Resurrecting Hebrew

by Ilan Stavans

Part of the Jewish Encounter series

Here is the stirring story of how Hebrew was rescued from the fate of a dead language to become the living tongue of a modern nation. Ilan Stavans's quest begins with a dream featuring a beautiful woman speaking an unknown language. When the language turns out to be Hebrew, a friend diagnoses "language withdrawal," and Stavans sets out in search of his own forgotten Hebrew as well as the man who helped revive the language at the end of the nineteenth century, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.



The search for Ben-Yehuda, who raised his eldest son in linguistic isolation-not even allowing him to hear the songs of birds-so that he would be "the first Hebrew-speaking child," becomes a journey full of paradox. It was Orthodox anti-Zionists who had Ben-Yehuda arrested for sedition, and, although Ben-Yehuda was devoted to Jewish life in Palestine, it was in Manhattan that he worked on his great dictionary of the Hebrew language.

The resurrection of Hebrew raises urgent questions about the role language plays in Jewish survival, questions that lead Stavans not merely into the roots of modern Hebrew but into the origins of Israel itself. All the tensions between the Diaspora and the idea of a promised land pulse beneath the surface of Stavans's story, which is a fascinating biography as well as a moving personal journey.

Genres: History, Language, Judaism, Nonfiction, Israel, Linguistics, Jewish

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. An award-winning writer and public television host, his books include Growing Up Latino and Spanglish. A native of Mexico City, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Katharine Kerr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ilan Stavan was born in Mexico City to a Jewish family that had emigrated to Mexic in the 1920s. Thus his first language is New World Spanish. His second, thanks to his ethnic heritage, was Yiddish, and as young man he learned Hebrew and English as well. You will not be surprised to learn that his English can be a bit rocky here and there, even though he now teaches in the USA in the field of Latin American studies. Unfortunately, some of the rockiness extends to errors of fact that should have been caught by his editor.

At one point, for example, he states that the oldest forms of English are Welsh and Gaelic. Er, no.

The trouble with errors of detail in a non-fiction book is, of course, that they make the reader distrust statements on subjects about which she knows little or nothing. Stavan interviews various experts on the history of the Hebrew revival in Israel. I have to assume that his quotes are accurate, because I bought this book for the simple reason that I know nothing about the subject. Doubtless the author knows more about it than I do. Still, I've been left with the feeling that I should engage in more research just to confirm his views and facts.

[Irina Dumitrescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book, which does a good job of unfolding the complexity of Hebrew in both ancient and modern times. Still, a horrific error of fact about my own field -- namely, that Old English is described as a Celtic language spoken in Scotland and Wales -- made me suspicious about the quality of the research on other topics.

[Yossi Khebzou · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is, ultimately, an ode to identity. Ilan Stavans makes an excellent job to retell the history of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's revival of Hebrew, to discern the myth from the man and explore modern Israel through its language while deeply linking it to his own life story, to his days in the CIM school in Mexico and the visits to the Yidishe Shule in La Condesa. The book starts with the author recounting a dream where a woman speaks him in a language he doesn't understand, and that language turns out to be Hebrew. The Liwerant, a monster in Jewish mythology, stand in the back. It's a prefect analogy for the book. The text turns out to be a blend between a scholarly work and a memoir. Enjoyable and insightful.

[Ashleigh Read · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is perhaps the most poorly-written book I’ve ever read. It is rambling and lacks cohesion. I was so excited when I picked it up. I love memoirs, and I love the Hebrew language. The combination seemed to be the perfect book for me! But the writing was so terrible that every time I picked up the book, I complained to my husband about how much I hated it and read him ridiculous passages. If it had been much longer, I would not have finished it. And I feel like I learned less than if I had read three or four Wikipedia entries. Do not read this book. I am a book hoarder, but I don’t think I can stand to keep this one on my shelf.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrendous. This book was dull and more about the authors own experience of Hebrew than any actual insight into the resurrection of Hebrew.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This narrative engagingly blends lexicographical erudition, personal history, the interpretation of dreams, and travels to Israel, of course. As a Mexican-born descendant of Eastern European and Russian Jews, and longtime professor at Amherst College, Stavans situates himself as a diaspora intellectual investigating his schooldays exposure to Hebrew, his revived curiosity with Hebrew, and his quest to unravel how it's tied to Jewish identity. Sparked by visions, Stavans wanders real life.

A short account, it roams across Eretz Israel, tracking the impact of Eliezer ben Yehuda, who emigrated there in the 1881 First Aliyah of settlers during the initial Zionist trek from the tsarist Pale of Settlement. He was the first pioneer to raise his first son speaking in a conversational form rather than religious form of the ancient tongue. Stavans analyzes how the amateur linguist labored against the disdain of the Orthodox, the dismissal by Yiddish advocates, and Theodore Herzl's expectation that German would by default become the common communication in the new land.

Stavans, although he gets bogged down in dictionary research and too many strained comparisons to the wonderful Dr Sam Johnson, also talks to scholars, Palestinians, and everyday residents (not enough in my opinion; this tilts towards the experts), who increasingly blur Arabic or English, which alongside Hebrew share official recognition in education. While he laments the use of English as a third language on street signs, perhaps it's to assist guides and tourists who flock there on pilgrimages and vacations? It's also unclear if such posted English is transliterated Hebrew or not.

