Even a language is subject to the force of fate. Its value in life and
its meaning for the life of a people change constantly with the great
changes of life. Only one hundred and twenty years ago there were those
who believed in the possibility of the realization of the medieval
idea that a day would come when all the peoples of the earth would
speak one language and all linguistic barriers would soon disappear.
Today language stands next to the state as the most important factor
in the life of a nation; in many cases it is as strong a factor as
the economical and political forces. This is especially true of the
so-called nationality states where the various peoples can show their
line of national demarcation chiefly by the language they use. Today
language is not only one of the strongest factors in the national
life of a people, but is also of great weight in universal politics.
The future historians, in describing the ups and downs of the present
war, will not fail to observe that one of the causes that threatened,
for a time, the existence of the Hapsburg Empire was the apparently
unimportant fact that the people in Germany and Bohemia could not come
to terms about the linguistic barrier. The language quarrels in Bohemia
were the cause of so many political upheavals that they shook the very
foundations of Austria; they have influenced, to a large extent, the
international crisis during the last three years.
Since language has developed into such a tremendous force, all the
meditations and calculations of the philosophers of the eighteenth
century about the possibility of one language for the entire human
race have proven to be empty visions--soap bubbles of philosophic and
humanitarian dreamers. If the living provincial languages of small
peoples, the Bohemians, Lithuanians, Armenians, and so forth, have
become important political factors in the lives of the nations, and,
in consequence thereof, an important momentum in international life,
the so-called dead languages, such as Hebrew, Gaelic, Welsh and many
others, have become driving forces in the lives of their peoples
and may even decide their fate and future. The development of these
dead languages during the nineteenth century is as interesting and
fascinating as the growth in political importance of such living,
provincial languages as Bohemian, Lithuanian, and so forth. Most
remarkable of all is the development of the importance of Hebrew during
the nineteenth century.
One hundred years ago, Hebrew was a purely philological and theological
proposition. The knowledge of Hebrew had quite a different value from
what it has today. To the Eastern Jew, Hebrew had the meaning of a holy
tongue only; to the Western Jew, Hebrew was a sort of a cultural luxury
which was very much appreciated as such, but had no national value. The
love for Hebrew in the West, which, by the way, was stronger than we
today imagine, smelled faintly of a museum. These conditions prevailed
in the West for several centuries. In the East, however, conditions
changed with kaleidoscopic rapidity. With the spread of the Haskalah
eastward, Hebrew achieved another value altogether; it had a different
function to perform. The adherents of the Haskalah used Hebrew not as a
holy tongue, as did the orthodox, nor as a theological proposition, as
did many of the Western Jews, but as a medium to spread culture among
the Jews and to introduce European ideas in the ghetto. The Hebrew
writer of the middle of the nineteenth century considered himself a
sort of cultural missionary. The best means to enlighten the people
and to counteract superstition was, at that time, Hebrew literature.
By the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties, Hebrew
experienced another transvaluation, chiefly because of the failure of
the Haskalah and the awakening of the national spirit among the Jews.
The writers of that time considered Hebrew no longer a means to an
end--that is to say, an agency to spread culture among the Jews--but
an object in itself. People began to realize that Hebrew is not only a
linguistic theological proposition, as was thought at the beginning of
the nineteenth century, but that it is the woof and warp of national
culture. The Hebrew writers of the last third of the nineteenth
century, consequently, began to speak of the Hebrew tongue as a certain
culture and Hebrew ideas as the ideas of the Jewish people. In short,
Hebrew became the national cultural force in contradistinction to the
humanitarian cultural force that it was thought to be in the middle of
the nineteenth century.
The Hebrew writers of the Eighties and Nineties no longer considered
themselves cultural missionaries of the Jews, as did the writers of
the preceding generation, but rather as the representatives of Hebrew
thought and Hebrew culture. The most conspicuous representative of this
school of thought is Ahad Ha'am, the father and systematizer of Hebrew
cultural nationalism. Ahad Ha'am himself witnessed the transition from
cultural Hebrew to political Hebrew. Although about twenty years ago
he was the embodiment of Hebrew thought, his school had to make room
for another conception of Hebrew, a conception to which, we think, the
future belongs. It is the national political conception of Hebrew in
opposition to its purely cultural conception.
To the modern Hebraist, Hebrew is neither a holy tongue nor a medium
to spread culture among the Jews, nor yet a national cultural idea, as
it is to the disciples of Ahad Ha'am, but a national political force;
accordingly, he strives to secularize Hebrew and to introduce into it
all the elements of secular civilization and to make it the expression
of the movement of life of his people. The modern Hebrew writer
would think in Hebrew not only on subjects Jewish, would not only
philosophize in Hebrew on Jewish cultural and theological problems,
but would write in Hebrew on all secular subjects and try to find
the Hebrew expression for all the movements of life, especially the
life of our people. This striving to secularize Hebrew has enriched
our national tongue enormously. We now know more Hebrew than did
our forefathers one hundred years ago. Because of our striving to
secularize Hebrew we were compelled to go to all the Hebrew sources of
antiquity and to find Hebrew terms for things which, for the last two
thousand years, have not been described in Hebrew, because the writing
of Hebrew was concentrated on theological and philosophical subjects. A
few years ago a Russian Jew wrote an agricultural text book in Hebrew,
which created a sensation among Hebrew circles because the author
re-created Hebrew agricultural terminology. Since the ancient Jews
were agriculturists, they had of course an agricultural terminology
of their own which had, however, been forgotten during our Diaspora
life. The author of the above mentioned book re-established that
Hebrew agricultural terminology. Other Hebrew writers have produced
similar results in other literary and scientific endeavors. A small
booklet by the late Dr. Schereschevsky, for instance, surprised the
Hebrew public by the abundance of Hebrew scientific terms and by his
re-establishment of a Hebrew scientific terminology. The modern Hebrew
writer is conscious of the fact that Hebrew is bound some day to become
a concrete political force and that, to gain that end, it must admit
all the elements of life and establish the life of our people as the
only agency of our general and Jewish education. This necessitates the
secularization and, one might say, the humanization of Hebrew. The
real modern Hebrew writers are, therefore, not those who can write a
treatise in Hebrew on medieval Jewish philosophy but those who can
write a Hebrew essay or Hebrew book on scientific or sociological
topics.
The tendency to secularize Hebrew is spreading all over the world; it
is to be hoped that the day is near when a considerable section of our
people will use Hebrew with the same ease as any other people uses its
national tongue. The secularization of Hebrew is a clear sign of our
approaching national liberation.