I taught Hebrew to a kid who faked being sick to skip class. Six months later he wouldn’t stop talking.
That was Moscow, years ago, when I was tutoring children in Jewish schools on the side. He wasn’t the only one — a few of my students went from failing to solid grades, some went from silent to actually speaking. I still think about that shift, the moment someone stops translating in their head first.
Then I moved to Israel myself, Hebrew philology degree in hand, and found out how much of what I’d been teaching was still textbook Hebrew. Correct, but not how anyone actually talks. I had to rebuild my own Hebrew from scratch, this time by living in it — at work, at the bank, arguing with clerks, sitting through meetings that had nothing to do with grammar and everything to do with getting things done. I built one career there in optometry, then another in clinical research, and somewhere along the way Hebrew stopped being something I studied and became something I just used.
I’m going back to teaching now, online, mostly with adults who’ve had enough of conjugation tables and want to actually speak. If that’s you, I’d like to talk.