155-620: Cochin Jews (also known as Malabar Jews or Kochinim from Hebrew : יְהוּדֵֽי־קוֹצִֽ׳ין , romanized : Yehudey Kochin ) are the oldest group of Jews in India , with roots that are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon . The Cochin Jews settled in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India , now part of the present-day state of Kerala . As early as the 12th century, mention
310-598: A Cochin Jew is written in Hebrew and dates to 1269 CE. It is near the Chendamangalam Synagogue, built in 1614, which is now operated as a museum. In 1341, a disastrous flood silted up the port of Cranganore, and trade shifted to a smaller port at Cochin (Kochi). Many of the Jews moved quickly, and within four years, they had built their first synagogue at the new community. The Portuguese Empire established
465-685: A Hebrew form. Medieval Hebrew added 6421 words to (Modern) Hebrew. The approximate number of new lexical items in Israeli is 17,000 (cf. 14,762 in Even-Shoshan 1970 [...]). With the inclusion of foreign and technical terms [...], the total number of Israeli words, including words of biblical, rabbinic and medieval descent, is more than 60,000. In Israel, Modern Hebrew is currently taught in institutions called Ulpanim (singular: Ulpan). There are government-owned, as well as private, Ulpanim offering online courses and face-to-face programs. Modern Hebrew
620-595: A century ago, was fluent enough in this idiom to be able to follow the Mishna Berurah without any trouble." Hebrew has been revived several times as a literary language, most significantly by the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement of early and mid-19th-century Germany. In the early 19th century, a form of spoken Hebrew had emerged in the markets of Jerusalem between Jews of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate for commercial purposes. This Hebrew dialect
775-608: A corollary Hebrew ceased to function as a spoken language around the same time. Moshe Zvi Segal , Joseph Klausner and Ben Yehuda are notable exceptions to this view. During the latter half of the 20th century, accumulating archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls has disproven that view. The Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in 1946–1948 near Qumran revealed ancient Jewish texts overwhelmingly in Hebrew, not Aramaic. The Qumran scrolls indicate that Hebrew texts were readily understandable to
930-579: A distinct style of philosophical Hebrew. This is used in the translations made by the Ibn Tibbon family. (Original Jewish philosophical works were usually written in Arabic. ) Another important influence was Maimonides , who developed a simple style based on Mishnaic Hebrew for use in his law code, the Mishneh Torah . Subsequent rabbinic literature is written in a blend between this style and
1085-594: A gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904–1914 Second Aliyah that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the more highly organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. A constructed modern language with
1240-557: A historic site. The Kadavumbhagam Ernakulam Synagogue was restored in 2018, it houses a sefer torah with occasional services, managed by one of few remaining Cochin Jews of the ancient Malabar Jewish tradition. A few synagogues are in ruins and one was even demolished and a two-storeyed house was built in its place. The synagogue at Chendamangalam ( Chennamangalam ) was reconstructed in 2006 as Kerala Jews Life Style Museum. The synagogue at Paravur ( Parur ) has been reconstructed as Kerala Jews History Museum. P. M. Jussay wrote that it
1395-468: A literary language down through the Byzantine period from the 4th century CE. The exact roles of Aramaic and Hebrew remain hotly debated. A trilingual scenario has been proposed for the land of Israel. Hebrew functioned as the local mother tongue with powerful ties to Israel's history, origins and golden age and as the language of Israel's religion; Aramaic functioned as the international language with
1550-536: A literary language, especially in Spain, as the language of commerce between Jews of different native languages, and as the liturgical language of Judaism, evolving various dialects of literary Medieval Hebrew , until its revival as a spoken language in the late 19th century. In May 2023, Scott Stripling published the finding of what he claims to be the oldest known Hebrew inscription, a curse tablet found at Mount Ebal , dated from around 3200 years ago. The presence of
1705-644: A semi-theocratic Pakistan , most of the Cochin Jews emigrated from India. Generally they went to Israel (made aliyah ). Many of the migrants joined the moshavim (agricultural settlements) of Nevatim , Shahar , Yuval , and Mesilat Zion . Others settled in the neighbourhood of Katamon in Jerusalem , and in Beersheba , Ramla , Dimona , and Yeruham , where many Bene Israel had settled. The migrated Cochin Jews still continue to speak Malayalam . Since
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#17327878258161860-548: A set of dialects evolving out of Late Biblical Hebrew and into Mishnaic Hebrew, thus including elements from both but remaining distinct from either. By the start of the Byzantine Period in the 4th century CE, Classical Hebrew ceased as a regularly spoken language, roughly a century after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since the aftermath of the catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt around 135 CE. In
2015-668: A spoken language, it continued to be used as a lingua franca among scholars and Jews traveling in foreign countries. After the 2nd century CE when the Roman Empire exiled most of the Jewish population of Jerusalem following the Bar Kokhba revolt , they adapted to the societies in which they found themselves, yet letters, contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry and laws continued to be written mostly in Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing and inventing terms. After
2170-520: A suffix added to prayer houses of the Abrahamic faiths . Throughout their history numerous synagogues have been constructed and lost to time. in their first settlement at Shingly ( Cranganore ), there were 18 synagogues as per their oral traditions. Today no archaeological evidence has been yet uncovered to validate these traditions. However the custom of naming their synagogues as " Thekkumbhagam " (lit: south side) and " Kadavumbhagam " (lit: River side)
2325-520: A trading beachhead in 1500, and until 1663 remained the dominant power. They continued to discriminate against the Jews, although doing business with them. A synagogue was built at Parur in 1615, at a site that according to tradition had a synagogue built in 1165. Almost every member of this community emigrated to Israel in 1954. In 1524, the Muslims, backed by the ruler of Calicut (today called Kozhikode and not to be confused with Calcutta ), attacked
2480-472: A truly Semitic vocabulary and written appearance, although often European in phonology , was to take its place among the current languages of the nations. While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous (because Hebrew was the holy language of the Torah and therefore some thought that it should not be used to discuss everyday matters), many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of
2635-558: A vernacular in Judea until it was displaced by Aramaic, probably in the 3rd century CE. Certain Sadducee , Pharisee , Scribe , Hermit, Zealot and Priest classes maintained an insistence on Hebrew, and all Jews maintained their identity with Hebrew songs and simple quotations from Hebrew texts. While there is no doubt that at a certain point, Hebrew was displaced as the everyday spoken language of most Jews, and that its chief successor in
2790-432: A young lawyer who became known as a "Jewish Gandhi", worked to end the discrimination against meshuchrarim Jews. Inspired by Indian nationalism and Zionism, he also tried to reconcile the divisions among the Cochin Jews. He became both an Indian nationalist and Zionist. His family were descended from meshuchrarim . The Hebrew word denoted a manumitted slave, and was at times used in a derogatory way. Salem fought against
2945-518: Is 8198, of which some 2000 are hapax legomena (the number of Biblical Hebrew roots, on which many of these words are based, is 2099). The number of attested Rabbinic Hebrew words is less than 20,000, of which (i) 7879 are Rabbinic par excellence, i.e. they did not appear in the Old Testament (the number of new Rabbinic Hebrew roots is 805); (ii) around 6000 are a subset of Biblical Hebrew; and (iii) several thousand are Aramaic words which can have
