187-467: Yitzhak Ben-Zvi ( Hebrew : יִצְחָק בֶּן־צְבִי Yitshak Ben-Tsvi ; 24 November 1884 – 23 April 1963; born Izaak Shimshelevich ) was a historian, ethnologist, Labor Zionist leader and the longest-serving President of Israel . He was first elected on 8 December 1952, assumed office on 16 December 1952, and continued to serve in the position until his death. As a scholar, Ben-Zvi conducted extensive research on Jewish communities in
374-674: 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
561-462: A Jewish majority and state—and the fact that at present the overwhelming majority of Palestine's population was Arab". In the essay, Ben-Zvi argued that Arabs in Palestine did not constitute a unified national entity and that Palestinian Arab nationalism was essentially inauthentic, indirectly denying their right to self-determination. He further stated that there was no true Arab liberation movement among
748-583: 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
935-649: 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
1122-562: 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
1309-579: 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
1496-655: A grandchild of a Jew), the legal right to assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, as well as Israeli citizenship. Someone who "makes aliyah " is called an oleh (m.; pl. olim ) or olah (f.; pl. olot ). Many religious Jews espouse aliyah as a return to the Promised Land , and regard it as the fulfillment of God 's biblical promise to the descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham , Isaac , and Jacob . Nachmanides (the Ramban) includes making aliyah in his enumeration of
1683-596: A higher geographic elevation . The reason is that many Jews in early rabbinic times used to live either in Egypt's Nile Delta and on the plains of Babylonia , which lay relatively low; or somewhere in the Mediterranean Basin , from where they arrived by ship. It is noteworthy that various references in the earlier books of the Bible indicate that Egypt was considered as being "below" other countries, so that going to Egypt
1870-567: A historian and ethnologist , he published a book about the Samaritans in 1935 titled Book of the Samaritans (an updated edition followed in 1976). As a leader of the Jewish Agency and the National Council, and finally as president, Ben Zvi was viewed by the Samaritans as an appropriate person to address their grievances. Ben Gurion learned about the Samaritans from Ben-Zvi, and he also backed
2057-463: 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
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#17330850629222244-722: 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
2431-415: A new suburb of Jaffa established in 1909, eventually grew to become the city of Tel Aviv . During this period, some of the underpinnings of an independent nation-state arose: Hebrew , the ancient national language, was revived as a spoken language; newspapers and literature written in Hebrew were published; political parties and workers organizations were established. The First World War effectively ended
2618-599: A political, social, economic, and spiritual overview of the Jewish population in the Land of Israel over 400 years (1517–1917), gathering and analyzing Arabic and Turkish documents. Following his 1922 publication entitled "The Jewish Settlement in the Village of Peki'in ," he began researching agricultural settlements preceding modern settlement in the Land of Israel. His studies on Shefar'am , Kafr Yasif , Hasbaya , and others were compiled in
2805-548: A price of $ 2,500 and later at $ 3,300 per head." A mass emigration was politically undesirable for the Soviet regime. The only acceptable ground was family reunification, and a formal petition ("вызов", vyzov ) from a relative from abroad was required for the processing to begin. Often, the result was a formal refusal . The risks to apply for an exit visa compounded because the entire family had to quit their jobs, which in turn would make them vulnerable to charges of social parasitism ,
2992-661: A right to Israeli citizenship, aliyah (returning to Israel) has both a secular and a religious significance. The first modern period of immigration to receive a number in common speech was the Third Aliyah, which in the World War ;I period was referred to as the successor to the First and Second Aliyot from Babylonia in the Biblical period. Reference to earlier modern periods as the First and Second Aliyot appeared first in 1919 and took
3179-466: A room in Jaffa, aiming to learn Arabic. He developed a fascination for the Samaritans, establishing friendships, visiting, and exchanging letters with High Priests , leaders and scholars such as Yaakov son of Aharon, Abu Shafi, and Yefet Zadaka. After learning Arabic and Samaritan Hebrew , he decided to undertake a thorough study of the Samaritans, including their religion , literature, and settlements. As
3366-535: 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
3553-622: A sign of approaching redemption and contributed greatly to the messianic spirit of the time. Aliyah was also spurred during this period by the resurgence of messianic fervor among the Jews of France , Italy , the Germanic states , Poland , Russia , and North Africa . The belief in the imminent coming of the Jewish Messiah , the ingathering of the exiles and the re-establishment of the kingdom of Israel encouraged many who had few other options to make
3740-497: A small economy and scant foreign currency reserves, could provide for the immigrants, a strict regime of rationing was put in place. Measures were enacted to ensure that all Israeli citizens had access to adequate food, housing, and clothing. Austerity was very restrictive until 1953; the previous year, Israel had signed a reparations agreement with West Germany , in which the West German government would pay Israel as compensation for
3927-603: 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
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#17330850629224114-468: 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
4301-739: A two part essay arguing that in certain circumstances Jewish national interests must take precedence over class solidarity and that Arab labourers should be excluded from Moshavot and the Jewish sector. In 1915, despite calling on Jews to become Ottoman citizens and attempting to assemble a militia in Jerusalem to fight on the Ottoman side in the First World War , both Ben Zvi and Ben Gurion were expelled to Egypt. From there they travelled to New York where they arrived wearing their tarboushes . In America they set about recruiting members of Paole Zion to fight on
4488-549: 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
4675-448: A while to catch on. The pronounced persecution of Russian Jews between 1881 and 1910 led to a large wave of emigration. Since only a small portion of East European Jews had adopted Zionism by then, between 1881 and 1914 only 30–40,000 emigrants went to Ottoman Palestine, while over one and a half million Russian Jews and 300,000 from Austria-Hungary reached Northern America. Between 1882 and 1903, approximately 35,000 Jews immigrated to
