Yaron Gal Zur’s first graders are quickly absorbing Hebrew. “My kid comes home and he’s just running to do his homework,” says one mom. (Michael Datikash/Jewish Week) Yaron Gal-Zur might as well be a rock star, as far as his adoring first-graders are concerned.

Singing “Bo nireh mi yoshev yafeh,” Hebrew for “come, let’s see who is sitting nicely,” he ushers his blue-and-white clad brood from their round tables and brand-new blue chairs to a rug and asks them, in Hebrew, how they are.

“Sababa!” they yell out enthusiastically, Hebrew slang for awesome. Although the class is large, with 27 students, all eyes are on the youthful and shaggyhaired Gal-Zur. When he asks whether “yesh” (there is) or “eyn” (there isn’t) sun today, several children call out, with perfect Sabra accents, “Yesh!”

An Israeli classroom? Fuhgeddaboutit – this is Brooklyn. And we’re not talking day school or yeshiva; at least 40 percent of Gal-Zur’s students aren’t even Jewish.

Welcome – or, perhaps one should say baruch haba – to the newly opened Hebrew Language Academy Charter School, a pioneer in a very fledgling educational movement. The first-ever school of its kind in New York City, HLA is only the second Hebrew-language charter school in the United States. The first, the Ben-Gamla Academy, opened two years ago in Hollywood, Fla. A third, proposed in East Brunswick, N.J., had its application approved last month and is expected to open next fall.

Despite questions about church-state separation issues and potential adverse impact on neighboring Jewish day schools, HLA, which is publicly funded but has also received start-up funds from the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life and other foundations, is managing to steer clear of controversy.

With only six weeks under its belt (classes began two weeks before the public schools), it is way too early too declare whether HLA – and the Hebrew charter model – is a success. As the school grows, it may become more difficult to maintain the sense of intimacy and enthusiasm among the parents and faculty. And as the children grow older, and issues like anti-Semitism and the Israeli- Palestinian conflict emerge in the curriculum, diversity and separation of church and state may become more difficult to manage.

But for now, students seem excited and happy – and are absorbing their new language faster than either the teachers or parents had expected. Meanwhile, parents are singing the praises of Principal Maureen Campbell and her faculty.

“My kid comes home and he’s just running to do his homework,” says Leah Amir of Sheepshead Bay, whose son Zachary is in kindergarten at HLA. “He’s coming home happy.”

A public schoolteacher, Amir is Jewish but speaks no Hebrew, and her husband, David, was born in Israel but mostly speaks English now.

Zachary has already taught his 2-year-old sister to count to three in Hebrew. And at a recent family event when everyone was being noisy, Amir said Zachary “yelled out ‘takshivu, takshivu,’” Hebrew for listen.

Now, Zachary is eagerly awaiting a visit from his Israeli relatives, so he can practice his new skills on them.

Elizabeth Cole, an African- American parent who lives in Flatbush, is also thrilled with the new language her son Jason, a firstgrader, is mastering.

“Later in life it’s going to be able to open up more doors,” she notes, adding, “A lot of times now when you go for a job interview they’re asking you to be bilingual.”

A nurse technician at Mount Sinai Hospital, Cole says she’s learning a little herself from supervising Jason’s homework. A few days ago, she surprised an Israeli patient at the hospital by greeting him with the Hebrew expression for good morning.

HLA uses a Hebrew proficiency model developed by a new group called Hebrew At The Center, which piloted the method at Boston’s Jewish Community Day School. The Hebrew teachers, who rely on a lot of body language and visual aids, adhere to a strict Hebrew-only policy.

The method can be seen in Michal Urieli’s first grade class. When students address her in English, the slender, perpetually smiling, soft-spoken teacher – who was raised bilingual in Hebrew and English – responds with “mah zeh?” (what is this?), or says in Hebrew that she does not know that word, offering the Hebrew word or phrase instead.

While no religion is taught at HLA, children learn about Jewish history and culture, through a social studies curriculum that focuses on world Jewish communities and Israel.

HLA teachers say they do teach about Jewish holidays, but in a “universal” way.

“We are finding ways to do it that don’t negate Judaism or exclude other religions,” Urieli says.

HLA’s 160 students (adding a grade each year, the school eventually expects to enroll approximately 450) have an hour-long Hebrew class each morning, speak the language while eating breakfast and lunch and have it incorporated into music and gym classes.

Gym teacher Qayyim Shabazz, a tall, muscular, black Muslim whose students know him as “Mr. Q,” has even invented a new game called “Fishy, Fishy, Dag, Dag” (dag is Hebrew for fish) to help reinforce Hebrew vocabulary.

On a recent Monday morning Mr. Q has his kindergarteners circling the large basement gym as he booms out in Hebrew “Run!” “Stop!” “Quiet!” and “Slow!”

Shabazz, who also speaks some Spanish and Arabic, has picked up all his Hebrew on the job, getting help from his colleagues.

Teacher learning is a huge value at HLA, where the faculty participates in daily professional development sessions. “We call it adult learning,” explains Principal Campbell. “Once they feel like they know it all, then I’ve lost the battle.”

Campbell, who does not speak Hebrew but is planning to learn, routinely comes in at 6 a.m. and leaves at 8 p.m. (School is in session from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and many of the children go to the Kings Bay YM-YWHA afterwards, which has an after-school program specifically for HLA students, with native Hebrew speakers offering homework assistance.)

A veteran of numerous public schools, Campbell “runs a tight ship” as Sara Berman, HLA’s president and the daughter of philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, approvingly puts it.

On a recent Monday morning, Campbell spots a member of the office staff walking through the hallway with a cup of boiling hot tea. She immediately stops her, saying, “I don’t want you to accidentally bump into one of the children and spill hot water on them.”

It has not been all smooth sailing for HLA.

Housed in space rented from the Zvi Dov Roth Academy of Yeshiva Rambam on Kings Highway, the charter school was homeless until a month before opening. Plans to use space in a public middle school in Marine Park fell through in the face of virulent community opposition.

While the HLA students have no contact with the yeshiva, the current location is not ideal for a school that some suspect is a stealth religious institution.

Making matters worse, HLA has not been able to use the auditorium its lease entitles it to because the yeshiva has been unable, so far, to evict the Orthodox synagogue that occupies the space. Although that synagogue has no lease, its rabbi has publicly insisted he will not leave without a fight and has criticized the yeshiva for leasing most of the building to a secular, rather than Jewish, institution.

The school also has had some minor personnel bumps: firing a Hebrew teacher the first day of school (a replacement was found within a day) and not being able to find a music teacher.

The setbacks haven’t fazed Berman. “I’d rather have a vacancy than not have the right teacher,” she says.

As for the auditorium, “I’d love to have the parent meeting there, but we’ll have it in a classroom,” she says.

While it remains to be seen how the charter school will affect nearby Jewish day schools over the long term, about 10 first graders have transferred there from the East Midwood Hebrew Day School, a Conservative school about a mile away.

“There are a number of parents that have children here as well as in the charter school,” says Eugene Miller, East Midwood’s executive director. “When I last spoke to them, they were still waiting and seeing how things go ... It’s still somewhat fluid. I don’t know if parents are going to return or not. A number have said that in the early grades [the charter school] is OK, but then they’d bring their kids back here.”

Despite the new competition, Miller says enrollment at his school, while small, is doing fine. He notes that whereas initially he heard comments from parents like “there’s this public yeshiva that’s free,” people are now “becoming clearer and clearer that the charter school is a very different kind of school than us.”

Reprinted from The Jewish Week of New York.