Literacy Narrative - Pnina Grossman

Pnina Grossman

English Composition

2/18/15

Out On a Limb and Off a Limb

            Around October of fourth grade I received a piece of paper folded into quarters with a Jewish star drawn on the front in blue highlighter. I assumed this paper was just a card for Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year, so its contents did not bother me all that much. Accordingly, I shoved it into my backpack, where it eventually sunk to the depths to join the countless ponytails and pencils that had never emerged from there. The three weeks that followed were the weeks of the Jewish Holiday season, so my school did not settle back into a routine until after then, and I didn’t hear anything having to do with this mysterious card either.

            Once things got back to normal, I started noticing some of my friends missing at lunch. Asking the remaining classmates, I eventually ascertained that they were at a special weekly activity called “Shulchan Ivrit” (meaning “Hebrew Table”), where students with a high level of Hebrew got together in a classroom, ate lunch, played games and only talked in Hebrew. I had never heard of such a thing going on before, but if there was an advanced group of anything, I wanted to join it. However, that turned out to be impossible, as you had to be invited.

            Normally, such an exclusion would have shocked me more than insulted me. I was not a stuck up kid, but I did know that I excelled academically. However, this had the added burn of telling me that I was not a real Israeli – something my classmates claimed all the time when I proudly pointed out my birthplace and dual-citizenship. I casually asked one of my friends from the exclusive group how they were chosen, and she told me about the paper. Yes, that paper. The one I had assumed was just a card wishing me a happy new year was actually my ticket into this magical lunchtime club.

            The next day happened to be a Wednesday, when they met. I came early and shyly explained to the teacher what had happened and she told me that it was not a problem and I could join. I took my seat at a desk in the corner and watched all the regulars file in to sit next to each other as they had every week. We started off with greetings and easy things, then the teacher explained a game that we were going to play. I missed a few words and raised my hand to ask the teacher to repeat herself. She did, but I got stuck on a word that I had never heard before. Flustered, with the whole class looking at me, I didn’t know what to do and just said the Hebrew words for “I don’t understand.” Then I heard a half whisper from the other side of the classroom,
“You don’t know because you’re not really in Shulchan Ivrit.” The speaker was a girl who had moved to America last year, obviously spoke perfect Hebrew and was loved by our entire grade. I felt like I had been exposed, almost as if the fact that I had not originally not looked at the invitation was pre-ordained because I didn’t really belong here. “Never mind,” I mumbled, and we went on to play whatever word game it was that I eventually picked up on.

            Thinking about it today, my heart still races as I hear that voice denounce me in front of everyone, speaking words out loud that I didn’t think anyone was allowed to say. I would not credit this moment with upending my academic success as I continued to get good grades throughout the rest of elementary school and high school. In fact, I would not even say that this incident stopped me from ever learning any more Hebrew. However, it did make me more conscious about speaking in public and putting myself out there. As I grew older, I shed the childish phobias of monsters and darkness for being haunted by the possibility that I might be wrong about something, and, even worse, that someone might know. In part this had to do with maturing and my natural disposition, but this particular moment stands out in my mind as an example of what can happen if you reach for something just slightly beyond you grasp.

Developing this fear was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, not being overly confident in my answers has taught me how to really listen and consider others’ opinions. Paradoxically, I developed a type of shyness where I ask a lot of questions, lest my silence be taken for a claim to understand something which I in truth do not understand. While these skills have been invaluable to me, the other side of this, not expressing my own opinions for fear of being wrong, has often held me back when I would decide not to take on a project I considered too ambitious for fear of failure or would not ask for advice if it meant someone would be able to see my work in progress. One of the most tangible examples of this impeding my literacy was when I took a gap year in an Israeli Jewish Studies program after high school. This was when finally reached a level of near-fluency in my Hebrew, and yet I would still minimize how much I spoke in front of others, especially if they knew I was American. The difference between my levels of Hebrew speaking and comprehension are vast. Part of this was the natural shyness that me and all the other American girls felt having to sort through complex ideas in a second language, but sometimes it was also due to my fear that someone would point out that I was that worst of all teenage villains – a phony.