4862-511: 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
5049-481: Is a Hebrew word meaning "fondness for Zion." They were also called Hovevei Tsiyon or "enthusiasts for Zion" by the members of the groups themselves. While these groups expressed interest and "fondness" for Palestine, they were not strong enough in number to encompass an entire mass movement as would appear later on in other waves of migration. The majority, belonging to the Hovevei Zion and Bilu movements, came from
5236-477: 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
5423-526: Is characterized as the Pre-Modern Aliyah . Since the birth of Zionism in the late 19th century, the advocates of aliyah have striven to facilitate the settlement of Jewish refugees in Ottoman Palestine , Mandatory Palestine , and the sovereign State of Israel. The periodization of historical waves of Aliyah was first published after the 1917 Balfour Declaration , which created expectations of
5610-578: 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
5797-555: 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
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5984-514: 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
6171-411: 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
6358-566: 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. Aliyah Aliyah ( US : / ˌ æ l i ˈ ɑː / , UK : / ˌ ɑː -/ ; Hebrew : עֲלִיָּה ʿălīyyā , lit. ' ascent ' )
6545-728: 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"
6732-826: 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
6919-474: Is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel or the Palestine region , which is today chiefly represented by the State of Israel . Traditionally described as "the act of going up" (towards the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem ), moving to the Land of Israel or "making aliyah" is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism . The opposite action – emigration by Jews from
7106-405: 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
7293-536: 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
7480-630: 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
7667-480: The 613 commandments . Sifre says that the mitzvah (commandment) of living in Eretz Yisrael is as important as all the other mitzvot put together. There are many mitzvot such as shmita , the sabbatical year for farming, which can only be performed in Israel. For generations of religious Jews, aliyah was associated with the coming of the Jewish Messiah . Jews prayed for their Messiah to come, who
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7854-586: The Bauhaus style (the White City of Tel Aviv has the highest concentration of International Style architecture in the world with a strong element of Bauhaus) and founded the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. With the completion of the port at Haifa and its oil refineries , significant industry was added to the predominantly agricultural economy. The Jewish population reached 450,000 by 1940. At
8041-655: The Bricha of the Holocaust survivors ; the aliyah from elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the aliyah from Western and Communist countries following the Six-Day War with the 1968 Polish political crisis , as well as the aliyah from post-Soviet states in the 1990s. Today, most aliyah consists of voluntary migration for ideological, economic, or family reunification purposes. Because Jewish lineage can provide
8228-589: The Byzantine Empire in 1453 and the expulsion of Jews from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1498), many Jews made their way to the Holy Land. Some Ukrainian Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms of the Khmelnytsky Uprising of the mid-17th century also settled in the Holy Land. Then the immigration in the 18th and early 19th centuries of thousands of followers of various Kabbalist and Hassidic rabbis, as well as
8415-633: 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
8602-567: The Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo , signing cooperation agreements with them. Ben-Zvi used to participate in a weekly Gemara lesson and refused to attend the opening celebrations of a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem. Ben-Zvi died at the start of his third term on April 23, 1963. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi engaged in the study of various fields within Jewish studies, including
8789-503: 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
8976-669: The First Aliyah and the Second Aliyah to Ottoman Palestine, followed by the Third , Fourth , and Fifth Aliyah to Mandatory Palestine. Following Ruppin and Jacob Lestschinsky before him, Gurevich's use of the term Aliyah emphasized the ideological element of the immigration, despite the fact that such a motivation was not representative of the immigrants as a whole. Subsequently, named periods include Aliyah Bet (immigration done in spite of restrictive Mandatory law) between 1934 and 1948 and
9163-557: 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
9350-698: The Histadrut (General Labor Federation); an elected assembly; national council; and the Haganah , the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces . Between 1924 and 1929, 82,000 Jews arrived, many as a result of increasing anti-Semitism in Poland and throughout Europe. The vast majority of Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe mostly from Poland, the Soviet Union , Romania, and Lithuania, but about 12% came from Asia, mostly Yemen and Iraq. The immigration quotas of
9537-538: The Holocaust , due to Israel's taking in a large number of Holocaust survivors. The resulting influx of foreign capital boosted the Israeli economy and allowed for the relaxing of most restrictions. The remaining austerity measures were gradually phased out throughout the following years. When new immigrants arrived in Israel, they were sprayed with DDT , underwent a medical examination, were inoculated against diseases, and were given food. The earliest immigrants received desirable homes in established urban areas, but most of
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#17330850629229724-448: The Jewish and the Arab proletariat should unite. It was agreed to publish a party journal in Yiddish - Der Anfang . The conference also voted that Ben Zvi and Israel Shochat should attend the 8th World Zionist Congress in The Hague . Once there they were generally ignored. They ran out of money on their return journey and had to work as porters in Trieste . Back in Jaffa they held another gathering, 28 September 1907, to report on
