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Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Good morning, dear friends. The second hour of the Good Morning Israel program is on air. My name is Julia Tsotoks.

[00:00:06]Joining me this hour is my colleague Oleg Klots. Oleg, hi.

[00:00:09]Hello, Julia. Good morning, dear radio listeners.

[00:00:11]And our guest in the studio is Dr. Marina Niznik, state inspector for the Russian language, Ministry of Education, lecturer at Telviv University. Hello. Good morning.

[00:00:21]Thank you.

[00:00:21]What is a state inspector for the Russian language?

[00:00:25]This is Shishkov. Sorry, I don't know how to translate. It is called mafmarite. In the Ministry of Education there are people who are responsible for teaching a particular subject. Here I am in charge of teaching Russian in public schools.

[00:00:40]There is a reminder from the inspector of public schools.

[00:00:44]I am younger than the inspector of public schools. No, no. Well, that's the position. A person who is responsible for teaching a particular subject.

[00:00:56]So you go out to places and to some schools in some area? The thing is that I am alone, there are a lot of schools, so I can’t get to all of them. My main job is to coordinate teaching, work on the curriculum, determine what will be taught and what will not be taught. I don't want to go into too much detail, because in Israel, teachers have a lot of freedom, of course, and a lot depends on teachers, and the Israeli education system encourages this.

[00:01:30]How many schools, in what number of schools, teach Russian today?

[00:01:34]Today there are about 65 schools. We have about 72 teachers. I say about, because unfortunately, someone will be fired at the end of the year, and new ones will appear. But, uh, this year 1,600 students took the Russian language test for five ephedots. This is five units.

[00:01:56]I don’t know whether I need to explain what this is or not. Uh, uh, for the school-leaving certificate.

[00:02:02]And, uh, we've been maintaining that number for quite a few years now. That is, with the arrival of the new Leah and their children, this figure has not changed much. It's not that, uh, she was there until, like, fourteen, I think. It used to be around 1,000-1,300 students, and now there are a little more, but I can’t say that it has changed that much. Yes.

[00:02:30]So, as a rule, people from Russian-speaking families, or not only those from other families, choose Russian as a language for their high school diploma, so to speak, in an expanded version?

[00:02:39]Just just. There are two languages ​​that were originally introduced into the education system as community languages. There is a term among Heritage Language methodologists and linguists, Svatomurash in Hebrew.

[00:02:54]In Russian it is called the inherited language, the family language.

[00:02:58]I'm still arguing about how to translate it correctly, because no matter how you translate it, it still comes out a little awkward. And in the nineties, when our Aliya arrived, and even teachers and parents began to fight for the Russian language to appear in schools. To begin with, they began to teach it as if it were their native language. Nobody knew what to do with it. But since many mandates arrived, that is, these people had real power, they decided to listen to them. M and they began to teach Russian, as it was taught in, uh, more or less in the then-defunct Soviet Union. They simply replaced Young Guard with Babel. Well, and then in accordance, so to speak, with the requirements of place and time.

[00:03:44]And by 1996, when children started telling stories about Pushkin killing Lermontov in a duel from Akhmatova, it became clear that we were doing something wrong. Oh, and they completely changed the program. And what was called a guideline was developed, which defined the teaching of Russian, how the second, third, and fourth languages ​​should be taught in general in an Israeli school. A and M, among other things, determined the teaching of Russian and Amharic. They were originally supposed to be taught as the language of the community. At that time, this term was still in use, that is, it already existed, but in Israel it was not yet known. Here. And then the first program was developed, which was not really native, but was already developed here by local, so to speak, forces, yes, here, here. Here, with the participation of specialists from the Pushkin Institute.

[00:04:44]Ah, but local Yes, yes, yes, yes. At that time, the inspector was a doctor named Elirus, who, by the way, was a native of Israel from a Russian-speaking family. Ah, and that was a great success. Because it was thanks to her that we were able to integrate Russian into the teaching system. I'm not sure that, for example, if there had been a new repatriate in this place, we would have been so successful in building the education system.

[00:05:05]She understood how the Israeli education system worked, and she knew what needed to be done to ensure the subject received status. For example, oral exams were replaced with written ones under her. And this gave the opportunity, uh, for children who finish, uh, and Russian, who choose Russian and take the matriculation exam, this gave them the opportunity, uh, to improve their matriculation exam, because they get a bonus of 20 points, since this is a subject that is taken for five ichidot.

[00:05:38]This is what is called a "vzrali megama", that is, a direction that a graduate must definitely choose. And yes, she did a very serious job, and it is largely thanks to her and later to Inspector Maria Vinyar, who also worked in this place for many years, that the item exists today. I've only been working for two years.