3100-644: Is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family . A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages , it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period ) and Samaritanism . The language was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and
3255-529: Is a city of legendary importance to this community. Fernandes writes, it is "a substitute Jerusalem in India". Katz and Goldberg note the "symbolic intertwining" of the two cities. Ophira Gamliel notes however that the first physical evidence of the presence of Jews in South India dates only to the granting of the Kollam copper plates . The copper plates are a trade deed dated to the year 849 C.E bestowed upon
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#17327878258163410-677: Is also called Mago dera Patinas ; it is also called Sengale." Saint Thomas , an Aramaic -speaking Jew from the Galilee region of Israel and one of the disciples of Jesus , is believed to have come to Southern India in the 1st century, in search of the Jewish community there. It is possible that the Jews who became Christians at that time were absorbed by what became the Nasrani Community in Kerala. A number of scholars have noted that
3565-512: Is also called molad BaHaRaD, because it occurred on Day 2 (yom Beis), 5 (Hei) hours, 204 (Reish Daled) parts (11:11:20 pm ). Because this is just before midnight when the Western day begins, but after 6 pm when the Jewish calendrical day begins (equivalent to the next tabular day with the same daylight period), its Julian calendar date is 6–7 October 3761 BCE (Gregorian: 6–7 September 3761 BCE or −3760). In Hebrew, Anno Mundi years are labeled "in
3720-1057: Is cited as a cultural memory of two such synagogues that once stood in Muziris . Several oral songs sung by Cochini women also contain references to these synagogues. Apart from these, numerous Syrian Christian churches of the St. Thomas Christian community in Kerala claim to have been built on old synagogues, though archaeological evidence is scarce. Synagogues believed to have existed or speculated on basis of oral traditions include: Synagogues in recorded history whose location and/or remains have been lost in time: Extant synagogues in Kerala: Cochini synagogues in Israel: Hebrew language Hebrew ( Hebrew alphabet : עִבְרִית , ʿĪvrīt , pronounced [ ʔivˈʁit ] or [ ʕivˈrit ] ; Samaritan script : ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ʿÎbrit )
3875-567: Is fighting to stop businesses from using only English signs to market their services. In 2012, a Knesset bill for the preservation of the Hebrew language was proposed, which includes the stipulation that all signage in Israel must first and foremost be in Hebrew, as with all speeches by Israeli officials abroad. The bill's author, MK Akram Hasson , stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary. Hebrew
4030-619: Is made of the Jews in southern India by Benjamin of Tudela . Following their expulsion from Iberia in 1492 by the Alhambra Decree , a few families of Sephardi Jews eventually made their way to Cochin in the 16th century. They became known as Paradesi Jews (or Foreign Jews). The European Jews maintained some trade connections to Europe, and their language skills were useful. Although the Sephardim spoke Ladino (Spanish or Judeo-Spanish), in India they learned Judeo-Malayalam from
4185-478: Is not considered by many linguists to be a language in its own right, but a dialect , or simply a language variation. Judeo-Malayalam shares with other Jewish languages like Ladino , Judeo-Arabic , and Yiddish , common traits and features. For example, verbatim translations from Hebrew to Malayalam, archaic features of Old Malayalam, Hebrew components agglutinated to Dravidian verb and noun formations and special idiomatic usages based on its Hebrew loanwords. Due to
4340-592: Is one of several languages for which the constitution of South Africa calls to be respected in their use for religious purposes. Also, Hebrew is an official national minority language in Poland , since 6 January 2005. Hamas has made Hebrew a compulsory language taught in schools in the Gaza Strip. Anno mundi Anno Mundi (from Latin "in the year of the world"; Hebrew : לבריאת העולם , romanized : Livryat haOlam , lit. 'to
4495-416: Is the first day of AM 2, Rosh Hashanah (1 Tishrei). Its associated molad Adam (molad VaYaD) occurred on Day 6 (yom Vav) at 14 (Yud Daled) hours (and 0 parts). A year earlier, the first day of AM 1, Rosh Hashanah (1 Tishrei), is associated with molad tohu (new moon of chaos), so named because it occurred before creation when everything was still chaotic—it is also translated as the new moon of nothing. This
4650-573: Is the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival . It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with the other being Aramaic , still spoken today. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew , with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around
4805-457: Is the primary official language of the State of Israel. As of 2013 , there are about 9 million Hebrew speakers worldwide, of whom 7 million speak it fluently. Currently, 90% of Israeli Jews are proficient in Hebrew, and 70% are highly proficient. Some 60% of Israeli Arabs are also proficient in Hebrew, and 30% report having a higher proficiency in Hebrew than in Arabic. In total, about 53% of
Cochin Jews - Misplaced Pages Continue
4960-590: Is the traditional language of the Kochinim, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India. In their antiquity, Malabar Jews may have used Judeo-Persian as evident from the Kollam Copper plates . Judeo-Malayalam is the only known Dravidian Jewish language . Since it does not differ substantially in grammar or syntax from other colloquial Malayalam dialects, it
5115-547: Is used to pronounce the Hebrew Bible; however, properly it should be distinguished from the historical Biblical Hebrew of the 6th century BCE, whose original pronunciation must be reconstructed. Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the scholarship of the Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who added vowel points and grammar points to the Hebrew letters to preserve much earlier features of Hebrew, for use in chanting
5270-650: The Chayei Adam in Hebrew, as opposed to Yiddish , as a guide to Halacha for the " average 17-year-old" (Ibid. Introduction 1). Similarly, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan 's purpose in writing the Mishnah Berurah was to "produce a work that could be studied daily so that Jews might know the proper procedures to follow minute by minute". The work was nevertheless written in Talmudic Hebrew and Aramaic, since, "the ordinary Jew [of Eastern Europe] of
5425-727: The Ancient Greek Ἑβραῖος ( hebraîos ) and Aramaic 'ibrāy , all ultimately derived from Biblical Hebrew Ivri ( עברי ), one of several names for the Israelite ( Jewish and Samaritan ) people ( Hebrews ). It is traditionally understood to be an adjective based on the name of Abraham 's ancestor, Eber , mentioned in Genesis 10:21 . The name is believed to be based on the Semitic root ʕ-b-r ( ע־ב־ר ), meaning "beyond", "other side", "across"; interpretations of
5580-547: The Canaanite group of languages . Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages. Hebrew was the spoken language in the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE. Epigraphic evidence from this period confirms the widely accepted view that the earlier layers of biblical literature reflect the language used in these kingdoms. Furthermore,
5735-726: The Code of Maimonides , and possessed no other authority or traditional law". According to the contemporary historian Nathan Katz, Rabbi Nissim of Gerona (the Ran) visited the Cochini Jews. They preserve in their song books the poem he wrote about them. In the Kadavumbhagam synagogue , a Hebrew school was available for both "children's education and adult study of Torah and Mishnah ". The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906) said, "Though they neither eat nor drink together, nor intermarry,
5890-572: The Gospel of Matthew . (See the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis or Language of Jesus for more details on Hebrew and Aramaic in the gospels.) The term "Mishnaic Hebrew" generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud , excepting quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew (also called Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which
