Hebrew Resurrected

The resurrection of the Hebrew language took place in Europe and Palestine toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language’s usage changed from the sacred language of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life in Israel. The process began as Jews started arriving in Palestine in the first half of the nineteenth century and used Hebrew as a lingua franca. However, a parallel development in Europe changed Hebrew from primarily a sacred liturgical language into a literary language which played a key role in the development of nationalist educational programs. Modern Hebrew, along with Modern Arabic, has been an official language in Israel since the British Mandate of Palestine, a situation that continued after the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. More than purely a linguistic process, the revival of Hebrew was utilized by Jewish modernization and political movements, and became a tenet of the ideology associated with settlement of the land, Zionism and Israeli policy.