Sweet language

I met Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, last week. He was describing the new Museum of Tolerance to be built in Jerusalem. It is, in part, a learning center and so in describing the philosophy behind the center’s outreach he used an analogy from a tradition in teaching the Hebrew alphabet. When first encountering the alphabet Jewish children have a drop of honey placed on their tongue as they pronounce the first letter, the aleph. This is meant to equate learning — perhaps language too — with sweetness.

Honey on the Aleph. This I like a lot.