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131-445: The Hannibal Directive ( Hebrew : נוהל חניבעל , romanized :  Nóhal Khanibaál ), also translated as Hannibal Procedure or Hannibal Protocol , is the name of a controversial procedure used by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces. According to one version, it says that "the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces." It

262-674: A Hebrew form. Medieval Hebrew added 6421 words to (Modern) Hebrew. The approximate number of new lexical items in Israeli is 17,000 (cf. 14,762 in Even-Shoshan 1970 [...]). With the inclusion of foreign and technical terms [...], the total number of Israeli words, including words of biblical, rabbinic and medieval descent, is more than 60,000. In Israel, Modern Hebrew is currently taught in institutions called Ulpanim (singular: Ulpan). There are government-owned, as well as private, Ulpanim offering online courses and face-to-face programs. Modern Hebrew

393-646: A barrage at the car that they are trying to take him away in. After a recording of Ribak's instructions was distributed by an anonymous source, the IDF reiterated its denial of having a policy of intentionally killing captured soldiers. The Hannibal Directive was invoked in October 2000 after the Hezbollah capture of three Israeli soldiers in the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms (Har Dov) area. An Israeli border patrol

524-659: A brief skirmish on August 1, despite the announcement of a 72-hour ceasefire agreement earlier that day. Forensic Architecture , investigating for Amnesty International in 2015, concluded that Israel then initiated the Hannibal Directive, ultimately resulting in carnage dubbed "Black Friday." The IDF carried out air and ground attacks on residential areas of Rafah during the Hannibal Directive attempt to prevent capture of Lt. Goldin. Amnesty and Forensic Architecture concluded that Israel's indiscriminate violence against all human life amounted to war crimes. Their report, along with

655-435: A captured soldier, rather than having him captured. Many testimonies from IDF soldiers and other sources contradict this claim and suggest that the IDF in practice adheres to the principle that a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier. According to the directive, once it had been declared by a field officer, Israeli forces were to open fire on enemy forces carrying away an IDF prisoner. Vehicles suspected of removing such

786-583: A century ago, was fluent enough in this idiom to be able to follow the Mishna Berurah without any trouble." Hebrew has been revived several times as a literary language, most significantly by the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement of early and mid-19th-century Germany. In the early 19th century, a form of spoken Hebrew had emerged in the markets of Jerusalem between Jews of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate for commercial purposes. This Hebrew dialect

917-649: A corollary Hebrew ceased to function as a spoken language around the same time. Moshe Zvi Segal , Joseph Klausner and Ben Yehuda are notable exceptions to this view. During the latter half of the 20th century, accumulating archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls has disproven that view. The Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in 1946–1948 near Qumran revealed ancient Jewish texts overwhelmingly in Hebrew, not Aramaic. The Qumran scrolls indicate that Hebrew texts were readily understandable to

1048-562: A distinct style of philosophical Hebrew. This is used in the translations made by the Ibn Tibbon family. (Original Jewish philosophical works were usually written in Arabic. ) Another important influence was Maimonides , who developed a simple style based on Mishnaic Hebrew for use in his law code, the Mishneh Torah . Subsequent rabbinic literature is written in a blend between this style and

1179-549: A fire procedure called the 'Hannibal fire procedure' – you fire at every suspicious place that merges with a central route. You don't spare any means. He reported that the initial fire lasted three hours. An artillery soldier said his battery was "firing at a maximum fire rate" into inhabited areas. According to the Givati Brigade inquiry, more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells were fired in Rafah on 1 August 2014, including 1,000 in

1310-579: A gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904–1914 Second Aliyah that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the more highly organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. A constructed modern language with

1441-456: A helicopter, tank or UAV , killing all occupants in at least some cases. Hebrew language Hebrew ( Hebrew alphabet : עִבְרִית ‎, ʿĪvrīt , pronounced [ ʔivˈʁit ] or [ ʕivˈrit ] ; Samaritan script : ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ‎ ʿÎbrit ) is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family . A regional dialect of

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1572-423: A kidnap attempt: "soldiers are told, though never officially" the content of this order. Maariv quoted a version of the directive apparently applicable in 2014: This section was accompanied by an asterisk comment emphasizing: "In any case, everything should be done to stop the vehicle and not allow it to escape". Apparently, the Hannibal Directive existed in several versions at that time. It had been amended by

1703-463: A literary language down through the Byzantine period from the 4th century CE. The exact roles of Aramaic and Hebrew remain hotly debated. A trilingual scenario has been proposed for the land of Israel. Hebrew functioned as the local mother tongue with powerful ties to Israel's history, origins and golden age and as the language of Israel's religion; Aramaic functioned as the international language with

1834-468: A mistaken understanding of the directive; Kasher intimated that the soldier was Lt. Goldin. Testimonies from IDF soldiers involved in the attack provided further evidence contrary to the official IDF story. An Israeli army infantry officer described the events of August 1 to Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence as follows: The minute 'Hannibal Directive' is declared on the radio, there are consequences. There's

1965-722: A modern version of the ancient language was led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda . Modern Hebrew ( Ivrit ) became the main language of the Yishuv in Palestine , and subsequently the official language of the State of Israel . Estimates of worldwide usage include five million speakers in 1998, and over nine million people in 2013. After Israel, the United States has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans ). Modern Hebrew

2096-452: A prisoner from the battlefield could thus be attacked, even at the risk of harming, or even killing, the abductee himself. According to some interpretations, this includes even firing missiles from attack helicopters or firing tank shells at suspected escaping vehicles. Amos Harel of Haaretz wrote in November 2011 that the Hannibal Directive was suspended for a time "due to opposition from

