Riverdale, NY – Orthodox Students Make Arabic a Cultural Bridge

Riverdale, NY – Several years ago, six teenagers at the SAR yeshiva high school in Riverdale came to the principal with a request: They wanted to study Arabic.

It was an unusual appeal in this heavily Orthodox neighborhood in the Bronx, with at least a half dozen congregations on tree-lined streets that can turn eerily quiet on the Sabbath. Among the kosher butcher shops, restaurants, bakeries and delis, the talk on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is usually supportive of the settlers on the West Bank, many of whom are transplanted Orthodox Jewish Americans, not Arabic speakers.

Still, the students, all of whom had spent time in Israel — some had visited every year of their lives — were eager, and Rabbi Tully Harcsztark, the principal of SAR High School, decided to add Arabic to the foreign language offerings of Spanish and Latin.

This year, the fifth year of the Arabic program, 40 students are studying Arabic in four grades, though their reasons vary, Mr. Harcsztark said: Some want to understand those they regard as enemies, but many more seem to want to build bridges.

“The Arab-Israel conflict is a huge part of our lives, and understanding the culture and language helps us to relate to the other side,” said Jonah Eidman, an 11th grader taking Arabic for a third year.

Sarah Samuels, one of 14 ninth graders who just completed their first year, said a schoolmate had questioned her commitment to study Arabic, saying, “It’s the language of terrorists.” But Sarah shrugged the student off.

“You can’t define a whole people by certain members of the language-speaking population,” she said.

Adin Goldstein, another ninth grader, added: “Not everybody who speaks Arabic is a bad person. Most are good people.”

“I feel like lots of people have misconceptions about Arabs and Palestinians,” chimed in Ariel Mintz, “and if I speak Arabic I can better understand the culture and understand what is really going on.”

Ariel, wearing a latke-sized skullcap, and Adin, Sarah and the other ninth graders were in class deciphering passages in Arabic about a man complaining about the cold weather in Ithaca, N.Y., and contrasting it with the warmth in California. It was the kind of nonsensical passage that all beginner language classes take on to tackle essential vocabulary and sentence structure.

In the 11th-grade class, students discussed a passage about how Israelis like Ariel Sharon have expressed fondness for the work of Mahmoud Darwish, one of the most widely known Palestinian poets, because they shared his love of the land.

Though rare, there are similar programs at Jewish day schools locally and nationally, according to the Jewish weekly The Forward, including Ramaz High School in Manhattan, Shalhevet High School for Girls in Cedarhurst on Long Island, and schools in Rockville, Md.; Greensboro, N.C.; and Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Only eight public high schools and one middle school in New York City offer Arabic, said Nicole Duignan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education.

Some of the Riverdale students said they were looking forward to reading signs in three languages on their next trips to Israel: Hebrew, Arabic and English. Others, like Adina Israel, a ninth grader, said, “We’re all hoping for peace, and it’s easier to establish peace if you’re able to talk in their terms.”

Arabic is not an easy language to master, said Irrit Dweck, 33, a part-time instructor who teaches all four grades. Its distinctive alphabet means that students, already challenged during their youth by two alphabets, spend months just mastering the characters, with 28 letters in a cursive script that take different forms depending on their placement in a word.

Parallels with Hebrew sometimes help. Words like “pineapple” and “watermelon” and the names of eight months are similar in both languages. Arabic had its origins in Aramaic, the language of the Talmud that students at the yeshiva study.

Ms. Dweck, whose paternal grandparents were Syrian Jews, got an early start, growing up with Arabic expressions and Arab music. She studied Arabic at Columbia, spent a year living in Cairo and has a master’s degree from Columbia in Middle Eastern language and culture.

“I feel it’s really impressive that the students wanted Arabic, and the school responded,” she said.

None of the students said their parents opposed the decision. Some parents liked the idea of bridge-building and the intellectual challenge of an uncommon language. Others emphasized the practical advantages in a world of increasingly global commerce and in a country with a growing Arabic population.

That is not to say that the course is shifting students’ political views. “I never thought all Muslims or Arabs do terrorist acts,” said Tuvia Lerea, an 11th grader. “But this class has solidified my idea. A tremendous majority of the Arab population live their daily lives and do their own things just like in our society.”

Ms. Dweck knows that her students will not be fluent in Arabic by the end of high school.

“The only way to learn a language is to live it, and they’re only living it for 40 minutes a day, three times a week,” she said.

Two former students did pursue the language after high school, and are now living in Jerusalem studying Arabic.