Hebrew

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Hebrew Language of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Orginally spoken in Palestine, it is the language of the Old Testament. It declined during the Babylonian Captivity, supplanted by Aramaic. Hebrew persisted as a literary and liturgical language among Jews. The 19th-century Zionist movement revived Hebrew as a spoken language. It became the official language of Israel in 1948. See also Yiddish

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