‘Know Before Whom You Stand’: How Hebrew Creates Belonging
How Serious Hebrew Education Creates Readiness, Recognition, and Belonging
Jewish tradition teaches, דַּע לִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עוֹמֵד, know before whom you stand (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 28b). The words ask us to recognize the presence before us and the responsibility that comes with that awareness. For Jewish education, they suggest another vital question: Do our students also know, quite literally, where they stand – and do they feel that they belong there?
One of my graduates recently sent me a message while walking through Jerusalem’s narrow alleys, past walls of pale Jerusalem stone, trying to become acquainted with the neighborhood in which he would live during his post-graduation year of Torah study. He felt overwhelmed, anxious, and, on some level, lost. Then he looked up and saw something familiar: a street sign reading “Shay Agnon Blvd.” Suddenly, the unfamiliar became familiar and the unknown became known. His disorientation gave way to recognition: “I do know where I am. This is part of me. I belong here – exactly here.”
But his next message revealed something deeper. He texted a resonant line from Agnon’s novel Tmol Shilshom: וְיוֹשְׁבֶיהָ בְּרוּכֵי אֱלֹקִים, “and its inhabitants are blessed by God.” By invoking Agnon, the student gave his own presence there another, almost existential, layer of meaning. He was not saying only, “I am here, and I know where I stand.” He was locating himself within a people: I am part of this nation; we are blessed by God; and I belong exactly here.
That moment captures what sustained Hebrew education can make possible. David Magerman’s Times of Israel essays, “An Apology from Your American Jewish Parents” and “Why I Wrote the Apology Letter,” raise an urgent question: Are American Jewish schools preparing students only to admire and support Israel, or also to study, work, and build meaningful lives there? From my experience leading Hebrew education at Maimonides School in Boston, my answer is hopeful and firm: we can and should prepare every student more fully before sending them. We can prepare them, and at Maimonides we do – across levels and through different pathways – even as we recognize how much more work remains.
This work grows from a larger institutional inheritance. Maimonides School was founded by Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rav, and sustained through its formative years together with his wife, Tonya Lewit Soloveitchik. I am grateful to our Head of School, Rabbi Yaakov Green, and our current principal, Rabbi Trencher, for their continued trust and support; Rabbi Dov Huff, who was principal when I began and served as the moral compass as this work took shape; Rafael Fadlon, my friend, critic, and academic Hevruta; and members of our parent and board community, whose encouragement has helped me pursue opportunities for professional growth with reflection, gratitude, and humility.
The six pathways therefore reflect six layers of collaboration: our founding vision, school leadership, principals past and present, colleagues, parent and board partnership, and the students whose commitment gives the work its purpose. They are not mine alone; they are a school effort.
Within that inheritance, our pedagogical compass is the deliberate balance between meaningful content, genuine language proficiency, Jewish values, and students’ continuing formation of identity. The six pathways share that foundation while emphasizing different capacities. Bishvil Ha-Ivrit develops sustained proficiency across the language skills; Project Eitan integrates reading, listening, grammar, literary interpretation, and independent project work; the International Hebrew Examination demands university-level analysis of literature and poetry; the Hebrew Language Olympiad cultivates critical and creative thinking; the Global Seal of Biliteracy emphasizes practical communication, particularly speaking and typed writing; and YAEL and YAELNET require academic Hebrew, inference, logical reasoning, and disciplined thinking under time constraints. Together, they present Hebrew as a living language, an academic discipline, and a foundation for Jewish identity and participation in Israeli life.
At Maimonides, that philosophy has taken form through six connected Hebrew Excellence Pathways. Together, the International Hebrew Examination and Eitan pathways now represent nearly 150 successful student completions. Students who pursued the Global Seal of Biliteracy averaged 7.5 out of 9, corresponding to an Advanced Mid proficiency level. These numbers matter: they demonstrate durable opportunities reaching successive groups of students, not isolated successes.
These pathways express our responsibility for every student. Excellence cannot be reserved for one level, one track, or the students who arrive already confident in Hebrew. Each learner deserves an ambitious next step, serious preparation, and the opportunity to have that work recognized beyond the classroom. The Eitan and International Hebrew Examination results give us confidence that sustained support and meaningful standards can widen participation. At the Hebrew Language Olympiad, our students did not merely participate: three earned first place, one earned second place, three earned third place, and four received Awards of Excellence.
These accomplishments do not mean that our program is perfect. It is not. We continue to confront gaps between proficiency levels, limits of time and staffing, the need to support every learner, and the challenge of turning individual successes into a durable system. But our experience demonstrates something important: an ambitious, coherent, and inclusive model of Hebrew education is possible in an American Jewish school.
Magerman’s distinction between schools that are “pro-Zionist rather than Zionist” raises an important challenge that deserves serious attention. Our schools may express genuine love for Israel: we celebrate its national days, defend it publicly, teach its history, and send graduates there for a gap year. These are meaningful commitments, but they should not mark the end of our educational responsibility. Before sending students to Israel, we can and should prepare them more fully for the lives they may build there. That means turning love into readiness by giving them the linguistic, academic, cultural, and practical tools to participate in Israeli life with confidence and independence.