6045-622: The Hellenistic period by both Jews and pagans to date creation , the flood , exodus , building of the Temple ... In the course of their studies, men such as Tatian of Antioch (flourished in 180), Clement of Alexandria (died before 215), Hippolytus of Rome (died in 235), Sextus Julius Africanus of Jerusalem (died after 240), Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine (260–340), and Pseudo-Justin frequently quoted their predecessors,
6200-495: The Latin alphabet of ancient Rome . The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels , and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places in which later Hebrew spelling requires them. Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example, Proto-Sinaitic . It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to Egyptian hieroglyphs , though
6355-682: The Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BCE) and the emergence of the Hasmonean kingdom , the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). The nationalist significance of Hebrew manifested in various ways throughout this period. Michael Owen Wise notes that "Beginning with the time of the Hasmonean revolt [...] Hebrew came to the fore in an expression akin to modern nationalism. A form of classical Hebrew
Cochin Jews - Misplaced Pages Continue
6510-565: The Malayalam script . Like many other Jewish languages, Judeo-Malayalam also contains a number of lexical , phonological and syntactic archaisms, in this case, from the days before Malayalam became fully distinguished from Tamil . A synagogue is called a beit knesset ( Mal : ബേത് ക്നേസേത് | Heb : בית כנסת ) in Judeo-Malayalam or "Jootha Palli" ( Mal : ജൂതപള്ളി ) with joothan meaning Jew in Malayalam and - palli
6665-536: The Second Aliyah , it replaced a score of languages spoken by Jews at that time. Those languages were Jewish dialects of local languages, including Judaeo-Spanish (also called "Judezmo" and "Ladino"), Yiddish , Judeo-Arabic and Bukhori (Tajiki), or local languages spoken in the Jewish diaspora such as Russian , Persian and Arabic . The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along
6820-462: The literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language . However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by different grammar and style, in the writings of people like Ahad Ha'am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into
6975-620: The official language of the State of Israel . Estimates of worldwide usage include five million speakers in 1998, and over nine million people in 2013. After Israel, the United States has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans ). Modern Hebrew is the official language of the State of Israel, while pre-revival forms of Hebrew are used for prayer or study in Jewish and Samaritan communities around
7130-543: The ostraca found near Lachish , which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE. In its widest sense, Biblical Hebrew refers to the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing between c. 1000 BCE and c. 400 CE . It comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after important literary works associated with them. Sometimes
7285-607: The 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic period , the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon . Classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew , the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that, through the Greeks and Etruscans , later became
7440-555: The 1980s in the USSR , Hebrew studies reappeared due to people struggling for permission to go to Israel ( refuseniks ). Several of the teachers were imprisoned, e.g. Yosef Begun , Ephraim Kholmyansky , Yevgeny Korostyshevsky and others responsible for a Hebrew learning network connecting many cities of the USSR. Standard Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was based on Mishnaic spelling and Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation. However,
7595-611: The 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted as neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921 (along with English and Arabic), and then in 1948 became an official language of
7750-604: The 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity . For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh ( לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶש , lit. ' the holy tongue ' or ' the tongue [of] holiness ' ) since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible , but as Yehudit ( transl. ' Judean ' ) or Səpaṯ Kəna'an ( transl. "the language of Canaan " ). Mishnah Gittin 9:8 refers to
7905-407: The Annunciation style for New Year's Day, i.e., 25 March, and shifted Panodorus' era by circa six months to begin on 25 March. This created the Alexandrian era, whose first day was the first day of the proleptic Alexandrian civil year in progress, 29 August 5493 BCE, with the ecclesiastical year beginning on 25 March 5493 BCE. This system presents in a masterly sort of way the mystical coincidence of
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#17327878258168060-579: The Aramaized Rabbinic Hebrew of the Talmud. Hebrew persevered through the ages as the main language for written purposes by all Jewish communities around the world for a large range of uses—not only liturgy, but also poetry, philosophy, science and medicine, commerce, daily correspondence and contracts. There have been many deviations from this generalization such as Bar Kokhba 's letters to his lieutenants, which were mostly in Aramaic, and Maimonides' writings, which were mostly in Arabic; but overall, Hebrew did not cease to be used for such purposes. For example,
8215-468: The Black and the White Jews of Cochin have almost the same social and religious customs. They hold the same doctrines, use the same ritual ( Sephardic ), observe the same feasts and fasts, dress alike, and have adopted the same language Malayalam. ... The two classes are equally strict in religious observances", According to Martine Chemana, the Jews of Cochin "coalesced around the religious fundamentals: devotion and strict obedience to Biblical Judaism, and to
8370-503: The British Mandate who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. After the establishment of Israel, it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language . The results of Ben-Yehuda's lexicographical work were published in a dictionary ( The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew , Ben-Yehuda Dictionary ). The seeds of Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by
8525-413: The Cochin Jews maintain striking cultural similarities to the Knanaya , Jewish-Christian migrants from Persia who settled in Kodungallur , Kerala in the 4th or 8th century. These symmetries are noted in both the wedding traditions and especially the folk songs of the two communities, some songs maintaining the exact same lyrics with few corruptions and variations. Central to the history of the Cochin Jews
8680-405: The Dutch military attempt, suffered the murderous retaliation of both the Portuguese and Malabar populations. A year later, the second Dutch siege was successful and, after slaughtering the Portuguese, they demolished most Catholic churches or turned them into Protestant churches (not sparing the one where Vasco da Gama had been buried). They were more tolerant of Jews, having granted asylum claims in
8835-443: The Graeco-Jewish biblical chronographers of the Hellenistic period, thereby allowing discernment of more distant scholarship. The Chronicon of Eusebius (early 4th century) and Jerome (c. 380, Constantinople ) dated creation to 5199 BCE. Earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day used this date, as did the Irish Annals of the Four Masters . The Alexandrian era was conceived and calculated in AD 412. After
8990-416: The Great conquered Babylon, he allowed the Jewish people to return from captivity. In time, a local version of Aramaic came to be spoken in Israel alongside Hebrew. By the beginning of the Common Era , Aramaic was the primary colloquial language of Samarian , Babylonian and Galileean Jews, and western and intellectual Jews spoke Greek , but a form of so-called Rabbinic Hebrew continued to be used as
9145-432: The Hebrew name of god , Yahweh, as three letters, Yod-Heh-Vav (YHV), according to the author and his team meant that the tablet is Hebrew and not Canaanite. However, practically all professional archeologists and epigraphers apart from Stripling's team claim that there is no text on this object. In July 2008, Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa that he claimed may be
