True, but less so.

I've learned a couple alphabets, Hebrew among them, just for fun. I'm pretty confident I could learn to recite the Quran with a month of steady practice.

But memorize the whole thing? Like, name a sura, and I'm off to the races? That's very impressive.

And without any understanding of the underlying words! That's even more impressive, but my heart sinks a little at the waste of human potential which it represents.

Perhaps they're right, and they earn a lifetime in Paradise for their trouble. I can't help but thinking there are better ways to spend ones youth.

Couldn’t help but think about Jesus words when reading your comment about the waste of potential: “they are ever hearing, but never understanding”

I think in his case he was criticizing the scribes who memorized the scriptures, yet had no mercy for others.

It’s certainly an amazing feat of perseverance to memorize anything, but without understanding and transformation for good, it might as well be a million digits of pi.

I mean, if they’re right it seems like a pretty good trade.

Just do it when you're old. More efficient that way.

Essentially Pascal's wager. Let's be honest, it's just dumb.

> We can read, and write in Hebrew but have no idea what it means

I don't think that matches the definition of "can read" of most people. Maybe you can pronounce Hebrew, but "being able to read a given lamguage" implies some level of understanding.

So how would you describe the ability to open a Hebrew bible/prayerbook and recite recite verses or liturgy that you have never seen before and don't have memorized? I think that's "reading", albeit without comprehension. This is common among religious folk.

Note: most religious schools I know of do try to teach the kids to understand what they're reading as well, but that's a more advanced phase - first the kids learn to read Hebrew, which is the bare minimum requirement to be a functioning member of religious society, and then they're taught to understand what they're reading.

My experience was that some kids learned enough to translate a passage of average difficulty by high school, while others never quite got past the very basic vocabulary. But no one in my school got past second grade without being able to read and transcribe a text. (This was at a religious day school in the US).

Sorry you feel that way.

What do you mean, how can you read Hebrew without nikudot unless you knew the words?

One can recognize the words without understanding their meaning

Well GP didn't specify "without nikkud". Most modern prayerbooks and bibles come with nikkud. Being able to read without nikkud does often require familiarity with the words but there are a limited number of constructions in Hebrew, especially when you remove loanwords in modern Hebrew (presumably GP was referring to religious literature, which doesn't include aberrations such as ווידאו (video) or אמברקס ("ambreks" - a vehicle handbrake)). It's not 100% phonetic but it's a whole lot easier than English, so while a you might mispronounce unfamiliar words you will be able to guess correctly quite a bit, or at least be close.