Revival of the Hebrew language

In July 2018, a new law made Hebrew the sole national language of the State of Israel, while giving Arabic a "special status".

[1] More than purely a linguistic process, the revival of Hebrew was utilized by Jewish modernization and political movements, led many people to change their names[2] and became a tenet of the ideology associated with aliyah, renaming of the land, Zionism[3] and Israeli policy.

First and foremost, Classical Hebrew was preserved in full through well-recognized sources, chiefly the Tanakh (especially those portions used liturgically like the Torah, Haftarot, Megilot, and the Book of Psalms) and the Mishnah.

During the Middle Ages, Hebrew continued in use as a written language in Rabbinical literature, including in judgments of Halakha, Responsa, Biblical and Talmudic commentaries, and books of meditation.

Outside of Spain, the Jews of Yemen were especially known until contemporary times for their tradition of poetry, exemplified by revered 17th century rabbi and poet Shalom Shabazi.

Otherwise, creative work in Hebrew was mostly limited to liturgical poems known as piyyut, designed to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious services.

[8] The secularization of Hebrew, which included its use in novels, poems, and journalism, was met with resistance from rabbis who viewed it as a desecration of the sacred language.

[9] Eliezer Ben Yehuda, a key figure in the revival, envisioned Hebrew as serving a "national spirit" and cultural renaissance in the Land of Israel.

[10] A preceding process to the revival of literary Hebrew took place during the Haskalah, the Jewish movement paralleling the secular Enlightenment.

This was due mostly to the lack of a broad and modern vocabulary, meaning translating books about science and mathematics or European literature was difficult.

Although an earlier, little known attempt at scientific writing was made when Israel Wolf Sperling translated Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1877 and 1878,[11] this barrier was breached with more lasting effect in the 1880s by a writer named Mendele Mocher Sfarim.

Another difficulty faced by Haskalah Hebrew writers was that the audience was exclusively male with profound study background, which meant that women and the less educated men were pushed against reading Hebrew by reading Yiddish literature, which led a number of writers to write in Yiddish to find audiences.

She notes the influence of Yiddish on his Hebrew, and traces this language interaction to Gabriel Preil, the last Haskalah poet of America.

In his book Great Hebrew Educators (גדולי חינון בעמנו, Rubin Mass Publishers, Jerusalem, 1964), Zevi Scharfstein described the work of Maharal of Prague, Naphtali Hirz Wessely (Weisel), R. Hayyim of Volozhin, R. Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, R. Israel Salanter, R. Israel Meir Ha-Kohen (the Hafes Hayyim), Aaron Kahnstam, Shalom Jonah Tscharno, Simha Hayyim Vilkomitz, Yishaq Epstein, David Yellin, Samson Benderly, Nisson Touroff, Sarah Schenirer, Yehiel Halperin, H. A. Friedland, and Janusz Korczak as significant contributors to the movement.

[14] As Jews in Palestine spoke a variety of languages such as Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish, and French, inter-communal affairs that required verbal communication were handled in a modified form of Medieval Hebrew.

He invented words such as ḥatzil (חציל) for an eggplant (aubergine) [adapted from Arabic ḥayṣal (حَيْصَل‎)][18] and ḥashmal (חשמל) [adapted from Akkadian elmešu][19] for electricity,[20][19] although the latter word (ḥashmal), found in the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 1, has been explained by Rabbi Yehuda in the 1st-century CE as meaning "fiery creatures who speak.

The former word derives from the name of a son of Japheth (Ṯīrās) listed in Genesis 10 who was sometimes identified with the Turkish people, who have been traditionally considered as the main source of distribution of maize in Europe.

For example, the Hebrew word kǝvīš (כביש), which now denotes a "street" or a "road," is actually an Aramaic adjective meaning "trodden down; blazed", rather than a common noun.

[29] According to Zuckermann, although the revivalists wished to speak Hebrew with Semitic grammar and pronunciation, they could not avoid the Ashkenazi mindset arising from their European background.

[31] On the other hand, during the Ottoman era, widespread activity began in the moshavot, or agricultural settlements, of the First Aliyah, which was concentrated in the Hebrew schools.

[27] At this point, progress was slow, and it encountered many difficulties: parents were opposed to their children learning in an impractical language, useless in higher education; the four-year schools for farmers' children were not of a high caliber; and a great lack of linguistic means for teaching Hebrew plus the lack of words to describe day-to-day activities, not to mention the absence of Hebrew schoolbooks.

Motivated by an ideology of rejecting the Diaspora and its Yiddish culture, the members of the Second Aliyah established relatively closed-off social cells of young people with a common world view.

In 1905, Yehuda Leib and Fania Matman-Cohen, a couple of educators, began teaching the first high school classes in Hebrew in their apartment in Jaffa.

[36] In addition, many of the Jewish immigrants during this period had reasonable Hebrew reading proficiency acquired from their education prior to arriving in the country.

Substantial unanimity of opinion in the Yishuv ran against this proposal, which was defeated, leading to the founding of Israel's foremost institute of technology, the Technion, with a curriculum taught in Hebrew.

[27] The 1922 census of Palestine lists 80,396 Hebrew speakers in Mandatory Palestine (829 in the Southern District, 60,326 in Jerusalem-Jaffa, 706 in Samaria, and 18,625 in the Northern District), including 65,447 in municipal areas (32,341 in Jerusalem, 19,498 in Jaffa, 5,683 in Haifa, 44 in Gaza, 425 in Hebron, 15 in Nablus, 2,937 in Safad, 6 in Lydda, 43 in Nazareth, 27 in Ramleh, 4,280 in Tiberias, 13 in Acre, 21 in Tulkarem, 7 in Ramallah, 2 in Jenin, 86 in Beersheba, and 13 in Baisan).

[41] Following Israeli independence, large waves of Jewish refugees came from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the world.

A 1952 order demanded that soldiers be taught Hebrew until they could converse freely on everyday matters, write a letter to their commander, understand a basic lecture, and read a vowelized newspaper.

[44] Many in the new state's administration denigrated Yiddish and enacted policies to promote Hebrew and remove resources from Yiddish-language cultural activities.

A year after its establishment in 1948, the state of Israel banned Yiddish theater and periodicals under their legal powers to control material published and presented in foreign languages (with the important exception of poet Avrom Sutkever’s literary magazine Di goldene kayt).