Since talmudic times, familiarity with the Hebrew alphabet was considered the most basic building block of Jewish education. For many centuries, Jews across the globe wrote letters and kept records using a variety of languages written in the Hebrew alphabet, since they knew no other. Even in America, where there has never been an assumption that Jews could comprehend Hebrew, there has long been an expectation that Jewish children who attend synagogue and have a bar or bat mitzvah would acquire the ability to read the alphabet. Saul Rosenberg, based on his own experience as a bar mitzvah tutor along with numerous interviews, shares his observations on the disappointing realities:

Most of the b’ney mitzvah [I tutored] chanted their haftarah by rote, because they couldn’t read Hebrew and didn’t know the trop, the ancient Masoretic cantillation signs that follow the syntax of the even more ancient text. You could tell: the rote learners sounded like time-traveling tourists to ancient Israel, working from a well-thumbed Berlitz phrase-book—which, in a way, they were.

Now, it’s one thing not to teach trop. But teaching the text by rote seemed like telling an illiterate he would be declaiming the first ten pages of Huckleberry Finn in public in nine months and working to help him memorize it, rather than teach him to read.

Generally, in Anglophone countries, Hebrew-school students to the left of Modern Orthodox—essentially, Conservative, Reform, and their international counterparts—do not learn to read Hebrew accurately, let alone fluently, unless they go to Jewish day school. Even this exception does not hold everywhere: in England, most Jewish children go to state-funded Jewish schools and still don’t learn. Canada does somewhat better than elsewhere, perhaps because the country has a long tradition of bilingualism, and certainly because it has a far greater proportion of Jewish students in day school. This means the pool of non-readers is small and there are plenty of certified day-school teachers to teach Hebrew school—and, consequently, higher communal expectations. Based on preliminary inquiry, South Africa is a bit like Canada and Australia a bit like London.

Why is it that Hebrew schools are failing at even this most basic of tasks? Rosenberg points to several reasons, among them:

In my conversations [with rabbis and educators], I heard “supplementary school” nearly as often as “Hebrew school.” This is a nod to the fact that some schools focus their limited time on Jewish and Israeli culture, history, Bible stories—anything and everything other than Hebrew reading. They want to give kids positive Jewish experiences and so avoid rote teaching that might well alienate, the power of early experience being what it is.

I . . . think it is long past time we got over our allergy to rote learning. Repetitio est mater studiorum is an idea so deep in ancient Roman culture that I can’t track it to a source.

In 2003, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, spooked by the American display of might in Iraq, decided to destroy or surrender his entire nuclear program. Informed observers have suggested that the deal he made with the U.S. should serve as a model for any agreement with Iran. Robert Joseph provides some useful background:

Gaddafi had convinced himself that Libya would be next on the U.S. target list after Iraq. There was no reason or need to threaten Libya with bombing as Gaddafi was quick to tell almost every visitor that he did not want to be Saddam Hussein. The images of Saddam being pulled from his spider hole . . . played on his mind.

President Bush’s goal was to have Libya serve as an alternative model to Iraq. Instead of war, proliferators would give up their nuclear programs in exchange for relief from economic and political sanctions.

Any outcome that permits Iran to enrich uranium at any level will fail the one standard that President Trump has established: Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Limiting enrichment even to low levels will allow Iran to break out of the agreement at any time, no matter what the agreement says.

Iran is not a normal government that observes the rules of international behavior or fair “dealmaking.” This is a regime that relies on regional terror and brutal repression of its citizens to stay in power. It has a long history of using negotiations to expand its nuclear program. Its negotiating tactics are clear: extend the negotiations as long as possible and meet any concession with more demands.