For close to 2,000 years in the Diaspora, Hebrew was the language of ritual, liturgy and Jewish studies. In the Middle Ages, the Hebrew language was used as a tool both to promote culture and to develop literary ideas and scientific theories. By the beginning of the 19th century, with the Enlightenment in full swing, Hebrew had become a popular written -and sometimes spoken-language amongst Europe’s educated often secular elite.

" Perhaps I am the last of Zion’s poets and you the last readers, " lamented Yehuda Leib Gordon, a Hebrew poet born in 1831 in Vilna. Abraham Mapu (1808-1867), another Lithuanian Jew, wrote the first romantic Hebrew novel. Sarah Menkin Foner was the first woman to publish a Hebrew novel, "The Love of the Righteous," in Vilna in 1880. By the third quarter of the 19th century, there were Hebrew weeklies and dailies, some longerlived than others, all a vibrant forum for the exchange of political and cultural ideas- Pirchei Tzafon, Hamelitz, Hacarmel, Hashachar, Tziyon, Kol Hamevaser .

But when the Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment, failed to respond to renewed anti-Semitism and painful restrictions of already limited rights, they turned in large numbers to Jewish nationalism . These early groups of Hovevei Zion made their way to Eretz Yisrael in the 1880s and established the communities of inter alia , Rishon LeZion, Gedera, Rosh Pinna, Rehovot and Petach Tikva. Hebrew had become a symbol of unity and a medium of revolt against the religious and political establishment, and no one understood that precept better than Eliezer Ben Yehuda.

"Everyone of those refugees from the yeshiva world in Odessa, Vilna, Warsaw, Lemberg and Vienna who sought to create secular poems and stories out of the Hebrew of sacred texts absorbed in early youth was implicitly declaring that from this point on, Jewish culture would have a new meaning, would propel itself into a wholly new context of European modernity. Religion would no longer be the chief defining term of Jewish existence and Hebrew would no longer be the Holy Tongue presided over by a clerical class, but rather the medium of a national culture."

From "Hebrew & Modernity," by Robert Alter

Hebrew in the Home

When their first son was born, Ben Yehuda swore that this child would be the first in modern history to be raised speaking only Hebrew. When speaking to baby Itamar, Ben Yehuda and his wife found themselves coining new Hebrew words for objects like bicycle, omelette, ice cream, towel and hundreds more. As Itamar grew, so did the language. Year by year, for some four decades, Ben Yehuda collected every word and phrase and compiled what was to eventually become the 17-volume Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew . To help him with his work, Ben Yehuda founded the Hebrew Language Council in 1890. Its offspring, The Academy of the Hebrew Language still meets regularly, coining new terminology, answering public queries and prescribing standards for mordern Hebrew. As the historian Cecil Roth stated, "Before Ben Yehuda... Jews could speak Hebrew, after him they did ."

Most of the early Jewish settlers were, like Ben Yehuda, young, educated and idealistic immigrants. They came from similar East European Jewish backgrounds, and had, like him, decided to begin their lives anew in the promised land of their forebearers.

Many could already speak Hebrew upon arrival in the  country, and most were interested in living in a Hebrew-speaking community. Revivalist organizations devoted to the cause of Hebrew, involving many schoolteachers, were founded in the Zionist settlements. In the early agricultural settlements of the Galilee and the Coastal Plain, it was these dedicated schoolteachers who raised the first generation of children to speak modern Israeli Hebrew . By the turn of the century, there was no turning back.

The language of instruction in the Alliance Israelite Universelle girls school in Jaffa was French. Headed by Rosa Jaffe, the school had 250 students by 1897. Teachers campaigned to adopt an entirely Hebrew curriculum, while the school’s Paris-based sponsors found the switch to Hebrew for general subjects unacceptable. Rosa Jaffe, backing her teachers, broke away from the donors in 1903, and establised the Avtonomia School which soon became a Hebrew cultural and educational center.

The teachers who lived on the second floor were involved in the activities of developing Jewish political movements and national institutions. The local religious forces branded the street where the school was situated Treifengassl ( non-kosher street ) . 

At the end of 1903, the Herzlia High School in Jaffa had been founded with 17 pupils and much bravado. In 1906, the Ezra Hebrew Teachers Seminary was established and, in 1913, Hovevei Zion established the Levinsky Hebrew Teachers Seminary, which still thrives today. The progressive leaders of a religious neighborhood in Neve Tzedek, unhappy at the idea of educating their children in Yiddish at the Talmud Torah schools, started a school known as Tachkemoni, the first religious Hebrew school in the country. By 1913, it had 250 pupils.

"In a language so rich in biblical and historical idioms, almost every conversation evokes our Jewish heritage." Lisa Fliegle, Hebrew Poet

The Language Conflict

In the summer of 1913, the preparations for the opening of the Technion in Haifa raised a fury. Rumors spread that the principal language of instruction was to be German. An urgent appeal was made to board member Ahad Ha’am by a group of youth from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv studying in Hebrew-language high schools .

" We have proved to the entire world that it is only the Hebrew language that can and should serve as the tongue for speech and instruction in our land; we have pinned so much hope on the only institution of higher learning which is now being established in our country. We have delighted in the hope of directly continuing our studies and receiving a full Hebrew education - THE LANGUAGE OF THE TECHNION CAN AND SHOULD BE HEBREW!"

A majority decision concluded that there would be no one language of instruction-the natural sciences and technical subjects, for example, would be taught in German. The "language conflict" erupted which resulted in the resignation of the three Zionist board members.

We have witnessed modern Hebrew culture grow for the past 200 years, blossoming into fields of prose, poetry and theater during the last eighty. Israel’s printing industry is one of the world’s largest per capita, with each of the nearly 200 publishers releasing between five and 150 new books per year. The number of Hebrew periodicals has surged over the past decade. In addition to magazines on every academic topic, science, home improvement and sports; the traditional arts and literature periodicals are thriving alongside new magazines and bulletins on politics and the arts.

Israel’s great modernist, S. Y. Agnon (1887-1970) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966. Not only have some English-speaking immigrants contributed to the Hebrew canon, such as Prof. Shimon Halkin, T. Carmi, and Reuven Avinoam but, through the talents of immigrant writers, many of them from English-speaking countries, translated Hebrew novels have reached the top of the bestseller lists around the world . In the more recent bursts of intense literary activity, several Israeli writers have achieved international recognition, notably Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, Shulamit Hareven, Yoram Kaniuk, Aharon Appelfeld, Savion Liebrecht, David Grossman, Yehudit Katzir, Batya Gur, Meir Shalev and Yoel Hoffman.

Hebrew has become not only the mother tongue of several million people, but also a contemporary language serving the many linguistic demands of a modern society. This is nothing less than astounding, considering that one hundred and twenty years ago, Hebrew had virtually no native speakers. We can humbly salute the dedicated efforts of those who came before us.

Includes excerpts from the work of writer and translator, Judith Cooper Weill .

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