Revival of the Hebrew language

The revival of the Hebrew language took place in Europe and the Southern Levant region toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language's usage changed from purely the sacred language of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life in Israel. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is often regarded as the "reviver of the Hebrew language" having been the first to raise the concept of reviving Hebrew and initiating a project known as the Ben-Yehuda Dictionary. The revitalization of Hebrew was then ultimately brought about by its usage in Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine that arrived in the waves of migration known as the First Aliyah and the Second Aliyah. In Mandatory Palestine, Modern Hebrew became one of three official languages and after the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, one of two official languages of Israel, along with Modern Arabic. In July 2018, a new law made Hebrew the sole official 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 settlement and renaming of the land, Zionism^[3] and Israeli policy.

The process of Hebrew's return to regular usage is unique; there are no other examples of a natural language without any native speakers subsequently acquiring several million native speakers, and no other examples of a sacred language becoming a national language with millions of native speakers.

The language's revival eventually brought linguistic additions with it. While the initial leaders of the process insisted they were only continuing "from the place where Hebrew's vitality was ended", what was created represented a broader basis of language acceptance; it includes characteristics derived from all periods of Hebrew language, as well as from the non-Hebrew languages used by the long-established European, North African, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities, with Yiddish being predominant.

^ Halbfinger, David M.; Kershner, Isabel (19 July 2018). "Israeli Law Declares the Country the 'Nation-State of the Jewish People'". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
^ "The Hebraization of Surnames". Jewish Agency for Israel. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 7 January 2009.
^ Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 442. " Yet in all [of young David Ben-Gurion's] activity, three salient principles remained constant. First, Jews must make it their priority to return to the land; ‘the settlement of the land is the only true Zionism, all else being self-deception, empty verbiage and merely a pastime’. [Quoted in Encyclopaedia Judaica, iv 506.] Second, the structure of the new community must be designed to assist this process within a socialist framework. Third, the cultural binding of the Zionist society must be the Hebrew language.

[NYT_2018-1] Halbfinger, David M.; Kershner, Isabel (19 July 2018). "Israeli Law Declares the Country the 'Nation-State of the Jewish People'". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 July 2018.

[JAI-2] "The Hebraization of Surnames". Jewish Agency for Israel. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 7 January 2009.

[3] Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 442. " Yet in all [of young David Ben-Gurion's] activity, three salient principles remained constant. First, Jews must make it their priority to return to the land; ‘the settlement of the land is the only true Zionism, all else being self-deception, empty verbiage and merely a pastime’. [Quoted in Encyclopaedia Judaica, iv 506.] Second, the structure of the new community must be designed to assist this process within a socialist framework. Third, the cultural binding of the Zionist society must be the Hebrew language.

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