Abstract
In this thesis, I am focusing on finding patterns in how parents present Modern Hebrew to their children. There are two groups presented in this thesis: secular Israeli Americans in the Boston area (including Israelis who have immigrated from Israel to the United States and children of these immigrant parents) and secular Jewish Americans in the Boston area (families that are second-generation in the United States; their grandparents immigrated from Europe to the United States). I conducted this research by interviewing 12 individual parents, seven Israeli American parents, and five American Jewish parents; this data set is small and not representative of Jewish Americans and Israeli Americans in the United States, but it is a good starting point to start thinking about different strategies in the future. I have asked them an array of questions, such as how they passed Hebrew to their children, whether they send their children to any Hebrew/Jewish programs or institutions, and how did Hebrew play a part in their households. This thesis examines how, from my 12 interviews, there seems to be a similar starting point, but the two groups learn the language differently; Jewish Americans and Israelis, based on my research, share a starting point regarding the reasoning behind learning Hebrew, for example in Jewish ceremonies such as Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and Jewish holidays. Moreover, the two groups take on the understanding of literacy in different ways. Two main points that were discovered by the interviews were: 1. Siblings will talk to each other in the opposite language depending on what the parents speak to them, and 2. During my interviews, although I did not ask questions about the Holocaust, two families linked their desire to learn Hebrew to their family’s association with the Holocaust. This is important to research and figure out a trend between the two groups because this work will help educators understand where these similarities start and interweave with one another. Ultimately, the goal of this thesis is to demonstrate how Hebrew identity inside the household can help create a cultural bridge between Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans which is important because these two groups need Hebrew as their foundation to understand each other.