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132-462: Jaffa ( Hebrew : יָפוֹ , romanized :  Yāfō , pronounced [jaˈfo] ; Arabic : يَافَا , romanized :  Yāfā , pronounced [ˈjaːfaː] ), also called Japho , Joppa or Joppe in English, is an ancient Levantine port city which is part of Tel Aviv-Yafo , Israel , located in its southern part. The city sits atop a naturally elevated outcrop on

264-643: A calcarenite ( calcareous sandstone or grainstone ), found on the Levantine coast of the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai Peninsula . The kurkar ridges are prevalent on Israel's coast from the area of Tel Aviv northwards. South of Mount Carmel they form parallel alignments, the result of transgressive coastlines. Kurkar

396-685: 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

528-578: A Jewish visitor, L.A. Frankl , found sixty-five Jewish families living in Jaffa, 'about 400 soul in all.' Of these four were shoemakers, three tailors, one silversmith and one watchmaker. There were also merchants and shopkeepers and 'many live by manual labour, porters, sailors, messengers, etc.' Until the mid-19th century, Jaffa's orange groves were mainly owned by Arabs, who employed traditional methods of farming. The pioneers of modern agriculture in Jaffa were American settlers, who brought in farm machinery in

660-595: 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

792-661: 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

924-579: 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

1056-404: A few tents covered with reeds, where pilgrims seek shelter from the heat of the sun. The sea enters the town, forming a poor and shallow harbor: it is dangerous to remain there long for fear of being driven onshore by a gust of wind. When any pilgrims disembark there, interpreters and other officers of the sultan instantly hasten to ascertain their numbers, to serve them as guides, and to receive, in

1188-594: 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

1320-472: A heap of ruins when he visited in 1598. Botanist and traveller Leonhard Rauwolf landed near the site of the town on 13 September 1575 and wrote "we landed on the high, rocky shore where the town of Joppe did stand formerly, at this time the town was so demolished that there was not one house to be found." (p. 212, Rauwolf, 1582) The 17th century saw the beginning of the re-establishment of churches and hostels for Christian pilgrims en route to Jerusalem and

1452-468: 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

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1584-742: 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 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

1716-675: A period of Babylonian occupation , under Persian rule , Jaffa was governed by Phoenicians from Tyre. Jaffa is not mentioned in Alexander the Great 's coastal campaign, but during the Wars of the Diadochi , Antigonus Monophthalmus captured Jaffa in 315 BCE. Ptolemy I Soter later destroyed it in 312 BCE. Despite this, Jaffa was resettled and became a Ptolemaic mint site in the third century BCE. Archaeological evidence from this period includes

1848-440: A pirate base. In the 3rd century CE, Jaffa was known by the name Flavia Ioppe , potentially indicating an honorary designation under Flavian rule . Despite the devastation and loss of life during the revolt, Jaffa maintained a Jewish population. Inscriptions from the early 2nd century indicate Jewish involvement in local governance. Further evidence includes Jewish epitaphs dating from the 3rd to 6th centuries, some from members of

1980-548: 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

2112-668: 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

2244-532: A three-year truce between the two armies. In 1229, Frederick II signed a ten-year truce in a new Treaty of Jaffa . He fortified the castle of Jaffa and had two inscriptions carved into city wall, one Latin and the other Arabic. The inscription, deciphered in 2011, describes him as the "Holy Roman Emperor" and bears the date "1229 of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus the Messiah." In March 1268, Baibars ,

2376-472: 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

2508-558: 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

2640-527: A watchtower and numerous stamped amphora handles. Additionally, the city is mentioned in several Zeno papyri . The area was transferred to Seleucid control after the Battle of Paneas in 198 BCE. Around 163–162 BCE, during the Maccabean revolt , the inhabitants of Jaffa invited the local Jews onto boats, subsequently sinking them and drowning hundreds. In retaliation, Judas Maccabeus attacked Jaffa, setting

