Hebrew Language Day: Celebrating the resurrected language of the Bible

Each year on the 21st of Tevet in the Hebrew calendar, Israel celebrates “Hebrew Language Day” on the birthday of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man who worked tirelessly to bring the Hebrew language back from the dead.

The day, which fell on Tuesday last week, was marked all over the country – in schools across Israel, within the IDF and throughout the Jewish Diaspora in the nations.

Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at Washington University, Dr. Nancy Berg, said, “The revival of the Hebrew language in the 19th and 20th centuries was improbable, unprecedented and, at least as of now, unreplicated.”

As remarkable as the resurrection of the language has been, Hebrew was, in fact, only “mostly dead.” Throughout the centuries, Jews worldwide continued to use Hebrew not only to read the Bible and in liturgy, but also to communicate as a common language.

In 1958, philologist Chaim Rabin claimed, “It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that at the time of Ben-Yehuda's first article in 1879, over 50 percent of all male Jews were able to understand the Pentateuch, the daily prayers, and some 20% could read a Hebrew book of average difficulty, allowing for a much higher proportion in eastern Europe, north Africa and Yemen, and a very much lower one in western countries.” 

Hebrew was used and understood, but not in everyday speech. Eliezer's son, Ben-Zion (meaning "son of Zion"), born in 1882, was the first person in 2,000 years to grow up with Hebrew as his mother tongue following the long exile.

Ben-Zion, who would later take the name Itamar, was kept from socializing by his parents who were determined that he speak only Hebrew. By all accounts, his childhood was challenging, to say the least, but the experiment worked.

Today there are approximately 9 million Hebrew speakers in the world, most of whom, of course, live in Israel, where the vast majority consider Hebrew their native language.

Ben-Yehuda seems to have felt his mission was a divine one – at least initially. In the book, “Momentous Century: Personal and Eyewitness Accounts of the Rise of the Jewish Homeland and State, 1875-1978,” written by Soshuk and Eisenberg (Associated University Presses, 1984, p.51), he wrote, “I heard an inner voice calling to me: ‘Revive Israel and its language in the land of the fathers!’” 

In the introduction of his Hebrew dictionary, he expounded on the profound experience.

“During this time, suddenly – it was as if the heavens opened and a light shone forth – a pure and gleaming ray flashed before my eyes, and a mighty inner voice called in my ears.”

Ben-Yehuda started with a religious zeal but gradually became more of a secular Zionist.

He explained, “The more the nationalist concept grew in me, the more I realized what a common language is to a nation…” 

The prophet Zephaniah heralded the revival of the language, declaring God’s word on the matter more than 2,600 years ago: “For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language that they all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord” (Zephaniah 3:9).

The extraordinary thing about this verse, in particular, is that it includes every single letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and it’s the only Bible verse to do so! The language has indeed been restored and any Israeli can now go to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to read the Dead Sea Scrolls, written in Hebrew thousands of years ago.

Hebrew was declared the official language of the Jews of British Mandate Palestine in November 1922, just one month before the death of the man who made it happen. As Jewish historian, Cecil Roth, rightly said, “Before Ben-Yehuda, Jews could speak Hebrew, after him, they did.”