ABSTRACT
The term "Modem Hebrew" is applied to two different time-spans. Both postdate Medieval Hebrew, which followed the ancient Hebrew of the Biblical and Mishnaic periods (see p. 145, Chapter 9), and both refer to a special kind of linguistic revival (Blau 1981). In one sense, Modem Hebrew arose in the late eighteenth century, first in Central and later in Eastern Europe. The main innovators in this development were Jewish writers and intellectuals associated with the Haskala (Enlightenment) movement who advocated the use of ancient Hebrew in literary and publicist writings. Their motivation was a renaissance of Jewish culture, for which they favored the ancient language of classical Hebrew over the parochial Yiddish vernacular, and their efforts were critical for the emergence of contemporary Hebrew writing and culture (Harshav 1990). They set the modernist background for the rich literature, both original and in translation, which flourished in Hebrew in the 1900s, and provided the basis for the creation of Hebrew-language schools and a Hebrew-language press.