9300-437: The Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes inherited a biblical text whose letters were considered too sacred to be altered, so their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters. The Syriac alphabet , precursor to the Arabic alphabet , also developed vowel pointing systems around this time. The Aleppo Codex , a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written in the 10th century, likely in Tiberias, and survives into
9455-454: The Israeli population speaks Hebrew as a native language, while most of the rest speak it fluently. In 2013 Hebrew was the native language of 49% of Israelis over the age of 20, with Russian , Arabic , French , English , Yiddish and Ladino being the native tongues of most of the rest. Some 26% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and 12% of Arabs reported speaking Hebrew poorly or not at all. Steps have been taken to keep Hebrew
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#17327878258169610-576: The Jewish customs and traditions ... Hebrew, taught through the Torah texts by rabbis and teachers who came especially from Yemen ." The Jews of Cochin had a long tradition of singing devotional hymns (piyyutim) and songs on festive occasions such as Purim. Women used to sing Jews songs in Judeo-Malayalam. They did not adhere to the Talmudic prohibition against public singing by women ( kol isha ). Judeo-Malayalam ( Malayalam : യെഹൂദ്യമലയാളം , romanized : yehūdyamalayāḷaṃ ; Hebrew : מלאיאלאם יהודית , romanized : malayalam yəhūḏīṯ )
9765-437: The Jews of Cochin and the Bene Israel community were greatest in the mid-19th century. According to native Bene Israel historian Haeem Samuel Kehimkar (1830-1909), several prominent members from the "White Jews" of Cochin had moved to Bombay in 1825 from Cochin , of whom are specifically named Michael and Abraham Sargon, David Baruch Rahabi, Hacham Samuel, and Judah David Ashkenazi. These exerted themselves not only in changing
9920-418: The Malabar Jews. The two communities retained their ethnic and cultural distinctions. In the late 19th century, a few Arabic-speaking Jews, known as Baghdadis , also immigrated to southern India from the Near East . After India gained its independence in 1947 and Israel was established as a nation, most of the Cochin Jews made Aliyah and emigrated from Kerala to Israel in the mid-1950s. In contrast, most of
10075-464: The Malabari coast of Kerala: "They know the law of Moses and the prophets, and to a small extent the Talmud and Halacha ." European Jews sent texts to the community of Cochin Jews to teach them about normative Judaism. Maimonides (1135–1204), the preeminent Jewish philosopher of his day, wrote, "Only lately, some well-to-do men came forward and purchased three copies of my code [the Mishneh Torah ], which they distributed through messengers... Thus,
10230-417: The Middle East was the closely related Aramaic language, then Greek , scholarly opinions on the exact dating of that shift have changed very much. In the first half of the 20th century, most scholars followed Abraham Geiger and Gustaf Dalman in thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel as early as the beginning of Israel's Hellenistic period in the 4th century BCE, and that as
10385-421: The Muslim chronologist al-Biruni as 3,448 years before the Seleucid era . An example is the c. 8th-century CE Baraita of Samuel . In the 8th and 9th centuries CE, the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to Europe, so calculations from the Seleucid era "became meaningless". From the 11th century, anno mundi dating became dominant throughout most of the world's Jewish communities, replacing
10540-424: The Nestorian merchant magnate Maruvan Sapir Iso and the Saint Thomas Christian community by Ayyan Atikal, the ruler of the Kingdom of Venad . The copper plates include signatures in Kufic, Pahlavi, and Hebrew and serve as evidence of West Asian mercantilism in Kerala. In 1768, a certain Tobias Boas of Amsterdam had posed eleven questions to Rabbi Yehezkel Rachbi of Cochin. The first of these questions addressed to
10695-456: The Netherlands. (See the Goa Inquisition for the situation of Jews in nearby Goa .) The Paradesi Jews built their own house of worship, the Paradesi Synagogue . The latter group was very small by comparison to the Malabaris. Both groups practiced endogamous marriage, maintaining their distinctions. Both communities claimed special privileges and the greater status over each other. In the early 20th century, Abraham Barak Salem (1882–1967),
10850-420: The Paradesi Jews (Sephardi in origin) preferred to migrate to Australia and other Commonwealth countries, similar to the choices made by Anglo-Indians . Most of their synagogues still exist in Kerala, with a few being sold or adapted for other uses. Among the 8 synagogues that survived till the mid-20th century, only the Paradesi synagogue still has a regular congregation. Today it also attracts tourists as
11005-446: The Portuguese occupied the Kingdom of Cochin , they allegedly discriminated against its Jews. Nevertheless, to some extent they shared language and culture, so ever more Jews came to live under Portuguese rule (actually under the Spanish crown, again, between 1580 and 1640). The Protestant Dutch killed the raja of Cochin, allied of the Portuguese, plus sixteen hundred Indians in 1662, during their siege of Cochin. The Jews, having supported
11160-516: The Seleucid dating system. The new system reached its definitive form in 1178 when Maimonides completed the Mishneh Torah . In the section Sanctification of the Moon (11.16), he wrote of his choice of Epoch, from which calculations of all dates should be made, as "the third day of Nisan in this present year ... which is the year 4938 of the creation of the world" (22 March 1178). He included all
11315-685: The Septuagint than they were in the Latin Vulgate , or the Hebrew Tanakh . The net difference between the two major genealogies of Genesis is 1,466 years (ignoring the "second year after the flood " ambiguity), 85% of the total difference. (See Dating creation .) There are also discrepancies between methods of dating based on the text of the Bible vs. modern academic dating of landmark events used to calibrate year counts, such as
11470-570: The Septuagint, the Earth seems to have been created roughly around 5500 BCE, and about 3760 BCE based on the Hebrew Masoretic text. Most of the 1,732-year difference resides in numerical discrepancies in the genealogies of the two versions of the Book of Genesis . Patriarchs from Adam to Terah , the father of Abraham , are said to be older by 100 years or more when they begat their named son in
11625-674: The Talmud, the Gemara , generally comments on the Mishnah and Baraitot in two forms of Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew, which occasionally appears in the text of the Gemara, particularly in the Jerusalem Talmud and the classical aggadah midrashes . Hebrew was always regarded as the language of Israel's religion, history and national pride, and after it faded as
11780-406: The Talmud, various regional literary dialects of Medieval Hebrew evolved. The most important is Tiberian Hebrew or Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect of Tiberias in Galilee that became the standard for vocalizing the Hebrew Bible and thus still influences all other regional dialects of Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century CE is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew" because it
11935-598: The West. Whatever the reasons, the West eventually came to rely instead on the independently developed Anno Domini (AD) epoch system. AM dating did continue to be of interest for liturgical reasons; however, since it was of direct relevance to the calculation of the Nativity of Jesus (AM 5197–5199) and the Passion of Christ (AM 5228–5231). For example, Bede in his World-Chronicle (Chapter 66 of his De Temporum Ratione , On
12090-488: The ability to speak the language and attempted to promote its use. According to the Jerusalem Talmud , Megillah 1:9: "Rebbi Jonathan from Bet Guvrrin said, four languages are appropriate that the world should use them, and they are these: The Foreign Language (Greek) for song, Latin for war, Syriac for elegies, Hebrew for speech. Some are saying, also Assyrian (Hebrew script) for writing." The later section of
