli people are all about going to the army after high school and living in kibbutzes where you don't get to have any personal property and also living in the Middle East and also basically doing the Hard Version of Everything!"

Just thinking about reading with no vowels makes me want to say goodbye to my three-hundred-something bucks and just sleep on Tuesday nights.But that would definitely be a Worst Jew thing to do and I'm trying NOT to do that!

How Many Commandments Do I Follow? (Smacking the Head of the Person that Guessed One, it's More Than That!)

So like I said in Post One (Otherwise Known as "Why Did I Start a Blog, Now I'm Actually Going to Have to WRITE IT) I'm on a quest to become a Slightly Better Not Embarrassing To My Mother Jew.

I feel like this is a good time to mention all the ways in which I am NOT a Worst Jew.

-I shalt never killed anyone (and I don't even plan to ever shalt kill anyone!)

I can't remember any of the other commandments, I have to cheat and look.

Reading, reading...Thou Shalt Not Steal (If this refers to taking french fries off of other people's plates without asking I am in trouble-times), Thou Shalt Not Covet (Only like all the time with everything!),Thou Shalt Not Misuse the Name of God (Only like more of all the time with almost everything!). Thou Shall Keep the Sabbath Holy (sometimes I get super lazybones right after sundown on Friday until right before sundown on Saturday, can that count? Please, let it count, I'm not doing great here...), Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor (This means being a bitch-bag to your friends, right? Or just being a bitch-bag in general? Either way, I'm out), Thou Shalt Honor Thy Mother and Father (Goddamnit, I'm basically going to get an F on the Ten Commandments. Goddamnit, These Goddamnits Aren't Helping!)

Ooh, here's one! Thou Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me! I don't! I don't! Hey God! I don't! And here, Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee any Graven Images. Hebrew God, I have NOT been drawing pictures of you! And I don't even want to! And Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery I'm NOT EVEN MARRIED I CAN'T! And if you count boyfriends, I love mine, I only kiss him on the lips, everyone else gets Euro- air-kisses on either side of their ears!

Four out of ten. That's not... zero out of ten.

How many commandments do YOU follow? I'm MOST interested in people that say zero out of ten (because then I will want to meet you and be slightly attracted to you) and ten out of ten (because then I will want to meet you and be resentful of you for always).

I'm getting an F for Commandments, but I'm REALLY HOPING learning Hebrew gives super special secret bonus points, like the Heebie version of Mario hitting the invisible question box to get mushrooms and gold coins. Hebrew should get me bonus points, learning another language is so hard after the age of like, infancy, who knew?

Oh, everyone knew? Oh. Okay.

Next Post: Finally getting to learning Hebrew. This one goes a little bit like a fairy tale we all know about a Mischievous Little Golden Haired Child and all the breakfasts and chairs and beds she didn't like. Only in my version it's a Michievious Jew Girl With Short Dark Hair (That Looks Like Bob Dylan's Haircut Circa his 1962 Self-Titled Album According to Her Boyfriend) and the Three Hebrew Classes, the FIRST Class That Basically Covered Everything She Already Learned For Her Bat Mitzvah 10 Years Ago, the SECOND Class Where Everybody Could Already Speak Hebrew Like Smart Israeli Four Year Olds and... oh wait, there is no "Just Right" third class. So which class will our Spunky, Intrepid Heeb-eroine choose?

(Hint: It's the really, really, really hard one. Where would the fun be otherwise?)

What is a "Worst Jew"?

Is it…

A.) Someone that eats during Yom Kippur and then lies and pretends to be hungry whenever anyone Jewish is around. (NOTE: "Yom Kippur" can be replaced with “Passover” and “hungry” can be replaced with “pretends to be sad about not eating bread.”)

B.) Someone that has "accidentally" eaten pig and also meat with mother's milk lots of times over the course of his/her life and by accidentally, I mean "Not accidentally, but doesn't want to admit that to any Real Jewish People that would be disappointed and judge-y."

C.) Someone that every year gets an incurable case of the giggles during Yom Kippur, the most serious and saddest day of the Jewish calendar year. To be fair, this is largely the part of someone’s wisecracking-sass-in-the-pants-joke-whispering-during-the-part-of-the-service-where-you’re-supposed-to-be-mourning-the-dead (deep breath) little brother who is also in his own special, adorable way a scoch of a “Worst Jew.”

D.) Someone that refuses to call his/her nose "Jewish" and insists that it's "Roman." But if your schnozz-ma-tozz is big enough to have its own flag and state bird, you are a Heeb, my son!

(Few centimeters short of an organized system of government with national funding for the arts, here)

E.) The Author of This Blog.

(Me and my "Roman Centurion meets All the Hebrew Slaves in Egypt" nose at its least flattering angle, though there are literally HUNDREDS to choose from.)

F.) All of the above.

If you don't know the answer, you haven't read the title of this blog.

(The answer is F. I will help you out JUST THIS ONCE and then no more!)

Okay, so nobody just decides to be “The Worst Jew There Ever Was.

Except maybe Woody Allen after he (you think I'm going to say started having love-times with Korean Stepdaughter WhoreMouth but I'm actually going to say) made "Mighty Aphrodite" and then never even tried to make a good movie ever again.

Or Julio Iglesias after he started making music.

Or Jesus Christ after he started another religion.

To be fair, being a Worst Jew can be fun times. Cheeseburgers! Christmas presents! Not feeling guilty about giggling about Orthodox Dudes’ Sideburns!

But being a Worst Jew can also be lonely and sad and crying-times when you look around at your life and for all the shellfish you eat in its many forms, you don’t have that big, huggy, without-tradition-our-lives-would-be-as-crazy-as-a-Fiddler-on-the-Roof-Sunrise-Sunset feeling you can only get from being a Good Jew. Or Passable Jew. Or even just a Not Worst Jew.

Well, no more crying times. I’m putting on a new dress. I’m going to aim to become a Slightly Better Jew and hopefully all the adults that helped me with my bat mitzvah and all the once-kids-now-twenty-somethings I went to Santa Barbara Reform Organized Temple Youth and Jewish Community Center Youth Group with will have less reasons to be Jewbarrassed about knowing me.

And I’m starting by learning Hebrew.

(If this looks backwards to you think how I feel, I have to read it!)

(It is backwards, that's what happens when you photograph things)

I'm going to do it, guys. And then I'll be a Real Jewish Girl after all. To life, to life, L'Chaim!

Next Post: How learning Hebrew is so hard it makes me want to rip out my own eyeballs but I can’t stop now because I paid too much money for my class to stop after basically a week.