2227-564: A private security firm, responsible for security at the Erez gate. Former Chief of Staff of the Southern Command, Brig.-Gen. Zvika Fogel said in an interview with Israeli radio : "We can't afford now any soul mate of Gilad Shalit". During the 2014 Gaza War , the third major offensive launched by Israel in Gaza since 2008, IDF Givati Brigade Lieutenant Hadar Goldin was captured by Hamas militants after

2358-535: A set of dialects evolving out of Late Biblical Hebrew and into Mishnaic Hebrew, thus including elements from both but remaining distinct from either. By the start of the Byzantine Period in the 4th century CE, Classical Hebrew ceased as a regularly spoken language, roughly a century after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since the aftermath of the catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt around 135 CE. In

2489-513: A soldier who has been killed, is a national problem." Asked whether he was referring to cases like Ron Arad (an Air Force navigator captured in 1986) and Nachshon Wachsman (an abducted soldier killed in 1994 in a failed rescue attempt), he replied "definitely, and not only". According to Prof. Emanuel Gross , from the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa , "Orders like that have to go through

2620-652: A spoken language, it continued to be used as a lingua franca among scholars and Jews traveling in foreign countries. After the 2nd century CE when the Roman Empire exiled most of the Jewish population of Jerusalem following the Bar Kokhba revolt , they adapted to the societies in which they found themselves, yet letters, contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry and laws continued to be written mostly in Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing and inventing terms. After

2751-454: A tractor carrying hostages to Gaza, killing one hostage and injuring others. According to Kibbutz Be'eri survivors Hadas Dagan and Yasmin Porat, an Israeli tank fired two shells at a house that was known to hold over a dozen hostages, including 12-year-old twins; only two hostages survived. In January 2024, a Haaretz editorial asked the IDF to disclose whether the Hannibal Directive was used during

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2882-468: A truly Semitic vocabulary and written appearance, although often European in phonology , was to take its place among the current languages of the nations. While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous (because Hebrew was the holy language of the Torah and therefore some thought that it should not be used to discuss everyday matters), many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of

3013-549: A vernacular in Judea until it was displaced by Aramaic, probably in the 3rd century CE. Certain Sadducee , Pharisee , Scribe , Hermit, Zealot and Priest classes maintained an insistence on Hebrew, and all Jews maintained their identity with Hebrew songs and simple quotations from Hebrew texts. While there is no doubt that at a certain point, Hebrew was displaced as the everyday spoken language of most Jews, and that its chief successor in

3144-551: A working journalist since 1997. He has written for a variety of publications including The Guardian , The New York Times , The Washington Post and The Times . His Haaretz column, "Jerusalem & Babylon", was a series of articles which covered issues relating to Israel and to Jewish identity, for which he received the B'nai B'rith award for "Recognizing Excellence in Diaspora Reportage" Pfeffer's British passport has enabled Haaretz to send him to cover

3275-511: Is 8198, of which some 2000 are hapax legomena (the number of Biblical Hebrew roots, on which many of these words are based, is 2099). The number of attested Rabbinic Hebrew words is less than 20,000, of which (i) 7879 are Rabbinic par excellence, i.e. they did not appear in the Old Testament (the number of new Rabbinic Hebrew roots is 805); (ii) around 6000 are a subset of Biblical Hebrew; and (iii) several thousand are Aramaic words which can have

3406-486: Is anyone in the army" believing that 'better a dead soldier than an abducted soldier'. Haaretz article about Dr. Shiftan's experience was the first to be published in an Israeli newspaper. In contrast to the view of Kasher, the IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz said in an interview with Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth in 1999: "In certain senses, with all the pain that saying this entails, an abducted soldier, in contrast to

3537-477: Is believed to be based on the Semitic root ʕ-b-r ( ע־ב־ר ‎), meaning "beyond", "other side", "across"; interpretations of the term "Hebrew" generally render its meaning as roughly "from the other side [of the river/desert]"—i.e., an exonym for the inhabitants of the land of Israel and Judah , perhaps from the perspective of Mesopotamia , Phoenicia or Transjordan (with the river referred to being perhaps

3668-578: Is derived from Old French Ebrau , via Latin from the Ancient Greek Ἑβραῖος ( hebraîos ) and Aramaic 'ibrāy , all ultimately derived from Biblical Hebrew Ivri ( עברי ), one of several names for the Israelite ( Jewish and Samaritan ) people ( Hebrews ). It is traditionally understood to be an adjective based on the name of Abraham 's ancestor, Eber , mentioned in Genesis 10:21 . The name

3799-602: Is derived from the name of the alphabet used , in contrast to Ivrit , meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . Hebrew ceased to be a regular spoken language sometime between 200 and 400 CE, as it declined in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Bar Kokhba revolt , which was carried out against the Roman Empire by the Jews of Judaea . Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among societal elites and immigrants. Hebrew survived into

3930-563: Is fighting to stop businesses from using only English signs to market their services. In 2012, a Knesset bill for the preservation of the Hebrew language was proposed, which includes the stipulation that all signage in Israel must first and foremost be in Hebrew, as with all speeches by Israeli officials abroad. The bill's author, MK Akram Hasson , stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary. Hebrew

4061-411: Is no text on this object. In July 2008, Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa that he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating from around 3,000 years ago. Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said that the inscription was "proto-Canaanite" but cautioned that "[t]he differentiation between the scripts, and between

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4192-637: Is one of several languages for which the constitution of South Africa calls to be respected in their use for religious purposes. Also, Hebrew is an official national minority language in Poland , since 6 January 2005. Hamas has made Hebrew a compulsory language taught in schools in the Gaza Strip. Anshel Pfeffer Pfeffer was born to a Jewish family in Manchester in the United Kingdom. Pfeffer has been