12245-478: The above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are simplified into "Biblical Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 10th century BCE to 2nd century BCE and extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE and extant in certain other Dead Sea Scrolls). However, today most Hebrew linguists classify Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew as
12400-521: The age of the world according to the biblical chronology were therefore based on the Septuagint, due to its early availability. They can be found in the Apology to Autolycus ( Apologia ad Autolycum ) by Theophilus (AD 115–181), the sixth bishop of Antioch, and the Five Books of Chronology by Sextus Julius Africanus (AD 200–245). Theophilus presents a detailed chronology "from the foundation of
12555-561: The average Jew, and that the language had evolved since Biblical times as spoken languages do. Recent scholarship recognizes that reports of Jews speaking in Aramaic indicate a multilingual society, not necessarily the primary language spoken. Alongside Aramaic, Hebrew co-existed within Israel as a spoken language. Most scholars now date the demise of Hebrew as a spoken language to the end of the Roman period , or about 200 CE. It continued on as
12710-547: The beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British Palestine. At the time, members of the Old Yishuv and a very few Hasidic sects, most notably those under the auspices of Satmar , refused to speak Hebrew and spoke only Yiddish. In the Soviet Union, the use of Hebrew, along with other Jewish cultural and religious activities,
12865-614: The celebration of the birth of Christ , Christmas, on 25 December. Church fathers such as Maximus the Confessor and Theophanes the Confessor , and chroniclers such as George Syncellus adopted the Alexandrian Era of 25 March 5493 BCE. Its striking mysticism made it popular in Byzantium, especially in monasteries. However, this masterpiece of Christian symbolism had two grave problems, namely historical inaccuracy regarding
13020-630: The choice of 25 March as the beginning of the year: 25 March was considered to be the anniversary of Creation itself. It was the first day of the year in the medieval Julian calendar and the nominal vernal equinox (it had been the actual equinox at the time when the Julian calendar was originally designed). Considering that Christ was conceived at that date turned March 25 into the Feast of the Annunciation which had to be followed, nine months later, by
13175-534: The city of Cochin , wherein I found what my soul desired, insofar that a community of Spaniards is to be found there who are derived of Jewish lineage, along with other congregations of proselytes. They had been converted many years ago, of the natives of Cochin and Germany. They are adept in their knowledge of Jewish laws and customs, acknowledging the injunctions of the Divine Law (Torah), and making use of its means of punishment. I dwelt there three months, among
13330-461: The community visit from Israel. In 1998, five families who were members of this congregation still lived in Kerala or in Madras. The following is a description of the Jews of Cochin by 16th-century Jewish traveler Zechariah Dhahiri (recollections of his travels circa 1558). I travelled from the land of Yemen unto the land of India and Cush, in order to search out a better livelihood. I had chosen
13485-602: The composition of 1 Maccabees in archaizing Hebrew, Hasmonean coinage under John Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE), and coins from both the Great Revolt and Bar Kokhba Revolt featuring exclusively Hebrew and Palaeo-Hebrew script inscriptions. This deliberate use of Hebrew and Paleo-Hebrew script in official contexts, despite limited literacy, served as a symbol of Jewish nationalism and political independence. The Christian New Testament contains some Semitic place names and quotes. The language of such Semitic glosses (and in general
13640-410: The content of Hebrew inscriptions suggests that the written texts closely mirror the spoken language of that time. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a spoken vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile when the predominant international language in the region was Old Aramaic . Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language by late antiquity , but it continued to be used as
13795-528: The creation of Adam to 21 March 5507 BCE. For its influence on Greek Christian chronology, and also because of its wide scope, the Chronicon Paschale takes its place beside Eusebius , and the chronicle of the monk Georgius Syncellus which was so important in the Middle Ages; but in respect of form it is inferior to these works. The Creation Era of Constantinople or Byzantine era of
13950-409: The creation of the world'), abbreviated as AM or A.M. , or Year After Creation , is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. Two such calendar eras of notable use are: While both eras reputedly begin with the creation of the world, their disparity in epoch lies in the biblical texts chosen to infer a year of creation. According to
14105-792: The date of the Resurrection as determined by its Easter computus , and its incompatibility with the Gospel of Saint John regarding the date of the Crucifixion on the Friday after Passover. A new variant of the World Era was suggested in the Chronicon Paschale , a valuable Byzantine universal chronicle of the world, composed c. AD 630 by some representative of the Antiochian scholarly tradition. It dates
14260-722: The destruction of the First Temple —see Missing years (Jewish calendar) . During the Talmudic era, from the 1st to the 10th centuries CE (38th – 48th centuries AM), the center of the Jewish world was in the Middle East, primarily in the Talmudic Academies in Babylonia and Syria Palaestina . Jews in these regions used Seleucid Era dating (also known as the "Anno Graecorum (AG)" or the "Era of Contracts") as
14415-568: The dialects of Classical Hebrew that functioned as a living language in the land of Israel. A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with the completion of the Mishnah. These include the halachic Midrashim ( Sifra , Sifre , Mekhilta etc.) and the expanded collection of Mishnah-related material known as the Tosefta . The Talmud contains excerpts from these works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested elsewhere;
14570-479: The discrimination by boycotting the Paradesi Synagogue for a time. He also used satyagraha to combat the social discrimination. According to Mandelbaum, by the mid-1930s many of the old taboos had fallen with a changing society. Although India is noted for having four distinct Jewish communities, viz Cochin, Bene Israel (of Bombay and its environs), Calcutta, and New Delhi, communications between
14725-423: The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating from around 3,000 years ago. Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said that the inscription was "proto-Canaanite" but cautioned that "[t]he differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear", and suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far. The Gezer calendar also dates back to
14880-513: The earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew had Yiddish as their native language and often introduced calques from Yiddish and phono-semantic matchings of international words. Despite using Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation as its primary basis, modern Israeli Hebrew has adapted to Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology in some respects, mainly the following: The vocabulary of Israeli Hebrew is much larger than that of earlier periods. According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann : The number of attested Biblical Hebrew words
15035-532: The early 6th century BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered the ancient Kingdom of Judah , destroying much of Jerusalem and exiling its population far to the east in Babylon . During the Babylonian captivity , many Israelites learned Aramaic, the closely related Semitic language of their captors. Thus, for a significant period, the Jewish elite became influenced by Aramaic. After Cyrus
15190-519: The families of Jhiratker, Shapurker and Rajpurker. Another influential man from Cochin, who is alleged to have been of Yemenite Jewish origin, was Hacham Shelomo Salem Shurrabi who served as a Hazan (Reader) in the then newly formed synagogue of the Bene-Israel in Bombay for the trifling sum of 100 rupees per annum , although he worked also as a book-binder. While engaged in his avocation, he
