Written by Ron Cantor

This week I began a 6-week intensive Hebrew course. The class normally costs around $1,500, but is only costing me 100 shekels ($30)! This came as a pleasant shock to me. If you don’t need university credit and you are an Oleh (immigrant), the government subsidizes it for you.

For a kid who could not sit still in grade school, I cannot explain why I love to study Hebrew so much. The class begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 1:20 PM, Sunday through Thursday.

One of the things I love about these courses is I always meet interesting people from all over the world who have come back to Israel to start a new life. I am usually the oldest, as most of them are in master’s programs that require their Hebrew to be at a much higher level. In my class I have students from South Africa, Russia, Ukraine, the US, Uruguay and Argentina.

Gabriel from Uruguay has only been here seven months. He is a 26-year-old dentist living in Ra’anana’s immigration center—similar to an old college dorm. His Hebrew is almost at my level—after only seven months! As an eight-year veteran, still learning, I wanted to kill him! Actually he is a very nice fellow.

On the first day, our class was over 30 people from three levels: 4, 5, and 6, which are called in Hebrew Dalit, Heh and Vav (after the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th letters of the alphabet). On the second day they were going to split the group into two groups and find another teacher. I hoped I would be in the more advanced group and was happy to find out yesterday that I, along with about fifteen others, was moved up. This was based on a placement test, which was very validating.