Trust Them, Challenge Them: Hebrew Education Post-October 7
Aharon Appelfeld begins his story “Cold Spring,” set at the end of the Second World War, with these words:
בְּאִחוּר שֶׁל שִׁבְעָה יָמִים נוֹדַע לָנוּ עַל סִיּוּם הַמִּלְחָמָה. סִפְּרוּ לָנוּ, כִּי הַיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן שֶׁל סִיּוּם הַמִּלְחָמָה שִׂמְחָתוֹ הָיְתָה רַבָּה. וְאָמְנָם, מִבַּעַד מַעֲטֵה הַמִּסְתּוֹר, אֶל תּוֹךְ הַבּוּנְקֶר, הִגִּיעוּ אֵלֵינוּ קוֹלוֹת שֶׁהִזְכִּירוּ לָנוּ רֵאשִׁית הַמִּלְחָמָה, וְלֹא יָדַעְנוּ שֶׁאֵלֶּה יִסּוּרִים שֶׁלְּאַחַר הַמִּלְחָמָה, וְהָיִינוּ מַחֲרִישִׁים וְסוֹפְגִים אֶת הַקּוֹלוֹת.
“Seven days late, we learned that the war had ended. We were told that the first day marking the war’s end was filled with great joy. And indeed, through the veil of concealment and into the bunker came sounds that reminded us of the beginning of the war. We did not know that these were the sufferings that followed the war, and we remained silent and absorbed the sounds.”
Appelfeld is writing about another time, although an instinctive resemblance to our own recent experience is difficult to miss. Yet the power of this passage is not primarily a warning. It is the recovery of a human voice—the moment people find words for the transition from one stage of history to another. It is an awakening to movement, growth, responsibility, and renewed spirit. It reminds us that our destiny cannot depend on waiting for someone else to tell us that the moment has changed or what we must do next.
The students who accepted these challenges taught me the most important lesson of all: rigor is an expression of trust.
After October 7, 2023, I repeatedly told our students that continuing to study was one way we could join the national effort. During that year, and throughout the period in which Israel remained officially at war, our responsibility was to learn another line of Rachel or Leah Goldberg, another Hebrew word from Bialik, another story by Agnon, and another chapter of Tanakh. The responsibility to continue learning belonged to every student, every teacher—to all of us.
Our students understood. Their eyes told us that this was not an escape from events but a response to them. Jewish continuity has always depended on our refusal to abandon study and interpretation, especially when history places the greatest pressure upon us.
The International Hebrew Examination in literature and poetry takes place after our seniors have completed their other final examinations and, in practical terms, have already finished high school. Since the program began, every cohort has returned for an intensive review day. They study from morning until late afternoon and return the following day to sit for a demanding university-level examination covering twenty-five works of Hebrew literature, poetry, and Tanakh. No grade or speech could produce that commitment by itself.
My dear friend Caroline Bryk, an inspiring leader at Tikvah, recalls in her essay “Those Who Can, Teach” the fifth-grade teacher who challenged her class to memorize fifty-nine lines of Robert Frost’s “Birches”—lines she can still recite. “A love of text is often born in laboring with it,” Bryk writes. “Labor creates deep attachment, binding our people to our text.” Our seniors returned because the work remained unfinished and because the texts with which they had labored had become part of them.
My brother and colleague Raffi Fadlon carried the idea one step further. “This,” he told me, “is the proof that we defeated October 7. There is no greater victory.”
His words stayed with me. Victory is not measured only on a battlefield. It can also be found in young Jews who return voluntarily to school after their final examinations to study Agnon, Alterman, Yehuda Halevi, and Tanakh—in Hebrew. They return not because the work is easy, but because it belongs to them.
In “Toward a Renaissance in American Jewish Education,” Eric Cohen and Steven Price argue that the rebuilding of the Jewish people is, at its heart, an educational project. Jewish education must prepare young people not merely to inherit Jewish life but to become its knowledgeable and responsible builders. That work requires more than affection, programming, or occasional inspiration. It demands serious learning, capable teachers, ambitious institutions, and students prepared to carry the Jewish story forward.
Our students do not need more preaching or language that leaves them feeling unprepared or unworthy. They need Torah, Hebrew language, knowledge, intellectual depth, confidence, and the ability to participate fully in the society they may choose to join. We cannot choose Israel for them, nor should we. We can ensure that Israel is a choice they are genuinely prepared to make.
