Stepping inside Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature Nancy Berg’s office in Busch Hall is like entering an idyll of multicultural scholarship. Her office is filled with books in three languages, and the closer you look, the more interesting things become. Representing extensive research on diverse topics from Babylonian Jewry to food in literature to Hebrew scholars in America, the collection of books is almost as impressive as Berg herself.

Courtesy of Joe Angeles

2.4.2016–Nancy Berg, Professor of Modern Hebrew Language & Literature, at Washington University in St. Louis.
Photo by Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photos

Berg, in conjunction with University of Washington professor Naomi Sokoloff, is the recipient of a 2019 National Jewish Book Award for “What We Talk about When We Talk about Hebrew (and What It Means to Americans).” A collection of essays by Hebrew scholars throughout America, the book was born of Berg and Sokoloff’s conversations about their experiences as American scholars of Hebrew.

“When I went to Israel, people would say, ‘How do you do this? How do you study Hebrew literature in America? You’re so far,’ or they would question our ability to grapple with the literature,” Berg said. In other cultures, she explained, this doesn’t happen to the same extent, and it left her contemplating what it meant to study Hebrew in America.

In order to create the collection of essays, Berg and her colleague focused exclusively on scholars who learned Hebrew as a second language to analyze how Americans engage with the language and its rich literary heritage.

“We wanted people from different generations, both age-wise and career-wise, and to bring them together and talk about it,” Berg said. “And in doing so it became more and more clear to me…that we were really part of something that’s much bigger than us.”

Berg emphasized the diversity of experiences and approaches that Hebrew scholars take.

“We looked at Hebrew in a number of different ways,” she said. “Someone who comes to it from a very religious standpoint looks at Hebrew as the entry to Jewish studies, or even Jewish religious experience, and others are looking to it for Jewish culture and others are looking at it as a Middle Eastern language.”

In addition to her writing on Hebrew, Berg has published numerous works on the Iraqi Jewish community, starting with her work graduate in graduate school.

When she isn’t creating award-winning books on language and culture, Berg teaches a writing-intensive class on Israeli women writers for undergraduates.

“We’re using the literature to talk about the writing, and I think I’ve found some ways to do it that make it more organic,” Berg said. For example, students in her class analyze the careful usage of simple words in a poem in order to consider their own words.

Looking forward, Berg will continue to write about Iraqi Jewish writers, drawing upon research from her time working at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We were working on Jews from Arab and Islamic lands, and so it’s not strictly literature. It deals with history and traditions and lives and what’s left of institutions,” Berg said.

She and Sokoloff are also working on publishing another book, which she described as a “celebration and examination” of Israeli literature over the past 70 years. Berg’s passions are rooted in a fascination with the history of the Hebrew language and a dedication to its revival.

“For me, the really exciting part of Hebrew is its backstory and the idea of taking a language that hadn’t been in daily use for 2000 years and reviving it, and that I get to be part of that revival,” Berg said. “I may be just a tiny part, but I’m part of something that has never been done before.”