15345-711: The first Middle East printing press, in Safed (modern Israel), produced a small number of books in Hebrew in 1577, which were then sold to the nearby Jewish world. This meant not only that well-educated Jews in all parts of the world could correspond in a mutually intelligible language, and that books and legal documents published or written in any part of the world could be read by Jews in all other parts, but that an educated Jew could travel and converse with Jews in distant places, just as priests and other educated Christians could converse in Latin. For example, Rabbi Avraham Danzig wrote
15500-557: The first thousand years and giving the years of the next thousand? In that case, the document is really post-dated! Said Rav Nahman : In the Diaspora the Greek Era alone is used. He [the questioner] thought that Rav Nahman wanted to dispose of him anyhow, but when he went and studied it thoroughly he found that it is indeed taught [in a Baraita ]: In the Diaspora the Greek Era alone is used. Occasionally in Talmudic writings, reference
15655-487: The frontier route, where I made a passage across the Great Sea by ship for twenty days... I arrived at the city of Calicut , which upon entering I was sorely grieved at what I had seen, for the city's inhabitants are all uncircumcised and given over to idolatry. There isn't to be found in her a single Jew with whom I could have, otherwise, taken respite in my journeys and wanderings. I then turned away from her and went into
15810-406: The generic term for these passages is Baraitot . The dialect of all these works is very similar to Mishnaic Hebrew. About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language. By the third century CE, sages could no longer identify the Hebrew names of many plants mentioned in the Mishnah. Only a few sages, primarily in the southern regions, retained
15965-598: The holy congregations. The Paradesi Jews , also called "White Jews", settled in the Cochin region in the 16th century and later, following the expulsion from Iberia due to forced conversion and religious persecution in Spain and then Portugal. Some fled north to Holland but the majority fled east to the Ottoman Empire . Both "Black Jews" and the "White Jews" (the Spanish Jews) of Malabar claimed that they are
16120-480: The horizon of these Jews was widened, and the religious life in all communities as far as India revived." In a 1535 letter sent from Safed to Italy, David del Rossi wrote that a Jewish merchant from Tripoli had told him the India town of Shingly ( Cranganore ) had a large Jewish population who dabbled in yearly pepper trade with the Portuguese. As far as their religious life, he wrote that they "only recognize
16275-571: The initial attempts of Hippolytus , Clement of Alexandria , and others the Alexandrian computation of the date of creation was calculated to be 25 March 5493 BCE. The Alexandrian monk Panodorus reckoned 5,904 years from Adam to AD 412. His years began on 29 August, which corresponded to the First of Thoth , the first day of the Egyptian calendar . Annianus of Alexandria , however, preferred
16430-502: The lack of long-term scholarship on this language variation, there is no separate designation for the language (if it can be so considered), for it to have its own language code ( see also SIL and ISO 639 ). Unlike many Jewish languages, Judeo-Malayalam is not written using the Hebrew alphabet . It does, however, like most Jewish languages, contain many Hebrew loanwords , which are regularly transliterated, as much as possible, using
16585-462: The language as Ivrit , meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit , meaning Assyrian , which is derived from the name of the alphabet used , in contrast to Ivrit , meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . Hebrew ceased to be a regular spoken language sometime between 200 and 400 CE, as it declined in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Bar Kokhba revolt , which
16740-465: The language spoken by Jews in scenes from the New Testament) is often referred to as "Hebrew" in the text, although this term is often re-interpreted as referring to Aramaic instead and is rendered accordingly in recent translations. Nonetheless, these glosses can be interpreted as Hebrew as well. It has been argued that Hebrew, rather than Aramaic or Koine Greek, lay behind the composition of
16895-471: The language. The revival of the Hebrew language as a mother tongue was initiated in the late 19th century by the efforts of Ben-Yehuda. He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 immigrated to Palestine , then a part of the Ottoman Empire . Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora " shtetl " lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making
17050-573: The late 20th century, former Cochin Jews have also immigrated to the United States. It is recorded that currently only 26 Jews live in Kerala, who is located in different parts of Kerala such as Cochin , Kottayam and Thiruvalla . In Cochin, the Paradesi Synagogue is still active as a place of worship, but the Jewish community is very small. The building also attracts visitors as a historic tourist site. Genetic testing into
17205-498: The latter location, Kadavumbagham Synagogue was built about 1200 and restored in the 1790s. Its members believed they were the congregation to receive the historic copper plates. In the 1930s and 1940s, the congregation was as large as 2,000 members, but all emigrated to Israel. Thekkambagham Synagogue was built in Ernakulam in 1580, and rebuilt in 1939. It is the synagogue in Ernakulam sometimes used for services if former members of
17360-429: The minds of the Bene-Israel and of their children generally, but also particularly in turning the minds of these few of the Bene-Israel, who through heathen influence had gone astray from the path of the religion of their forefathers, to the study of their own religion, and to the contemplation of God . David Rahabi effected a religious revival at Revandanda, followed by his successor, Hacham Samuel. Although David Rahabi
17515-727: The newly declared State of Israel . Hebrew is the most widely spoken language in Israel today. In the Modern Period, from the 19th century onward, the literary Hebrew tradition revived as the spoken language of modern Israel, called variously Israeli Hebrew , Modern Israeli Hebrew , Modern Hebrew , New Hebrew , Israeli Standard Hebrew , Standard Hebrew and so on. Israeli Hebrew exhibits some features of Sephardic Hebrew from its local Jerusalemite tradition but adapts it with numerous neologisms, borrowed terms (often technical) from European languages and adopted terms (often colloquial) from Arabic. The literary and narrative use of Hebrew
17670-713: The origins of the Cochin Jewish and other Indian Jewish communities noted that until the present day the Indian Jews maintained in the range of 3%-20% Middle Eastern ancestry, confirming the traditional narrative of migration from the Middle East to India. The tests noted however that the communities had considerable Indian admixture, exhibiting the fact that the Indian Jewish people "inherited their ancestry from Middle Eastern and Indian populations". The 12th-century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela wrote about
17825-534: The phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite , and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from that of Egyptian. One ancient document is the famous Moabite Stone , written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam inscription , found near Jerusalem , is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Archaic Hebrew include
17980-591: The present day. It is perhaps the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence. During the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain , important work was done by grammarians in explaining the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew; much of this was based on the work of the grammarians of Classical Arabic . Important Hebrew grammarians were Judah ben David Hayyuj , Jonah ibn Janah , Abraham ibn Ezra and later (in Provence ), David Kimhi . A great deal of poetry
18135-635: The primary language of use, and to prevent large-scale incorporation of English words into the Hebrew vocabulary. The Academy of the Hebrew Language of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem currently invents about 2,000 new Hebrew words each year for modern words by finding an original Hebrew word that captures the meaning, as an alternative to incorporating more English words into Hebrew vocabulary. The Haifa municipality has banned officials from using English words in official documents, and