4323-446: Is supported by many commanders, even at brigade and division level. It goes further than the official order, including the use of tank shells or air strikes. "A dangerous, unofficial interpretation of the protocol has been created", a senior officer told Haaretz . "Intentionally targeting a vehicle in order to kill the abductee is a completely illegal command. The army's senior command must make this clear to officers." In anticipation of

4454-728: Is the official language of the State of Israel, while pre-revival forms of Hebrew are used for prayer or study in Jewish and Samaritan communities around the world today; the latter group utilizes the Samaritan dialect as their liturgical tongue. As a non- first language , it is studied mostly by non-Israeli Jews and students in Israel, by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations , and by theologians in Christian seminaries . The modern English word "Hebrew"

4585-826: Is the famous Moabite Stone , written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam inscription , found near Jerusalem , is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Archaic Hebrew include the ostraca found near Lachish , which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE. In its widest sense, Biblical Hebrew refers to the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing between c.  1000 BCE and c.  400 CE . It comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after important literary works associated with them. Sometimes

4716-405: Is the primary official language of the State of Israel. As of 2013 , there are about 9 million Hebrew speakers worldwide, of whom 7 million speak it fluently. Currently, 90% of Israeli Jews are proficient in Hebrew, and 70% are highly proficient. Some 60% of Israeli Arabs are also proficient in Hebrew, and 30% report having a higher proficiency in Hebrew than in Arabic. In total, about 53% of

4847-536: Is used to pronounce the Hebrew Bible; however, properly it should be distinguished from the historical Biblical Hebrew of the 6th century BCE, whose original pronunciation must be reconstructed. Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the scholarship of the Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who added vowel points and grammar points to the Hebrew letters to preserve much earlier features of Hebrew, for use in chanting

4978-630: The Chayei Adam in Hebrew, as opposed to Yiddish , as a guide to Halacha for the " average 17-year-old" (Ibid. Introduction 1). Similarly, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan 's purpose in writing the Mishnah Berurah was to "produce a work that could be studied daily so that Jews might know the proper procedures to follow minute by minute". The work was nevertheless written in Talmudic Hebrew and Aramaic, since, "the ordinary Jew [of Eastern Europe] of

5109-464: The 2008–2009 Gaza war , an unidentified Israeli soldier was shot and injured by a Hamas fighter during a search of a house in one of the neighbourhoods of Gaza. The Hannibal directive was declared. The wounded soldiers' comrades evacuated the house due to fears that it was booby-trapped. According to testimony by soldiers who took part in the incident the house was then shelled to prevent the wounded soldier from being captured alive by Hamas. According to

5240-458: The Battle of Shuja'iyya , on July 20, 2014, Hamas fired an anti-tank missile at an IDF armored personnel carrier carrying seven soldiers, including St.-Sgt. Oron Shaul. Hamas claimed to have captured an IDF soldier named "Aron Shaul", corroborating its claim with the soldier's "photo ID and credentials". The IDF later stated that the body of Oron Shaul had not been identified among the dead found inside

5371-453: The Be'eri massacre . On 18 December the IDF confirmed that Israeli combatants “fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7," but added that "beyond the operational investigations of the events, it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents due to the immense and complex quantity of them that took place in the kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities due to the challenging situations

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5502-633: The Canaanite languages , it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period ) and Samaritanism . The language was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and is the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival . It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with

5633-503: The Euphrates , Jordan or Litani ; or maybe the northern Arabian Desert between Babylonia and Canaan ). Compare the word Habiru or cognate Assyrian ebru , of identical meaning. One of the earliest references to the language's name as " Ivrit " is found in the prologue to the Book of Sirach , from the 2nd century BCE. The Hebrew Bible does not use the term "Hebrew" in reference to

5764-664: The Gaza War in 2009, Lt. Col. Shuki Ribak, the commander of the Golani Brigade 's 51st battalion, instructed his soldiers to avoid kidnapping at any cost and even made clear that he expected his soldiers to commit suicide rather than being abducted: [N]o soldier in Battalion 51 will be kidnapped at any price. At any price. Under any condition. Even if it means that he blows himself with his own grenade together with those trying to capture him. Also even if it means that now his unit has to fire

5895-557: The Gospel of Matthew . (See the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis or Language of Jesus for more details on Hebrew and Aramaic in the gospels.) The term "Mishnaic Hebrew" generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud , excepting quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew (also called Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which

6026-586: The IDF General Staff in October 2013, but neither the corresponding orders at the IDF Southern Command , nor the one at the Gaza Division had been similarly updated by July 2014. The three different, simultaneously current, versions of the directive could therefore be interpreted in different ways, especially on the sensitive question of the value of a soldier's life. Israeli officials insisted that

6157-556: The Maalot Massacre . In cases where Israeli soldiers were captured and no military solution was found, Israel was forced to negotiate with the captors for an exchange of prisoners. Large parts of the Israeli public would not accept abandoning captured soldiers to their fate. In 1970, a member of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement ( Fatah ) entered Israel from Lebanon and abducted a security guard in

6288-655: The Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BCE) and the emergence of the Hasmonean kingdom , the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). The nationalist significance of Hebrew manifested in various ways throughout this period. Michael Owen Wise notes that "Beginning with the time of the Hasmonean revolt [...] Hebrew came to the fore in an expression akin to modern nationalism. A form of classical Hebrew

6419-469: The PLO ) and three by the pro-Syrian PFLP-GC . In 1983, Israel agreed to free 4,700 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, including several high ranking PLO officers, for the six IDF soldiers held captive by Fatah. The following year Israel agreed to free another 1,150 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Many were allowed to remain in Israeli controlled territory. According to Haaretz reporter Leibovich-Dar,

