A Short History of the Hebrew Language

By Yoav Greenburg | March 6, 2010

Today we think of Hebrew as the language of Israel, but it was originally spoken by the children of Abraham, who went down to Egypt, were enslaved there, and who were led forth by Moses. The language was activce as the language of a nation for over 1700 ears. The Jewish Bible, called the Torah (or the five books of Moses) was written in Hebrew.

When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 C.E., Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language. It did, however, survive, throught he ongoing study of the Torah and use in prayers by religious Jews.

At first, some thought Eliezer ben Yehudah (1858-1922), was idle dreamer, but today he is known as the restorer of Hebrew as a modern language. When he moved to Jerusalem, Ben-Yehuda became a teacher at the Alliance School, and with his efforts, became the first school where some courses were taught in Hebrew.

As many young boys of that time period, he began learning Hebrew at a young age. He excelled in his studies, attended a Yeshiva (talmud academy) in hope that he would become a Rabbi. However, he become interested in the secular world, and attended a Russian “gymnasium” and later the Sarbonne in Paris.

Ben-Yehuda adopted several plans of action. The main ones were three-fold, and they can be summarized as “Hebrew in the Home,” “Hebrew in the School,” and “Words, Words, Words.” Even before coming to Palestine, as a result of his first successful prolonged Hebrew conversation, Ben-Yehuda had decided to speak only Hebrew with every Jew he met. Although he was able to speak Hebrew with little problem, there was indeed a shortage of Hebrew words on certain topics.

He got his wife Deborah to agree to raising his son, Itamar Ben-Avi (born in 1882) with only Hebrew. He once became infuriated when he came home, and his wife was singing a Russian song to their son. One of the biggest problem he face was the lack of words that were needed to describe all the daily events and encounters of modern life, including machinery, electricity, airplanes, radio etc…

The resurrection of an ancient language to a modern society would only succeedd if the younger generation would learn to speak Hebrew fluently. Upon moving to Israel, he started teaching at the Alliance Isralite Universelle School, where the children were from a variety of Jewish communities around the Europe and the mid-East, and thus Hebrew was their only common language. Ben-Yehudah began to use the “direct system” of learning Hebrew (this means teaching the HEbrew language without translations from other languages). After a short time, the students were able to chat with each other about daily topics.

After a few years of writing articles in the local paper, Hahavatzelet, he began to publish his own newspaper Hatzvi, in 1884, to serve as an instrument for teaching adults, both via its content and its language. Ben-Yehuda also used his paper as a means to introduce new words which hitherto were missing, such as: newspaper, soldier, fashion and many others.

One of his culminating works was the “Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew.” In 1910 he published the first of six volumes, but the ultimate edition completed by his second wife and son was 17 volumes. Ben-Yehuda also founded “Va’ad HaLashon”, the predecessor of the Hebrew Language Academy.

In 1922, the British mandate authorities recognized Hebrew as the official language of the Jews in Palestine. This culiminated in his life=long dream being fulfillled, but one month later, he died from tuberculosis which had plagued him numerous years. This was the first time in all of human history whre a language that had ceased to be spoken in ancient times, came back to life.

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