[00:06:00]And children who choose, as Magomoga, as an advanced study of the Russian language, they later bitterly regret it, because they think: "Well, I know Russian anyway, I say to my grandmother: "I don't want any more cutlets." Uh, why don't I uh, that's a good question, because parents often ask it. Why do we need this Russian? But the thing is, I'm rather, I'm rather, why, so to speak, we'll ask about this later. I'm rather from the point of view of a child who thinks: "Well, I'm talking, and it turns out that it turns out that later I need to learn these rules, put some commas." Well, and so on, and the emphasis, and when we check, and the work of maturity, that is, bagruts, is not on punctuation marks and not on, uh, unstressed vowels, although for not knowing several basic rules grades are reduced, but you can't lose many points on this. The emphasis is on understanding the text, on the ability to find the right one information, but the emphasis is on the ability to express your thoughts, and to do it reasonably, and to do it convincingly. And therefore, the skills that children acquire when they learn Russian are what are called metalinguistic skills, and they will then be ready for them in life. Besides, Yulia and I were just discussing children. My son is a doctor. And when he came to his first job, he said he was very grateful that they still taught him, despite the objection to the Russian language, because he worked in an area where there were a lot of Russian-speaking patients. And it turned out that knowledge of Russian is a huge advantage. In general, if you work in a hospital, knowledge of Russian is a huge advantage. Well, this is, in general, and in many public and government structures, this is Yes. Marina, you speak a little more into the microphone. That way you can be heard better. Good.

[00:08:04]Okay. Good. Well, in general, this whole, as you think, this whole story with language, the language of heritage, taking into account, well, as with any The language of emigrants, I think, in any country, is a story for one or two generations, no more.

[00:08:18]There was a linguist who started it all in many ways. Maybe not with him, but he was one of the outstanding figures in this. And Fishman, he lived and worked in New York.

[00:08:29]And he put forward the so-called three-generation theory. That is, in the third generation, the language is usually lost, unless we are talking about some kind of religious community, and we can see this. And look at the Old Believers who live outside of Russia. Look at the Yiddish that is preserved in marriage.

[00:08:53]Because they have to preserve this deglasia. That is, Yiddish for everyday communication and Hebrew for, as a holy language. And so, uh, all these things, they depend very much on the circumstances. If there are no certain, uh, circumstances that force the community to preserve the language, then the language is lost. And, uh, scientists thought that today, when we know about the benefits of multilingualism, bilingualism, when the world much more open, and when language teaching is given a lot of attention again, and maybe it will be different, but, uh, we need another 20 years to look back and see how it will be. But on the other hand, we are faced with a very interesting phenomenon. This is the desire of our children, that is, those who are 40 today, who arrived at the age of thirty, uh, 40 years old, in the nineties, yes, who are today, our children today are 30-40, and they, many of them, want their children to speak Russian, and they no longer have any complexes, they no longer have any sense of guilt. They are not afraid that these children will not be full-fledged citizens of Israel because of this, but they want the children to retain their Russian. This is also true.

[00:10:14]Not all, but very many.

[00:10:16]And what do you attribute this to?

[00:10:19]Uh, you know, I think it has to do with status, and Russian speakers today in Israel, that is, this is already today, I don’t know if all the listeners remember Baba Lyuba.

[00:10:33]But at one time, the Israeli comedian Talf Friedman created this caricature, which caused a lot of controversy and criticism, of the cashier-turned-woman Baba Lyubaya, who was actually probably 10 years younger than me. And yet, she was a woman. And I remember very well how painful this was for children. And this collective image of Baba Lyuba, uh, of course, it was negative. Although Friedman denied it back then.

[00:11:02]And he, but he was very funny.

[00:11:04]He was, of course, he was terribly funny.

[00:11:06]You know, one girl put it very well to me about this, I discussed it with my students, she said: "Well, of course, Marina, because you work at the university and you don't identify with her, and my mother works in a supermarket and that hurts me." And then I realized that our view of this, as supposedly successful and accomplished people, is not always correct. That's how it is. Uh, we, we We've moved very far away from that image. And today there are many successful, uh, established Russian speakers in Israel. And today, uh, a Russian accent doesn't at all mean that you have to live in a poor neighborhood and work as a security guard or street sweeper.

[00:11:47]Today, so to speak, Israeli high-tech has a lot of Russian accent, and so it's stopped being some kind of marker, uh, so to speak, of something second-rate. And in many ways, the success of the people who came in the 90s is due to the fact that, so to speak, the Russian language won the place it won in the Israeli space. And that's the first thing.

[00:12:11]And secondly, uh, you know, I have this game with my students. I say, uh, um, in the first lesson, uh, we each say three sentences about ourselves. They have to guess whether it's true or not. So I tell them that I was Amir Peretz's Russian teacher. And it really is true.

[00:12:31]They always think I'm lying, which means it really is true. And he tells me He said, by the way, contrary to the image he had, that he was a very stupid person. And he asked for a few lessons before the elections. And I, well, naturally, everything is clear. And I asked him: "Listen, why do you need this?" And he told me: "Listen, when the Russians have 15 mandates, even a Moroccan starts speaking Russian." And this is also, of course, a very, so to speak, important factor. Well, and another phrase I heard at one lecture on marketing, which I got into completely by accident, was that if you want to sell something, you need to speak Hebrew or English. That is, if you want to buy something, you need to speak Hebrew or English. And if you want to sell something, you need, among other things, to speak Russian.