6550-525: The Second Aliyah , it replaced a score of languages spoken by Jews at that time. Those languages were Jewish dialects of local languages, including Judaeo-Spanish (also called "Judezmo" and "Ladino"), Yiddish , Judeo-Arabic and Bukhori (Tajiki), or local languages spoken in the Jewish diaspora such as Russian , Persian and Arabic . The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along

6681-455: The literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language . However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by different grammar and style, in the writings of people like Ahad Ha'am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into

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6812-456: The medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy , rabbinic literature , intra-Jewish commerce, and Jewish poetic literature . The first dated book printed in Hebrew was published by Abraham Garton in Reggio ( Calabria , Italy) in 1475. With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, the Hebrew language experienced a full-scale revival as a spoken and literary language. The creation of

6943-476: The "most devastating" use of the Hannibal Directive to date. In December 2014, audio recordings from the IDF's communication system were obtained by Ynet . This evidence, in addition to the July 2015 release of full transcripts from the IDF's communication system, reveal the initiation of the Hannibal Directive. However, an IDF investigation denied that the "Hannibal Procedure" was implemented, despite admitting to using

7074-547: The 1980s in the USSR , Hebrew studies reappeared due to people struggling for permission to go to Israel ( refuseniks ). Several of the teachers were imprisoned, e.g. Yosef Begun , Ephraim Kholmyansky , Yevgeny Korostyshevsky and others responsible for a Hebrew learning network connecting many cities of the USSR. Standard Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was based on Mishnaic spelling and Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation. However,

7205-601: The 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted as neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921 (along with English and Arabic), and then in 1948 became an official language of

7336-746: The Aramaized Rabbinic Hebrew of the Talmud. Hebrew persevered through the ages as the main language for written purposes by all Jewish communities around the world for a large range of uses—not only liturgy, but also poetry, philosophy, science and medicine, commerce, daily correspondence and contracts. There have been many deviations from this generalization such as Bar Kokhba 's letters to his lieutenants, which were mostly in Aramaic, and Maimonides' writings, which were mostly in Arabic; but overall, Hebrew did not cease to be used for such purposes. For example,

7467-503: The British Mandate who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. After the establishment of Israel, it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language . The results of Ben-Yehuda's lexicographical work were published in a dictionary ( The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew , Ben-Yehuda Dictionary ). The seeds of Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by

7598-416: The Great conquered Babylon, he allowed the Jewish people to return from captivity. In time, a local version of Aramaic came to be spoken in Israel alongside Hebrew. By the beginning of the Common Era , Aramaic was the primary colloquial language of Samarian , Babylonian and Galileean Jews, and western and intellectual Jews spoke Greek , but a form of so-called Rabbinic Hebrew continued to be used as

7729-437: The Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes inherited a biblical text whose letters were considered too sacred to be altered, so their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters. The Syriac alphabet , precursor to the Arabic alphabet , also developed vowel pointing systems around this time. The Aleppo Codex , a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written in the 10th century, likely in Tiberias, and survives into

7860-537: The IDF ordered the Hannibal Directive to be used during the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel . In September 2024 ABC News reported on the use of the Hannibal Directive on October 7. Dr. Avner Shiftan , an army physician with the rank of major, came across the Hannibal directive while on reserve duty in South Lebanon in 1999. In army briefings he "became aware of a procedure ordering soldiers to kill any IDF soldier if he should be taken captive by Hezbollah. This procedure struck me as being illegal and not consistent with

7991-409: The IDF spokesman, however, the soldier was already dead, killed by terrorist gun fire. In 2009, Israeli civilian Yakir Ben-Melech was shot dead by Israeli security guards while trying to enter the Gaza Strip from Israel, by jumping the fence at the Erez crossing . He was a mental patient of Yehuda Abarbanel Mental Health Center , who, according to family members, wanted to contact Hamas , to secure

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8122-445: The Israeli military while they were there. In an interview with Israel's Haaretz weekly Hebrew pod, Lieut. Col. Nof Erez explained that the IDF was more or less wiped out on the ground on the Gaza border. There was no one that helicopter or drone pilots could communicate with. This made the identification of persons on the ground very difficult. According to Erez, "the Hannibal [Protocol], for which we have been conducting drills over

8253-454: The Israeli population speaks Hebrew as a native language, while most of the rest speak it fluently. In 2013 Hebrew was the native language of 49% of Israelis over the age of 20, with Russian , Arabic , French , English , Yiddish and Ladino being the native tongues of most of the rest. Some 26% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and 12% of Arabs reported speaking Hebrew poorly or not at all. Steps have been taken to keep Hebrew

8384-417: The Middle East was the closely related Aramaic language, then Greek , scholarly opinions on the exact dating of that shift have changed very much. In the first half of the 20th century, most scholars followed Abraham Geiger and Gustaf Dalman in thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel as early as the beginning of Israel's Hellenistic period in the 4th century BCE, and that as

8515-449: The Talmud, the Gemara , generally comments on the Mishnah and Baraitot in two forms of Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew, which occasionally appears in the text of the Gemara, particularly in the Jerusalem Talmud and the classical aggadah midrashes . Hebrew was always regarded as the language of Israel's religion, history and national pride, and after it faded as

8646-406: The Talmud, various regional literary dialects of Medieval Hebrew evolved. The most important is Tiberian Hebrew or Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect of Tiberias in Galilee that became the standard for vocalizing the Hebrew Bible and thus still influences all other regional dialects of Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century CE is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew" because it