He missed a chance to inquire with visitors from evangelical U.S. backgrounds about their adult acquisition of Hebrew, only mentioning this in passing. As a novice student of its biblical version myself, I've noticed my classmates come from many places, Europe, Asia, and disproportionately both descendants and natives of African origin. Such inherent interest transcends Christian efforts to.convert, and treating its manifestations online and in travel deserves detail, expanding range.

While the account ends movingly and memorably among cemeteries and epitaphs, it's marred. As an academic with many titles to his credit at an elite liberal arts institution, who acknowledges a slew of learned colleagues, how Stavans can twice claim incorrect origins for English baffles me, as a medievalist, and an Irish-speaker. First, that "Celtic" constituted what we know as Old English (after all, where does Anglo-Saxon come from but the Angles and Saxons of today's Scandinavian and German territories?). Later, asserting that "1066" marked the arrival of English, rather than the Norman conquest. Maybe he meant "English" more as we know it with the Latin-Frenchification, but this was not part of his bald statement. And his first one, as he claims academic expertise in language learning and linguistic cross-overs, leaves me dumbfounded. Outside of a few phrases, "Celtic" influences directly into my other mother tongue (one of his secondary ones) tally scarce.

Notwithstanding, I now will look up the work of I.L. Peretz, a Yiddishkeit champion of fervent, socialist "mamaloshen" in competition with upstart demotic Hebrew. Praised by novelist David Grossman in Stavans' conversation, the Israeli author crediting the storyteller as one of a trio of eminent Yiddish writers. I'd have liked for Stavans to ask who the other two were. As editor of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories, you'd think he'd follow up. Instead he seems to brush off his past subject's "Yinglish," and Singer's fancy, grating airs. Still, Stavans touches on both Edmund Wilson and Borges as models of Gentiles who admired Hebrew old and recent for non-missionary reasons, and such nods prove that one need not be a "member of the tribe" to be wooed by Hebrew's appeal.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave me a good background on elements surrounding the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, and the complexities involved in any language. One device the author used made the writing a bit stiff - he would write about conversations he had and place long quotes that clearly would never be spoken by anyone, as a way to demonstrate both his various interactions and his linguistic journey. This book ended up being somewhat useful for me in learning about Hebrew.

[Bobby Bermuda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A language which was colloquially dead for over two thousand years has been revived exactly one time in known history. This is not exactly an exhaustive nor strictly chronological telling of that story, but a fascinating aspect nonetheless. I would have enjoyed it more had it been more technically linguistic in nature, giving very specific examples of the lexical and syntactic differences between biblical and contemporary Hebrew.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

How ignorant of me to assume that all Jews spoke Hebrew and I stand corrected by this book. It turns out Hebrew was practically a fossilized language by the early 20th century, spoken primarily amongst scholars of the Torah and Talmud for theological debates. All the more amazing that Hebrew is now the national language of Israel. This book also provides a useful overview of the history of dictionaries in general.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hebrew is the only language to come back from the dead. This slim volume tells the story of how it happened. Fascinating and extremely well told although I could have done without the recurring dream motif!

[char · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of these reviews are criticizing the book for not being an academic biography of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda or history of his revitalization of the Hebrew language. The book synopsis makes it clear that this is not that. Instead, it is one man's personal exploration of how Hebrew has changed over time, as well as its many relationships with the state of Israel, Judaism, the Jewish diaspora, and Ben-Yehuda himself...

And for what it is, the book is fairly interesting. While I wish it included a more linguistic analysis of Hebrew (as opposed to relying mostly on literary criticism and politics), it discussed many elements I never really thought about in relation to a language's identity.

That said, I think the book could have been significantly better organized. Stavans jumps from topic to topic, making connections with things he hadn't discussed for chapters, namedropped up the wazoo... Between keeping track of countless names and keeping up with his train of thought, it was easy to get confused and uninterested.

[Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt duped by this book. Since it came out in the Nextbook series, I figured that I would get a nice, informative survey of the way the Hebrew language was resurrected from a mostly sacred, religious language into a living language by Ben Yehuda and company.

The facts concerning the revival of Hebrew were few and far between, and instead we get the self-indulgent ramblings of Stavans that range incoherently from his personal dreams, stories of the Golem, Yiddish vs. Hebrew in Israel and other mostly tangential subjects.

The links between all these subjects are weak and by around page 100 I was officially annoyed but what was being left out.

How was Hebrew institutionalized in Israel?
Why does he feel that Esperanto has binyanim?

These are some of the topics that are raised tantalizingly, but are not developed.

I've been had and I feel I still need to read a book on this topic

[Jeffrey Spitz Cohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Resurrecting Hebrew" takes the reader on two tracks:

One is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's inspiring quest to resurrect Hebrew. To quantify just how amazing Ben Yehuda's achievement is, the number of Hebrew speakers has increased from about 10,000 to 8 million

The second track is author Ilan Stavans' personal quest to reclaim the Hebrew language for himself, after years of letting his Hebrew skills fall into disuse.

