The Hebrew revolution and the revolution of the Hebrew language between the 1880s and the 1930s

Authors

• Judith Winther Copenhagen

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30752/nj.69451

Keywords:

Israel -- Languages, Zionism, Hebrew language, Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer, 1858-1922, Politics and Judaism, Jewish literature, Hebrew literature, Names, Hebrew

Abstract

The new Hebrew culture which began to crystallize in the land of Israel from the end of the last century, is a successful event of “cultural planning”. During a relatively short period of time a little group of “cultural planners” succeeded in creating a system which in a significant way was adapted to the requested Zionist ideology. Eliezer Ben Yehudah immigrated to the land in 1881 and hitched his wagon to the hard work of the renewal of the spoken Hebrew language. The decision to establish Hebrew as a spoken language in the last two decades of the 19th century was not generally agreed upon nor accepted, even by central figures who participated in the creation of the new-old Hebrew language.