Hebrew

HEBREW

Major official language of the State of Israel.

Hebrew is the national language of the Jewish population of Israel (about 5 million) and the mother tongue of Jews born in the country. For world Jewry (about 14 million) it is the traditional liturgical language and a link to daily life in contemporary Israel.

Hebrew is the original language of the Bible. It has played a central role in the cultural history of the Jewish people for the past three millennia, and has had an important impact on Western culture. Ancient Hebrew names such as Jacob, Joseph, Sarah, and Mary, and old Hebrew words or concepts such as "amen," "hallelujah," "hosanna," "Sabbath," and "Messiah" have survived, resisting translation in many languages and cultures.

Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of the Northwestern Semitic or Afro–Asiatic family of languages. During its long history (which follows the historical course of the Jewish people), it has undergone diverse changes and has developed several different layers, from biblical Hebrew to modern Israeli Hebrew.

Biblical Hebrew (BH) is believed to have crystallized over 3,000 years ago, when the Israelite tribes coalesced into a homogeneous political unit under the monarchy in Jerusalem (eleventh–tenth centuries b.c.e.). It emerged as a fully formed literary language whose poetic grandeur is attested by the oldest portions of the Bible, written about that time.

In its early, classical form BH functioned as a living language until the end of the First Temple Period (586 b.c.e.). Due to its prestigious status as the language of the early books of the Bible, it survived as a literary language until the second century b.c.e., as seen in the late books of the Bible, in the Apocrypha, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. BH was employed centuries later, mainly by the Hebrew poets of medieval Spain (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) and the writers of the Jewish Enlightenment movement in Eastern Europe (late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). Most important, because praying and reciting the Bible in the original Hebrew have always been central to synagogue worship, contact with BH has never ceased. The preservation throughout the ages of the morphological structure of BH accounts for the relative uniformity in the various historical layers of the language.

The Second Temple Period (516 b.c.e.–70 c.e.) saw the beginning of Jewish bilingualism. Aramaic, another Northwestern Semitic language, closely akin to Hebrew and a lingua franca in the ancient Middle East, became the second language of the Jewish people. The contact between BH and Aramaic (and, to a certain degree, Greek and Latin) gradually resulted in an enriched and quite different kind of spoken Hebrew with a literary counterpart, known as Rabbinic Hebrew (RH). A change in script occurred at that time, the ancient Canaanite alphabet of BH being replaced by the Assyrian square script used in Aramaic.

Well adapted to deal with everyday practical matters, RH was employed in writing down the Mishna (the oral law, 220 c.e.), and for several hundred years it continued to be used together with Aramaic in the Rabbinic literature (the Talmud and the

Midrash). Its role as a spoken language, however, declined at the end of the second century c.e., following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Judaean state by the Romans (70 c.e.).

For the following 1,700 years, Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language in daily use because the diaspora Jews used the vernaculars of their host countries for communication. Nevertheless, Hebrew was by no means a dead language. In their dispersed communities the Jewish people continued to use it as their written language in their liturgical, scholarly, literary, and even practical activities. Writing and copying were greatly aided in the Middle Ages by the introduction of the Rashi script (which survives among Middle Eastern Jews). In addition to the vast, multifaceted religious and secular literature written in Hebrew at that period, hundreds of books were translated into Hebrew, primarily from Arabic and Latin. Each of these literary activities contributed to the growth of the language by enriching its vocabulary and by introducing new syntactic patterns. At the same time, many Hebrew words and expressions were incorporated into the Jewish languages that developed alongside the vernaculars, such as Judeo–Arabic, Judeo–Spanish, and Yiddish.

The search for a new Hebrew idiom, suitable for a realistic literary expression in the modern era, followed the revival of Hebrew culture by the Jewish Enlightment Movement. Mendele Mokher Seforim (1835–1917) is considered the first modern writer who integrated in his style varied elements from all the periods of Hebrew as well as from Yiddish. His work contributed to the transformation of Hebrew into a flexible modern literary vehicle and helped pave the way for the rise of modern Hebrew literature.

The renaissance of Hebrew as a spoken language in the twentieth century was closely linked to the national revival of the Jewish people in their forefathers' land. Hebrew was revived thanks to the efforts of a small group of devoted people, led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1857–1922), who in 1881 settled in Jerusalem and pioneered Hebrew usage at home and in school. He published a Hebrew periodical, promoted the coining of new words, and cofounded the Language Committee (1890–1953), which began dealing with language planning issues and set normative measures. Above all, Ben-Yehuda compiled several volumes of the first modern dictionary of ancient and modern Hebrew.

Ben-Yehuda's work gained increasing support from the waves of Jewish immigrants and refugees returning to Zion. When the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, Hebrew was a functioning modern language, fully established as the living language of the growing Jewish community in the country. Supervision of its continuous growth was assigned in 1953 to the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem.

Since the first days of its rebirth, thousands of new words have been created in Hebrew from its own roots and many of its ancient words have been given new meanings. Influence from other languages on vocabulary and syntax may be discerned as well. Encompassing all areas of life and gaining ever greater flexibility, Hebrew has become the dynamic, vibrant language of modern Israel.

See also ben-yehuda, eliezer; dead sea scrolls.

Bibliography

Saenz-Badillos, Angel. The History of the Hebrew Language, translated by John Elwolde. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Waldman, Nahum. The Recent Study of Hebrew. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1989.

ruth raphaeli