9911-429: The Jewish Legion (1st Judean battalion 'KADIMAH') together with Ben-Gurion. He helped found the Ahdut HaAvoda party in 1919, and became increasingly active in the Haganah . On returning to Palestine he married Golda Lishansky who had remained in the country throughout the war. In 1919 he was one of the founders of Ahdut Ha'Avoda which he helped reshape as a non- Marxist , Social Democratic party, which joined
10098-433: 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
10285-493: The Mount of Olives . Kurdish Jews settled in Jerusalem starting around 1895. Between 1904 and 1914, 35–40,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman Palestine. The vast majority came from the Russian Empire , in particular from the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe. Jews from other countries in Eastern Europe such as Romania and Bulgaria also joined. Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe was largely due to pogroms and outbreaks of anti-Semitism there. However, Mountain Jews from
10472-507: The Ottoman Palestine , joining the pre-existing Jewish population which in 1880 numbered 20,000-25,000. The Jews immigrating arrived in groups that had been assembled, or recruited. Most of these groups had been arranged in the areas of Romania and Russia in the 1880s. The migration of Jews from Russia correlates with the end of the Russian pogroms, with about 3 percent of Jews emigrating from Europe to Palestine. The groups who arrived in Palestine around this time were called Hibbat Tsiyon , which
10659-400: The Russian Empire with a smaller number arriving from Yemen . Many established agricultural communities. Among the towns that these individuals established are Petah Tikva (already in 1878), Rishon LeZion , Rosh Pinna , and Zikhron Ya'akov . In 1882 the Yemenite Jews settled in the Arab village of Silwan located south-east of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem on the slopes of
10846-454: The Samaritan communities. The Ben-Zvi Institute he founded and directed continues to be an important institution for research on Jewish communities in the Middle East. Born in Poltava in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine ), Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was the eldest son of Zvi Shimshi (originally Shimshelevich), a writer and communal worker, and Karina (Atara), daughter of the rabbi Israel Leib Kupilevich. From his mother's side, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
11033-422: 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
11220-439: The United States kept Jews out. This group contained many middle-class families that moved to the growing towns, establishing small businesses, and light industry. Of these approximately 23,000 left the country. Between 1929 and 1939, with the rise of Nazism in Germany , a new wave of 250,000 immigrants arrived; the majority of these, 174,000, arrived between 1933 and 1936, after which increasing restrictions on immigration by
11407-405: The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel and the history of Jewish communities in the Arab world , and their customs. He authored over 150 scientific publications in these fields, including approximately twenty books and numerous articles on publicistic matters and research. His initial writings on the research fields he later extensively explored were penned during his journey to
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#173308506292211594-399: 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
11781-408: 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
11968-412: The world's Jewish population . The Hebrew word aliyah means "ascent" or "going up". Jewish tradition views traveling to the Land of Israel as an ascent, both geographically and metaphysically. In one opinion, the geographical sense preceded the metaphorical one, as most Jews going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem , which is situated at approximately 750 meters (2,500 feet) above sea level, had to climb to
12155-436: The 1930s and 1940s, Zionist historians began to divide the next periods of immigration to Palestine into different phases, in a form which "created and presumed the unique traits of aliyah and the Zionist enterprise". The currently accepted five-wave periodization was first published in Hebrew by sociologist David Gurevich in his 1944 work The Jewish Population of Palestine: Immigration, Demographic Structure and Natural Growth :
12342-454: 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,
12529-535: 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
12716-405: The Arab population in Palestine. Ben-Zvi asserted that the elite, Effendi , class in Palestine were exploiting Palestinian peasants ( Fellahin ), and as such, the Effendis had no popular support among the indigenous inhabitants. Zionism, Ben-Zvi concluded, was good for the Palestinian peasants since they are "interested in the expansion of employment and industry in the country and the improvement of
12903-579: 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,
13090-598: The Ben-Yehuda family's property on 17 Alharizi Street for the President's Residence. At their home, they performed the traditional duties of the president. Each month, on the eve of the new month, representatives from diverse Jewish communities were welcomed. Throughout Ben-Zvi's tenure, delegates from Jewish communities spanning North Africa , Iran , Bukhara , Hungary , Babylonia , Romania , Kurdistan , Czechoslovakia , Egypt , Italy , India , Greece , Bulgaria , United Kingdom , Ireland , and Latin America visited in this capacity. As part of Rachel's official activities,
13277-503: 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
13464-517: The British Mandate, and illegal immigration escalated rapidly as many Holocaust survivors joined the aliyah. After Aliyah Bet, the process of numbering or naming individual aliyot ceased, but immigration did not. A major wave of Jewish immigration, mainly from post-Holocaust Europe and the Arab and Muslim world took place from 1948 to 1951. In three and a half years, the Jewish population of Israel, which
13651-558: The British made immigration clandestine and illegal, called Aliyah Bet . The Fifth Aliyah was again driven almost entirely from Europe, mostly from Central Europe (particularly from Poland , Germany , Austria , and Czechoslovakia ), but also from Greece . Some Jewish immigrants also came from other countries such as Turkey , Iran , and Yemen . The Fifth Aliyah contained large numbers of professionals, doctors, lawyers, and professors, from Germany. Refugee architects and musicians introduced
13838-495: The Caucasus and Jews from other countries including Yemen, Iran , and Argentina also arrived at this time. The Eastern European Jewish immigrants of this period, greatly influenced by socialist ideals, established the first kibbutz , Degania Alef , in 1909 and formed self-defense organizations, such as Hashomer , to counter increasing Arab hostility and to help Jews to protect their communities from Arab marauders. Ahuzat Bayit,
