PORTRAIT: ZIPPI MAZAR
By Joseph Lowin
Mastering the Art of Hebrew Made Easy

It started out as two newspapers. She started out as piano teacher with (eventually) two pianos. How they got together to produce one of the most effective tools for the teaching of Hebrew - in Israel and in the Diaspora - is a continuing love story with a can't-fail happy ending.

In the 1960s Israel's Ministry of Education founded two newspapers. One, Sha'ar la-koreh he-hadash, ("Entryway for the New Reader") was designed for adults who had never learned to read in any language; the other, Lamathil ("For the Beginner"), was intended to teach the reading of Hebrew and reading for comprehension to new olim. When the problem of illiteracy was more or less resolved in a country with one of the highest per capita literacy rates in the world, the two newspapers were combined, in the late seventies, to form Sha'ar Lamathil. ═══════

Zippi Mazar, the current editor of Sha'ar Lamathil, explains in an interview what type of newspaper Sha'ar Lamathil is. While it has always been published by a major Israeli newspaper, first by Davar, then by the Jerusalem Post, and, since December 2001, by Yediot Aharonot, it is still "owned" by the Ministry of Education. Mazar is married to a former kibbutznik who studied computer science at Queens College of the City University of New York; two of her three daughters≈she says it laughingly≈were "Made in America." While the couple were living in New York City, Mazar worked in the security department at "515 Park," the Jewish Agency's home in America during the golden years. "That's where I started teaching Hebrew, at the Agency's ulpan," says Mazar.

Music has also played a big role in her life; she has played the piano since she was six years old. She studied music at Tel Aviv University and received her B.A. from the Music Academy. For many years she earned her living giving private piano lessons.

Her first university, she insists however, was the Israeli army, where she learned to become a journalist, working as a producer and editor for Galei Tsahal, the IDF radio station.

During the fifth grade in Kiryat Motzkin, near Haifa, where she grew up, something happened: she fell in love with Hebrew, especially with the dots and dashes that are used for the vowel sounds. She discovered at that time that "Language is also music and that music is also a language."

Sixteen years ago, she landed a job at the Ministry of Education as what she calls a "chomer" person, producing educational materials for teaching Hebrew, especially in an Ulpan setting. She has worked on a whole catalog of projects: Yad Va-Ed, using Holocaust testimonies and diaries for teaching Hebrew; Hello Peninah, a 20-lesson video on which she served as research advisor; Olim la-Kafeh, a series of 15-minute radio segments of Hebrew lessons in easy Hebrew; and Ein Be'ayah, a video for the teaching of Hebrew which she did with Israeli actor and singer Dudu Topaz. When challenged for using the Shoah as an instrument, Mazar answers emphatically, "I don't use it an instrument. I let it speak. When you teach a language you teach life. This is a way of teaching history with text in the first person."

About seven years ago, the powers-that-be at the Ministry of Education offered Mazar the job of editor of Sha'ar Lamathil. She is quick to point out that although Sha'ar Lamathil is not her creation, it is certainly her baby. "I inherited a wonderful mif'al," she says, using a Hebrew word that translates into the English word enterprise. "Everybody knows it. All we did was to modernize the look, add color, and make it look more like a newspaper." She explains how she chooses the subjects she writes about. "I also want to share what I received growing up here with those who haven't grown up here, to make it as though we have a common ground."

The audience for Sha'ar Lamathil ranges widely. It is used by new olim, of course, and by people studying Hebrew in the Diaspora, adults, teens and youngsters, often in a classroom setting. It is used by Arabs studying Hebrew. It is used by people who learned to read and write at an advanced age, in special education classes, and by retirees. "It has big letters," she explains about the retirees. Because it is a "clean" paper, containing no muck, and is full of Yiddishkeit, it is read by many religious people. She likes to say that because of its Zionism, it is a "blue and white" paper, but it is neither a "blue" paper, indulging in smut, nor a "yellow" paper pandering to those interested in scandal and gossip. "I have to refelect reality without being a tabloid," she says of her weekly juggling act.

Indeed, the paper appears every week, on a Tuesday, fifty times a year (the exceptions being hol ha-mo'ed Pessah and Sukkot), and has had some 1,250 issues. It contains five pages of news (with the level of Hebrew ranging from very simple, to easy, to advanced) and eleven pages devoted to feature stories, including culture, music, ballet, history, family, the Hebrew language, the weekly Torah portion, book reviews, an advice column (shades of the Yiddish newspaper Forverts's "A Bintel Brif" column), a crossword puzzle, and jokes. Mazar is most proud of the Hebrew column, sha'ar la-ivrit, which was one of her innovations.

"I want the paper to be as much itton (newspaper) as it can be. After all, we belong to a newspaper and I am a journalist," she asserts. "Nevertheless," she adds, "I am still a Hebrew teacher." She views Sha'ar Lamathil as a "prep school for the regular papers." She adds, "Our dream is to go out of business - even in America - ≈that people will be able to read ▒regular' newspapers." She says this knowing that some people in Israel still consider Sha'ar Lamathil to be their "regular" paper, either subscribing to it at home or buying it regularly at the newsstand.

She loves to dilate on her concept of "easy Hebrew" and how she applies it to the newspaper. For Zippi Mazar, Sha'ar Lamathil, the newspaper in easy Hebrew, is a newspaper without condescension. She asserts that she doesn't use mistakes in Hebrew to make a Hebrew point. "Easy Hebrew," she says, making a Hebrew pun, "is ivrit mukelet, Hebrew made easy, but not ivrit mekulkelet, ruined Hebrew. In addition, she does not believe in providing translations, even though she does use explanations with words from other languages (mainly English) that have been adopted by Hebrew speakers. "There are too many readers from too many countries," to make that even a possibility, she explains.

She also has a knack for finding articles to reprint that her readers will be able to understand. To illustrate her point, she takes out from a pile of newspapers six issues of Sha'ar Lamathil that contain excerpts from Amos Oz's recent masterpiece, the autobiography/novel, "A Story of Love and Darkness." Vowels have been added and careful editing has been done, but, she asserts, not a word has been altered. When asked if the writing of Amos Oz can indeed be considered "easy Hebrew," she answers that it is indeed easy Hebrew "for those who are willing to make an effort."

Whether in choosing appropriate articles or writing her own articles, she reiterates, "I don't rewrite. I don't make changes that 'ruin' the language so that it will be easier for the readers, and yet it is easy Hebrew."

When asked how that is possible, she answers, more modestly than it sounds, "That is my art."