8777-400: The United Nations' investigation, the United Nations' Gaza Inquiry investigation alleged that war crimes were committed by both Israel and armed Palestinian groups, presumably Hamas. The massive Israeli bombardment killed between 135 and 200 Palestinian civilians, including 75 children, in the three hours following the suspected capture of the one Israeli soldier. Haaretz reported this to be

8908-462: The West Bank and outside Israel in peace time and a general directive for war time. Very little is known about the content of these directives or the eventual differences between them. One general difference between the new and the previous Hannibal directive is that now it is clearly stated that, in case of an attempted abduction, soldiers should fire at the abductors "while avoiding hitting the captive". A July 2024 Haaretz investigation revealed that

9039-495: The abductors was attacked, killing its crew. Attempts to rescue the bodies of the tank crew led to further IDF losses. By the time the Israeli government convened to decide how to respond to the attack, Israel – according to Gazit – "was already at war". The Hannibal Directive was officially revoked by the military in 2016. The directive was replaced by three separate directives in January 2017. They were named "True Test", "Tourniquet" and "Guardian of life" and dealt with abductions in

9170-422: The ability to speak the language and attempted to promote its use. According to the Jerusalem Talmud , Megillah 1:9: "Rebbi Jonathan from Bet Guvrrin said, four languages are appropriate that the world should use them, and they are these: The Foreign Language (Greek) for song, Latin for war, Syriac for elegies, Hebrew for speech. Some are saying, also Assyrian (Hebrew script) for writing." The later section of

9301-411: The above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are simplified into "Biblical Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 10th century BCE to 2nd century BCE and extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE and extant in certain other Dead Sea Scrolls). However, today most Hebrew linguists classify Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew as

9432-502: The average Jew, and that the language had evolved since Biblical times as spoken languages do. Recent scholarship recognizes that reports of Jews speaking in Aramaic indicate a multilingual society, not necessarily the primary language spoken. Alongside Aramaic, Hebrew co-existed within Israel as a spoken language. Most scholars now date the demise of Hebrew as a spoken language to the end of the Roman period , or about 200 CE. It continued on as

9563-535: The beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British Palestine. At the time, members of the Old Yishuv and a very few Hasidic sects, most notably those under the auspices of Satmar , refused to speak Hebrew and spoke only Yiddish. In the Soviet Union, the use of Hebrew, along with other Jewish cultural and religious activities,

9694-401: The bodies of the tank crew. The Hannibal directive triggered instant aerial surveillance and airstrikes inside Lebanon to limit Hezbollah's ability to move the soldiers it had seized. "If we had found them, we would have hit them, even if it meant killing the soldiers," a senior Israeli official said. The bodies of the two soldiers were returned in an exchange with Hezbollah in July 2008. During

9825-562: The city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that, through the Greeks and Etruscans , later became the Latin alphabet of ancient Rome . The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels , and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places in which later Hebrew spelling requires them. Numerous older tablets have been found in

9956-483: The commanding officer who invoked the Hannibal procedure, was asked if it did not occur to him that by firing at the cars he might also kill the abducted soldiers. He answered that when he saw the jeep, he realized that they were no longer alive. Tank gunner Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid from Gaza 25 June 2006. Two IDF soldiers were killed in the attack and another two were wounded. Shalit

10087-596: The composition of 1 Maccabees in archaizing Hebrew, Hasmonean coinage under John Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE), and coins from both the Great Revolt and Bar Kokhba Revolt featuring exclusively Hebrew and Palaeo-Hebrew script inscriptions. This deliberate use of Hebrew and Paleo-Hebrew script in official contexts, despite limited literacy, served as a symbol of Jewish nationalism and political independence. The Christian New Testament contains some Semitic place names and quotes. The language of such Semitic glosses (and in general

10218-563: The dialects of Classical Hebrew that functioned as a living language in the land of Israel. A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with the completion of the Mishnah. These include the halachic Midrashim ( Sifra , Sifre , Mekhilta etc.) and the expanded collection of Mishnah-related material known as the Tosefta . The Talmud contains excerpts from these works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested elsewhere;

10349-481: The directive does not permit killing IDF soldiers to prevent abduction. In case of the abduction of Gilad Shalit , invocation of the Hannibal Directive occurred too late to have any influence on the course of events. Israeli newspapers including Haaretz , ABC News and the UN's Commission of Inquiry have pointed out that during the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel the IDF ordered the Hannibal Directive to be used. The IDF

10480-468: The directive had been used on several occasions on that day, starting with a 7:18 a.m. order for the situation at Erez border crossing. On 5 December 2023, Israeli hostages released by Hamas met with Benjamin Netanyahu 's war cabinet and claimed that, during the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel they were deliberately attacked by Israeli helicopters on their way into Gaza, and were shelled constantly by

10611-569: The directive's name was a random computer-generated designation; however, Hannibal , the Carthaginian general, is said to have preferred suicide by poison rather than being taken prisoner by his Roman enemies. According to statements by several Israeli officials, the aim of the directive is to prevent the capture of an IDF soldier by enemy forces, even by risking the soldier's life or the lives of scores of non-Israeli civilians. Israeli spokespersons claim that IDF forces are forbidden to attempt to kill

10742-513: The earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew had Yiddish as their native language and often introduced calques from Yiddish and phono-semantic matchings of international words. Despite using Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation as its primary basis, modern Israeli Hebrew has adapted to Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology in some respects, mainly the following: The vocabulary of Israeli Hebrew is much larger than that of earlier periods. According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann : The number of attested Biblical Hebrew words

10873-570: The early 6th century BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered the ancient Kingdom of Judah , destroying much of Jerusalem and exiling its population far to the east in Babylon . During the Babylonian captivity , many Israelites learned Aramaic, the closely related Semitic language of their captors. Thus, for a significant period, the Jewish elite became influenced by Aramaic. After Cyrus

