J Ewish I Ntragroup C Onvergence and D Ivergence in the U Niversity H Ebrew C Lass
A S A H EBREW LANGUAGE TEACHER and language acquisition researcher living in North America, I have found myself thinking deeply about how my commitment to the Hebrew language affects and creates my sense of Jewish identity. I spent time as a young child in Israel, where I was immersed in the Hebrew language and Israeli culture. When I eventually returned to Canada with my family, the ability to communicatively function in modern Hebrew marked me as different from my peers. Using a qualitative, ethnographic methodological framework based in emergent, grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) I investigated the attitudes and feelings of individuals who participated in an advanced, undergraduate modern Hebrew class at a large Canadian university. 1 How did others living in the Canadian Jewish Diaspora negotiate their dual linguistic, national, and cultural loyalties? I entered the research field with three key questions. First, what framework of ethnic identity did participants structure in their lives? Rather than define identity specifically as Jewish identity, I chose the term "ethnic identity" to ensure freedom and flexibility in defining senses of self while limiting the subject area to the notion of shared ancestry, lineage, or heritage. Second, I asked how Hebrew language fit into participants' frameworks of ethnic identity. Because the students, professor, and I committed time and effort to the study, teaching, or practice of the language, it clearly held a place of priority in our lives, and, I hypothesized, our ethnic identities. Third, I wondered