2772-518: 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

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2904-477: Is a large harbour frequented by all the ships coming to Filastin, and from it they set sail to all lands. Between it and Ar Ramlah the distance is 6 miles, and it lies west of Ar Ramlah." In 1432, Bertrandon de la Broquière observed that Jaffa was in ruins, with only a few tents standing. He wrote: "At Jaffa, the pardons commence for pilgrims to the Holy Land ... at present, it is entirely destroyed, having only

3036-482: Is believed to be based on the Semitic root ʕ-b-r ( ע־ב־ר ‎), meaning "beyond", "other side", "across"; interpretations of 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

3168-505: Is debated, given the term leistai (pirates) was often used pejoratively in this period. Jaffa was annexed to Syria by Pompey but later restored to Judaea by Julius Caesar , reaffirming Jewish access to the sea through their traditional port. In 39 BCE, Herod captured Jaffa from Antigonus , though control fluctuated until Octavian returned it to Herod after the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra . After Herod's death, Jaffa, along with Strato's Tower (Caesarea), Sebaste , and Jerusalem,

3300-595: Is derived from Old French Ebrau , via Latin from 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

3432-612: 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 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

3564-567: 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

3696-731: Is made to Jose ben Halafta (2nd century) traveling through Jaffa. Jaffa seems to have attracted serious Jewish scholars in the 4th and 5th century. The Jerusalem Talmud (compiled 4th and 5th century) in Moed Ketan references Rabi Akha bar Khanina of Jaffa; and in Pesachim chapter 1 refers to Rabi Pinchas ben Yair of Jaffa. The Babylonian Talmud (compiled 5th century) in Megillah 16b mentions Rav Adda Demin of Jaffa. Leviticus Rabbah (compiled between 5th and 7th century) mentions Rav Nachman of Jaffa. The Pesikta Rabbati (written in

3828-411: 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 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

3960-551: 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. Kurkar Kurkar is the regional name for an aeolian quartz sandstone with carbonate cement, in other words an eolianite or

4092-748: 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 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"

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4224-841: 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 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

4356-405: 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

4488-535: Is the product of windblown quartzitic sands which created dunes during the Pleistocene , which were cemented by carbonates transforming them to sandstone (lithification process), forming successive ridges along the shore. Kurkar occurs on the shore as well as under the current sea level, on the continental shelf. There are three underwater sandstone ridges off the coast of Israel and two on land. The younger kurkar formations also build small islands or islets along

4620-547: 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

4752-650: 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

4884-644: The Canaanite city, where the soldiers emerged and conquered it. The story predates the story of the Trojan horse , as told by Homer , by at least two centuries. The city is also mentioned in the Amarna letters under its Egyptian name Ya-Pho ( Ya-Pu, EA 296, l.33 ). The city was under Egyptian rule until around 1200 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible , Jaffa is depicted as the northernmost Philistine city, bordering

5016-692: The Council of Ephesus in 431 CE. A very small number of its Greek or Latin bishops are known. Early Christian texts describe Jaffa as a modest settlement, with varying accounts of its prosperity and state of preservation. The New Testament account of Saint Peter bringing back to life the widow Dorcas (recorded in Acts of the Apostles , 9:36–42 , takes place in Jaffa, then called in Greek Ἰόππη ( Latinized as Joppa ). Acts 10:10–23 relates that, while Peter

5148-512: The Euphrates , Jordan or Litani ; or maybe the northern Arabian Desert between Babylonia and Canaan ). Compare 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

5280-572: 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

5412-515: The Israelite territories – more specifically those of Tribe of Dan (hence the modern term " Gush Dan " for the center of the coastal plain). The Israelites did not manage to take Jaffa from the Philistines. Jaffa is mentioned four times in the Hebrew Bible : as the northernmost Philistine city by the coast, bordering the territory of the Tribe of Dan ( Joshua 19:46 ); as port-of-entry for

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5544-542: 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 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