As an Israeli Zionist and the Hebrew Department Chair at Maimonides School, our department’s goal is to send students to Israel with more than affection and good intentions. We want them to arrive with concrete tools already in hand: university credit earned through the International Hebrew Examination; preparation for—and, for some, completion of—the YAEL or YAELNET examination while they are still at Maimonides; internationally recognized proficiency through the Global Seal of Biliteracy; and the highest possible command of Hebrew for university study, employment, military service, and daily life.
These achievements can save them time and money, but more importantly, they can open academic doors and allow graduates to enter Israeli society as capable participants rather than perpetual outsiders.
Across the graduating classes of 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026—with the class of 2024 standing out especially—our graduates have accepted demanding responsibilities. From the cities and towns surrounding Maimonides School in Brookline, Massachusetts—including Brighton, Newton, and Sharon—they have gone on to serve in the Paratroopers Brigade, Golani, Givati, the Combat Engineering Corps, the Artillery Corps, Shaldag, Units 81 and 8200, combat-pilot training, and positions involving significant leadership responsibilities. They have served in Jabalia, Khan Yunis, and Rafah; in the mountains of southern Lebanon; along the Jordanian border; and in some of Israel’s deepest and most secretive intelligence rooms.
This is no longer Israel as a beautiful word, nor even the familiar streets of Israel that I described in my first essay. It is immersion in its fullest sense: presence, responsibility, contribution, and service.
During the early stages of the war, two of our graduates from the classes of 2021 and 2022 served as lone soldiers and paratroopers in different platoons in the heart of Gaza. One night, in a rest area before returning to the fighting zone, they passed by one another. Both were carrying heavy combat equipment and wearing helmets that made it difficult even to see each other’s eyes. Yet something stopped them.
Almost simultaneously, they asked, “You’re from Maimo, right?”
Two lone soldiers, defending the only state of the Jewish people and expecting neither recognition nor reward, suddenly found someone from the community in which they had been raised. They fell into each other’s arms and embraced, enormous smiles visible beneath their helmets.
Alterman gives us language for that moment in “The Silver Platter”:
לוֹבְשֵׁי חֹל וַחֲגוֹר, וּכְבֵדֵי נַעֲלַיִם,
בַּנָּתִיב יַעֲלוּ הֵם, הָלוֹךְ וְהַחְרֵשׁ.
לֹא הֶחְלִיפוּ בִגְדָם, לֹא מָחוּ עוֹד בַּמַּיִם
אֶת עִקְּבוֹת יוֹם־הַפֶּרֶךְ וְלֵיל קַו־הָאֵשׁ.
“Dressed in battle gear and heavy-shod,
They will ascend the path, walking in silence.
They have not changed their clothes, nor washed away
The traces of the grueling day and the night at the line of fire.”
Both graduates also carried biblical Hebrew names—Yosef and Shilo—linking them to the history, language, and people they had chosen to defend. Their embrace was a living image of what our texts attempt to teach: one can help build Israel while simultaneously being built by it. We are deeply proud of them and of all their friends who have chosen to serve.
Agnon describes this reciprocity at the beginning of Tmol Shilshom:
כִּשְׁאָר אַחֵינוּ בְּנֵי גְּאֻלָּתֵנוּ, אַנְשֵׁי הָעֲלִיָּה הַשְּׁנִיָּה, הִנִּיחַ יִצְחָק קוּמֶר אֶת אַרְצוֹ וְאֶת מוֹלַדְתּוֹ וְאֶת עִירוֹ, וְעָלָה לְאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל לִבְנוֹת אוֹתָהּ מֵחֻרְבָּנָהּ וּלְהִבָּנוֹת מִמֶּנָּה.
“Like the rest of our brethren, the sons of our redemption, the people of the Second Aliyah, Isaac Kumer left his country, his birthplace, and his city, and ascended to the Land of Israel to rebuild it from its destruction and to be rebuilt by it.”
Agnon’s language recalls the command given to Abraham:
לֶךְ־לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ.
“Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
Presence, study, contribution, and service are not merely responses to war or obligations inherited from earlier generations. They are processes of formation. The external encounter with language and literature can become an inward expression of identity; physical participation in Israel can become spiritual transformation. Our students understand that to build is also to be built.
