Introduction

Volume 9, No.3 Spring 1991 INTRODUCTION1 ZevGarber Zev Garber is Professor of Jewish Studies, Los Angeles Valley College, and Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California at Riverside. The editor of Methodology in the Academic Teaching ofJudaism (1986) and Methodology in the Academic Teaching ofthe Holocaust (with A. Berger and R. Libowitz, 1988), he is also the editor-in-chief of a new series, Studies in the Shoah. Finally, he served as President of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH). 1 More than a hundred years have passed since a young Eliezer BenYehudah (1858-1923) spoke out against the goals of the "Enlightenment of Berlin," and the "spiritual" nationalism of Peretz Smolenskin and others. In a letter to Smolenskin's journal, Hashahar, dated 1879, Ben-Yehuda opines that the Berlin maskilim see Hebrew only as a bridge to enlightenment and not redemption, and he questions the assumption made by Smolenskin that the Jewish people is defined by spirit alone. Even if so, he wonders, what is the redemptive role of the Hebrew language for a Jewish religion adapted to alien lands and foreign tongues? Further, he suggests, in the eyes of many of the young, Hebrew is seen as a "dead and useless tongue." To correct this, Ben-Yehudah argues for a truly Hebrew Enlightenment: the return of a people to the desolate land of its forebears and the re-establishment of its political sovereignty. In such a natural setting, he believes, the youth can learn their ancestral language and never abandon it. Contra other Zionist ideologues, Ben-Yehudah envisioned the twin pillars -later, remarkable accomplishments-of the Jewish National Movement : return to the land and return to the language, equally binding and significant . His philosophy, "Let us revive the nation, and its tOQgue will be revived , too," permeated his more than 40-year zealous devotion to renew the lA number of views expressed in the introduction were previously published in the introduction to my edited, Methodology in the Academic Teaching of Judaism (UPA, 1986), and in my presidential perspective in 19geret (Newsletter of NAPH), Fall 1989. 2 SHOFAR biblical tongue and transform it into modern idiom, in written word and speech, for every topic, sacred and profane. Hebrew as a written language spans over three millennia and four periods , viz., Biblical, Talmudic (Rabbinic), Medieval, and Modern (Israeli), each contributing to the spiritual and national life of a people on and off the Land of Israel. The genres of medieval Hebrew writing, namely, commentaries on the Bible and Talmud, contracts, liturgy, literature (belles lettres), mysticism, philosophy, responsa, science, translation, etc., illustrate the point. In addition to molding the thought of medieval Jewry and uniting the dispersed communities, medieval Hebrew writing contributed to the development of Hebrew as an historical, literary, and religious language. However, it did not succeed in producing a living, popular language. Hebrew speech started to decline with the Babylonian captivity (586-539 B.C.E.), and it became unspoken from the end of the second century c.E., when Rome exiled the bulk of Jewry from Eretz Israel. In succeeding times and in different climes, Jews spoke other languages (Aramaic, Greek, Arabic, European languages) with their host populations and among themselves. The stirrer of Hebrew as a spoken language, however, began in the Enlightenment period and came into its own, albeit in a restrictive manner , during the period of Hibbat Zion (mid-nineteenth century); the "Love of Zion" movement sent and settled groups of Hebrew-speaking pioneers in Eretz Israel. In the year 1889/90, Eliezer Ben-Yehudah and a cadre of like-minded Hebrew enthusiasts established the Va'ad Halashon Haivrit (Hebrew Language Committee). The expressed goal of the Va 'ad was to move Hebrew from its exclusive state oflashon hakodesh (and thus restrictive usage) into the everyday spoken idiom of theyishuv. In revitalizing Hebrew to serve all facets of life, the Va 'ad recognized the need to establish rules and directions for vocabulary building, style, and syntax development. In WUJS Newsletter No. 29 (Summer 1989), an article on "The Academy of the Hebrew Language" (successor of the "Hebrew Language Committee," since 1948) points out that "Hebrew was unspoken for 1700 years...