5676-682: 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

5808-594: The Mahmoudiya Mosque and the public fountain known as Sabil Abu Nabbut . During the 1834 Peasants' revolt in Palestine , Jaffa was besieged for forty days by "mountaineers" in revolt against Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt . In 1820, Isaiah Ajiman of Istanbul built a synagogue and hostel for the accommodation of Jews on their way to their four holy cities - Jerusalem, Hebron , Tiberias and Safed . This area became known as Dar al-Yehud (Arabic for "the house of

5940-653: The Mediterranean coastline. Excavations at Jaffa indicate that the city was settled as early as the Early Bronze Age . The city is referenced in several ancient Egyptian and Assyrian documents. Biblically, Jaffa is noted as one of the boundaries of the tribe of Dan and as a port through which Lebanese cedars were imported for the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem . Under Persian rule, Jaffa

6072-536: 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

6204-464: The cedars of Lebanon for Solomon's Temple ( 2 Chronicles 2:16 ); as the place whence the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish ( Jonah 1:3 ); and again as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for the Second Temple of Jerusalem ( Ezra 3:7 ). In the late 8th century BCE, Sennacherib , king of Assyria , recorded conquering Jaffa from its sovereign, the Philistine king of Ashkelon . After

6336-533: The diaspora , along with references in Talmudic sources to scholars associated with Jaffa. Archaeological findings from the 2nd and 3rd centuries reveal structures destroyed by fire, possibly linked to regional unrest. During the first centuries of Christianity , Jaffa was a fairly unimportant Roman and Byzantine locality, which only in the 5th century became a bishopric . The new religion arrived in Jaffa relatively late, not appearing in historical records until

6468-433: The kurkar ridge are lentisk ( Pistacia lentiscus ) and headed thyme ( Coridothymus capitatus ). The rare plants include French lavender ( Lavandula stoechas ) with its purple blooms, Paronychia palaestina and Galilee sea-lavender ( Limonium galilaeum ). In May 2009, an offshore pilot study was conducted in the northern Galilee by a team of scientists collecting geological, geophysical, geochemical and biological data in

6600-462: 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

6732-460: 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 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

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6864-673: The 1192 Battle of Jaffa and subsequent Treaty of Jaffa , a truce between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin , as well as a later 1229 peace treaty . In 1799, Napoleon also sacked the town in the Siege of Jaffa , and in the First World War the British took the city in the 1917 Battle of Jaffa , and under their watch, as part of Mandatory Palestine , ethnic tensions culminated in the 1921 Jaffa riots . As an Arab majority city in

6996-437: The 1850s and 1860s, followed by the Templers and the Jews. From the 1880s, real estate became an important branch of the economy. A 'biarah' (a watered garden) cost 100,000 piastres and annually produced 15,000, of which the farming costs were 5,000: 'A very fair percentage return on the investment.' Water for the gardens was easily accessible with wells between ten and forty feet deep. Jaffa's citrus industry began to flourish in

7128-454: 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,

7260-535: 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

7392-419: The 9th century) in chapter 17 mentions R. Tanchum of Jaffa. Several streets and alleys of the Jaffa Flea Market area are named after these scholars. In 636 Jaffa was conquered by Arabs. Under Islamic rule, it served as a port of Ramla , then the provincial capital. Al-Muqaddasi ( c.  945 /946 – 991) described Yafah as "lying on the sea, is but a small town, although the emporium of Palestine and

7524-579: 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,

7656-503: 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

7788-490: The Galilee. During the 18th century, the coastline around Jaffa was often besieged by pirates and this led to the inhabitants relocating to Ramla and Lod , where they relied on messages from a solitary guard house to inform them when ships were approaching the harbour. The landing of goods and passengers was notoriously difficult and dangerous. Until well into the 20th century, ships had to rely on teams of oarsmen to bring their cargo ashore. On 7 March 1799, Napoleon captured

7920-416: 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

8052-437: 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

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8184-454: 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

