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Resurrecting Hebrew (Jewish Encounters)

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Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: Schocken
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$21.00~~
Buy New: $11.65
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Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

4 reviews
Sales Rank: 37899

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.1

ISBN: 0805242317
Dewey Decimal Number: 492.409
EAN: 9780805242317
ASIN: 0805242317

Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Also Available In:

•	Kindle Edition - Resurrecting Hebrew

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
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.

Customer Reviews:

3 out of 5 stars

The Renaissance of Hebrew October 25, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

Stavans, Ilan. "Resurrecting Hebrew", Schocken Books, 2008.

The Renaissance of Hebrew

Amos Lassen

I love the Hebrew language and consider myself to be fairly fluent but living in Little Rock, Arkansas I don't have much opportunity to speak it. What is so amazing is that Hebrew had been a dead language and had been used only for prayer but it was brought back to life with the creation of the state of Israel and this quite naturally presented problems. After all, there were so many new words that had to be added for things that did not exist 2000 years ago. Here is a language that was not spoken, save in synagogues and then in prayer only, that had to be adjusted to fit the modern age. It would be like bringing Latin back as the spoken language of Italy.
Stavans shows us in a very interesting way how this seemingly impossible project became reality and he writes with knowledge in a way that is easily understood. What is so interesting is that there are less that 8000 words in the Hebrew Scriptures and it was virtually one man, Eliezer Ben Yehudah, who took the ancient language and brought into the world as a spoken language and this is a story that reads like fiction.
This is also a personal book for Stavans because he searches for his own forgotten language as well as Ben Yehudah's own quest.
Does the Hebrew language play a part in the survival of the Jewish people as well? This is one of the issues considered here. Obviously the resurrection of Hebrew ties in directly with the emergence of the Jewish state. Here is Stavans own attempt to understand the dream of the state and the language. Stavans's own personal dream is strange but it brings his story into focus. His dream brings about an identity crisis which leads him on his journey to the understanding of the mystery of Hebrew.
However, as readable as the book is, there are problems. Stavans has a low level of understanding of Hebrew and he becomes both confused and confusing. I can't say much more than this but reading the book should clarify what I mean. In essence, the book does not say much and there are no conclusions and it really does not provide food for thought. Even with this, "Resurrecting Hebrew" is a pleasant read.

3 out of 5 stars

Interesting, but a bit of a slow read October 20, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

The Hebrew language is perhaps one of the most fascinating tongues in the history of civilization. It is the only language that has officially died and that has experienced a resurrection. Dr. Ilan Stavans, the Chair of Spanish at Amherst College, illustrates the rebirth of this amazing language in Resurrecting Hebrew.

The good professor approaches the rebirth from a pretty weird angle - his recollection of a dream that propels him to reconnect with his lost Hebrew. In his dream, a lady sits next to him at a party and speaks in a language he does not immediately recognize. Conveniently, a group of rabbis are nearby, and one informs him that the mysterious language is Hebrew. His dream haunts him since a Jewish native from Mexico City should recognize the tongue of his youth. To add to the mystery, the lady completely undresses herself during the conversation.

Bothered, the dream propels Dr. Stavans to search out its meaning. After much reflective thought and conversations will well-intended friends, he believes the dream means he is "missing" his Hebrew. This displaced Jewish man is in the midst of a language identity crisis.

To find his language he investigates the life of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a lexicographer who is credited with helping Hebrew to achieve its national status once again. Ardently he searches and passionately he writes. The prose, however, is dreadfully slow in places. The various conversations he alludes to in full quotation do not ordinarily occur in casual circumstances.

Love language? Read this book. Don't read it in bed, however, or the Hebrew language won't be the only thing that needs a resurrection.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

3 out of 5 stars

Meandering Book Lacking any True Insight October 17, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

The redeeming aspect of this book is that it is extremely readable, a trait not usually associated with academic books. On the other hand, the author demonstrate a very low knowledge and understanding of the Hebrew language in its various forms, and an inability to comprehend that "Hebrew" as discussed in the book is actually three distinct notions ideologically amalgamated by him subconsciously: 1. The Classical Hebrew Language, 2. The Modern Hebrew Language, the final and most current version of it which is used in the State of Israel today, and 3. Hebrew as a metaphysical concept and language as theorized by the Jewish, the Christian and other religious traditions, philosophers, authors-of-fiction, and theoreticians. His inability to distinguish between these three notions of "Hebrew" deprives the book's text of serious speculative of contemplative significance. One personal issue that the author is trying to contend with is the notion that he might have "lost his Hebrew" which for him means, literally, an inability to speak the Modern Hebrew he had learned and used when he was involved with the Zionist movement and after that, during his several-year residency in Israel. Again, conceptual confusion abounds: Does "Hebrew" here mean some sort of spiritual meta-language, Jewish or otherwise, embedded in his spirit and then translated in to the other language he uses, or does "Hebrew" here mean, literally, the Modern Hebrew he learned and used during his residency in Israel? I suppose that his own lack-of-clarity and understanding of this question is the principal investigation of this book but since his own discourse on this issues, as expressed in the book, lacks, simultaneously, "Precision and Soul," it really says nothing, concludes nothing, and does not even offer any issues of irresolvable conflict worthy of contemplation.

4 out of 5 stars

Lexicographerlust September 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Savvy Ilan Stavans has here another highly intelligent and artfully constructed book. At heart one finds Stavans' odyssey after traces and the impact of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a Jewish lexicographer whose ideological ambitions for Hebrew may have clouded his appreciation of its true horizons. Although, most of the neologisms that he coined for a modernizing Jewish people fell into disuse within a decade or two of their creation, Hebrew thrives. Also, as in all of Stavans' books that I have read, is a powerful autobiographical current. The reflections, linguistic and otherwise, in seem to have been triggered by a difficult to understand dream, one for which Stavans believes his language withdrawal may account. In the course of his travels and narration of a quite beautiful history of Hebrew, its vernaculars and sages, its vicissitudes in the sea of history and its rescuers from the shoals of Diasporic neglect, the author also comes to understand the significance of his dream and the importance of Hebrew for his acceptance of the ties of tradition in its many manifestations. This book is a gem of historical insight and political provocation as well as a revealing look at the power of Hebrew and the divisions among its speakers concerning its appropriate employment.

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