Submitted by Dan, Aug 2, 2007 08:33

Those opposed to teaching Hebrew for fear that this would cater to a small segment of the population are misguided. First off, Hebrew has been taught in New York City high schools; both Stuyvesant High and the Bronx H.S. of Science offered Hebrew as a foreign language back in the 1960's when I was in high school. Nobody seemed especially concerned back then. I believe, but am not exactly positive, that NY State gave a Regents' Examination in Hebrew at the conclusion of three years' study.

These days, many high schools offer instruction in Chinese and in Korean; largely because there is a large population of those ethnicities which wasn't as much the case 40 years ago. Nobody is raising separation of church and state issues there.

Those who worry that taking Hebrew in high school will convert one into a committed Zionist have little to fear: I took three years of French, and it was so boring that it totally turned me off from France and everything French for years thereafter. I have since made many trips to all regions of France, both for business and for pleasure, but the French I took in high school had little or nothing to do with spurring my interest in traveling there. Sexy French movies, and my discovery after college that French food actually tasted good, played much more of a role.

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