8316-399: The Jews"); and was the basis of the Jewish community in Jaffa. The appointment of Mahmud Aja as Ottoman governor marked the beginning of a period of stability and growth for the city, interrupted by the 1832 conquest of the city by Muhammad Ali of Egypt . By 1839, at least 153 Sephardic Jews were living in Jaffa. The community was served for fifty years by Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi miRagusa . In

8448-417: 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

8580-409: The Ottoman Empire) had 285 square kilometers of kurkar and hamra formations. Due to construction, farming and the use of off-road vehicles, this has diminished to 109 square kilometers. Kurkar ridges in Israel provide nesting sites for an endangered species of bird, the European bee-eater ; and nine species of wild plants native only to Israel, such as the coastal iris. Among the dominant plants on

8712-455: The Ottoman era, Jaffa became known starting from the 19th century for its expansive orchards and fruits, including its namesake Jaffa orange . It was also a Palestinian hub for journalism in Mandatory Palestine in the 20th century, where Falastin and Al-Difa' newspapers were established. After the 1948 Palestine War , most of its Arab population fled or were expelled , and the city became part of then newly established state of Israel, and

8844-438: The Roman and Byzantine periods. Archaeological remains from the Roman period are mainly found near the harbor, including rich finds like terra sigillata , a bread or cheese stamp, and coins. In the early stages of the First Jewish–Roman War in 66 CE, Cestius Gallus sent forces to Jaffa, where the city was destroyed and its inhabitants indiscriminately killed. Josephus writes that 8,400 inhabitants were massacred. Subsequently,

8976-449: 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

9108-406: 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

9240-422: 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

9372-411: 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

9504-493: The accumulation of debris and landfill over the centuries, made the hill even higher. The city as such was established at the latest around 1800 BCE. Jaffa is mentioned in an Ancient Egyptian letter from 1440 BCE. The so-called story of the Taking of Joppa glorifies its conquest by Pharaoh Thutmose III , whose general, Djehuty , hid Egyptian soldiers in sacks carried by pack animals and sent them camouflaged as tribute into

9636-404: The afternoon, the prisoners of Jaffa were marched off in the midst of a vast square phalanx formed by the troops of General Bon... The Turks, walking along in total disorder, had already guessed their fate and appeared not even to shed any tears... When they finally arrived in the sand dunes to the south-west of Jaffa, they were ordered to halt beside a pool of yellowish water. The officer commanding

9768-561: 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

9900-547: 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,

10032-465: The best pomegranates . Hebrew language Hebrew ( Hebrew alphabet : עִבְרִית ‎, ʿĪvrīt , pronounced [ ʔivˈʁit ] or [ ʕivˈrit ] ; Samaritan script : ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ‎ ʿÎbrit ) is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family . A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages , it was natively spoken by

10164-535: The blessed minaret, as well as the gate of this mosque...in the year 666 of the Hijra [1268 CE]. May God have mercy upon him and upon all Muslims. Abu'l-Fida (1273–1331), writing in 1321, described "Yafa, in Filastin" as "a small but very pleasant town lying on the sea-shore. It has a celebrated harbour. The town of Yafa is well fortified. Its markets are much frequented, and many merchants ply their trades here. There

10296-525: The bodies of those already dead had to be pulled away so as to finish off those unfortunate beings who, concealed under this awful and terrible wall of bodies, had not yet been struck down. Many more died in an epidemic of bubonic plague that broke out soon afterwards. Residential life in the city was reestablished in the early 19th century. The governor who was appointed after the devastation brought about by Napoleon, Muhammad Abu-Nabbut , commenced wide-ranging building and restoration work in Jaffa, including

10428-576: 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 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

10560-453: The city was resettled by Jews expelled from neighboring regions, who used it to disrupt maritime commerce between Egypt and Syria . As the Romans, led by Vespasian , approached Jaffa, those Jews fled to sea but were devastated by a storm, killing 4,200 people. Those who reached shore were killed by the Romans, who subsequently destroyed Jaffa again and stationed troops to prevent its reuse as