[00:13:29]Well. Good. Uh, children, so to speak, want their children to also speak Russian, so that, well, firstly, everyone today understands that language is Good, not bad.

[00:13:43]What else? There are a ton of languages.

[00:13:46]Great. But the number of languages spoken by 240 million is not a ton, but a ton. And so, no matter what happens in the world today, Russian is a language. Russian is a language of enormous international significance. And no Putin can change that. And so, so to speak, he hasn't exactly made our lives, like the lives of many people, better, easier, or more pleasant, but, uh, this is a huge country with a huge population and a huge number of people speak, that is, according to the latest data, I think 240 million. I made cheat sheets, but I don't want to open my phone because then we'll freeze. And, and, so, people understand that, uh, this can really help them. Today, there is a huge Russian-speaking community all over the world, and many services are aimed, international ones are aimed specifically at this community, that is, so to speak, the transnational Russian-speaking community.

[00:14:51]And therefore, this language already exists. It's a complex language, it's A flexive language. Flexi is an ending. That is, words are connected using an ending. And learning all these cases, so to speak, declensions, verb conjugations, all of this is very difficult. But, uh, children from Russian-speaking families already have a base, it's all much easier for them. You know, my grandfather had a collection of antique furniture. My parents, when we got married, threw it all out. Well, because it wasn't fashionable. They wanted, I don't know, a Hungarian cherka, a cherka wall unit, and then it turned out that, so to speak, my grandfather, it turns out, had antiques, all of this cost a fortune. It's the same with language. It's not by chance that it's called the language of heritage. That is, you can reject this heritage, throw it out and forget about it, and no one will start limping and wet the bed because of it. This, by the way, is from the tales of bellinguism, because, well, if we talk about this, then we will touch on this topic.

[00:15:44]But just why do we have Do you have an antique coffee table? Why throw it away? It's unwise.

[00:15:53]Well, but that's no reason to, uh, take it to school in an extended format.

[00:15:59]And why?

[00:16:02]Well, because everything that is studied at school is usually not liked by children. Oh, a lot.

[00:16:07]Oh, well, uh, well, well, look, where did you learn all this?

[00:16:14]You had governors, home schooling. Well, tell me, where did you learn to read, write? You probably learned mathematics at school, all this.

[00:16:22]Besides, you see, not everything we learn at school necessarily has practical application. Russian is a different culture, Russian is a different view on a whole range of things. Now you'll start telling me about imperial thinking, we can talk about that too. Ah, but Russian is a language spoken by a huge, as we've already said, a huge number of people. Russia is a very important player in both good and bad on the world stage. And, ah, well, it seems to me, it seems to me that this is enough. And besides, listen, well, you brought albums with you, there are inscriptions, you don’t want your grandchildren to be able to decipher them.

[00:17:04]There is, in fact, I think, another reason why it is worth learning Russian. Especially since there is already a foundation, because there are studies that say that, uh, the more languages, the, in general, the easier it is to learn the next, let’s say, yes, this is also uh and but there are studies that convincingly prove that bilinguals have very serious cognitive advantages.

[00:17:32]Well, who are they? Let's start with a definition. Who are Bilinguals?

[00:17:36]Oh, good question. Uh, so there are many types of bilingualism, right? Uh, there are, uh, what are called simultaneous bilinguals, like, for example, Nabokov, who was absolutely fluent in English and Russian. There are many such people today. In Israel, there are a huge number People who know Russian and English at the same level. What's the big deal?

[00:18:05]Our Prime Minister. And now, so to speak, there are many people who have truly reached this level, but it's a difficult task. And most often, people are also bilingual. One language is dominant or dominant in some area, and the other language is less developed. And for our children, it's still bilingual. They are still belingual. Belinguals come in all sorts. People are all different. Bilinguals are people. And bilinguals, like people, can also be very different. There are a huge number of—I won't overwhelm you with terms now—but there are very different types of bilingualism. And what interests us, perhaps for this program, and what's very important is that this division is considered very politically incorrect, but forgive me. And it is believed that there is so-called elite bilingualism. This is the linguistics we strive for. This is the bilingualism of Pushkin, Nabokov.

[00:19:03]Ah, and there's the so-called forced bilingualism. It's the belinguism of, I don't know, the outskirts.

[00:19:12]That is, when they say that your great-grandmother spoke Ukrainian Yiddish and Polish, living in a conditional forced bilingualism in many ways. Yes, I don't know specifically, so to speak, maybe your grandmother wrote poetry in all these languages, but also scientific research, but if we abstract from this, then in general, if we take the history of the shtetl, then yes. In many ways. Yes. And, by the way, it is the shtetl that proves to us that there is no particular harm in this. The whole question is, how do we feel about this. And here we also come to a very interesting topic, because in the nineties, the topic of bilingualism became very fashionable. Everyone began to defend the right of emigrants, repatriates in our case, immigrants, in principle, throughout the world, to preserve their family language. And then they took over the schools, because crowds of children came who They didn't know the language of the country they were in. By the way, we still have this phenomenon today. And because, so to speak, their mother and grandmothers said—this is my favorite phrase— they will take the language. So, you can't take a language, but unless it's from the shelf before the New Year, from the shelf in the refrigerator.

