Russian Folktales Accelerate Hebrew Learning for Kavkazim

Ada, whose melodic voice and gentle manner belie her tenacity, first began teaching Hebrew in the former Soviet Union (FSU) over a decade ago, shortly after the fall of communism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a renewed interest in all things Jewish and Ada’s hometown of Derbent, in the Caucasus Republic of Dagestan, was no exception.

It was 1991 and Ada had just returned to Derbent after five years in university, where she had studied languages and literature. Soon after her homecoming, Ada struck up a friendship with an Israeli couple, who had come to Derbent to work with the Kavkazi Jewish community (Jews from the Caucasus Region). When the time came for the couple to return to Israel, the wife left Ada a dictionary and a few Hebrew books. Linguistically gifted, Ada subsequently taught herself Hebrew and then spent a month in St. Petersburg, attending a special Hebrew language course which gave her the confidence to teach.

By then a regular elementary school teacher during the week, Ada wanted to play a part in helping her community flourish. She soon opened a Jewish Sunday school in Derbent with help from interested friends and Israel’s Foreign Ministry. The school was immensely popular, as the community exploited their new freedom to explore their language and culture. The demand for Hebrew language classes was so great that Ada soon began organizing classes in kindergartens and schools across Derbent.

Although Ada had learned Hebrew easily herself, she noticed that some of her students were having a harder time grasping the language, which is very different from Juharit, the Kavkazi mother-tongue. In order to assist her students, Ada began taking folk tales and stories the students were familiar with and translating them into Hebrew. Students read the stories in Hebrew, or put on dramatic productions, learning not only their lines but also a new language.

This method was very successful, and in 1993 Ada was invited to Israel to participate in a training course for educators from the FSU. While in Israel, Ada kept hearing about JDC and the help they provided to Jewish schools in the FSU. Before she returned to Derbent, Ada arranged to meet with Stanley Abramovitch, the JDC Country Director for North Caucasus and Central Asia. A month later, Abramovitch traveled to Derbent and found Ada. The two met and discussed the unique curriculum that she had created for Hebrew-language acquisition. Ada soon started working with JDC, who provided materials and monetary support to bring her Hebrew education program to young Jews in the region.

In 1994, Ada immigrated to Israel. After a number of years working with the Ministry of Education’s Department of Immigrant Absorption, she decided that she wanted to work more intensely with immigrants from the Kavkazi community, choosing language acquisition as her primary focus.

"From my own experience and from research done at the time, I knew that the Kavkazi community was having difficulty learning Hebrew, which was making it difficult for them to integrate into Israeli society," Ada recalls. "As I began developing educational materials, I remembered my years teaching Hebrew in Derbent, and began to develop a similar model here in Israel using Kavkazi folktales and the dramatic arts to teach language skills. The dramatic arts are very important in Kavkazi culture, and I wanted to take a medium that was familiar and comfortable for the community and use it to teach Hebrew."

In order to successfully implement her program, however, Ada required institutional backing. As she searched for an appropriate partner, she remembered the invaluable support and help JDC had provided in Derbent, so she approached them once again. "I picked JDC because I saw them as an organization that is able to develop and give to the community," Ada recalls. "I wanted to develop a program in which I find the community’s strengths and then utilize those strengths to bolster them in areas in which they are weak. I wanted to take theater, folktales and drama — mediums with which the children are familiar and the parents are connected — and use these mediums to teach Hebrew."

Ada's collaboration with JDC resulted in the establishment of Mirkam, a Hebrew language-enhancement program for elementary school students based on the method Ada developed for teaching Hebrew in Derbent. Today, thanks to JDC, some 1,160 Kavkazi-Israeli children across Israel are learning Hebrew while simultaneously taking pride in their cultural roots. And Ada, as JDC's Mirkam Program Director, is continuing her mission to help her community thrive.