10692-507: The city. During the operations of Antiochus VII Sidetes in Judaea, he demanded the surrender of Jaffa among other cities. Simon negotiated a settlement by agreeing to pay a smaller tribute. Simon's capture of Jaffa is praised in 1 Maccabees because of the city's strategic importance as a port. In the Hasmonean period, the city was fortified and served as the main port of Judaea. Under Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (103 – 76 BCE), Jaffa

10824-431: The coast of Israel, Lebanon (at Sidon and near Tripoli ), and Syria ( Arwad ). In the Gaza Strip , coastal plain kurkar deposits of medium to coarse-grained calcareous sandstone are characterized by crossbedding . Israel's coastal sand dunes, the habitat of many rare species of plants and animals, are made of kurkar interspersed with hamra, red sandy loam. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Palestine (then under

10956-602: 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

11088-568: 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;

11220-513: 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

11352-686: The early 1850s, HaLevi leased an orchard to Clorinda S. Minor , founder of a Christian messianic community that established Mount Hope, a farming initiative to encourage local Jews to learn manual trades, which the Messianics did in order to pave wave for the Second Coming of Jesus. In 1855, the British Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore bought the orchard from HaLevi, although Minor continued to manage it. American missionary Ellen Clare Miller, visiting Jaffa in 1867, reported that

11484-590: 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

11616-455: The faith of His Prophet...Sultan of Islam and the Muslims, Baybars...who came out with his victorious army on the 10th of the month of Rajab from the land of Egypt, resolved to carry out jihad and combat the intransigent infidels . He camped in the port city of Jaffa in the morning and conquered it, by God's will, in the third hour of that day. Then he ordered the erection of the dome over

11748-436: 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 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

11880-711: 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

12012-406: 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

12144-510: The harbor is reputed to have been the place where Andromeda was rescued by Perseus. Pliny the Elder associated the name with Iopa, daughter of Aeolus , god of the wind. The medieval Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi referred to it as Yaffa . Ancient Jaffa was built on a 40 metres (130 ft) high kurkar sandstone ridge, with a broad view of the coastline, giving it a strategic importance in military history. The tell of Jaffa, created through

12276-492: The harbor on fire, destroying ships, and killing many inhabitants, though he did not attempt to hold the city. By 147 – 146 BCE, his brother Jonathan Apphus expelled the garrison of Seleucid king Demetrius II from Jaffa but did not conquer the city. In 143 BCE, Simon Thassi established a garrison in Jaffa, expelled the non-Jewish inhabitants to prevent them from collaborating with the Seleucid commander Tryphon, and fortified

12408-491: 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 the language as Ivrit , meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit , meaning Assyrian , which

12540-587: 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 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

12672-465: 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

12804-471: 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

12936-499: 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 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

13068-415: The last quarter of the 19th century. E.C. Miller records that 'about ten million' oranges were being exported annually, and that the town was surrounded by 'three or four hundred orange gardens, each containing upwards of one thousand trees'. Shamuti or Shamouti oranges, aka " Jaffa oranges ", were the major crop, but citrons , lemons and mandarin oranges were also grown. Jaffa had a reputation for producing

13200-466: The late 1880s. The most successful enterprises were metalworking factories, among them the machine shop run by the Templers that employed over 100 workers in 1910. Other factories produced orange-crates, barrels, corks, noodles, ice, seltzer, candy, soap, olive oil, leather, alkali, wine, cosmetics and ink. Most of the newspapers and books printed in Ottoman Palestine were published in Jaffa . In 1859,

13332-477: The name of their master, the customary tribute." In 1515, Jaffa was conquered by the Ottoman sultan Selim I . In the census of 1596, it appeared located in the nahiya of Ramla in the liwa of Gaza . It had a population of 15 households, all Muslim . They paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3 % on various products; a total of 7,520 akçe . The traveller Jean Cotwyk (Cotovicus) described Jaffa as

13464-727: 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

13596-535: 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 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.   '