[00:20:25]Because, uh, uh, language, uh, uh, a person learns, right? That is, they can learn it in a natural environment, they can learn it in an artificial environment. These are different processes, but you can't just take a language. If you throw me out to China tomorrow, I won't learn the language, because there is a concept called comprehensive input. That is, you have to understand the language, right? This is the volume you consume. I know it's clumsy, it doesn't come to mind. And the language that you perceive, and you understand, because if you perceive simply in no no no you won't begin to understand it. And we know this too. Unfortunately, we have it too.

[00:21:12]We see repatriates who have lived in the country for 40 years and haven't learned the language, because for them it's just a bunch of sounds. And you need to understand that if you don't live in Russia, you need to learn the language of the country, otherwise it ends in complete and utter disaster for your children.

[00:21:29]So, should parents learn the language so that their children know it too?

[00:21:32]No, parents, that's also a good question. And if you, uh, uh, so to speak, came to a new country, now I'm generally saying, yes, otherwise it will take you a certain amount of time to learn the language. And, uh, it's better if you speak to your child in your native language, because you're passing on your apartment to them.

[00:21:54]And that's on the one hand. On the other hand, if you speak with mistakes, and they correct these mistakes, then this, so to speak, affects your authority. Uh, uh, yes, they 'll know that you don't know Hebrew, so to speak, yes, so to speak. Uh, but you tell them important, interesting things, and You tell it quickly, interestingly, and don't ask him or try to guess what this word means.

[00:22:20]Now, what, what should we think about? Of course, a child shouldn't grow up in a ghetto situation. If you speak Russian at home, then cartoons should be in, uh, Hebrew, uh, and, I don't know, introduce him to the theater in Hebrew. Let him listen to books in Hebrew.

[00:22:39]That is, there should have been a balance. You must understand that if you throw a Russian-speaking child into school or the theater, oh, into school or into kindergarten, and he doesn't know the language, then this is a terrible trauma for him, and it's unknown what the consequences of this trauma will be. That is, we must do everything possible to ensure that the child learns the language of the country. And this is first and foremost, as a Russian language inspector, it doesn't hurt me to say this, this is first and foremost, and this is the most important thing.

[00:23:07]To what extent, in your opinion, is the following statement true?

[00:23:14]Well, it's kind of a complex, but it's in In general, about one thing. Back when we arrived, there were no Russian channels, no internet, no Google Translate. And so we all learned the language quickly and well.

[00:23:28]Oh, oh, oh.

[00:23:31]And now new repatriates can... No, well, I understand. Oleg, look at you and me. Of course, we were better, younger, and more beautiful than anyone today. But now a new repatriate can point his phone at some Hebrew text he received, I don't know, from somewhere, translate it and don't have to learn anything. And that's why people don't know Hebrew well. Oleg, I'll tell you.

[00:23:53]Don't tell anyone here, or they'll fire me from my job, so to speak. And that for the first 10 years, my son wrote all the notes to school himself, ah, and he corresponded with the teachers himself, so to speak, on my behalf. That's it. And I'm not sure anyway, history is silent about this.

[00:24:14]So, uh, you know, let's not.

[00:24:19]And it was a sea Tears of blood. And I wrote down my first lectures in Hebrew using Russian letters. And a lot of people who came, I still write with mistakes, and a lot. They have nothing to be proud of, but when people start telling me that everyone who came in the nineties is such great guys, but no, I see, uh, now a lot of colleagues, teachers who are learning Hebrew, who have learned excellent Hebrew. Many of them already know, they write better, for example, than me. And because for many years I wrote all my work documents in English and also because I'm lazy, probably. That's it.

[00:24:56]But no, I think everyone is different. And those who are young will learn the language and learn it faster. With the elderly, it will be harder. It's very good that there is Google, it's very good that there is the Internet. It's very good that these people can draw information from a variety of sources. And I don't see anything bad in that. I want to go back to the story, when children start to grab or or Somehow, well, learn Hebrew, for example, in their educational institutions, and parents continue to speak Russian with them. A very common situation is when they start answering in Hebrew.

[00:25:34]In this case, it's like a blow to bilingualism. If, look, raising a bilingual or trilingual child, a polylingual, a multilingual, I don't know, it's a very expensive project. This needs to be understood.

[00:25:51]It's a complex, expensive project, unless we're talking about forced bilingualism, unless we're talking about a conscious approach to this process, that's the only way it makes sense to do it.

[00:26:05]And if you want the child to retain the language, then usually, if it's a mixed family, there's a method like this. That is, one parent, one language, where the father speaks Russian, the mother speaks Hebrew. If it's a completely Russian-speaking family, then the system recommends a place and time. That is, at home we speak Russian, outside the home. You, please, can speak Hebrew. If friends come over, you You speak Hebrew.

[00:26:32]That's perfectly normal. Ah, but we need to discuss the rules of the game.

