In the beginning�
9:52 a.m.
Eventually I was switched from an English public school to a half-English/half-Hebrew parochial school (not for linguistic reasons, but because my mother had gone back to work and didn�t want me to have to come home for lunch, or rather didn�t want to have to hire someone to be there for one child as my brother was going to junior high where he would eat his lunch in the cafeteria, and the school was within walking distance), skipping Grade 2 (that�s another story having to do with my birthday being in January and the cut-off date for school enrollment being December 31) but being oh so far behind in my acquisition of the Hebrew language that I entered that class in Grade 1.
This did wonders for me socially (please detect a note of sarcasm) as I not only was a latecomer to the preformed cliques in this small, snobby school, but I was put back two years in Hebrew. Halfway through the year, I �graduated� to Grade 2, then halfway through the next year I entered the level my English colleagues were already at. So, eventually, I was caught up. I graduated from this school at the end of Grade 6, just in time to go to junior high (the same one my brother had attended, where he was quite the legend�I had much to live up to, believe me), but the end result was that I had attained a degree of fluency in Hebrew, I was literate (sort of, I still can�t read without n�kudot, or �dots� which act as vowels, which means I�ll never be able to read a newspaper or a novel or anything more advanced than children�s literature), but having learned a second language (with a strange script) at an early age I truly believe has helped me in my later forays into foreign tongues.
Anyway, it is known that I speak Hebrew, even though in reality I speak it poorly having forgotten tons of vocabulary and grammar. Three of my daughter�s fellow band members, including her boyfriend, my Latin buddy and the singer, have banded together to produce a project for their electronic music course, and they are using various world creation myths as the basis for sound manipulation and other techniques learned in class. They prevailed upon me to read the first six days of creation (B�reshit bara elohim et hashamayin v�ha�aretz) into a microphone after choir practice on Thursday, along with a young man who is in the first year of music (having already completed two years of engineering studies elsewhere) and who attended Hebrew school until he graduated from high school. In other words, he�s a more recent Hebrew speaker than I am.
In the studio, amid much hilarity and stumbling, I managed to read each of the days separately into a microphone. At first I read a day, then Gill read the same day with headphones on so he could match my rhythm, but after the fourth day (va�y�hi erev va�y�hi boker) he begged off, saying he had to get some supper, get his bass, and be back for jazz ensemble in 45 minutes. So I finished the fifth and sixth days myself (the last is the longest and the hardest), finishing about an hour and-a-half after we started, going home and heating up a frozen pizza for supper (which I first decorated with marinated artichoke hearts and kalamata olives).
I guess what I wanted to say was that the whole experience brought back much I had forgotten. It was also very frustrating, as my eyes are experiencing the effects of presbyopea and the print was small and cluttered with diacritical/musical marks (every bar-mitzvah boy learns them�they describe the ornamentation that gives Hebrew scripture its �tune� when it is read in synagogue) which would at times obscure those vowels that I find so necessary. The thing is, instead of just reading phonetics, I found myself understanding the text, and would sometimes comment (not when I was reading into the microphone, but during my mini-rehearsals between takes) on it. After I�m done with the Latin, maybe I�ll sign up for some religion courses. I see myself becoming more argumentative as I age, and this would provide me with ample opportunities.
In case you missed it, I updated late last night and reviewed some great Canadian theatre.
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