Language in Time of Revolution

by Benjamin Harshav

Book Overview

This book deals with two remarkable events--the worldwide transformations of the Jews in the modern age and the revival of the ancient Hebrew language. It is a book about social and cultural history addressed not only to the professional historian, and a book about Jews addressed not only to Jewish readers. It tries to rethink a wide field of cultural phenomena and present the main ideas to the intelligent reader, or, better, present a "family picture"...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520079582
• ISBN13: 9780520079588
• Release Date: August 1993
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Essential Reading to understand the rise of Israeli Hebrew

Benjamin Harshav's `Language in Time of Revolution' plots the trajectory of the rise of Hebrew as a vernacular in Palestine and later Israel; Harshav attempts to show, quite rightly, that the support of Hebrew as the language of the Jewish state was integral to the development of new Jewish society and culture in the Holy Land. Unlike other works on the topic, Harshav is actually interested in exploring the blood and bones of the actual use of the language in the early days of its inception, showing how grass roots the effort to revive Hebrew was; he examines the literary revival of the language, which predated its use as a vernacular, since this is an important component of its history, but this is not overshadowed by the practical and detailed historical dimension of the people who decided to use Hebrew instead of another language in their daily lives. Perhaps the most insightful conclusion Harshav reaches shows how instrumental the rise of Yiddish as a 'world' language was to the formation and rise of Hebrew. The entry of Yiddish onto the stage of Jewish history as a language for politics and revolution slightly pre-dated Hebrew, and gave Hebrew and its proponents a powerful model. For anyone interested in the history of Israeli Hebrew, this book is essential.