[00:26:38]We need to discuss the rules of the game. And we also need to avoid fanaticism, because, for example, psychologists talk about how a child comes, wants to tell their parents something, it's painful for them, it's important for them to say something, they have difficulty expressing it in Russian, and the parents say, "No, we only speak Russian at home." This, of course, shouldn't happen, because if the child's well-being comes first, then bilingualism and so on, yes, but at the same time, uh, you still need to invest emotion first and foremost in multilingualism, time, time, and money. Time, and in general, you need to invest time and money in raising children.

[00:27:17]And if you want a little more, then you need to invest more time and more money. And here, even I don't know what is more, time or money, because, ah, now, ah, today it's a very big market, yes, and besides everything else, that is, in Israel we are starting to teach Russian, From the seventh grade, that is, from the khatva, but in reality, Russian teaching is mostly conducted for young children abroad, for preschool-age children, elementary grades, and so on. And here it is very interesting that in Israel, most of the schools that opened in the 1990s have gone bankrupt or are in a very poor state.

[00:27:58]Very few have survived. You mean weekends, evenings, weekends, that kind of thing, yes. But we don't have weekends; we have evenings in Europe, in America, weekends. And there, many of them survived, not without difficulty, but they survived. Here, they suffered. Many went bankrupt.

[00:28:14]Some survived, but many went bankrupt. And today there is also a market for online services, yes, and here, too, you have to be very careful, because all, so to speak, a huge number of teachers who left decided that they can teach bilingual, if they taught Russian language and literature there, they were such wonderful teachers. They will just continue. No, it's a different specialty. In general, what does it look like, since we've touched on the topic of cooperation, well, the structures you head are huge, with thousands of people, so, not thousands of people, my God, no, not with those who arrived recently, teach Russian, are some kind of avid philologist, and work on programs, what does it all look like?

[00:29:00]We have a refresher course, and we, uh, well, we definitely give lectures and conduct seminars. We have practical classes where we focus on the fact that, well, guys, this is what Zhivanetsky said: "Forget school, like a nightmare, forget everything you did there." Well, at least half of what you did there.

[00:29:21]Why here?

[00:29:22]Because when a person teaches, when a teacher teaches his native language, he focuses on reflection. That is, when they tell you there, I don’t know the sentence, Mom went to work, then they explain to you that Mom is the present tense, and went is the predicate. But in order to be told: "Mom went to work," you don't need to know that it is a subject and a predicate. That is, it is called reflection. You and your child are discussing something that he practically already knows. Well, yes. Along with this, the vocabulary increases, grammatical constructions change, and so on.

[00:29:59]He learns new grammatical constructions. And the study of a foreign language is structured completely differently until the age of 12.

[00:30:08]Well, the age of 12 is conditional. This goes along with learning about the world. Then, in many ways, adults learn this through translation. Ah, but that's a completely different mechanism. Ah, and so we found ourselves at a crossroads for our children. It's neither native nor foreign, right? Ah, and that’s why there is a methodology, a methodology. A lot of work has been written on this topic.

[00:30:36]In some things we are still groping our way, while others have already been clearly described by methodologists and linguists, and so to speak, we are trying to guide teachers in the right direction. We teach them to work specifically with the upper-story buildings.

[00:30:56]Tell me, the fact is that children, from the moment they go to school until they are 12 years old, when they come to Khotva, actually do not have Russian, except at home. It could be here, in this conservatory, to correct something, maybe to introduce the Russian language to the school principal. I'm for it. It's a pity that no one ever asked me what I thought about this except you. Ah, but in this conservatory only parents can change anything. And now, uh, we're starting in seventh grade. Now we have finished the textbook, which is designed for what are called false beginners, false beginnings, how to translate false beginners, yes, false beginnings. And this is exactly for such children and for those we already have this local, this local textbook, local, yes, yes, yes. Everything here is, so to speak, local.

[00:31:52]That is, the proposal is to turn on your brain there.

[00:31:55]This is a slightly different thing. This is a little bit of a different thing, right? We can talk about this now too, we have time there.

[00:32:00]No, no, I don't know. Let's talk. So, m this is for fake nights. And now we have groups for Russian as a Foreign Language (RFL), in which we have a wide variety of children. There are not many such groups, this is an experiment, but they exist. There are children who want to learn Russian, especially if they live in areas where there is a high concentration of Russian speakers, and in schools where there are 70-80% Russian speakers, many of them want to learn Russian. And we try to give them this opportunity too. It’s not very easy, but here we are simply pioneers, because Russian, as a foreign language, has never existed for Hebrew speakers. There were children for adults here for many years, so to speak, but there were none for small children.

[00:32:43]And yes, we are going by touch, but it is very interesting. It's always interesting to be first.

[00:32:49]Oh, and yes, what did you want? Oh, about Mozgan, yes.

[00:32:52]Well, Mozgan, so to speak, as an image, yes.

[00:32:55]So, Russian Russian Russian in Israel is what is called an ethnodialect.

[00:33:02]That is to say, well, scientists joke that the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has, uh, an army, borders. Ah, but, um, in fact, there are more, so to speak, strict criteria. But Russian in Israel is this subdialect; there is no Russian, so to speak, no Israeli Russian. This is such an option. And we are an example of an Israeli Russian.