18290-637: The primary method for calculating the calendar year. For example, the writings of Josephus and the Books of the Maccabees used Seleucid Era dating exclusively, and the Talmud tractate Avodah Zarah states: Rav Aha b. Jacob then put this question: How do we know that our Era [of Documents] is connected with the Kingdom of Greece at all? Why not say that it is reckoned from the Exodus from Egypt, omitting
18445-674: The rest of the Middle East; and eventually Greek functioned as another international language with the eastern areas of the Roman Empire. William Schniedewind argues that after waning in the Persian period, the religious importance of Hebrew grew in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and cites epigraphical evidence that Hebrew survived as a vernacular language – though both its grammar and its writing system had been substantially influenced by Aramaic. According to another summary, Greek
18600-507: The rulership and tax revenue of a pocket principality in Anjuvannam near Cranganore, and rights to seventy-two "free houses". The Hindu king gave permission in perpetuity (or, in the more poetic expression of those days, "as long as the world, sun and moon endure") for Jews to live freely, build synagogues , and own property "without conditions attached". A family connection to Rabban, "the king of Shingly" (another name for Cranganore),
18755-539: The rules for the calculated calendar epoch and their scriptural basis, including the modern epochal year in his work, and establishing the final formal usage of the anno mundi era. The first year of the Jewish calendar, Anno Mundi 1 (AM 1), began about one year before creation, so that year is also called the Year of emptiness. The first five days of Jewish creation week occupy the last five days of AM 1, Elul 25–29. The sixth day of creation, when Adam and Eve were created,
18910-725: The said Rabbi concerned the origins of the Jews of Cochin and the duration of their settlement in India. In Rabbi Yehezkel's response (Merzbacher's Library in Munich, MS. 4238) , he wrote: "after the destruction of the Second Temple (may it soon be rebuilt and reestablished in our days!), in the year 3828 of anno mundi , i. e., 68 CE, about ten thousand men and women had come to the land of Malabar and were pleased to settle in four places; those places being Cranganore , Dschalor, Madai [and] Plota. Most were in Cranganore, which
19065-493: The southern villages of Judea." In other words, "in terms of dialect geography, at the time of the tannaim Palestine could be divided into the Aramaic-speaking regions of Galilee and Samaria and a smaller area, Judaea, in which Rabbinic Hebrew was used among the descendants of returning exiles." In addition, it has been surmised that Koine Greek was the primary vehicle of communication in coastal cities and among
19220-474: The spoken language of the Russian Jews, should be treated as their only national language, while Hebrew was to be treated as a foreign language. Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries, although liturgical texts were still published until the 1930s. Despite numerous protests, a policy of suppression of the teaching of Hebrew operated from the 1930s on. Later in
19375-470: The term "Hebrew" generally render its meaning as roughly "from the other side [of the river/desert]"—i.e., an exonym for the inhabitants of the land of Israel and Judah , perhaps from the perspective of Mesopotamia , Phoenicia or Transjordan (with the river referred to being perhaps the Euphrates , Jordan or Litani ; or maybe the northern Arabian Desert between Babylonia and Canaan ). Compare
19530-637: The three main dates of the world's history: the beginning of Creation, the Incarnation , and the Resurrection of Christ . All these events happened, according to the Alexandrian chronology, on the 25th of March; furthermore, the first two events were separated by the period of exactly 5500 years; the first and the third one occurred on Sunday – the sacred day of the beginning of the Creation and its renovation through Christ. Dionysius of Alexandria had earlier emphatically quoted mystical justifications for
19685-517: The towns thereof, live several thousand Israelites . The inhabitants are all black, and the Jews also. The latter are good and benevolent. They know the law of Moses and the prophets , and to a small extent the Talmud and Halacha ." These people later became known as the Malabari Jews. They built synagogues in Kerala beginning in the 12th and 13th centuries. The oldest known gravestone of
19840-524: The true inheritors of the old Jewish culture. Some went beyond that territory, including a few families who followed the Arab spice routes to southern India. Speaking Ladino language and having Sephardic customs, they found the Malabari Jewish community as established in Cochin to be quite different. According to the historian Mandelbaum, there were resulting tensions between the two ethnic communities. The European Jews had some trade links to Europe and useful languages to conduct international trade When
19995-410: The universe." Western Christianity never fully adopted an Anno Mundi epoch system, and did not at first produce chronologies based on the Vulgate that were in contrast to the Eastern calculations from the Septuagint. Since the Vulgate was not completed until only a few years before the sack of Rome by the Goths, there was little time for such developments before the political upheavals that followed in
20150-580: The upper class of Jerusalem , while Aramaic was prevalent in the lower class of Jerusalem, but not in the surrounding countryside. After the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century CE, Judaeans were forced to disperse. Many relocated to Galilee, so most remaining native speakers of Hebrew at that last stage would have been found in the north. Many scholars have pointed out that Hebrew continued to be used alongside Aramaic during Second Temple times, not only for religious purposes but also for nationalistic reasons, especially during revolts such as
20305-437: The wealthy Jews of Cranganore because of their primacy in the lucrative pepper trade. The Jews fled south to the Kingdom of Cochin , seeking the protection of the Cochin Royal Family (Perumpadapu Swaroopam). The Hindu Raja of Cochin gave them asylum. Moreover, he exempted Jews from taxation but bestowed on them all privileges enjoyed by the tax-payers. The Malabar Jews built additional synagogues at Mala and Ernakulam . In
20460-455: The word Habiru or cognate Assyrian ebru , of identical meaning. One of the earliest references to the language's name as " Ivrit " is found in the prologue to the Book of Sirach , from the 2nd century BCE. The Hebrew Bible does not use the term "Hebrew" in reference to the language of the Hebrew people; its later historiography, in the Book of Kings , refers to it as יְהוּדִית Yehudit " Judahite (language)". Hebrew belongs to
20615-424: The world today; the latter group utilizes the Samaritan dialect as their liturgical tongue. As a non- first language , it is studied mostly by non-Israeli Jews and students in Israel, by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations , and by theologians in Christian seminaries . The modern English word "Hebrew" is derived from Old French Ebrau , via Latin from
20770-421: The world was the official era of the Eastern Orthodox Church from c. AD 691 to 1728 in the Ecumenical Patriarchate . By the late 10th century the era, which had become fixed at 1 September 5509 BC since at least the mid-7th century (differing by 16 years from the Alexandrian date, and by 2 years from the Chronicon Paschale ), had become widely accepted by Chalcedonian Christianity . The Byzantine era
20925-404: The world" to emperor Marcus Aurelius. His chronology begins with the biblical first man Adam through to emperor Marcus Aurelius , in whose reign Theophilus lived. The chronology puts the creation of the world at about 5529 BCE: "All the years from the creation of the world amount to a total of 5,698 years." No mention of Jesus is made in his chronology. Dr. Ben Zion Wacholder points out that
21080-399: The writings of the Church Fathers on this subject are of vital significance (even though he disagrees with their chronological system based on the authenticity of the Septuagint , as compared to that of the Hebrew text ), in that through the Christian chronographers a window to the earlier Hellenistic biblical chronographers is preserved: An immense intellectual effort was expended during