11004-507: The filter of the Military Advocate General's Office, and if they were not involved that is very grave", he said. "The reason is that an order that knowingly permits the death of soldiers to be brought about, even if the intentions were different, carries a black flag and is a flagrantly illegal order that undermines the most central values of our social norms". Harel writes that a kind of " Oral Law " has developed inside IDF, which

11135-436: The finding of what he claims to be the oldest known Hebrew inscription, a curse tablet found at Mount Ebal , dated from around 3200 years ago. The presence of the Hebrew name of god , Yahweh, as three letters, Yod-Heh-Vav (YHV), according to the author and his team meant that the tablet is Hebrew and not Canaanite. However, practically all professional archeologists and epigraphers apart from Stripling's team claim that there

11266-703: The first Middle East printing press, in Safed (modern Israel), produced a small number of books in Hebrew in 1577, which were then sold to the nearby Jewish world. This meant not only that well-educated Jews in all parts of the world could correspond in a mutually intelligible language, and that books and legal documents published or written in any part of the world could be read by Jews in all other parts, but that an educated Jew could travel and converse with Jews in distant places, just as priests and other educated Christians could converse in Latin. For example, Rabbi Avraham Danzig wrote

11397-406: The generic term for these passages is Baraitot . The dialect of all these works is very similar to Mishnaic Hebrew. About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language. By the third century CE, sages could no longer identify the Hebrew names of many plants mentioned in the Mishnah. Only a few sages, primarily in the southern regions, retained

11528-487: The holy tongue ' or ' the tongue [of] holiness ' ) since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible , but as Yehudit ( transl.  ' Judean ' ) or Səpaṯ Kəna'an ( transl.  "the language of Canaan " ). Mishnah Gittin 9:8 refers to the language as Ivrit , meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit , meaning Assyrian , which

11659-469: The intelligence officer, Colonel Yaakov Amidror . The order was secret, and its existence was denied by Israeli military authorities. The exact wording of the directive was not known, though Leibovich-Dar claimed that it had been updated several times over the years. Anshel Pfeffer , writing in The Jerusalem Post , described the order in 2006 as the "rumored" standard procedure in the eventuality of

11790-574: The language of the Hebrew people; its later historiography, in the Book of Kings , refers to it as יְהוּדִית Yehudit " Judahite (language)". Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages . Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages. Hebrew was the spoken language in the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE. Epigraphic evidence from this period confirms

11921-458: The language spoken by Jews in scenes from the New Testament) is often referred to as "Hebrew" in the text, although this term is often re-interpreted as referring to Aramaic instead and is rendered accordingly in recent translations. Nonetheless, these glosses can be interpreted as Hebrew as well. It has been argued that Hebrew, rather than Aramaic or Koine Greek, lay behind the composition of

12052-464: The language. The revival of the Hebrew language as a mother tongue was initiated in the late 19th century by the efforts of Ben-Yehuda. He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 immigrated to Palestine , then a part of the Ottoman Empire . Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora " shtetl " lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making

12183-494: The languages themselves in that period, remains unclear", and suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic period , the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon . Classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew , the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after

12314-500: The last incident where the Hannibal directive was officially declared. Some commentators have argued that the Hannibal directive, previously understood to generally apply to situations involving IDF soldiers, enemy combatants and possibly non-Israeli civilians (with the goal of avoiding a repetition of the Ahmad Jibril , Samir Kuntar and Gilad Shalit prisoner exchanges thought as unfavorable for Israel), but not to Israeli civilians,

12445-548: The moral code of the IDF. I understood that it was not a local procedure but originated in the General Staff , and had the feeling that a direct approach to the army authorities would be of no avail, but would end in a cover-up." He contacted Asa Kasher , the Israeli philosopher noted for his authorship of Israel Defense Forces' Code of Conduct , who "found it difficult to believe that such an order exists" since this "is wrong ethically, legally and morally". He doubted that "there

12576-600: The motivation for the directive was the capture of two Israeli soldiers during a Hezbollah ambush in South Lebanon in June 1986. Both soldiers presumably died during the attack, and their bodies were returned to Israel in an exchange with Hezbollah in 1996. The directive developers were three top officers of the IDF Northern Command : Major General Yossi Peled , the command's operations officer; Colonel Gabi Ashkenazi ; and

12707-720: The newly declared State of Israel . Hebrew is the most widely spoken language in Israel today. In the Modern Period, from the 19th century onward, the literary Hebrew tradition revived as the spoken language of modern Israel, called variously Israeli Hebrew , Modern Israeli Hebrew , Modern Hebrew , New Hebrew , Israeli Standard Hebrew , Standard Hebrew and so on. Israeli Hebrew exhibits some features of Sephardic Hebrew from its local Jerusalemite tradition but adapts it with numerous neologisms, borrowed terms (often technical) from European languages and adopted terms (often colloquial) from Arabic. The literary and narrative use of Hebrew

12838-406: The northernmost Israeli town of Metula . He did this in order to secure a swap of the guard for a senior member of Fatah, jailed in Israel. In 1979, Israel agreed to exchange an Israeli POW held by Palestinians for 76 convicted Palestinian militants in Israeli jails. After the 1982 Lebanon War , Palestinian forces imprisoned nine IDF soldiers as POWs . Six were held by Fatah (the main faction of

12969-582: The other being Aramaic , still spoken today. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew , with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity . For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh ( לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶש , lit.   '

13100-449: The past 20 years, relates to the case a single vehicle containing hostages: you know which part of the fence it comes through, what side of the road it would move to and even which road... What we saw here was a "mass Hannibal". There were many openings in the fence. Thousands of people in many different vehicles, both with hostages and without hostages". The Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 reported on 16 December that IDF forces had shot at