Sheryl Fox-Adler—a Maimonides parent and board member, and a thoughtful advocate for meaningful education and the formation of the whole person—expresses this idea powerfully in her paper, “Ordered Souls: Education and the Formation of Human Beings.” “Education is never confined to curriculum alone,” she writes. Students are shaped by their surroundings, relationships, expectations, habits, and by the larger vision of what deserves their attention and commitment. As she argues, “Virtue and Formation provide the essential framework within which all other pedagogy finds its meaning.” Education must therefore concern itself not only with what students know but with who they are becoming.
The responses to my first essay reminded me that this movement—from learning to formation, and from building to being built—is already visible in the lives of our graduates. The message that should encourage all of us, strengthening both our pride and our confidence in this educational path, came from parents whose children have made aliyah and entered Israeli life through its many circles.
Graduates are leading startups, attending law school and nursing school in Hebrew, spending a fourth year in yeshiva, participating in the Atuda academic program, interviewing for positions in Israel’s leading hospitals, and performing Sherut Leumi in Sderot—the same city that has witnessed extraordinary suffering and heroism. These are not temporary encounters with Israel. They are testimonies to full immersion.
Amir Gilboa gives voice to the moment when an individual recognizes that belonging is also language, communication, and creative participation:
פִּתְאֹם קָם אָדָם בַּבֹּקֶר וּמַרְגִּישׁ כִּי הוּא עַם וּמַתְחִיל לָלֶכֶת,
וּלְכָל הַנִּפְגָּשׁ בְּדַרְכּוֹ קוֹרֵא הוּא שָׁלוֹם.
“Suddenly, a person rises in the morning and feels that he is a people, and begins to walk; and to everyone he meets along the way, he calls, ‘Shalom.’”
That connection between language and national consciousness begins long before senior year. Our students learn the literary works in the International Hebrew Examination program by heart, but the discipline begins much earlier. In sixth grade, they encounter Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s “My Heart Is in the East”:
לִבִּי בַּמִּזְרָח וְאָנֹכִי בְּסוֹף מַעֲרָב,
אֵיךְ אֶטְעֲמָה אֵת אֲשֶׁר אֹכַל וְאֵיךְ יֶעֱרָב?
אֵיכָה אֲשַׁלֵּם נְדָרַי וֶאֱסָרַי, בְּעוֹד
צִיּוֹן בְּחֶבֶל אֱדוֹם וַאֲנִי בְּכֶבֶל עֲרָב?
יֵקַל בְּעֵינַי עֲזֹב כָּל טוּב סְפָרַד, כְּמוֹ
יֵקַר בְּעֵינַי רְאוֹת עַפְרוֹת דְּבִיר נֶחֱרָב.
“My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west—
How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good things of Spain—
Seeing how precious in mine eyes to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.”
—Translated by Nina Salaman
At a certain point each year, I can say with confidence that at least half of our school knows the entire poem by heart—accurately, without mistakes, with full understanding and the ability to offer immediate literary analysis. We use this brief but remarkable poem to teach approximately twenty literary devices.
There is value in seeing לִבִּי בַּמִּזְרָח printed on a shirt or a mug; such expressions can signal genuine affection and identification. The classroom, however, must take students further. It should enable them to examine every word, image, contradiction, sound, and historical reference until the poem becomes not only a familiar phrase but part of their intellectual and spiritual vocabulary.
The Eitan pathway provides an earlier bridge into this kind of rigor. Its central theme is hope and resilience, and its five assessment components—reading comprehension, listening and viewing, grammar and language, literary analysis, and an independent project—ask students to demonstrate several different kinds of Hebrew proficiency.
For our advanced eighth graders, Eitan is the bridge to the intellectual demands of the Upper School. Its purpose is not merely to prepare students for another test. It helps establish, before ninth grade, a different mindset toward growth, responsibility, and sustained commitment. For our accelerated eleventh graders, it reinforces the understanding that Hebrew is a serious academic discipline requiring thought, interpretation, and creation.
This helps explain why Alterman’s “The Silver Platter,” one of the works studied for the International Hebrew Examination, speaks so directly after October 7:
וְהָאָרֶץ תִּשְׁקֹט. עֵין שָׁמַיִם אוֹדֶמֶת
תְּעַמְעֵם לְאִטָּהּ
עַל גְּבוּלוֹת עֲשֵׁנִים.
וְאֻמָּה תַּעֲמֹד—קְרוּעַת לֵב אַךְ נוֹשֶׁמֶת—
לְקַבֵּל אֶת הַנֵּס
הָאֶחָד אֵין שֵׁנִי.
“And the land falls silent. The reddening eye of heaven
Slowly dims
Above smoking borders.
