Page 20 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - September 15
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FROM DEPRESSION TO EXPRESSION
DAVID L. YOUNG, JERUSALEM
I in my teaching career to have spent most of my
came on Aliya in October 1968 and
immediately went into deep depression. It
time teaching in ‘good’ schools where I was able
took me three hours and a triple Scotch to
I compare thee to a summer’s day? This of course
cure me of this and since then I’ve been happy, to teach the delights of Macbeth, Hamlet and Shall
smiling and usually sober. Why, I hear you asking, was linked with teaching less delightful but
were you depressed? Surely you’d achieved your possibly more useful material such as the Present
aims? You’d fulfilled your Zionist dreams, come Progressive, the Past Simple and the Future
on Aliya and would soon be standing there Perfect Passive. More about Shakespeare, later.
shoulder to shoulder with your fellow Zionists
helping to develop the Land of our Fathers. Probably, like most teachers, I remember my very
first lesson. There I was, keen and green, standing
Not so! Here I was, twenty-two years old and I’d in front of a class of forty fifteen-year old kids in a
already fulfilled all my life’s ambitions. What was Sunderland housing estate school. I had just read
I going to do for the next 98 years - ad 120? As I them The Pied Piper by Robert Browning with all
knocked back my glass of duty-free Johnny the fervour I could muster.
Walker (Black Label, of course) I remembered
writing my first grammar school essay, “My “Now what did you think of that?” I asked,
Future” at Willesden County Grammar School. In brightly.
this piece of youthful and thoughtful prose I had A large bulky girl stood up and faced me. Then
written, “When I grow up, I want to be an English turning to face the rest of the class in a broad
and History teacher and live in Israel.” Now here I Geordie accent she said the immortal words,
was at the WUJS (World Union of Jewish “Please, sir, I think it’s crap, sir.”
Students) Ulpan in Arad about to play out the rest
of my life. What else was I to do? Where were the Fortunately the bell rang immediately after this
challenges? What was the Great Unknown going piece of literary criticism.
to throw at me? I had done all I’d set out to do
since I’d written those fateful words eleven years And now to the beginning of my teaching career,
earlier. I had arrived in the Holy Land and was here in Israel. This next highlight occurred one
destined to become a teacher. day in 1970 when I had mistakenly explained that
crude oil is measured in havitot (omelettes)
Fortunately, this period of alcoholic introspection instead of in haviot (barrels). One of the kids
didn’t last long. Six months later after having began to laugh derisively at my linguistic blunder.
graduated from the Ulpan, I was standing in front Suddenly his nasty reaction was cut short by a
of a Yod Bet class inspiring them with the works blow from the class bully who was sitting next to
of Milton, Steinbeck and, of course, Shakespeare. him. Looking at the now prostrate pupil on the
floor, the lout then proceeded to educate him,
Why “of course, Shakespeare”? Because, since I saying, “If you would try and talk English like
stepped foot on terra firma Israelis, I have fallen David is trying to do in Hebrew, you’d do much
in love with the Bard of Avon. I have been lucky
better! Now shut up!”
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