Hebrew Editions

קורס בניסים

Hebrew Translation Team Leaders: Avi Yasur and Ruth Shek Yasur

I grew up in a diplomatic family, and I learned all of my languages as a child. By the time I was eight years old I spoke my native Hebrew, as well as English, French, and German. Now I translate film subtitles.

I encountered ACIM in 1978, even before the first edition was published. I immediately identified with it and I became involved in organizing a way to teach it in Israel. Phyllis Schlemmer, Avi Yasur and I gathered a group of twelve people. We began by studying photocopies of the English manuscript of the Workbook, but a need quickly arose for a Hebrew version.

We approached Judy, who agreed that we should translate ACIM in its entirety. Over the course of twelve years, five people worked on the Hebrew edition: a team of two translators, one copyeditor, and two readers. On top of that, there were endless iterations with Ken, as well as one trip to Roscoe to make sure we got it right.

Since that first introduction to A Course in Miracles in the summer of 1978 I’m forever changed. I see it in everything I do. I am not currently teaching but I’m still involved through the occasional translation, by taking part in workshops, and by sharing the light with those around me.

I am honored to be among those who have helped make ACIM available to others.

Published in late 1996 in Israel, the Hebrew edition of A Course in Miracles continues to be distributed primarily there, although it has begun to find its way into Hebrew-speaking communities in other parts of the world as well. Avi Yasur and Ruth Shek Yasur, were the primary Hebrew translators. They lived in Tel Aviv, where all of the translating was done.

“The Course was something completely different and extraordinary, as far as translating most material goes, because of its wording, material, and ideas.”

But for Avi, it was worth it all, because it was important for him that A Course in Miracles be made available in Hebrew.

“You see, for me, Jews must learn to see Jesus as the loving, ecumenical teacher he appears to us in the Course,” he explained, “not the way he has been often represented or misused or misperceived by others and other religions throughout the generations.” At the same time Avi realized that this is a hard thing for most Jews to see and accept. Eventually, however, he hoped that “the Course would enable us to create some kind of reconciliation between Judaism and Christianity, which were basically formed from the same root.”

Obviously, Avi believed strongly in this notion, which is the reason he devoted twelve years to the Course’s translation into Hebrew, while continuing to teach and bring it to the attention of others. “This is certainly one of the major messages A Course in Miracles carries for Jews, and it’s now available to them in the Hebrew edition,” he proclaimed.

One of Avi’s team members, Efrat Sar-Shalom, is also dedicated to the idea of introducing a loving concept of Jesus to her fellow Jews, and not the misperceived one usually carried. In the nearly twelve years she worked with Avi in translation of the Course, she, too, hopes to help bring a reconciliation between Jews and Christians, as well as Arabs, through it—literally “a peace among them that would reach to other parts of the world and to other religions.”

Avi was able to complete reading and recording the Course in Hebrew before his death. This was a life-long dream of his, to be able to have the Course recorded in Hebrew.

The two Supplements, “The Song of Prayer” and “Psychotherapy,” extensions of A Course in Miracles’ principles, are available in Hebrew

Hebrew Team Member: Efrat Sar Shalom

I was born in Israel in 1958. When I was nine in 1967, the Israeli-Arab Six-Day War broke out. So many people were killed on both sides that I swore to God and to myself that I would do anything and everything to help bring peace to the world.

In 1976, I was living in a Yoga centre and was looking for a healer. One day a man at the centre told me of two wonderful healers: Dr Phyllis Carmel Schlemmer and her husband Israel Carmel. Phyllis was a gifted American healer and trance-medium who had moved to Israel. Their house became my second home. I would come to them twice a week to get healing treatments and enjoy their presence. I liked being there because of a mysterious aura that emanated from their place and their being. I wanted to be part of what was there, but I didn’t know its name.

One spring day, Phyllis said, “A new Bible has been found in the States.” My thoughts started racing. A new Bible had been found? I was so excited that I wondered if and when and how I would be able to see it. Many questions ran through my mind. Where had they found it? In Qumran, near the Dead Sea where the hidden scrolls were found? Had they found more scrolls in the Judean desert, the desert that I had loved so much in my childhood and that felt to me like a holy desert and like my true home…? I wanted to know a lot more. I introduced Ami Shefman, my teacher in Yoga, to Phyllis Schlemmer. Ami then introduced Phyllis to Ruth and Avi Yasur. During her time as a teacher for the study of the concealed, Phyllis told them about A Course in Miracles. Intrigued, they asked Phyllis to teach them the Course. Together Phyllis and 12 students learned from one set of paperback books, printing sections and copying lessons onto sheets until the three-volume sets of new books arrived six months later.

Avi Yasur also started teaching the Course. He felt that it must be translated into Hebrew. Despite doubts about the importance of the translation in a small country like Israel, he insisted that the book would bring a great blessing to many people. He wrote to Judy Skutch Whitson who “co-incidentally” was coming to Israel for a short visit. Avi and Judy met on that trip in 1985 and it was decided that he should translate the Course.