I enjoyed both tracks.

Stavans provides an eye-opening, unflinching description of Ben Yehuda, whose work played to mixed reviews in his own day and who continues to be the subject of mixed opinions, now approaching indifference, today.

The second track is more moving, focusing on Hebrew as the lashon hakodesh, the holy tongue. Stavans appropriately compares losing Hebrew to losing his soul. The Hebrew language is inherently spiritual -- a medium for Jews to talk not just to each other, but to G-d. It's resurrection is a true blessing.

[Ushan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ilan Stavans is a Mexican-American Jewish writer; his grandparents emigrated to the land of the Aztecs from the Ukraine before the Russian Revolution, and he emigrated to the United States as an adult. He was exposed to some Hebrew as a boy in a Jewish school in Mexico City, and decided to resurrect it, and write a book about the resurrection of the language in Palestine. Stavans walks in the footsteps of Eliezer Perelman aka Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the creator of modern Hebrew, who did not permit his son to listen to birds singing so his Hebrew would be uncontaminated. He meets a bunch of linguists, from a lexicographer member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language to a professor of Arabic who views Hebrew as nothing but a colonialist language, and is not swayed by the fact that Ben-Yehuda borrowed many Arabic roots to create modern Hebrew.

[Smitty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't be fooled. This is not a book about Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. This is a book of retellings of anecdotes about Ben-Yehuda as told to Stavans by other people who know more about Ben-Yehuda than he does. Stavans' personal "journey" to "discover" Ben-Yehuda is a useless and uninteresting framing device. Many of the anecdotes are interesting, and I'd be interested to hear more from these other personalities who actually know about Ben-Yehuda, rather than be subject to this meandering, mostly structure-less collection of conversations. To make things worse, I noticed that a non-insignificant number of the historical details he relates are erroneous--confusing the Gezer calendar with the Siloam inscription, for example--or at least simplistic, which makes me caution to accept other facts as presented in the book. The bibliography is useful, and I'll be locating those works in the future.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating little book, and one I discovered quite by accident. It was on an RPL list at Borders (that's a list of books to pulled and sent back because they're not selling well), and I saw it was about the quest to ressurect Hebrew as a viable language of daily life. I have often wished that the same could be done with Latin; in fact the back of the dustjacket compares the accomplishment with just that. So I decided to borrow the book and read it before sending it back. It's a short book and a quick read, very enjoyable (especially if you enjoy linguistics). Sad to be sending it away, but I don't need it and don't have the money to buy it if I did. Alas.

[Hara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of the Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the creation of modern Hebrew. Stavans takes readers along on his personal quest to better understand Ben-Yehuda's legacy, meeting interesting scholars and thinkers along the way. This is not a dry, scholarly study but rather a quirky, subjective tale of Stavans' own relationship with Hebrew, Israel, Judaism, identity, and language. A worthwhile read and the basis for many interesting discussions about the importance of Hebrew in particular and language in general.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I'm interested in language politics and the history of Hebrew, and I enjoyed Stavans' memoir On Borrowed Words. But I didn't really understand the point of this book. The 40 or so pages I read consisted mainly of Stavans reporting on conversations he had with experts on the history of Hebrew. Personally, I'd rather read something the experts themselves wrote. But maybe I should view this book more as a journalistic piece, providing a summary of what is known about the "resurrection" of Hebrew. As it is, though, it just wasn't for me.

[Alex Rosenblum · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little too academic for me to follow- lots of references to Yiddish Literature and Israel's political history- only some of which I was familiar with- plus a sort-of off-putting personal tangent by the author about his dreams- made this not such a great read for me. I did however, come across many things I would like to learn/read more about, and the parts concerning the linguistic history of Hebrew were fascinating.

[Ilana · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very quick read, and enjoyable. Like much of Stavans' work, there's nearly as much memoir as there is history, but so long as you like Stavans' personality, this is not a bad thing. I would have liked more information on linguistics, but that's not this book; unfortunately, linguistics and linguistic anthropology coverage is a little thin on the ground. But Stavans is an engaging writer and this book is very accessible. A good read for Shabbat, if you keep it.

[Kaitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

As many have noted this isn't an historical account of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, but rather someone's personal journey toward resurrecting Hebrew in their life. There is information about Ben-Yehuda, and the personal format is nice, but what took so long to read it is how scattered the anecdotes are within the book. It could have done with a better editor.

[David Levinson]

Stavans' curiosity is boundless. His pursuit of the origins of modern Hebrew leads him into great discussions about Borges, lexicography, and Israeli culture. Sometimes a little stilted, as when his tour guide recites in full paragraphs on some topic at lunch, but compelling nonetheless.

[Yvonne · Rating 1 out of 5]

A little disappointing--this book is more "personal search" than history.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read on how Hebrew was once considered a dead langugae and is now the official language of Israel.

[Dave Maddock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too skewed towards the author's journey than the intent of said journey.

If I wasn't an obsessive completist, I would have abandoned it.

[Afton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Very informative

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and delightful. Learned much I had not known before.