13231-522: The phrase on IDF field radios. The IDF investigation concluded that 41 people were killed, 12 of them Hamas combatants. Asa Kasher , a winner of the Israel Prize and the author of the IDF's ethical code, disagreed with the IDF's report while speaking at a conference of the Tzohar Zionist rabbinical organization . Kasher stated that a soldier had been killed during the summer of 2014 by his comrades due to

13362-630: The present day. It is perhaps the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence. During the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain , important work was done by grammarians in explaining the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew; much of this was based on the work of the grammarians of Classical Arabic . Important Hebrew grammarians were Judah ben David Hayyuj , Jonah ibn Janah , Abraham ibn Ezra and later (in Provence ), David Kimhi . A great deal of poetry

13493-620: The primary language of use, and to prevent large-scale incorporation of English words into the Hebrew vocabulary. The Academy of the Hebrew Language of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem currently invents about 2,000 new Hebrew words each year for modern words by finding an original Hebrew word that captures the meaning, as an alternative to incorporating more English words into Hebrew vocabulary. The Haifa municipality has banned officials from using English words in official documents, and

13624-438: The public and reservist soldiers" but was revised and reinstated by IDF Chief-of-Staff Benny Gantz after the abduction of Gilad Shalit in June 2006. The revised order stated that IDF commanders may take whatever action is necessary, even at the risk of endangering the life of an abducted soldier, to foil an abduction, but it does not allow them to kill an abducted Israeli soldier. The post-2006 version gave local field commanders

13755-431: The reformulation of the protocol. Two versions of the Hannibal Directive may have existed simultaneously at times: a written version, accessible only to the upper echelon of the IDF, and an "oral law" version for division commanders and lower levels. In the latter version, "by all means" was often interpreted literally, as in "an IDF soldier was 'better dead than abducted ' ". In 2011, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz stated

13886-451: The region was Old Aramaic . Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language by late antiquity , but it continued to be used as a literary language, especially in Spain, as the language of commerce between Jews of different native languages, and as the liturgical language of Judaism, evolving various dialects of literary Medieval Hebrew , until its revival as a spoken language in the late 19th century. In May 2023, Scott Stripling published

14017-431: The region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example, Proto-Sinaitic . It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to Egyptian hieroglyphs , though the phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite , and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from that of Egyptian. One ancient document

14148-403: The release of Israeli captive Gilad Shalit . According to Shlomo Saban, director of the Erez crossing, several warning shots were fired, after which the man was shot in the leg, an injury that caused extensive loss of blood and eventually led to his death. Reportedly, the Hannibal Directive was declared when Ben-Melech tried to jump the fence and he was shot, not by IDF soldiers but by members of

14279-711: The rest of the Middle East; and eventually Greek functioned as another international language with the eastern areas of the Roman Empire. William Schniedewind argues that after waning in the Persian period, the religious importance of Hebrew grew in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and cites epigraphical evidence that Hebrew survived as a vernacular language – though both its grammar and its writing system had been substantially influenced by Aramaic. According to another summary, Greek

14410-465: The right to invoke Hannibal and take action, without waiting for superior officers' confirmation. Former head of Israeli military intelligence (1974–1978) Shlomo Gazit criticised the fact that a low level officer ("a corporal") could invoke the Hannibal Directive, with such potentially far reaching consequences. The invocation of the Hannibal Directive in the 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid had far-reaching consequences. An IDF tank sent in pursuit of

14541-442: The soldiers were in at the time." In January, an investigation by Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth concluded that the IDF had in practice applied the Hannibal Directive from noon of October 7, ordering all combat units to stop "at all costs" any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza with hostages. According to Yedioth Ahronoth , Israeli soldiers inspected around 70 vehicles on the roads leading to Gaza that had been hit by

14672-485: The southern villages of Judea." In other words, "in terms of dialect geography, at the time of the tannaim Palestine could be divided into the Aramaic-speaking regions of Galilee and Samaria and a smaller area, Judaea, in which Rabbinic Hebrew was used among the descendants of returning exiles." In addition, it has been surmised that Koine Greek was the primary vehicle of communication in coastal cities and among

14803-468: The spoken language of the Russian Jews, should be treated as their only national language, while Hebrew was to be treated as a foreign language. Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries, although liturgical texts were still published until the 1930s. Despite numerous protests, a policy of suppression of the teaching of Hebrew operated from the 1930s on. Later in

14934-406: The three hours following the capture. A second case occurred in a clash between an IDF unit and Hamas forces on July 25, 2014. After St.-Sgt. Guy Levy went missing, the Hannibal procedure was reportedly enacted. It is unknown whether Levy was captured dead or alive, and killed later by IDF fire. According to the IDF, Levy was killed by a Hamas anti-tank missile and his body seized by Hamas. During

15065-580: The upper class of Jerusalem , while Aramaic was prevalent in the lower class of Jerusalem, but not in the surrounding countryside. After the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century CE, Judaeans were forced to disperse. Many relocated to Galilee, so most remaining native speakers of Hebrew at that last stage would have been found in the north. Many scholars have pointed out that Hebrew continued to be used alongside Aramaic during Second Temple times, not only for religious purposes but also for nationalistic reasons, especially during revolts such as

15196-523: The vehicle. It is unclear if Shaul was captured alive or dead or whether the Hannibal Directive was invoked or not. Two members of the Oketz Unit (Special Forces) soldiers entered Qalandiya Refugee Camp by mistake and were confronted by a Palestinian crowd, which began throwing stones and molotov cocktails. The burning jeep was abandoned and the two soldiers got separated in the alleys of the camp. One of them retained his mobile phone, contacted IDF command and