[00:33:28]Well, that's what it's called, it's called ethnolect. This is a very fashionable word today. This is an option, right?

[00:33:38]No, it is not a separate language, it is, of course, a variant of the Russian language. And he has his own there, he has his own in Germany, they have their own in Israel. Well, it's clear why. Because my child immediately says: "You're breaking the rules."

[00:33:52]Oh, this is not offensive, it is a statement of fact that Rusit, Hibrash has many different names. Yes, my child speaks Russian. Well, look at not only yours, I just said, look, yes, if if one of my, well, nabs, I don’t know, but even one of my friends from Moscow or St. Petersburg were here, they would tell me: “Well, really, well, this is, of course, the influence of Hebrew.” Or, for example, recently I saw, uh, pieces of Solomon pomevce on the window of some Russian-language shop. So why did they cut up poor Solomon? And who was the knibal here who cut it?

[00:34:34]This is an absolutely incomparable thing.

[00:34:37]There, uh, bullets are 15 shekels, right? So, it's kind of, uh, a mixture of Yiddish, right? M.

[00:34:45]And of these, yes, of course, there are a lot of them. Well, if I ask you to turn on the air conditioner, you will look at me, so to speak, Marina, what are you showing off for, basically. And, of course, we, let’s say, we’re going to Kupatkhuli, yes, and we’re outraged that Kida drinks coffee day and night. And there are very, very many such things. Yes. Yes. Because language is a means of communication. Language is never a goal. Language is a means of communication. That is, you don’t have to eat yourself up for this, yes, for the inclusion.

[00:35:16]Oh, my God, Yulia, we have so many problems and I think that in this, if you are a radio host, Yulia, this does not apply to You know, this is also a very interesting story. I recently heard David Sharp talking about how he wasn't accepted to Radio Reka. Wow.

[00:35:33]Because Carmon said that with such a Russian there was no place for him there at all. But, for example, during the war, the Hebrew accent became, on the contrary, a kind of quality mark, indicating that a person feels quite comfortable and, uh, well, at home in Israel, in the Israeli system. And he probably knows what he's talking about. If you look at the success of many, so to speak, Russian bloggers, you'll see that those who, for example, in the nineties, who would have been pelted with rotten tomatoes for putting the stress in the wrong place and calling, they call, today quite easily gain thousands of views, and among their viewers, including people who know Russian very well, because, yes, they, so to speak, yes, this has become such a, this is a very interesting phenomenon, I think, for sociolinguists.

[00:36:28]Tell me, well, we talk about children a lot, but you also teach at the university. Who's listening?

[00:36:34]Like Brezhnev, I find it difficult to live on one salary.

[00:36:38]Tell me, who studies Russian at the university?

[00:36:41]I have a beginners group.

[00:36:44]These are those who study Russian as a foreign language, who come and we teach them the alphabet and start from the very beginning. My name is Marina. What is your name? I live in Tal Aviv and so on.

[00:36:58]There is a group of those who continue and there is a group of those who have lived on the Erieth-floor.

[00:37:02]I dearly love the group of Eriethyadniks. This is my I love everyone, but I love the group of Eriethyazhniki especially tenderly. There we sing, there we dance, there we... And whose group, excuse me?

[00:37:12]Heritazhnikov. The Heritazhnikovs are children. These are precisely those for whom the Russian language is hereditary, inherited.

[00:37:20]Heritage.

[00:37:20]Heritage.

[00:37:21]Heritage. Heritage is us Yes. Yes. Now in Russian they are called " heritazhniki".

[00:37:29]Oh, and I love them very much. This is very interesting because they have Marina at the microphone.

[00:37:37]To the microphone, to the microphone. It's bad to be little. A and a they e it's very interesting with them. It’s very interesting with them, because, well, I see, so to speak, my children in them. And they, for example, not long ago we read an excerpt from The Twelve Chairs, and they said: “Oh, now we understand what language our parents speak, where all these quotes come from.” Although it is very difficult for them to understand, for example, this humor. M Yes, that’s exactly it, we have three groups like that at the university.

[00:38:13]And the Russian language and imperial thinking. You would really like this, but you didn't want it at all. Well, I’m just, so to speak, I’m already tired of talking about this. And Russia was an empire and Russia was an empire until recently. And the empire has an imperial language. And how does this manifest itself?

[00:38:35]From your point of view as a linguist, let's leave political analysis aside.

[00:38:40]From a linguist's point of view, probably not, firstly, there is no purely linguistics here, but sociolinguistics. Well, look, all these, everything that we, so to speak, are remaking today, all these Baltics, which cannot be mentioned, and the Baltic countries, and Central Asia and so on, about Ukraine, well, there’s nothing even to mention. M and this is the language that in many ways suppressed the language of the imperial outskirts. There was forced Russification. This national Russification seemed to affect not only the national outskirts, but also local dialects. M language is in many ways a way of thinking.