Hebrew is central to that preparation. It is more than a practical tool for ordering food, finding an apartment, or completing paperwork. It is the language through which Israeli humor, memory, disagreement, friendship, and public life unfold. English-language programs may help a student begin a degree in Israel, but Hebrew allows that student to move beyond the protected space of an international program and enter the society itself.
This is why we decided to treat Hebrew at Maimonides as both a language of identity and a complete academic field. Our university-level course includes 25 literary works and reflects the level of literary study associated with Israel’s highest, five-unit Bagrut pathway. Students encounter demanding Hebrew poetry, short fiction, and longer prose from different periods and perspectives. They know poems by heart before analyzing them, and they are asked to interpret and create with the language, not merely recognize it.
Agnon’s Tehilla, one of the most iconic works of modern Hebrew literature, makes this kind of study real. Its closing line reads: מְנוּחַת הַשֶּׁקֶט הָיְתָה בַּחֶדֶר, כְּבַחֲדַר תְּפִלָּה לְאַחַר הַתְּפִלָּה, “The restfulness of silence was in the room, as in a prayer room after prayer.” One student offered an interpretation I have never forgotten: Jewish life is never simply “after prayer.” Am Yisrael is always after one prayer and before the next, preserving tradition, identity, and avodat Hashem across thousands of years. The deepest menuhah, the student suggested, comes from knowing that we belong within that continuing movement.
The other works bring that belonging into equally concrete contexts. Yehuda Amichai’s “Tourists” allows students to encounter Jerusalem from within, so that when they arrive they need not experience themselves only as visitors looking at someone else’s city. Zelda is familiar to many readers through “Each of Us Has a Name,” but in “Each Rose” she ends with a command: קַח סִירָה וַחֲצֵה אֶת יָם הָאֵשׁ, “Take a boat and cross the sea of fire.” We ask our students to hear that command personally: take an intellectual risk, move beyond the safety of what is already familiar, and try.
Natan Alterman’s prophetic closing words in “The Silver Platter” ask another kind of question: אֲנַחְנוּ מַגַּשׁ הַכֶּסֶף שֶׁעָלָיו לָךְ נִתְּנָה מְדִינַת־הַיְּהוּדִים, “We are the silver platter on which the Jewish state was given to you.” They invite students to ask not only whether they are willing to serve their country – as many of our graduates do – but what responsibility service and citizenship demand of them.
Roni Somek’s “The Poverty Line” turns their gaze toward Israel’s social realities: הַקַּו הַיָּחִיד שֶׁרָאִיתִי הָיָה קַו הָאֹפֶק וּמִתַּחְתָּיו הַכֹּל נִרְאָה עֹנִי, “The only line I saw was the horizon, and beneath it everything looked poor.” It pushes students beyond individual acts of chesed, asking them to see the diversity and social challenges within our land – rich and poor, from south to north.
Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s poem offers an older beacon: לִבִּי בְמִזְרָח וְאָנֹכִי בְּסוֹף מַעֲרָב, “My heart is in the East, while I am at the edge of the West.” It serves as a beacon from the moment we begin teaching it in sixth grade: Hebrew can orient the heart before the feet arrive.
Dan Pagis’s “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car” extends this education beyond Israel as a state to Am Yisrael as a people. One student sent me a photograph from a concentration camp she visited, where she encountered the poem inscribed at the entrance. What she had studied in a Hebrew classroom became part of how she understood Jewish memory in the world. Leah Goldberg’s “Pine” offers another dimension through the line וְשָׁרָשַׁי בִּשְׁנֵי נוֹפִים שׁוֹנִים, “My roots are in two different landscapes.” It helps our students know where they stand without denying where they came from, and to carry gratitude for their homes, families, teachers, and friends as they form a deeper relationship with Israel.
External standards have helped us clarify that work. A credible assessment does more than produce a final score. It influences what teachers plan, makes progress visible to families, and allows students to understand that their Hebrew can be evaluated and recognized beyond their own classroom. University credit and external recognition also place Hebrew alongside other serious fields of study.
These achievements matter not only because they measure proficiency, but because they expand what students are able to recognize, understand, and claim as their own. Do our students actually know where they stand? We cannot create belonging for them or dictate the relationship they will build with Israel. We can, however, give them the language, literature, memory, and confidence through which belonging becomes possible. When a graduate looks up in Jerusalem and sees Agnon rather than merely a street sign, Israel is no longer only a country admired from afar. It becomes legible, familiar, and part of their own story. They can say: I know where I am. I recognize the story I am part of. Yet belonging is not a one-sided claim; it is an act of reciprocal recognition. Whether our students come to make aliyah, serve, learn, or simply visit, they should never imagine that they arrive alone or unwanted. Tehilla, Agnon’s heroine, says: כָּל מִי שֶׁמַּגִּיעַ לְכָאן נֶחְקָק בְּלִבֵּנוּ וְאֵין אָנוּ שׁוֹכְחִים אוֹתוֹ, “Every person who comes here is inscribed in our hearts, and we do not forget them.” That is the complete cycle of belonging: our students learn to recognize Israel as part of their own story, and Israel and Am Yisrael recognize them in return – not as guests at the margins of the story, but as participants within it. There lies the enduring strength of the only Jewish state and its people: no Jew who comes to learn, serve, build, or simply stand upon its soil arrives without a place in the story.