14025-714: The Central Committee. The following year Ben Zvi was one of the founding members of Hashomer . In Jaffa Ben Zvi found work as a teacher. In 1909, he organized the Gymnasia Rehavia high school in the Bukhari quarter of Jerusalem together with Rachel Yanait . In spring of 1910 Poale Zion (Palestine) decided to launch a Socialist Hebrew language periodical in Jerusalem. It was called Ha'ahdut and Ben Zvi persuaded Ben Gurion to join as proof reader and translator. The Haredi community in Jerusalem refused to rent them rooms. At
14212-536: The Dead Sea Scrolls, contributing to the study of Jewish history and culture. Additionally, he was involved preserving biblical manuscripts from Jewish communities in the Arab world, notably the Aleppo Codex , which became a focal point of his research and publications. During his time in Vilnius , Ben-Zvi's first article, "די יידישע אומוואנדערונגען" was published, examining the history of the Jewish diaspora and exploring
14399-565: The French port of Sète aboard President Warfield (renamed Exodus ). The British turned them back to France from Haifa, and forced them ashore in Hamburg. Despite British efforts to curb the illegal immigration, during the 14 years of its operation, 110,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine. In 1945 reports of the Holocaust with its 6 million Jewish killed, caused many Jews in Palestine to turn openly against
14586-516: 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
14773-689: The Hague conference. On the first evening of the conference a group of nine men met in Ben Zvi's room where, swearing themselves to secrecy with Shochat as their leader, they agreed to set up an underground military organisation - Bar-Giora , named after Simon Bar Giora . Its slogan was: " Judea fell in blood and fire; Judea shall rise again in blood and fire." David Ben-Gurion was not invited to join and it had been his policies which were overturned in April. Despite this Ben Zvi tried unsuccessfully to invite Ben Gurion onto
14960-588: 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
15147-455: The Hebrews of living in Egypt of being enemies who in time of war might "Fight against us, and so get them up out of the land". Widespread use of the term Aliyah to describe ideologically inspired Jewish immigration to Palestine / Israel is due to Arthur Ruppin 's 1930 work Soziologie der Juden . Aliyah has also been defined, by sociologists such as Aryeh Tartakower , as immigration for
15334-454: 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
15521-464: The Jewish Agency under which 50,000 German Jews and $ 100 million worth of their assets would be moved to Palestine. The British government limited Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine with quotas, and following the rise of Nazism to power in Germany , illegal immigration to Mandatory Palestine commenced. The illegal immigration was known as Aliyah Bet ("secondary immigration"), or Ha'apalah , and
15708-590: The Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine. When Israel gained its independence, Ben-Zvi was among the signers of its Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. He served in the First and Second Knessets for the Mapai party. In 1951, Ben-Zvi was appointed one of the acting members of the Government Naming Committee , whose duty was to decide on appropriate names for newly constructed settlements. After
15895-498: The Jewish exiles living in Babylon to their home city of Jerusalem in 459 BC. Even those Jews who did not end up returning gave their children names like Yashuv-Tzadik and Yaeliyahu which testified to their desire to return. Jews returned to the Land of Israel throughout the Second Temple period . Herod the Great also encouraged aliyah and often gave key posts, such as the position of High Priest , to returnees. In late antiquity,
16082-506: The Jewish year 5600, Christian year 1840, a movement documented in Arie Morgenstern's Hastening Redemption . There were also those who like the British mystic Laurence Oliphant tried to lease Northern Palestine to settle the Jews there (1879). Jewish immigration to Palestine began in earnest following the 1839 Tanzimat reforms; between 1840 and 1880, the Jewish population of Palestine rose from 9,000 to 23,000. In Zionist history,
16269-462: The Jews (both of which were regarded as "co-nationals"), their price was "calculated". Ceaușescu, happy with these policies, even declared that " oil , Germans, and Jews are our most important export commodities". Israeli government paid to facilitate aliyah, and around 235,000 people emigrated from Romania to Israel under this agreement. When Romania was under control of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej , he received 10 million dollars per year, and only he had
16456-478: The Land of Israel , including those that existed before the foundation of the modern State of Israel . He preserved oral histories , gathered firsthand accounts and documentary evidence, and published a number of books and articles on the subject. He shed light on their traditions, language , folklore , and religious practices through his work, which frequently focused on the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish as well as
16643-432: The Land of Israel in 1904, during which he visited biblical sites and was impressed by encounters with the Samaritan community , prompting further investigations. Ben-Zvi's scholarly contributions also extended to areas such as archaeology, epigraphy, and topography, where he delved into the traditions of fellahin and Bedouins . Following the establishment of Israel, he turned his attention to significant discoveries like
16830-587: The Land of Israel were compiled in the books Our Neighbors in the Land and The Population of the Land of Israel. His studies on the Samaritan community were collected in Book of the Samaritans . Ben-Zvi's area of interest encompassed the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel from the destruction of the Second Temple to the Zionist revival. His book, Eretz Israel and Its Settlement During Ottoman Rule , provided
17017-526: The Land of Israel – is referred to in the Hebrew language as yerida ( lit. ' descent ' ). The Law of Return that was passed by the Israeli parliament in 1950 gives all diaspora Jews, as well as their children and grandchildren, the right to relocate to Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship on the basis of connecting to their Jewish identity . For much of their history , most Jews have lived in
17204-417: 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
17391-527: The Middle East, later named the Ben-Zvi Institute (Yad Ben-Zvi) in his honor. The Ben-Zvi Institute occupies Nissim Valero's house. His main field of research was the Jewish communities and sects of Asia and Africa, including the Samaritans and Karaites . Ben-Zvi had a unique relationship with the Samaritan community . His first encounters with the community were in 1908, when he first met the elder Abraham son of Marhiv Zeadaka Hazafrir, from whom he rented