[00:39:24]But if we take literature, then there are the main complaints: how can you teach Dostoevsky if he was an anti-Semite, how can you teach Gogol after what he wrote in Taras Bulba, how can you, I don’t know, love Brodsky after and so on. And, well, we can continue to list all of this, so to speak, until about the evening. The problem is that Kipling was exactly the same kind of imperialist, and so to speak, Brodsky was nervously chickening on the sidelines. If we read Kipling, so to speak, what he wrote, and the same can be said about Canada, which, well, I personally grew up on. The same can be said if we, uh, talk about French literature, so to speak, of the times.

[00:40:07]Ah, and, uh, so all these complaints about Russian literature, that it is nationalistic, xenophobic and imperial, yes, but I just remind you that Einstein said that Dostoevsky’s books gave him more for the creation of the theory of relativity than the work of modern mathematicians. And one of the most interesting researchers of Dostoevsky, in my opinion, was Stefan Zweik. And what he wrote about Dostoevsky, and as accurately as he wrote, no one else wrote. Didn't they know he was an anti-Mite? I knew. But their greatness lay in the fact that they were able to rise above this. Now, if, eh, well, Dostoevsky doesn’t care anymore. By the way, I don’t really like Dostoevsky.

[00:40:50]OK. Ah, but, for example, Gogol, whom I simply couldn’t reread for many years after we studied Taras Bulba at school, if you remember, there is a scene of a Jewish pogrom there. I just couldn't. And then it happened that I spent several years re-teaching Russian literature at the University of Italy. I had to reread it all. Well, somehow it’s impossible to teach without reading. And I realized that this is simply, well, in my opinion, the most talented Russian writer who has ever written. And a or a Ukrainian writer, he still wrote in Russian. He wrote in Russian.

[00:41:24]I'm not dragging you, this is so wonderful. I even wrote in Russian. I believe that the writer determines the language. The writer defines the language.

[00:41:33]And Dina Rubina, that is, a Russian poet in general.

[00:41:36]Well, there are no questions about him here, because, of course, he is a Russian poet. Pasternak is a Russian poet. They accepted Christianity, and there is nothing to talk about at all. And but ma ae maybe further there they are forced to parsnip at the call of the heart, but as if a but I believe that the writer defines the language, of course. And I’ll tell you more than that, I, uh, have significantly more Russian than Jewish in Shalom Aleiham. Both Gogol and Pushkin influenced him. Any literary scholar who has, so to speak, researched his texts will confirm this to you.

[00:42:14]They had a significant, well, no less influence on him than the Hasi parables.

[00:42:19]Ah, and Marshak is a Russian poet. And, well, and then with all the stops I will tell you more about Dina Rubina, a Russian writer. That is, she is Russian, she is Jewish, she is Israeli, but she is a Russian writer. And I don’t know, maybe she’ll be offended at me for this, but I think that’s the only way.

[00:42:35]If we are in the context of imperial thinking, then we are probably offended. Well, I apologize in advance. Ah, yes, a writer is certainly defined by language, in my opinion.

[00:42:45]Fine. And this situation with the Russian language has remained the same, despite the fact that Russia has ceased to be an empire.

[00:42:52]You say that, in general, language determines thinking, yes, well, no, language, you know, language, I have greatly lost faith in the educational power of literature.

[00:43:09]Ah, and it’s as if all this has completely evaporated from me. These are the necessary books you read as a child, it’s, of course, very romantic, but it has little to do with the matter. I don't really believe in this at all.

[00:43:21]Ah, I think that books should be read because books help you understand, books teach you empathy, books help you understand others. This is generally something that modern young people lack. Well, if it is present, then it is to a very small degree. If it is present rather declaratively, then the ability to understand others, those who think differently, those who stand on a different point of view, those who read little.

[00:43:52]And I don’t know why this is for anthropologists.

[00:43:54]Ah, but I, when people ask me why I need to read, this is why I need to read, yes, so that the world becomes more complex, so that I understand that the world is not flat, not one-dimensional. This, in my opinion, is very important. Now here are all these stories about the terrible harm of Russian literature. This, in my opinion, is complete nonsense. That is, any other, so to speak, imperial literature is just as harmful. And if we look at Europe, well, let's abandon the European classics, but let's follow the path. They're cutting something out of Mark Twain now. But this is complete nonsense. This is complete nonsense. This is stupid. We need to explain to children that yes, people used to think, people used to believe erroneously, otherwise they considered many things to be correct, but today we consider them to be wrong. And maybe today what we so sacredly believe in will be considered wrong in 30 years. So we will completely erase this layer of culture, but this is already some kind of hunvibizm.

[00:44:51]Here. And therefore, uh, it’s not me who supports all this talk about, so to speak, imperial Russian culture, no, I don’t support it. I believe that, so to speak, what we call culture must always be considered in context, whether it be Russian, French or German culture, and without context nothing can be considered. And the question is not so much what we teach, but how we teach. But we practically never teach Pushkin and Gogol, so this is not a date for an Israeli school. Yes.

