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Center delves deeply into Hebrew language

LEISAH NAMM
Staff writer

The Center for Biblical Hebrew is an organization Uri Harel formed in 1995 to offer classes about Hebrew as the language of the original text of the Bible. Harel was born in Israel, where he was raised in a traditional Jewish household. He earned a business degree from Buffalo University. He moved to Arizona in 1977.

The goal of the CBH is to teach the Hebrew text objectively, in a non-denominational, unbiased and informative environment, Harel says. Although Harel and his wife, renowned tapestry artist Bat-Zvi, are involved with Chabad of Phoenix, CBH is not affiliated with any synagogue or organization.

Harel, who has been teaching classes about the origins of the Hebrew language and the Hebrew biblical text for many years, developed the center because "people wanted to have a place to meet others who are interested in Hebrew" he says. "A lot of my students are non-Jewish, and I found there is a great interest and hunger of people out there to learn more about the Torah and the Bible, our Tanach. And they realize that this is written in Hebrew for a reason, and there is more to it than they can find in a translation."

The center's classes are "designed to teach the original Hebrew text of the Bible," he says. "I relate to it as the original divine document that was received by Moses, and at the time, the document, God, or Moses were not associated with a religion. So it's based on the original document and that's the way that, objectively, I can deal with it without getting religion into it."

Dan Loehnis, president of Faith Lutheran Church, has attended Harel's Bible study class, held at the church, for five years. "Uri's traditional Torah reading and biblical explanations are a rare treat," he says. Loehnis says that he feels motivated to learn about the Bible and that studying it in the original Hebrew text makes it more meaningful. Several of Harel's students enrolled after discovering they are probably descendants of Conversos - Jews who escaped the Inquisition by becoming Catholic. The students' families have been Catholic for several generations but still perform acts they're not sure why they do, Harel says. For instance, they may light candles on Shabbat. "They have a desire to discover Judaism and they come on their own. It's not like anyone is going out of their way to solicit them. When they show up, and you talk to them and after awhile it comes up that they have a feeling for Judaism. "They can't explain it, but they have a drive to know more about it."

Harel says his classes provide a place for some people who might feel intimidated entering a synagogue. He has received invitations from groups who had visited his Web site, to speak in Canada, Louisiana and along the East Coast.To Harel, Hebrew is not just a 4,000 year-old language. He describes it as a "perfect, conceptual" language that imitates nature. "I always had great passion for the Bible and the Hebrew language, and when I grew older and I started to read on my own, I found out things about Hebrew that I never knew."

Harel describes Hebrew as a "nuclear language" because it emulates "other systems in nature and employs the same principals that control the particles in the physical universe." Comparing it to science, he explains that each of the 22 letters of the aleph-bet ("a-b" in Hebrew) is similar to an atom; three letters together form a root, as three atoms could form a molecule. Each letter represents a spiritual concept, and the root delivers a concept that is a combination of the three letters. For example, "ear" in Hebrew is "ozen" and "balance" is "izzon". The root of both words uses the consonants Aleph, Zayin and Nun, which could be read by their spiritual concepts: G-d nurtures the soul. What is the connection between these two words (ear & balance)? Harel asks. "Today we know that our balance mechanism resides in the inner ear, but 4,000 years ago? Maybe it is the one who planned the ear who called it by its appropriate name," he says.

Besides his Bible class, the center offers "Secrets of the Hebrew Bible"  Seminars which discuss (among many other issues) " Bible Codes" recently discovered by computer analysis of the Hebrew letters, as well as the spiritual significance of the letters. For the past several years, in addition to teaching, Harel has been working on a project dealing with music in the Bible. He explains that Hebrew tradition says there are 70 facets of the Torah. Bible codes and numerical values of letters are two commonly known levels. Harel reasons that there also must be music in the Bible. "Because everything in the universe is based on music, on vibration, on frequency. 'Music' is just another word for 'frequency,' " he says. "So I said, where is that music? I played with it for about three years until I found the formula that translates every Hebrew letter into a musical note and now when you play the text, you actually get beautiful music." He and a number of musicians collaborated on producing a compact disc of 10 psalms in which the Hebrew letters of the words of the psalms are translated into musical tones. This phenomenal discovery brought attention and interest from people around the globe.

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