As his students will attest, Menahem Mansoor was a master teacher of biblical Hebrew. In a series of posts that touch on matters discussed a year ago on this blog, key features of his method are provided in outline, with personal memories thrown in for good measure.
Menahem Mansoor, for those who might not know, served as chairman of the UW-Madison Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies for twenty two years. He developed the first-ever Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Jewish Cultural History courses by correspondence. He authored a more than a dozen textbooks designed to teach Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic as well as two audio-based courses in Hebrew and Arabic for Linguaphone. A native Arabic speaker, he was born in Port-Said, Egypt, on August 4, 1911. At age thirteen, he was sent by his parents to Palestine to receive a Hebrew education at the Herzliah High School in Tel Aviv. He studied at the University of London and Trinity College, Dublin, where in 1944 he earned a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and Semitic Languages. During World War II he served with the British Ministry of Information on the Middle East, later, as Education Officer in Jerusalem, and after the establishment of the State of Israel, as Chief Interpreter in the British Embassy in Tel Aviv. His truest gifts, however, were pedagogical. As professor of Hebrew and in many other capacities, he dedicated almost fifty of his ninety years to teaching the Hebrew language and the universal values of Jewish culture and history.
In my view, the strengths of Mansoor’s method
of teaching ancient Hebrew are the following, and I will concentrate on them:
(1) Emphasis
on orality
(2) Emphasis
on English to Hebrew composition
(3) Use of
non-biblical texts in learning biblical Hebrew
(4) Creation
of a sense of cultural immersion in the Jewish world
(5) Friendly
atmosphere
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