21235-421: The year of the world" ( לבריאת העולם ), while in English they are abbreviated AM or A.M. . Occasionally, Anno Mundi is styled as Anno Hebraico (AH) , though this is subject to confusion with notation for the Islamic Hijri year . The Jewish Anno Mundi count is sometimes referred to as the "Hebrew era", to distinguish it from other systems such as the Byzantine calendar (which uses a different calculation of
21390-410: The year since creation. Thus, adding 3760 before Rosh Hashanah or 3761 after to a Julian calendar year number starting from 1 CE will yield the Hebrew year. For earlier years there may be a discrepancy; see Missing years (Jewish calendar) . The Septuagint was the most scholarly non-Hebrew version of the Old Testament available to early Christians . Many converts already spoke Greek, and it
21545-421: Was a spoken language , and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language . The earlier section of the Talmud is the Mishnah that was published around 200 CE, although many of the stories take place much earlier, and were written in the earlier Mishnaic dialect. The dialect is also found in certain Dead Sea Scrolls. Mishnaic Hebrew is considered to be one of
21700-430: Was at all times ready to explain any scriptural difficulty that might happen to be brought to him by any Bene Israel. He was a Reader, Preacher, Expounder of the Law, Mohel and Shochet . He died on 17 April 1856 in Bombay. India became independent from British rule in 1947 and Israel established itself as a nation in 1948. With the heightened emphasis on the Partition of India into a secular republic of India and
21855-490: Was believed that the earliest Jews in India were sailors from King Solomon 's time. It has been claimed that following the destruction of the First Temple in the Siege of Jerusalem (587 BCE), some Jewish exiles came to India. Only after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE are records found that attest to numerous Jewish settlers arriving at Cranganore , an ancient port near Cochin. Cranganore, now transliterated as Kodungallur , but also known under other names,
22010-406: Was carried out against the Roman Empire by the Jews of Judaea . Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among societal elites and immigrants. Hebrew survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy , rabbinic literature , intra-Jewish commerce, and Jewish poetic literature . The first dated book printed in Hebrew
22165-469: Was convinced that the Bene Israel were the descendants of the Jews, he still wanted to examine them further. He therefore gave their women clean and unclean fish to be cooked together, but they singled out the clean from the unclean ones, saying that they never used fish that had neither fins nor scales. Being thus satisfied, he began to teach them the tenets of the Jewish religion. He taught Hebrew reading, without translation, to three Bene Israel young men from
22320-406: Was long considered a sign of both purity and prestige within the community. Rabban's descendants led this distinct community until a chieftainship dispute broke out between two brothers, one of them named Joseph Azar , in the 16th century. The Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela , speaking of Kollam (Quilon) on the Malabar Coast, writes in his Itinerary : "[t]hroughout the island, including all
22475-418: Was made to other starting points for eras, such as Destruction Era dating, being the number of years since the 70 CE destruction of the Second Temple , and the number of years since the Creation year based on the calculation in the Seder Olam Rabbah . By his calculation, based on the Masoretic Text , Adam and Eve were created on 1st of Tishrei ( Rosh Hashanah Day 1) in 3760 BCE , later confirmed by
22630-438: Was now a more significant written language than Aramaic within Judaea." This nationalist aspect was further emphasized during periods of conflict, as Hannah Cotton observing in her analysis of legal documents during the Jewish revolts against Rome that "Hebrew became the symbol of Jewish nationalism, of the independent Jewish State." The nationalist use of Hebrew is evidenced in several historical documents and artefacts, including
22785-406: Was published by Abraham Garton in Reggio ( Calabria , Italy) in 1475. With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, the Hebrew language experienced a full-scale revival as a spoken and literary language. The creation of a modern version of the ancient language was led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda . Modern Hebrew ( Ivrit ) became the main language of the Yishuv in Palestine , and subsequently
22940-406: Was readily adopted as the preferred vernacular-language rendering for the eastern Roman Empire. The later Latin translation called the Vulgate , an interpretative translation from Hebrew and other Greek sources, replaced it in the west after its completion by St. Jerome c. 405 , Latin being the most common vernacular language in those regions. The earliest extant Christian writings on
23095-470: Was revived beginning with the Haskalah movement. The first secular periodical in Hebrew, Ha-Me'assef (The Gatherer), was published by maskilim in Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad ) from 1783 onwards. In the mid-19th century, publications of several Eastern European Hebrew-language newspapers (e.g. Hamagid , founded in Ełk in 1856) multiplied. Prominent poets were Hayim Nahman Bialik and Shaul Tchernichovsky ; there were also novels written in
23250-479: Was suppressed. Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew "reactionary" since it was associated with Zionism, and the teaching of Hebrew at primary and secondary schools was officially banned by the People's Commissariat for Education as early as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming to secularize education (the language itself did not cease to be studied at universities for historical and linguistic purposes ). The official ordinance stated that Yiddish, being
23405-437: Was the language of government, Hebrew the language of prayer, study and religious texts, and Aramaic was the language of legal contracts and trade. There was also a geographic pattern: according to Bernard Spolsky , by the beginning of the Common Era, " Judeo-Aramaic was mainly used in Galilee in the north, Greek was concentrated in the former colonies and around governmental centers, and Hebrew monolingualism continued mainly in
23560-416: Was their close relationship with Indian rulers. This was codified on a set of copper plates granting the community special privileges. The date of these plates, known as "Sâsanam", is contentious. The plates are physically inscribed with the date 379 CE, but in 1925, tradition was setting it as 1069 CE. Indian rulers granted the Jewish leader Joseph Rabban the rank of prince over the Jews of Cochin, giving him
23715-408: Was to a certain extent a pidgin . Near the end of that century the Jewish activist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda , owing to the ideology of the national revival ( שיבת ציון , Shivat Tziyon , later Zionism ), began reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken language. Eventually, as a result of the local movement he created, but more significantly as a result of the new groups of immigrants known under the name of
23870-448: Was used as part of the civil calendar of the Byzantine Empire from AD 988 to 1453, and by Russia from c. AD 988 to 1699. Its computation was derived from the Septuagint Biblical translation and placed the date of creation at 1 September, 5,509 years before the Christian Era . 1 September remains the first day of the Orthodox liturgical year. The "year of creation" was generally expressed in Greek as Etos Kosmou , literally "year of
24025-570: Was written, by poets such as Dunash ben Labrat , Solomon ibn Gabirol , Judah ha-Levi , Moses ibn Ezra and Abraham ibn Ezra , in a "purified" Hebrew based on the work of these grammarians, and in Arabic quantitative or strophic meters. This literary Hebrew was later used by Italian Jewish poets. The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from Classical Greek and Medieval Arabic motivated Medieval Hebrew to borrow terminology and grammar from these other languages, or to coin equivalent terms from existing Hebrew roots, giving rise to
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