Translated Bible into Hebrew Banned from Schools
I recently posted about an Hebrew “translation” of the Tanakh that was going to be used in Israeli schools. It turns out that the Bible-lite, as it is being called, won’t be in Israeli schools after all.
The Education Ministry is to ban Bible aid booklets that help elementary and junior high school students by “translating” the text into simple Hebrew. Private publishers defend the booklets by arguing that biblical Hebrew is a foreign tongue to young Israelis.
Teaching experts lambast the booklets, warning that children will skip reading the Bible and opt for the simplified version. This will not only deteriorate Bible studies but also impact the Hebrew language, which is based on the Bible, they say.
The idea of translating the Bible into simple contemporary language is “scandalous,” Drora Halevy, the ministry’s National Supervisor for Bible Studies, told Haaretz. The booklets present the text in “skimpy slang” that cheapens the Bible, she added.
“It’s a purely marketing initiative intended for the below-average; it’s a disaster,” says Professor Yaira Amit, a Bible instruction expert.
See the rest here.
Update: In Haaretz there is an article/opinion piece about the whole affair. See here for the English and here for the Hebrew. The author writes,
Motivated Bible teachers today need not make it easier for native Hebrew speakers to understand the language of the Bible, the same language in which they speak. They must not make the Bible easier for them, which essentially means killing the Bible softly. Rather, they should demonstrate that a small amount of thought and effort is all that is required to understand the Bible as it was written.
Forget about the challenges of understanding Biblical Hebrew, it seems like Haaretz needs some better translators of Modern Hebrew. Compare the following, the emphasis is mine.
Back in 1919, my grandfather, Yisrael Eliyahu Handelzalts, a Hebrew teacher and translator in Poland who knew a thing or two about translations of the Bible and its similarity to spoken Hebrew, accurately diagnosed the problem. He translated the Book of Esther from Aramaic to Hebrew, as well as the Aramaic sections of the Book of Daniel.
את הבעיה הגדיר היטב, עוד בשנת 1919, סבי, ישראל אליהו הנדלזלץ, מורה לעברית ומתרגם לעברית בפולין, שידע דבר או שניים על תרגום התנ”ך וקירובו לדוברי עברית; הוא תירגם מארמית לעברית את “תרגום שני” למגילת אסתר, ואת החלקים הארמיים של ספר דניאל.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:35 am
Nice post. Such a shame it won’t be in schools. Keep up the good posts, i enjoy reading your blog!