17578-438: The Ottoman side. When this failed he and Ben Gurion embarked on educating Paole Zion followers on the settlement projects in Palestine. This resulted in the publication of Eretz Israel - Past and Present (1918) which ran to several editions, selling 25,000 copies. Initially Ben Zvi was to be co-editor but Ben Gurion ended up dominating all aspects and despite writing about a third Ben Zvi got little recognition. Ben-Zvi served in
17765-462: The Poale Zion conference held in April 1911, Ben Zvi announced his plan to move to Constantinople to study Ottoman law. By the following year many of the second Aliyah activists had gathered in the Ottoman capital, with Shochat, Ben Gurion, Moshe Shertok , David Remez , Golda Lishansky , Manya Wilbushewitch and Joseph Trumpeldor all there. As Poale Zion's leading theoretician in 1912 he published
17952-497: The President's residence. Two larger wooden structures in the yard were used for official receptions. During Ben-Zvi's presidency, his residence was opened to the public twice a year, during the festivals of Sukkot and Independence Day . As part of the clemency powers vested in the president, Ben-Zvi was presented, among other things, with requests for clemency for defendants in trials of public interest, including Adolf Eichmann and
18139-596: The Rachel Ben-Zvi Foundation for Israeli Children was established. Ben-Zvi believed that the president should set an example for the public, and that his home should reflect the austerity of the times. For over 26 years, he and his family lived in a wooden hut in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem. The State of Israel took interest in the adjacent house, built and owned by Nissim and Esther Valero, and purchased it after Nissim's death to provide additional space for
18326-654: 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
18513-509: 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
18700-649: The United States (especially in New York City and Los Angeles ). The first major wave of aliyah from Ethiopia took place in the mid-1970s. The massive airlift known as Operation Moses began to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel on November 18, 1984, and ended on January 5, 1985. During those six weeks, some 6,500–8,000 Ethiopian Jews were flown from Sudan to Israel. An estimated 2,000–4,000 Jews died en route to Sudan or in Sudanese refugee camps. In 1991 Operation Solomon
18887-708: The United States, Ben Zvi became leader of the Russian Poale Zion. He moved their headquarters from Poltava to Vilna and established a publishing house, the Hammer , which produced the party's paper, The Proletarian Idea . In April 1907, having been arrested twice and being under surveillance by the Tzarist secret police , Ben-Zvi made Aliyah . He traveled on forged papers. It was his second visit to Palestine . On his arrival in Jaffa he changed his name to Ben Zvi - Son of Zvi. He found
19074-480: 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
19261-470: 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
19448-435: The access to the money transferred to the secret account. Israel also bought Romanian goods and invested into Romania's economy. After his death, Ceauşescu practically sold the Jews to Israel, and received between 4,000 and 6,000$ per person. Israel could have transferred nearly 60 million dollars for the aliyah. Another estimation is higher - according to Radu Ioanid , "Ceausescu sold 40,577 Jews to Israel for $ 112,498,800, at
19635-552: 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
19822-535: 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,
20009-491: The beginning of the immigration wave, most of the immigrants to reach Israel were Holocaust survivors from Europe, including many from displaced persons camps in Germany , Austria , and Italy , and from British detention camps on Cyprus . Large sections of shattered Jewish communities throughout Europe, such as those from Poland and Romania also immigrated to Israel, with some communities, such as those from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia , being almost entirely transferred. At
20196-520: The bourgeois World Zionist Organization rather than the Communist International . With his knowledge of the Arabic language Ben Zvi was in charge of policy towards the Arabs. In 1921 he published an essay titled The Arab Movement focusing on Palestinian Arab Nationalism in which he attempted to "resolve the apparent contradiction between the long-term goal of Zionism—the creation in Palestine of
20383-458: The camps received a ration card, an identity card, a mattress, a pair of blankets, and $ 21 to $ 36 in cash. They settled either in established cities and towns, or in kibbutzim and moshavim . Many others stayed in the Ma'abarot as they were gradually turned into permanent cities and towns, which became known as development towns , or were absorbed as neighborhoods of the towns they were attached to, and
20570-476: The cause of the Samaritans residing in Israel. In 1953, Ben-Zvi was awarded the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought. Ben-Zvi's photo appears on 100 NIS bills. Many streets and boulevards in Israel are named for him. In 2008, Ben-Zvi's wooden hut was moved to Kibbutz Beit Keshet, which his son helped to found, and the interior was restored with its original furnishings. The Valero house in Rehavia neighbourhood
20757-562: 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
20944-596: 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
21131-463: The core of the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem. This was part of a larger movement of thousands of Jews from countries as widely spaced as Persia and Morocco, Yemen and Russia, who moved to Palestine beginning in the first decade of the nineteenth century – and in even larger numbers after the conquest of the region by Muhammad Ali of Egypt in 1832 – all drawn by the expectation of the arrival of the Messiah in
21318-655: The country. While many have actively chosen to settle in Israel rather than some other country, many had little or no choice about leaving their previous home countries. While Israel is commonly recognized as "a country of immigrants ", it is also, in large measure, a country of refugees , including internal refugees. Israeli citizens who marry individuals of Palestinian heritage, born within the Israeli-occupied territories and carrying Palestinian IDs, must renounce Israeli residency themselves in order to live and travel together with their spouses. The Hebrew Bible relates that
21505-502: The death of Chaim Weizmann , David Ben-Gurion proposed Yitzhak Ben-Zvi as the candidate for the presidency of the state at the party convention held on November 26, 1952. In a secret ballot, Ben-Zvi won over Yosef Sprinzak by a margin of 14 votes. On December 8, 1952, Ben-Zvi was elected to the position, subsequently re-elected in 1957 and again in 1962, supported by 62 coalition members of the Knesset, with 42 opposition members abstaining. He
