Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its partners assume any responsibility for them. Please contact us in case of abuse. In case of abuse, The Israeli flag tucked into the Jewish Heritage Mural in New York's Lower East Side Tonight I’m talking with an instructor about enrolling my Jewish American son in Hebrew lessons. Not Hebrew school lessons and not the kind of Hebrew lessons that stop at “Tav makes the t-t-t sound like in toot!” I mean real conversational Hebrew lessons with the goal of teaching him how to both speak and read a modern, living language, something I still struggle with having only ever learned Hebrew-via-American-phonics. My linguistic disconnect rendered both the Biblical and the living language of my people a mystery to me that I was largely content not to solve. That is, until we visited my husband’s family in Israel and I found my inability to read and speak the native language deafening. All my life I considered myself a Zionist and yet there in the heart of my ancestral homeland I felt like a complete foreigner. I couldn’t be a responsible Jewish mother if I allowed my sons to grow up feeling the same way.