And a nation stood—cloven-hearted but breathing—
To receive the miracle.
The one miracle and only…”
The first passage from the poem gives language to the physical reality of service. This passage expands our view from the individual soldiers to the nation that receives them: heart-torn, still breathing, and responsible for what comes next. It asks our students not only whether they are willing to serve—as many of our graduates are—but what citizenship, sacrifice, and national responsibility demand of them.
Creating appropriate materials is one part of a much larger responsibility. Preparing students linguistically, intellectually, culturally, spiritually, and emotionally to participate in Israeli life must begin in the earliest grades, from kindergarten through fifth grade, and continue through graduation. It cannot be postponed until the final months of high school or delegated entirely to a gap-year program. It requires coherent progression, meaningful standards, protected instructional time, external measures of achievement, and a vision connecting language learning with identity and responsibility.
This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for department chairs and school leaders: Do we actually have a vision for the graduates we hope to form, or only a program that changes from year to year?
A plan organizes courses, materials, schedules, and assessments. A vision identifies the kind of human being and Jewish graduate we hope our collective work will help form.
My brother and dear friend, Rabbi Dov Huff, who recently made aliyah and now serves as Sgan Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi, was the moral compass as these pathways began. From him I learned to share educational goals openly with students, to make high expectations an expression of respect, and to understand that serious learning becomes meaningful when students know why it matters.
This work is not a criticism of Hebrew teachers. I support them deeply. In schools everywhere, they enter their classrooms each day with devotion, creativity, and too few resources. Sustainable change requires department chairs and school leaders to establish the conditions in which teachers and students can succeed.
At the same time, supporting teachers cannot mean freeing any of us from professional responsibility. Hebrew educators must continue to study, grow, write, create, and renew their practice. My own book, Zot Ha’aretz—זֹאת הָאָרֶץ—a Hebrew reader for learners of Hebrew as a second language, emerged from that responsibility. It was an attempt to create something my students needed and that I could not find elsewhere. Professional growth should lead not only to acquiring new methods but also to creating new possibilities for students.
The work ahead is therefore institutional and personal. It belongs to teachers who must continue developing their craft; department chairs who must articulate coherent academic visions; administrators who must protect time, resources, and standards; board members and parents who must support ambitious learning; and students whom we must challenge because we believe in their capacity.
Appelfeld closes “Cold Spring” with a different kind of movement:
שֶׁמֶשׁ הָאָבִיב נֵעוֹרָה וְדָרְכָה בָּרְקִיעִים, פָּנָיו שֶׁל דוּדְל הִבְהִיקוּ לֹבֶן, דַּעְתָּהּ שֶׁל צַיְיטְל נִתְפַּיְּסָה עָלֶיהָ וְאָמְרָה: “אֵינֶנִּי מְבַקֶּשֶׁת יוֹתֵר אֶלָּא שֶׁנִּהְיֶה שׁוּב כֻּלָּנוּ בְּיַחַד, כְּמוֹ בִּימֵי הַבּוּנְקֶר, וְר׳ יִצְחָק וּבֶרְל נִמְצָאִים עִמָּנוּ, וּמוּכָנָה אֲנִי אָז לָלֶכֶת מִסּוֹף הָעוֹלָם וְעַד סוֹפוֹ.”
“The spring sun awakened and made its way across the skies. Dudel’s face shone white. Zeitel’s spirit was restored, and she said: ‘I ask for nothing more than that we all be together again, as we were in the days of the bunker, with Rabbi Yitzhak and Berl among us. Then I would be ready to walk from one end of the world to the other.’”
The strength of a people is revealed not only in the unity created by crisis, but in its ability to carry that unity into the growth that follows. At Maimonides, Torah learning, love of Israel, Religious Zionism, Hebrew, service, and aliyah form parts of one educational life. Our task is to ensure that this spirit produces sustained intellectual work, practical preparation, and graduates capable of helping build the future of Am Yisrael and fulfill Hashem’s promise.
Our students are ready to walk. Our responsibility is not to flatter them or protect them from difficulty. It is to teach them Torah, give them language and knowledge, place serious tools in their hands, demand more than the ordinary, and push their intellectual capacities toward the extraordinary. We must help them understand where they come from, where they stand, and where they truly belong.
They will still have to choose, serve, build, and grow. So will we. The work before all of us remains immense—לִבְנוֹת וּלְהִבָּנוֹת: to build and to be built.
