The average Jewish educator knows at least some of these words. But what about the linguistic stories behind them – where they come from, how they connect to other words? Let’s unpack ten Hebrew words about education.
1. חִינּוּךְ – education
Whereas in English there’s upbringing and there’s education, in Hebrew there’s one word for both – חינוך. That’s because in Jewish culture, education begins in the home and entails not just history, science and literature, but also morals, manners and values.
חינוך – the noun form of the פיעל verb לחנך – is related to חנוכה, which is not just the Festival of Lights but actually means dedication or inauguration: when we educate children, we inaugurate them as members of human society.
2. חוֹנֵךְ, חוֹנֶכֶת – mentor
לחנוך – to dedicate, to inaugurate – is a grammatically simple verb. In Modern Hebrew, it also means to mentor, giving us חונך and חונכת, as in:
כשהיא הייתה סטודנטית היא עבדה בתור חונכת לילדה יתומה.When she was a student she worked as a mentor for an orphan girl.
We might think of education – חינוך – as a more intensive form of mentoring: it derives from the פיעל verb לחנך and gives us מחנך and מחנכת – educator (also “homeroom teacher”).
3. חָנִיךְ, חֲנִיכָה – cadet, apprentice, “camper”
The one receiving mentorship or guidance is a חניך (a male) or חניכה (a female). You may have heard this word at Jewish summer camp referring to a camper. חניכה and חניך also mean cadet or apprentice.
4. בֵּית סֵפֶר – school
The nations of the world know the Jewish People as עם הספר – the People of the Book. Which book? The Bible, of course. Likewise, בית ספר – meaning literally “house of a book” and today referring to a school for kids or a profession – referred to a place for Bible study when the term was first used in Mishnaic times.
When a child would graduate to Talmudic study, he went to בית תלמוד, a term that has since been replaced by ישיבה – yeshiva.
5. תַּלְמִיד, תַּלְמִידָה – student
In the example above about mentoring, “student” appears as סטודנטית. But what about תלמידה? Doesn’t that mean “student”? Whereas תלמידה (or her male counterpart תלמיד) refers to a student in general, סטודנטית and סטודנט refer to someone attending an institution of higher education. תלמידה and תלמיד come from the root ל.מ.ד which means learning or studying.
6. הַשְׂכָּלָה – (higher) education
Speaking of higher education, in Hebrew we call this השכלה גבוהה. Why not חינוך גבוה? Because while חינוך means not just intellectual education but also value-instillment, השכלה refers exclusively to academic learning and development – which is what university is all about (at least in theory). After all, the three-letter root of השכלה is שׂ.כ.ל – intellect.
7. מוֹרֶה, מוֹרָה – teacher
The root of מורה – teacher – is י.ר.י, the same as that of תורה – Torah. What’s the connection? י.ר.י means instruction: a teacher is an instructor, and the תורה is the book of instruction.
So how do you say “to instruct”? That’s the הפעיל verb להורות.
8. מִכְלָלָה – college
While the Hebrew word for אוניברסיטה borrows from the foreign “university”, college is מכללה, a proper Hebrew word. Eliezer Ben Yehuda coined this term, basing it on the root כ.ל.ל meaning “all” or “general.”
9. שִׁיעוּר – lesson
שיעור means not only “lesson” but also “size”, “portion” and “rate”. What does a lesson have to do with all these? Instead of delivering an entire course in one shot, instructors divide their material into manageable portions – lessons or שיעורים.
