I’m not sure how it started or even what prompted it but soon after I returned to Concordia on a part-time basis. Miss Billotte asked me if I would teach her kids Hebrew. Mind you, these kids are first and second graders who, not all that long ago, had just learned to speak, read, and write English.

Considering that they would have to learn not only a foreign language, but also a foreign alphabet (Hebrew looks nothing like English), and that they would have to learn a foreign way of writing- backwards, that is right to left, I was more than a bit leery. After all, grown college kids have had fits with the language, and more than one of them has thrown up his hands in despair.

I needn’t have worried. Within several weeks, each student was able to recognize, recite, and write all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, thanks in no small part to Miss Billotte, who no doubt drills them diligently each and every day.

Having learned the letters, we’re now working on the vowels which, unlike English and even Greek, don’t consist of letters but of "dots and dashes." That, too, is a foreign concept.

So far we have learned the sounds of long "e" as in "they," the long "o" as in "flow," the long "u" as in "flu," and the long "i" as in "machine." There are a few more to go, and once we get them all down, we can begin to read some of the easier portions of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Teaching Hebrew is a good thing, not only for the student, but also for me. I was in college when I began to study the language, and what I learned, I learned well. In time I could translate my Hebrew Grammar by Weingreen, a standard work back then. What looked like chicken scratch to me before I started became second nature. More so, I could translate nearly all of Genesis 1!

To this day, that book remains my favorite OT book, and if I had time, I would go back and translate every chapter.

How far these kids will go in their study of Hebrew is anyone’s guess. I know that a number of them will return next year as second graders, and if things work out, I’ll continue to teach them.

In the meantime, these kids are learning what few (if any!) Lutheran children learn: the language in which God gave us His Old Testament. Perhaps in some future Sunday morning worship we can have them recite the "Great Shema" of Deuteronomy 6:4 in its original Hebrew.