Recent months have handed Israelis a new script, and the words I’m learning have… a different flavor

I

teach English in an Israeli high school, and my students and coworkers teach me a lot of Hebrew. Recent months have handed Israelis a new script, and the words I’m learning have… a different flavor. Below, I present five words (the maximum number of new words I’ve found students can learn in one sitting), using research-based methods for vocabulary instruction:  providing a definition, a synonym, an antonym, and, wherever possible, repeated exposure to the word in context.

קשוח (adjective): tough

This word is not to be confused with kishu, zucchini, which, if you’ve ever sauteed one, you’ll know is actually the opposite of kashuach.

I first encounter this word in our teachers’ room. The day before, a relative of a faculty member had fallen in Gaza, and the funeral was interrupted by an air raid siren that sent the mourners to the ground with their hands over their heads, shielding each other with their bodies.

“How was your day yesterday?” one teacher asks the other.

She leans on the counter, hunched, cupping her warm coffee, and sighs: “Yom kashuach.”

I sense that the word is something of an onomatopoeia: the long middle syllable, the “shu” that casts ripples through her cup — is her inhale, and the culminating sound — the guttural, despairing “ach”— is her exhale.

I hear in that word the strain of having a husband in miluim and a home full of young kids (whose well-being she confirmed with panicky fingers when the siren went off and she was pressed to the ground on Har Herzl).

Soon, she’ll put down her cup, smile, and go out into the hallways, but for now, in the quiet of the teachers’ room, she allows herself a sigh: kashuach.