HEBREW STUDIES are in decline at Israeli universities according to Haaretz:

At all the country's universities, Hebrew studies are in decline. "The humanities are in a bad way," says Prof. Chaim Cohen, head of the Hebrew Language Department at Ben-Gurion University, "and the departments of Bible studies and Hebrew language are at the top of the list." But it's the same at all the country's universities. These departments are rapidly shrinking, with enrollment standing at less than 1 percent of all humanities students, at most, as in Haifa. They are surviving as best they can.

Tel Aviv University, for example, rescued the Hebrew Language Department from its death throes by making it into a section within the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies, together with Bible, Semitic linguistics, Talmud and ancient literature - all former departments from which students had been staying away in droves. At first, the university's senior faculty objected to the forced merger. But four years later, some faculty members are beginning to see the light.

"Even if it comes out of necessity, the result is better," says Dr. Tamar Sovran, the head of the Hebrew language section. "It led to interdisciplinary enrichment for both students and faculty."

The situation in Jerusalem is equally gloomy. In recent years, enrollment in the Hebrew Language Department has been 12 to 20 students. This year, just before studies began, the university announced cuts in the humanities, "and our department was hurt," says Prof. Steven (Shmuel) Fassberg, the head of the department. "We had to cut back on electives." The reason for this development, Prof. Fassberg says, is the mushrooming of colleges and the general disdain for humanities in Israeli society. "People who once took humanities because they were not admitted to law or business administration are now taking those subjects in the colleges and forsaking humanities completely," he says. It's a process that occurred in the United States and reached us late. The difference is that medicine or law are graduate studies there, and people have to take something to get an undergraduate degree, so quite a few take English literature, for example, in order to improve their ability to express themselves verbally and in writing."

A society without humanities is a society void of content, Prof. Ben-Artzi says. "Every civilized society has grasped that. Germany prepared special task forces and opened hundreds of new units in the humanities. New York University established a whole organization to engage in brainstorming and reached the conclusion that a society loses its essence without the humanities, so they created hundreds of new positions."

Ben-Gurion University this year recorded a slight increase in undergraduate enrollment in Hebrew-language studies. Of the 30 new students, half are Bedouin. Prof. Cohen is aware that no insurance company will sell him a policy against closure of the department. "For the time being, I have an explicit promise from the dean, Prof. Moshe Justman - we pray together every Shabbat in the same synagogue - that closure is not in the offing. But if things get worse, there is no knowing what will happen."

But the number of Arab and Druze students studying Hebrew has been going up for purely practical reasons.