Master of Arts (by dissertation) — Hebrew Language & Literature postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

A few months ago a customer brought a memory stick into the print shop where I work and asked for two hundred copies of a menu for a family celebration. The English side was fine. On the Hebrew side every word ran backwards, final letters had turned up at the start of words, and the vowel points floated beside the consonants instead of beneath them. Fixing it took me most of a lunch break: resetting the text direction, choosing a font that handled niqqud properly and checking each line against what the family meant to say. It was a small job, but it reminded me how much of a language's character sits in details that people only notice when they go wrong. That attention to detail is what I want to bring to a dissertation on modern Hebrew poetry.

I studied Hebrew and English for my undergraduate degree and continued in Hebrew for my Honours year. In the early years the work was largely grammatical: the binyanim, the construct state, and learning to read unpointed text without guessing. What changed my sense of the subject was a course that set biblical passages beside twentieth-century poems. I began to see that modern Hebrew writers often work with readers who carry fragments of scripture and prayer in their heads, and that a single phrase can mean one thing in the street and another in the synagogue.

My Honours research essay explored this in the work of Yehuda Amichai. I focused on poems that rework liturgical language, especially his version of El Male Rachamim, where the memorial prayer's appeal to a merciful God is turned into a speaker's bitter doubt about mercy itself. I compared the poem line by line with the prayer, recorded where Amichai kept the original wording and where he broke it, and considered how the effect differs for a reader who knows the prayer and one who meets the poem in translation. I also read several English translations alongside the Hebrew, which showed me how often the double register disappears. My supervisor's comments pushed me to be more careful about separating my own reading from claims about what the poet intended, and that discipline is something I want to develop further.

For the dissertation I would like to extend this approach beyond a single poet, looking at how writers of the same generation draw on prayer-book language and whether their uses can be compared in a useful way. I know that the scope will need narrowing with guidance, and I would welcome advice on whether to concentrate on one form, one theme or a small group of poems studied closely.

Outside my studies I have worked at the print shop for three years, first part-time and now nearly full-time. I deal with deadlines, unclear instructions and customers who are anxious about how their wedding invitations or funeral programmes will look, and I have learnt to ask precise questions early. On Saturday mornings I help coach a junior trail-running group on the lower slopes of Table Mountain, which mostly involves counting heads, plotting safe routes and persuading reluctant twelve-year-olds up the final hill. During the week I tutor my younger cousin in English for her matric year, and explaining how a poem works to someone who would rather be elsewhere has made me a clearer writer.

A dissertation-based degree suits the way I work: I am happiest with a long, specific problem and enough time to read slowly. I am ready to manage my own schedule alongside employment, and I hope to leave with research skills and a reading knowledge of Hebrew poetry deep enough to support further study or teaching.