21692-563: 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;
21879-410: The diaspora outside of the Land of Israel due to various historical conflicts that led to their persecution alongside multiple instances of expulsions and exoduses . In the late 19th century, 99.7% of the world's Jews lived outside the region, with Jews representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region . Despite its historical value as a national aspiration for the Jewish people , aliyah
22066-509: The different waves of aliyah , beginning with the arrival of the Biluim from Russia in 1882, are categorized by date and the country of origin of the immigrants. In the late 19th century, 99.7% of the world's Jews lived outside the region, with Jews representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region . Pre-19th century small-scale return migration of Diaspora Jews to the Land of Israel
22253-658: The disciples of the Vilna Gaon and the disciples of the Chattam Sofer , added considerably to the Jewish populations in Jerusalem , Tiberias , Hebron , and Safed . The messianic dreams of the Gaon of Vilna inspired one of the largest pre-Zionist waves of immigration to Eretz Yisrael. In 1808 hundreds of the Gaon's disciples, known as Perushim , settled in Tiberias and Safed, and later formed
22440-513: 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
22627-521: 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
22814-494: The entire Jewish population of Libya left for Israel around this time, and clandestine aliyah from Syria took place, as the Syrian government prohibited Jewish emigration, in a process that was to last decades. Israel also saw significant immigration of Jews from non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran , Turkey , and Afghanistan in this period. This resulted in a period of austerity . To ensure that Israel, which at that time had
23001-436: 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
23188-703: 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
23375-596: The founding of the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency for Israel was mandated as the organization responsible for aliyah in the diaspora. From 1948 until the early 1970s, around 900,000 Jews from Arab lands left, fled, or were expelled from various Arab nations, of which an estimated 650,000 settled in Israel. In the course of Operation Magic Carpet (1949–1950), nearly the entire community of Yemenite Jews (about 49,000) immigrated to Israel. Its other name, Operation On Wings of Eagles (Hebrew: כנפי נשרים, Kanfei Nesharim),
23562-406: 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
23749-407: The good of the community, regardless of the destination. Aliyah is an important Jewish cultural concept and a fundamental component of Zionism . It is enshrined in Israel's Law of Return , which accords any Jew (deemed as such by halakha and/or Israeli secular law ) and eligible non-Jews (a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of
23936-487: 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
24123-410: The immigrants still living in transit camps. The Israeli government built 260 new settlements and 78,000 housing units to accommodate the immigrants, and by the mid-1950s, almost all were in permanent housing. The last ma'abarot closed in 1963. In the mid-1950s, a smaller wave of immigration began from North African countries such as Morocco , Tunisia , Algeria , and Egypt , many of which were in
24310-405: The immigrants were then sent to transit camps, known initially as immigrant camps , and later as Ma'abarot . Many were also initially housed in reception centers in military barracks. By the end of 1950, some 93,000 immigrants were housed in 62 transit camps. The Israeli government's goal was to get the immigrants out of refugee housing and into society as speedily as possible. Immigrants who left
24497-507: The influence of the "isolated element" and the "comprehensive element" on Jewish integration into general society and migration patterns. In 1911, he published an essay in Ha-Shiloaḥ on the Maccabean revolt . Subsequently, his research interests focused on the Land of Israel, local history, and the study of sub-divisions and sects within the Jewish people. His writings on non-Jewish settlements in
24684-613: The killers of Rezső Kasztner . Under the clemency powers, Ben-Zvi released all the accused in the Kafr Qasim massacre . In 1958, President Ben-Zvi visited the Kingdoms of the Netherlands and Belgium at the invitation of their monarchs. In 1959, he made an official visit to Burma , then Israel's only friend in Asia. In August 1962, Ben-Zvi embarked on a state tour of Africa, during which he visited
24871-574: 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
25058-458: 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
25245-464: 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
25432-494: 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
25619-410: The local Poale Zion divided and in disarray. Slightly older and more experienced than his comrades he took command and, the following month, organised a gathering of around 80 members. He and a Rostovian - a strict Marxist group from Rostov - were elected as the new Central Committee . Two of the party's founding principles were reversed : Yiddish , not Hebrew was to be the language used and
25806-542: The midst of nationalist struggles. Between 1952 and 1964, some 240,000 North African Jews came to Israel. During this period, smaller but significant numbers arrived from other places such as Europe, Iran , India , and Latin America . In particular, a small immigration wave from then communist Poland , known as the " Gomulka Aliyah", took place during this period. From 1956 to 1960, Poland permitted free Jewish emigration, and some 50,000 Polish Jews immigrated to Israel. Since
25993-599: The murder over sixty years later, in an Israeli television interview in 1985: "I have done what the Haganah decided had to be done. And nothing was done without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. I have no regrets because he [de Haan] wanted to destroy our whole idea of Zionism." Ben Zvi was elected to the Jerusalem City Council and by 1931 served as president of the Jewish National Council , the shadow government of
26180-720: 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
26367-420: The newly formed Histadrut . In 1931 he became chair of Va'ad Leumi . According to Avraham Tehomi , Ben-Zvi ordered the 1924 murder of Jacob Israël de Haan . De Haan had come to Palestine as an ardent Zionist , but he had become increasingly critical of the Zionist organizations, preferring a negotiated solution to the armed struggle between the Jews and Arabs. This is how Tehomi acknowledged his own part in