15327-413: The widely accepted view that the earlier layers of biblical literature reflect the language used in these kingdoms. Furthermore, the content of Hebrew inscriptions suggests that the written texts closely mirror the spoken language of that time. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a spoken vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile when the predominant international language in

15458-421: Was a spoken language , and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language . The earlier section of the Talmud is the Mishnah that was published around 200 CE, although many of the stories take place much earlier, and were written in the earlier Mishnaic dialect. The dialect is also found in certain Dead Sea Scrolls. Mishnaic Hebrew is considered to be one of

15589-580: Was attacked by a Hezbollah squad with rockets and automatic fire. St.-Sgt. Adi Avitan, St.-Sgt. Benyamin Avraham and St.-Sgt. Omar Sawaid were captured and brought over the ceasefire line into Lebanon by their captors. When the abduction was discovered, the Northern Command ordered a "Hannibal situation". Israeli attack helicopters fired at 26 moving vehicles in the area since they assumed that the abducted soldiers were transported in one of them. Yossi Rephaeloff,

15720-649: Was held for five years, before being exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, which was the highest number released for a single Israeli prisoner. According to the Israeli commission of inquiry, headed by Giora Eiland , the Hannibal directive was declared more than an hour after the capture. By that time, Shalit and his captors were already well inside the Gaza strip. The declaration of Hannibal therefore had few practical consequences. On 12 July 2006, two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were captured by Hezbollah in an ambush , in which three other soldiers were killed. The Hannibal directive

15851-475: Was implemented by the IDF on a mass scale on 7 October 2023 when the IDF fired on Israeli civilian hostages while they were being driven by Hamas militants into Gaza. This would be the first time in the history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that a Palestinian kidnapping operation and subsequent IDF Hannibal reaction included Israeli civilians. An investigation by Haaretz in July 2024 concluded that

15982-462: Was introduced in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and subsequent controversial prisoner exchanges. The full text of the directive was never published, and until 2003, Israeli military censorship forbade any discussion of the subject in the press. The directive has been changed several times, and in 2016 Gadi Eizenkot ordered the formal revocation of the standing directive and

16113-407: Was invoked and a force consisting of tanks and armored personnel carriers was sent across the border to capture a Hezbollah post and block the exit routes out of the town of Ayta ash-Sha’b . A Merkava II main battle tank ran over a powerful explosive charge and was totally destroyed and its four crew killed. The rescue mission was therefore aborted. An eighth IDF soldier was killed trying to retrieve

16244-487: Was now a more significant written language than Aramaic within Judaea." This nationalist aspect was further emphasized during periods of conflict, as Hannah Cotton observing in her analysis of legal documents during the Jewish revolts against Rome that "Hebrew became the symbol of Jewish nationalism, of the independent Jewish State." The nationalist use of Hebrew is evidenced in several historical documents and artefacts, including

16375-426: Was ordered to prevent "at all costs" the abduction of Israeli civilians or soldiers, possibly leading to the death of a large number of Israeli hostages. Israel has, with several notable exceptions , adhered to the principle of not negotiating with those it considers terrorists, especially in hostage situations. This policy led to some notable successes, such as Operation Entebbe , but also to loss of human life, e.g.

16506-449: Was picked up by IDF forces. The second soldier hid in a yard, waiting to be rescued. Meanwhile "Hannibal" was declared and the camp was surrounded by large numbers of IDF forces. After less than an hour the second soldier was found unharmed. So, none of the IDF soldiers were ever captured by Palestinians. One Palestinian was killed in the clashes, while 10 Palestinians and five Israeli soldiers were wounded. The incident has been described as

16637-618: Was revived beginning with the Haskalah movement. The first secular periodical in Hebrew, Ha-Me'assef (The Gatherer), was published by maskilim in Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad ) from 1783 onwards. In the mid-19th century, publications of several Eastern European Hebrew-language newspapers (e.g. Hamagid , founded in Ełk in 1856) multiplied. Prominent poets were Hayim Nahman Bialik and Shaul Tchernichovsky ; there were also novels written in

16768-527: Was suppressed. Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew "reactionary" since it was associated with Zionism, and the teaching of Hebrew at primary and secondary schools was officially banned by the People's Commissariat for Education as early as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming to secularize education (the language itself did not cease to be studied at universities for historical and linguistic purposes ). The official ordinance stated that Yiddish, being

16899-540: Was the language of government, Hebrew the language of prayer, study and religious texts, and Aramaic was the language of legal contracts and trade. There was also a geographic pattern: according to Bernard Spolsky , by the beginning of the Common Era, " Judeo-Aramaic was mainly used in Galilee in the north, Greek was concentrated in the former colonies and around governmental centers, and Hebrew monolingualism continued mainly in

17030-408: Was to a certain extent a pidgin . Near the end of that century the Jewish activist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda , owing to the ideology of the national revival ( שיבת ציון , Shivat Tziyon , later Zionism ), began reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken language. Eventually, as a result of the local movement he created, but more significantly as a result of the new groups of immigrants known under the name of

17161-570: Was written, by poets such as Dunash ben Labrat , Solomon ibn Gabirol , Judah ha-Levi , Moses ibn Ezra and Abraham ibn Ezra , in a "purified" Hebrew based on the work of these grammarians, and in Arabic quantitative or strophic meters. This literary Hebrew was later used by Italian Jewish poets. The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from Classical Greek and Medieval Arabic motivated Medieval Hebrew to borrow terminology and grammar from these other languages, or to coin equivalent terms from existing Hebrew roots, giving rise to

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