[00:45:25]This means that we have a separate program somewhere where something is rushing, rushing, rushing, rushing. Udal. It's rushing. And, that means, we have a separate program for those, uh, the exam consists of an oral and written part. In the oral part, uh, there is literature. Literature for those who arrived and stayed in the country for up to four years is, so to speak, one program, but for those living on the Eriezhnaya Street it is another. And there you need to choose at your discretion. We have a very large list, which includes many contemporary writers. And, oh, there is amazing children's and teenage literature in Russian today, not necessarily entirely written in the Russian Federation, although there are wonderful writers there too. And now we have a new compatriot, an amazing children's writer, a classic, I consider her, Zhenya Pasternak, who, together with Andrei Zhvalevsky, writes amazing, completely children's books. If you have children, go buy Zhenya immediately, she is absolutely amazing. And there are many modern authors. Nina Dashevskaya, who lives in Moscow, and there is Maria Byurshakaya, who lives in Canada, she is from Belarus. And there is Narine Obgaryan, who writes about Armenia and lives in Germany. And we try to include these authors in our program, because it’s simply a more understandable language, of course, because our task is to teach children to read. It is generally very difficult to teach children to read. I will tell you more generally, to interact, that is, to teach them to understand the text. That is, there was a study in which the scientists who conducted it claimed that, for example, many children have difficulty solving math problems because they are unable to read and understand the conditions. That is, the fact that we switched completely to pictures has weaned a certain portion of children off perceiving and understanding text.

[00:47:40]And that is why this work with text is what we, so to speak, pay the greatest attention to. Oh, and yes, with text, including with the text of fiction. And yes, of course, because if you take, for example, Deniskin's stories, then mom will be there in the kitchen, yes, and dad will be reading the newspaper. And this does not fully reflect what normal Israeli children see in their families. And there will be a lot of such things there. Or will you see some models of communication with a child who, absolutely, like modern children, took out a belt, right?

[00:48:14]No, well, no one takes out Dragonsky's belt, but, for example, there a child takes third place and his dad shames him, and there third place was the last, yes, and his dad will shame him, that the devil did n't take first place. Well, this in no way correlates with any rules of modern teaching pedagogy.

[00:48:32]This kind of achievement-seeking, in this form, is not welcomed for such children. And this book and Zhlevsky, Pasternak and Dashevskaya, they are very modern. And they write about all kinds of children, they write about neurodivergent children, they write about what school should be like. Eh, my amazing favorite book is by Zhvalevsky, Pasternak and Zhvalevsky. This time is always good, which is such a fantasy that happens in two times. M. A and M.

[00:49:08]absolutely do not need to, so to speak, read Taras Bulba with children and stand over them with a belt so that they somehow, so to speak, make their way through these texts. If they then want to read there, well, not Taras Bulba, but The Inspector General or, for example, The Nose or the St. Petersburg stories, which, in my opinion, is absolutely amazing literature, well, great, but if they don’t want to, well, that means they won’t want to.

[00:49:29]The cartoon will be watched eventually.

[00:49:31]Mulfi Listen, this is a fantastic Narshtein film. Amazing, just amazing. I watch it again and again and again. Yes, in this sense, it’s true that we have very little time left, but nevertheless, the advantage of translated literature is that new translations are made periodically and, in general, the language changes a little, adapts to the next generation, but here, go and actually read something that was written 100 years ago or even 50 years ago in Russian. That is, and so it is a hiritage of languages.

[00:50:03]Well, don’t read, read, read, read what was written yesterday. read what will be written tomorrow. And maybe after some time they themselves will read what is also very interesting. I read with the children in the military, and I read Dubrovsky. I still have a few hours at the wonderful school named after John Zhebatinsky. I believe that the inspector should not leave the school. He needs to see living children, not hear them, um, told to him about them. Well, I don’t know how long I can hold out. So, but I had a class called Military Aliyah, and we read Dubrovsky with them. You can't imagine how wonderful it all went. Much better than I would have been surprised at myself. There is, apparently, some kind of magic of talent. Ah, but with children born in Israel, I probably wouldn’t start with Dobrovsky. Ah, I don’t know, some modern stories would be a pleasure.

[00:51:01]Why not? Yes, Marina, there is literally a minute left until the end of the program.

[00:51:05]Tell me, when you came here with your profession, so to speak, as a teacher of the Russian language, did you even imagine that my ex-classmate, so to speak, looking at me, said pitifully that with such a profession in emigration they usually die. But, as you can see, I am quite alive and even more well-fed than I would like. Uh, so, uh, I think that, uh, uh, there is no God and no devil, there is universal chance. I think it's largely luck. And I really love what I do. I really love what I do. I think it helped me a lot. Dr. Marina Niznik, State Inspector of the Russian Language, Ministry of Education, lecturer at Troizvodsk University.

[00:51:51]Thanks a lot.

[00:51:52]Thank you very much.

[00:51:53]Thanks a lot. The second hour of the program.

[00:51:55]Good morning. Israel is coming to an end.

[00:51:56]Badassery at the controls. Producer Lena Cherkasova.

[00:51:59]Thank you, Oleg Klots.

[00:52:00]Thank you, Julia ottsodeks.

[00:52:02]Watch our YouTube. Have a nice day everyone.

[00:52:04]Happily.