26554-468: The newly formed Russian Poale Zion which he co-founded with Ber Borochov . Yitzhak Ben-Zvi's parents were banished to Siberia following the discovery of a cache of weapons he had concealed in their home. In 1918, Ben-Zvi married Rachel Yanait a fellow Poale Zion activist. They had two sons: Amram and Eli. Eli died in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War , defending his kibbutz , Beit Keshet . Following Borochov's arrest, March 1906, and subsequent exile in
26741-528: 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. '
26928-452: The patriarch Abraham came to the Land of Canaan with his family and followers in approximately 1800 BC. His grandson Jacob went down to Egypt with his family, and after several centuries there, the Israelites went back to Canaan under Moses and Joshua , entering it in about 1300 BC. In Zionist historiography, post the Balfour Declaration and the start of the "Third Aliyah", the "First Aliyah" and "Second Aliyah" originally referred to
27115-401: The perilous journey to the land of Israel. Pre-Zionist resettlement in Palestine met with various degrees of success. For example, little is known of the fate of the 1210 "aliyah of the three hundred rabbis" and their descendants. It is thought that few survived the bloody upheavals caused by the Crusader invasion in 1229 and their subsequent expulsion by the Muslims in 1291. After the fall of
27302-408: The period of the Second Aliyah. It is estimated that over half of those who arrived during this period ended up leaving; Ben Gurion stated that nine out of ten left. Between 1919 and 1923, 40,000 Jews, mainly from Eastern Europe arrived in the wake of World War I . The British occupation of Palestine and the establishment of the British Mandate created the conditions for the implementation of
27489-400: The poet Shulamit Klogai and Dina, who married Benjamin Mazar . As a member of the B'ne Moshe and Hovevei Zion movements in Ukraine, Zvi Shimshelevich was one of the organizers of the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in the fall of 1897, together with Theodor Herzl . At that Congress the World Zionist Organization was founded, and the intention to re-establish a Jewish state
27676-484: 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
27863-503: 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
28050-501: The promises contained in the Balfour Declaration . Many of the Jewish immigrants were ideologically driven pioneers, known as halutzim , trained in agriculture and capable of establishing self-sustaining economies. In spite of immigration quotas established by the British administration, the Jewish population reached 90,000 by the end of this period. The Jezreel Valley and the Hefer Plain marshes were drained and converted to agricultural use. Additional national institutions arose such as
28237-451: 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
28424-431: 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
28611-498: 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
28798-399: The same time, tensions between Arabs and Jews grew during this period, leading to a series of Arab riots against the Jews in 1929 that left many dead and resulted in the depopulation of the Jewish community in Hebron . This was followed by more violence during the " Great Uprising " of 1936–1939. In response to the ever-increasing tension between the Arabic and Jewish communities married with
28985-450: The same time, the number of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries greatly increased. Special operations were undertaken to evacuate Jewish communities perceived to be in serious danger to Israel, such as Operation Magic Carpet , which evacuated almost the entire Jewish population of Yemen , and Operation Ezra and Nehemiah , which airlifted most of the Jews of Iraq to Israel. Egyptian Jews were smuggled to Israel in Operation Goshen. Nearly
29172-426: 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
29359-413: 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
29546-473: The start of a huge wave of immigration dubbed the "Third Aliyah", in contrast to the Biblical "First Aliyah" and "Second Aliyah" " returns to Zion " described in Ezra–Nehemiah . Over the next two years, discussion in Zionist literature transformed the two prior to refer to the contemporary immigration waves at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th. These periods as per the modern convention were first published in October 1919 by Yosef Haim Brenner . In
29733-431: The tin dwellings were replaced with permanent housing. In the early 1950s, the immigration wave subsided, and emigration increased; ultimately, some 10% of the immigrants would leave Israel for other countries in the following years. In 1953, immigration to Israel averaged 1,200 a month, while emigration averaged 700 a month. The end of the period of mass immigration gave Israel a critical opportunity to more rapidly absorb
29920-421: The two Biblical " returns to Zion " described in Ezra–Nehemiah – the "First Aliya" led by Zerubbabel , and the "Second Aliya" led by Ezra and Nehemiah approximately 80 years later. A few decades after the fall of the Kingdom of Judah and the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people, approximately 50,000 Jews returned to Zion following the Cyrus Declaration from 538 BC. The Jewish priestly scribe Ezra led
30107-430: The two hubs of rabbinic learning were Babylonia and the land of Israel . Throughout the Amoraic period, many Babylonian Jews immigrated to the land of Israel and left their mark on life there, as rabbis and leaders. In the 10th century, leaders of the Karaite Jewish community, mostly living under Persian rule, urged their followers to settle in Eretz Yisrael. The Karaites established their own quarter in Jerusalem , on
30294-580: 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
30481-413: The various commitments the British faced at the dawn of World War II, the British issued the White Paper of 1939 , which severely restricted Jewish immigration to 75,000 people for five years. This served to create a relatively peaceful eight years in Palestine while the Holocaust unfolded in Europe. Shortly after their rise to power, the Nazis negotiated the Ha'avara or "Transfer" Agreement with
30668-422: The volumes of She'ar Yeshuv. Additionally, Ben-Zvi explored the demographic origins of the rural Arab population, suggesting potential Jewish ancestry among a significant portion of them. Ben-Zvi also advocated for the repatriation of Jews who had been driven out of Peki'in, and initiated the establishment of Peki'in HaHadasha . In 1948, Ben-Zvi headed the Institute for the Study of Oriental Jewish Communities in
30855-530: The war ended. Romanian Jews were, under their own will, "sold" or "exchanged" to Israel in the 1950s with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for about 8,000 lei (about 420 dollars ). The price of these Jews usually varied according to their "worth". This practice continued at a slower pace from 1965 under Nicolae Ceaușescu , a Romanian communist leader. During the 1950s, West Germany had been also paying Romania an amount of money in exchange for some Germans of Romania , and, just like
