Jerusalem, May, 1997
"Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there... Then they said, Come let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11)
Scholars differ as to what caused Gods wrath so that he ensured the people would not understand one another. "So the Lord scattered them abroad and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel because the Lord confused the language of all the earth." Whatever Gods reason might have been, it is intriguing to surmise that were it not for that act of divine intervention, the whole world might today be a monoglot Hebrew-speaking people.
As it is, Hebrew as a spoken language had basically ceased to exist by the onset of this century, although it never died out entirely. It remained the language of Jewish ritual and liturgy the language in which Jews throughout the lands of exile expressed their longing when they turned their faces to Zion.
Still, other than for prayer, the language had become virtually the sole intellectual property of a handful of scholars and poets. It was primarily through the single-minded efforts of one man fanatic and rigid in his beliefs Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922,) that new life was given to the moribund tongue. Ben-Yehuda coined thousands of new words to meet the challenges of modern existence; it was he who caused the school curricula in Eretz-Israel to become Hebrew-based; it was he who moulded the language into the vital, lively and expressive language that it is today.
Contemporary Hebrew like any other modern language is still in a constant state of evolution and change. Just think of a few words in English alone whose meanings have changed radically over the past decade or so: gay, aids, hardware, dyke, rating and thousands more. How much more complex then, was the task of updating a language thousands of years old!
Much of this issue of Ariel is devoted to a glimpse into the state of Hebrew today. As we approach the 21st century, we have allowed ourselves a backward glance at the influence Hebrew has had on other languages; at the story of Beit Bialik the home of Israels national poet; an account of the first Hebrew schools in Eretz-Israel; the story of how "My Fair Lady" was rendered into Hebrew. Including a fresh look at Ben-Yehuda himself, and reviews of recent books on Hebrew lettering we have covered several aspects of the modern revival of the Hebrew tongue.
From calligraphy to computer graphics, from mail delivered on horse-back to e-mail instantly conveyed by modem, Hebrew has not only had to take its own revival in its stride, but has also had to cope with the staggering advances of this century. From both these challenges it has emerged triumphant.