Five years would pass before I would meet Phyllis again in a flat in Tel Aviv. On the threshold of her door she said farewell to Avi Yasur and I entered. Four more years went by. In my life everything had become difficult and frustrating and painful. I didn’t know what I should do. I prayed. Night and day I prayed. And then a sharp, clear and loving answer appeared in my mind. “If you want to live, leave everything you have.” I left my old life. Ami, my yoga teacher, invited me to stay in his flat in Tel Aviv for awhile.

One Saturday night I entered Ami’s flat with a baby in my arms. It was very dark. When I turned on the light, I saw a matchbox on a table. Written by hand across the matchbox were the words, “I am spirit.” A shiver passed through my whole being. “What is this?” I asked Ami.

“Ah,” he replied. “This is from A Course in Miracles. Gilad, my son, is studying it with Avi Yasur.”

Avi Yasur? I remembered meeting him at Phyllis’s. During the following weeks, I found sentences on pieces of paper that turned my world upside down. “I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.” “There is nothing to fear.” “God is the strength in which I trust.” Hesitating, I sneaked looks at translated pages of “Workbook for Students.” The pages felt so sacred to me that I no longer knew whether the lines were already in my mind or were freshly printed on the draft translations.

In 1987 I started studying the Course with Avi. I was convinced that the lessons were written especially for me. Here was Phyllis’s new Bible. Everything was new and old, strangely familiar deep within me as if it had never left me, warming my heart. Yet I also sensed that my eyes were opening as though I had met a loved one for the first time. My life had changed.

I began to teach the Course at the same time that Avi was translating the Course with Ruth Yasur. Ruth and I would go over the translation in Hebrew and compare it with the English. Over a number of years I read the translation in Hebrew and Ruth checked the English. It seemed as if we were divinely guided to find the right words. If we didn’t understand the content of a sentence we would go over it again and again, until everything became clear.

To find such clarity, we had to let the Course into our lives. It was not like translating a book with which we had no connection. Here we really needed to understand how to implement Course principles in our relationships and in every event in our lives. Many times we worked on one section for hours, until the clouds shifted from our minds. Only then could we move forward. Over twelve years, this is how the Course was translated in sacred diligent work and with a great love. Working with Avi, Ruth and the Holy Spirit was the best school for me.

Then I met Seffi Hanegbi in the year 2000. After we talked of God and the desert and peace work, we decided to create a centre for love and peace in the Judean desert in the spirit of “A Course in Miracles.” The name “Zman Midbar,” came immediately to our minds. Later, while Seffi worked on peace activities and journeys through the desert, I taught A Course in Miracles whose essence is peace, and I held resolution workshops between Arab and Jewish women. Both Seffi and I were committed to peace in the deepest sense.

Studying The Course in the Israeli Desert

In prayers of peace, in spiritual journeys in the desert, in meetings of Bedouin and Jewish women, in conversations with Bedouins that gather there for resolution and forgiveness, in meetings of study, the spirit of the Course always accompanies us. We have returned the Course to the place where it belongs: the Judean desert. Sometimes in a cave or in a shaded creek, in an open tent in the middle of the desert, on a spiritual journey with students, when I read from the Book, I am so happy that the feeling of gratitude rises within me. I am grateful for an oath that was fulfilled and for a calling that was answered. In those moments I return to a time that is eternal and will never change.

In 2009, Efrat published a book on Peace. This book, Peace-Salaam-Shalom, features quotations from A Course in Miracles about peace, in Hebrew, English and Arabic. This is the first time ever that an Arabic reader can read (in Arabic) the ideas of A Course in Miracles.

Efrat states, “ We have before us two languages that are very similar in origin and represent cultures which have still not learned how to create between themselves peace. I believe that this physical closeness in one book changes for the readers their observations and their union between the two languages… Even without understanding both languages we can be influenced by them and everything they represent, and we can influence in our thoughts a new concept: a world of peace. I believe that any person who unifies both cultures through these letters into one, influences his own being towards unity and peace.”

In addition to teaching the Course, Efrat, along with her husband, Seffi Hanegbi, founded “Zman Midbar,” a spiritual ecological site for peace, located in the Judean desert, Israel. Zman Midbar means Abode or Dwelling of Peace. You can read more about Zman Midbar in English here and watch this wonderful YouTube video.

For those of you who speak Hebrew, here is a YouTube video of Efrat reading from the Course (T-29.vii.1:1).

Currently, (2012), Efrat is hosting a TV program available in Hebrew on A Course in Miracles. It is called “The Best Life” and you can also watch the recordings of previous shows, in Hebrew.

Visit the Hebrew website for A Course in Miracles: kursbenisim.org.il and Efrat’s ACIM site: EfratSarShalom.com