31042-588: The western slope of the Kidron Valley . During this period, there is abundant evidence of pilgrimages to Jerusalem by Jews from various countries, mainly in the month of Tishrei , around the time of the Sukkot holiday. The number of Jews migrating to the land of Israel rose significantly between the 13th and 19th centuries, mainly due to a general decline in the status of Jews across Europe and an increase in religious persecution . The expulsion of Jews from England (1290), France (1391), Austria (1421), and Spain (the Alhambra decree of 1492) were seen by many as
31229-413: 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
31416-552: The workers' lot, which of necessity results from Jewish settlement and immigration." He was head of the Poale Zion's Arab labor department, despite this he opposed a 1922 railway strike by Arab and Jewish workers in Haifa, and in 1923 he blocked a strike threatened by Arab workers in Jaffa and Lydda. Between 1925 and 1928 he produced an Arabic language Zionist bi-weekly newspaper called Ittiḥād al-ʿUmmāl (Workers Unity). In 1926 Ahdut HaAvoda decided to cease all efforts at unionising Arab workers and that Arabs should be barred from joining
31603-446: Was 650,000 at the state's founding, was more than doubled by an influx of about 688,000 immigrants. In 1949, the largest-ever number of Jewish immigrants in a single year - 249,954 - arrived in Israel. This period of immigration is often termed kibbutz galuyot (literally, ingathering of exiles), due to the large number of Jewish diaspora communities that made aliyah. However, kibbutz galuyot can also refer to aliyah in general. At
31790-421: 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
31977-453: Was acted upon by few prior to the rise of a national awakening among Jews worldwide and the subsequent development of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century; the large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine had consequently begun by 1882. Since the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, more than 3 million Jews have made aliyah. As of 2014 , Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories contain approximately 42.9 percent of
32164-476: Was announced. Shimshi was the only organizer of the first Zionist Congress to live to see the birth of the modern State of Israel in 1948. On 10 December 1952, Zvi Shimshi was honored by the first Knesset with the title "Father of the State of Israel". Ben Zvi had a formal Jewish education at a Poltava heder and then the local Gymnasium . He completed his first year at Kiev University studying natural sciences before dropping out to dedicate himself to
32351-400: Was descended from Rabbi Meir Halevi Epstein. On his father's side, he traced his lineage back to Lithuanian Rabbi Jehiel ben Solomon Heilprin , Rabbi Eliyahu Chaim Meisel of Łódź , the mekubal Rabbi Moshe Ashkenazi (known as Moshe Iwer), and ultimately to the renowned commentator Rashi . His brothers were Moshe (who died aged 12 in March 1906), and the writer Aharon Reuveni. His sisters were
32538-407: Was described as "going down to Egypt" while going away from Egypt (including Hebrews going out of Egypt to Canaan) was "going up out of Egypt". Thus, in the Book of Genesis 46 God speaks to Jacob and says “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you." And in the Book of Exodus 1, the oppressive new King of Egypt suspects
32725-447: Was designated an historic building protected by law under municipal plan 2007 for the preservation of historic sites. 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
32912-453: Was inspired by Following the establishment of Israel, about one-third of Iranian Jews , most of them poor, immigrated to Israel, and immigration from Iran continued throughout the following decades. An estimated 70,000 Iranian Jews immigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1978. Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, most of the Iranian Jewish community left, with some 20,000 Iranian Jews immigrating to Israel. Many Iranian Jews also settled in
33099-467: Was launched to bring the Beta Israel Jews of Ethiopia . In one day, May 24, 34 aircraft landed at Addis Ababa and brought 14,325 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel . Since that time, Ethiopian Jews have continued to immigrate to Israel bringing the number of Ethiopian-Israelis today to over 100,000. After the war, Romania had second-largest Jewish population in Europe, of around 350,000 or higher. In 1949, 118,939 Romanian Jews had emigrated to Israel since
33286-438: 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
33473-429: Was organized by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet , as well as by the Irgun . Immigration was done mainly by sea, and to a lesser extent overland through Iraq and Syria . During World War II and the years that followed until independence, Aliyah Bet became the main form of Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine. Following the war, Bricha ("escape"), an organization of former partisans and ghetto fighters
33660-457: Was primarily responsible for smuggling Jews from Eastern Europe through Poland. In 1946 Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah to Mandate Palestine without visas or exit permits. By contrast, Stalin forcibly brought Soviet Jews back to USSR, as agreed by the Allies during the Yalta Conference . The refugees were sent to the Italian ports from which they traveled to Mandatory Palestine. More than 4,500 survivors left
33847-470: 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
34034-479: 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
34221-437: 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
34408-417: Was the only president to be elected for three terms, and during his second and third candidacies, he was the sole nominee without any opposition. During his tenure, he won the sympathy of all elements of the political spectrum. Yitzhak and Rachel Ben-Zvi declined to move from their residence on Ibn Gabirol Street in Jerusalem to a luxurious and representative mansion. Therefore, the Israeli government acquired
34595-408: 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
34782-499: Was to redeem the "Land of Israel" ( Eretz Yisrael , commonly known in English as the region of Palestine ) from gentile rule and return world Jewry to the land under a Halachic theocracy . In Zionist discourse, the term aliyah (plural aliyot ) includes both voluntary immigration for ideological, emotional, or practical reasons and, on the other hand, mass flight of persecuted populations of Jews. The vast majority of Israeli Jews today trace their family's recent roots to outside
34969-570: 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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