Amjad Taha didn’t speak a word of Hebrew until seven months ago. For most places in the world this would hardly pose a problem. But Taha was born in the Old City of Jerusalem. At 22, he is fluent in Arabic and English, two languages that are spoken by large minorities in Israel, but are not the dominant languages of the Jewish state. Without Hebrew, neither of those languages are likely to help him find a decent job.
Israeli Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population. They often find themselves caught between Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians, not fully accepted by either group. This holds true even more for Jerusalem’s Arabs, who are less immersed in Israeli mainstream society. They represent a much larger Arab minority than in most other Israeli cities and live along the lines that divide the West Bank from Israel. About 215,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem making up nearly a third of the city’s population.
Israel is officially a bi-lingual country with Hebrew spoken by the majority, including within the Arab minority. Arabic is the second language. While Israeli Arabs outside Jerusalem are often fluent in Hebrew, Jerusalem’s Arabic-speakers are a unique case. They belong to an educational system peripheral to Israel’s wider network of Arab schools.
The Arab branch of Jerusalem’s municipal educational authority melds Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian elements into one curriculum. The mixture, in some cases, is yielding a generation of Arabic speakers without a facility for spoken Hebrew in a country where that language is essential. Thus, Taha and his fellow students feel they’ve been short-changed.
Between Worlds
In reality, it is quite easy for Jerusalem’s Arabic-speakers to grow up and get by without being fluent in Hebrew. The city is rigidly segregated into Arab-speaking and Hebrew-speaking neighborhoods. The school system is made up of two networks – an Arab language network in east Jerusalem and Hebrew language schools in west Jerusalem. Both systems are run by the Jerusalem Educational Authority, and more broadly by Israel’s Ministry of Education.
According to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, there are about 18,000 students in east Jerusalem’s municipality schools (the municipality did not return repeated phone calls regarding how many of these students were learning Hebrew).
Jerusalem’s Arab network of schools is commonly recognized as being less developed and less well-funded than the Hebrew language schools. Since 1967, when east Jerusalem came under Israeli control, it has also held the exceptional and ambiguous status of being simultaneously influenced by Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian pedagogy.
Bar-Ilan University Political Science Prof. Muhammad Amara has extensively researched Jerusalem’s schools and curriculum. Since 1967, he said, east Jerusalem schools have not been pressured by Israel’s Ministry of Education to fully adopt the Israeli curricula.
“Nobody on either side was convinced enough that the schools should be completely Israeli, so, in reality, Israeli influence has been soft enough that they have two curricula,” he said.
Until 1994, east Jerusalem schools had a mixed Israeli and Jordanian curriculum. That year, the Palestinian Ministry of Education took over West Bank schools and consequently influenced east Jerusalem curricula. It is now up to each school to implement a Palestinian and/or Israeli curriculum and it is up to each student to take the Jordanian Tawjihi or Israeli Bagrut, the respective high school matriculation exams.
The Palestinian curriculum some east Jerusalem schools are now implementing does not include Hebrew. Within the standard Arab-Israeli curriculum students typically begin their Hebrew studies in the third grade. And within the east Jerusalem curriculum, Hebrew or French are normally introduced in grades five through 10 as a third language, following Arabic and English, according to a study by the east Jerusalem research organization, The Multi-Sector Review. However, it is unclear how many schools in east Jerusalem have adopted the Hebrew curriculum, and if so which curriculum they have chosen.
This inconsistent education has left Arab Jerusalemites at a stark disadvantage.
“Arab citizens from other parts of the country go to universities without a problem, but for Jerusalem Arabs, after Grade 12, they still have to take additional schooling in order to attend university,” said Bar-Ilan’s Amara.
Fatima, a young mother studying Hebrew at the Beit Ha’am cultural center in Jerusalem, who asked that her last name not be used, complained that her own formal Hebrew education left her lacking and worries the same thing will happen to her children.
“We didn’t learn how to speak Hebrew and it was of no interest to the teachers,” she said. “At the end of the month, they just want a salary. They don’t understand that we need to speak Hebrew to work, to go to university, to do anything.”
Fatima says she comes to Hebrew classes to change her situation. She wants to be able to help her children with their Hebrew homework, and simply be able to buy shoes in the street, or explain a medical situation to a doctor.
Her classmate, Karim Nashashibi, 22, also of east Jerusalem, studied pharmacology in Jordan and said without Hebrew the only job opportunities available were those in Arab neighborhoods. Students such as Nashashibi, Fatima and Taha, who graduated from the east Jerusalem school system, remain a language away from full economic integration into Israel.
A Necessity or not?
In Israel, Hebrew is the primary language in most professions and a major tool in attaining economic sustainability. But in east Jerusalem, Hebrew is more than merely a language; it is a symbol of the State of Israel that many reject. Poorly taught Hebrew is a phenomenon that extends from the municipality schools to an additional 13,500 students in the private system, who learn French or German before they learn Hebrew.
Amara said that in the past, Israel had tried to implement its curriculum in east Jerusalem, but the people there have historically resisted its influence. In the past, students even crowded into private schools to avoid municipal schools.
“The motivation just isn’t there to learn Hebrew; it isn’t integrated into their society,” he said.
Amara added that decreasing job opportunities outside Israel and the Palestinian territories have made the Hebrew language even more essential. Israel, in many ways, represents a glimmer of economic opportunity for Arabs in east Jerusalem.
The lack of Hebrew language education in east Jerusalem is challenging many of Jerusalem’s young Arab-Israelis to decide whether the language is vital for them.
“Principally, the Hebrew they learn is enough to get around, but systematic language teaching in order to function at school isn’t enough for jobs requiring high language competence. If they don’t learn from an early age, they will not be able to integrate in the future,” Amara said. “Attitudes take a long time to change.”
The Reality
In the span of a year, young, educated, Arabic-speaking Jerusalemites like Taha are expected to go from speaking Hebrew at the level of a kindergartner to the proficiency of a lawyer or doctor. He has already taken intensive Hebrew language classes for seven months and is now entering the final quarter of his three additional months of specialized language courses for lawyers. Finally, he will take the Israeli bar exam in the spring. He claims that in Israel, without Hebrew, his law degree from Jordan is useless.
By the time Taha even starts looking for a job, he will have paid $1,200 for Hebrew courses and spent nearly 18 months learning the language well enough to competitively enter the Israeli job-market.
Almost every morning for most of the past year, Taha has awakened bright and early to travel from his Arab neighborhood, Beit Hanina, to attend four-hour Hebrew classes in downtown Jerusalem. Since graduating from university more than a year ago, he has been working in his father’s restaurant in Jerusalem’s Old City in the afternoons in order to make ends meet.
“Without the language we can do nothing,” he said. “It’s the mistake of our families and our schools. If I were a principal, I would teach Hebrew from their first years.”
Taha claims his schooling didn’t prepare him for the economic reality in Israel. He knows Hebrew grammar from four years of studies in his east Jerusalem public school, but until he started Hebrew classes after returning from Jordan with a university degree, he says he could barely speak a word.
Regardless of the reasons east Jerusalem Arabs lack proper Hebrew education, Taha said he and others just wish they had learned it earlier. Now that he knows Hebrew, he hopes he can help others like him.
“My younger brother begs me all the time… ‘teach me, teach me!’” he said.