BEN ROTHKO REVIEWS “THE STORY OF HEBREW” BY LEWIS GLINERT
This review originally appeared in The Jewish Link of New Jersey.
Many people have likely heard the claim that Hebrew is the only
ancient language to be in active use today. While speakers of Farsi
and Chinese may disagree,Hebrew’s resurgence and resurrection may be
the linguistic equivalent of a miracle. From being a peripheral
language in far off Israel a little over a century ago, it’s now a
vibrant language spoken by millions across different continents.
In a fascinating new book, The Story of Hebrew (Princeton University
Press 978-0691153292), Dr. Lewis Glinert, professor of Hebrew Studies
at Dartmouth College, provides a history of the Hebrew language from
biblical times to today. While written by an Ivy League professor and
published by Princeton University Press, this is nonetheless a most
readable and highly engaging book.
In addition, knowledge of Hebrew is not needed to enjoy this
remarkable book. At Dartmouth, Glinert teaches a class From Genesis
to Seinfeld: Jewish Humor and its Roots. As to his dry sense of humor,
he has written an entire book about Hebrew, and aside from a few
illustrations, not used a single Hebrew character. The truth is that
this is not a book about what the Hebrew words mean. Rather it is
about what the Hebrew language has meant to the people who have
possessed it.
The book tells two stories. First, how Hebrew has been used in Jewish
life for the past 3,500 years; how it was left for dead, only to come
back. The other story is that of how Jews and Christians have
conceived of Hebrew, and invested it with a symbolic power far beyond
normal language.
A few of the many questions that Glinert addresses are: how did Hebrew
figure into the sense of identity of the Jews, how did that
relationship change with the advent of Zionism and their love affair
with the Hebrew language, what kept Hebrew from dying out completely,
and perhaps most importantly: what can its remarkable story teach
about the working of human language in general.
The story of Hebrew starts at the beginning with the chumash. Glinert
notes that the chumash tells the history of the Jewish people almost
entire in prose, deliberately turning its back on the epic poetry with
which the cities of Ugarit, Ur and every other Near Eastern cultures
recounted their cosmic beliefs. This use of the Hebrew language
created the reality that the spoken language in its ordinary form,
that which the patriarchs and matriarchs spoke, formed the basis for
today’s use of Hebrew.
This leads to the question: if Moshe Rabenu found himself on Dizengoff
Street, could he understand the Hebrew spoken? Glinert believes if you
gave him a dictionary and a few minutes to adjust to the accent, he’d
be able to take it all in. Since Hebrew now has the same basic
vocabulary and word structure as it did 3,500 years ago, with a little
adjustment, new Hebrew which was grafted onto its ancient roots, means
that an Israeli adult can readily open the chumash and start reading.
Even more remarkable is when Hebrew is contrasted for example to the
Old English of Beowulf, written a mere 1,000 years ago. Of the over
3,000 lines of this epic poem, one is hard-pressed to find a single
line that is comprehensible to an English speaker today.
In the chapter Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, Glinert interestingly calls
the sages of the Talmud linguistic revolutionaries. He meant this in
the sense that they saw that to preserve Hebrew, rather than using a
different language; their legal and moral teaching employed a simple,
even folksy style of Hebrew. By using this new vernacular Hebrew,
replete with shared terms from Greek and other languages, the Sages
could add life to a language near death. The brilliant foresight of
the sages to move the oral law to the Hebrew language, was their
planning for the future of the Hebrew language.
The following are the chapters of the book, and here, Glinert provides
a fascinating overview of Hebrew and the many areas it touched. The
chapters on how Christians embraced Hebrew, often via the Jews they
distained, who thought by using it, they would be better able to
convert Jews to Christianity.
Let There Be Hebrew
Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome
Saving the Bible and Its Hebrew
The Sephardic Classical Age
Medieval Ashkenaz and Italy: Sciences, Sonnets, and the Sacred
Hebrew in the Christian Imagination, I: Medieval Designs
Hebrew in the Christian Imagination, II: From Kabbalists to Colonials
Can These Bones Live? Hebrew at the Dawn of Modernity
The Hebrew State
For those who thought Hebrew was a shoo-in as the national language of
20th-century Israel, Glinert writes how that was not the case. As late
as 1914, most Jews in Israel, even the most ardent Zionists, were
skeptical about the future of the new Hebrew language, and the
majority were not sending their children to Hebrew-speaking schools.
German remained the official language of the international Zionist
movement. Other languages that were considered as a stronghold for the
future included Yiddish, French, Arabic and even Turkish. Amazingly,
within 50 years, Hebrew was fully revived.
My only critique of the book is its brevity. At 250 very readable but
all too brief pages, this is a topic that begs for more detail. The
last chapter alone, about Hebrew’s resurgence in the modern state of
Israel deserves its own full-length book.
Glinert weaves an amazing story here. Both a history of Hebrew, and
it’s miraculous (he’s an academic, so doesn’t use terms like that)
restoration, is unparalleled in linguistic and sociopolitical history.
The story of Hebrew’s resurgence is perhaps the ultimate victory for a
long-persecuted people. A mesmerizing book is The Story of Hebrew, and
a most worthwhile read.
This review originally appeared in The Jewish Link of New Jersey.
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