13728-629: The port of Ar-Ramlah . It is protected by a strong wall with iron gates, and the sea-gates also are of iron. The mosque is pleasant to the eye, and overlooks the sea. The harbour is excellent". Jaffa was captured in June 1099 during the First Crusade , and was the centre of the County of Jaffa and Ascalon , one of the vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem . One of its counts, John of Ibelin , wrote

13860-643: 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

13992-635: 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

14124-748: The principal book of the Assizes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem . Saladin conquered Jaffa in 1187. The city surrendered to King Richard the Lionheart on 10 September 1191, three days after the Battle of Arsuf . Despite efforts by Saladin to reoccupy the city in the July 1192 Battle of Jaffa , the city remained in the hands of the Crusaders. On 2 September 1192, the Treaty of Jaffa was formally signed, guaranteeing

14256-451: The region was Old Aramaic . Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language by late antiquity , but it continued to be used as 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

14388-431: 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 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

14520-734: 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

14652-493: 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

14784-474: 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

14916-721: The sultan of the Egyptian Mamluks , conquered Jaffa simultaneously with conquering Antioch . Baibars's goal was to conquer Christian crusader strongholds . An inscription from the White Mosque of Ramla , today visible in the Great Mosque of Gaza , commemorates the event: In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate ,...gave power to his servant...who has trust in him...who fights for Him and defends

15048-422: The town had a population of "about 5000, 1000 of these being Christians, 800 Jews and the rest Moslems". The city walls were torn down during the 1870s, allowing the city to expand. By the beginning of the 20th century, the population of Jaffa had swelled considerably. A group of Jews left Jaffa for the sand dunes to the north, where in 1909 they held a lottery to divide the lots acquired earlier. The settlement

15180-490: The town in what became known as the Siege of Jaffa , breached its walls, ransacked it, and killed scores of local inhabitants as a reaction to his envoys being brutally killed when delivering an ultimatum of surrender. Napoleon ordered the massacre of thousands of Muslim soldiers who were imprisoned having surrendered to the French. Napoleon's deputy commissioner of war Jacques-François Miot described it thus: On 10 March 1799 in

15312-420: The troops then divided the mass of prisoners into small groups, who were led off to several different points and shot... Finally, of all the prisoners there only remained those who were beside the pool of water. Our soldiers had used up their cartridges, so there was nothing to be done but to dispatch them with bayonets and knives. ... The result ... was a terrible pyramid of dead and dying bodies dripping blood and

15444-580: 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

15576-413: The widely accepted view that the earlier layers of biblical literature reflect the language used in these kingdoms. Furthermore, 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

15708-474: 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

15840-411: Was assigned to Archelaus ' ethnarchy in Judaea. The construction of Herod's superior harbor at Caesarea diminished Jaffa's regional importance. Josephus's accounts indicate that Jaffa had city status, administering surrounding districts, reflecting continued regional significance. However, he adds that the harbor at Jaffa was inferior to that of Caesarea . The population of the city during this period

15972-518: Was given to the Phoenicians . The city features in the biblical story of Jonah and the Greek legend of Andromeda . Later, the city served as the major port of Hasmonean Judea . However, its importance declined during the Roman period due to the construction of Caesarea . Jaffa was contested during the Crusades , when it presided over the County of Jaffa and Ascalon . It is associated with

16104-573: Was in Jaffa, he had a vision of a large sheet filled with "clean" and "unclean" animals being lowered from heaven, together with a message from the Holy Spirit telling him to accompany several messengers to Cornelius in Caesarea Maritima . Peter retells the story of his vision in Acts 11:4–17 , explaining how he had come to preach Christianity to the gentiles . In Midrash Tanna'im in its chapter Deuteronomy 33:19 , reference

16236-502: Was known at first as Ahuzat Bayit, but an assembly of its residents changed its name to Tel Aviv in 1910. Other Jewish suburbs to Jaffa had already been founded since 1887 , with others following until the Great War . In 1904, rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1864–1935) moved to Ottoman Palestine and took up the position of Chief Rabbi of Jaffa. In the 19th century, Jaffa was best known for its soap industry. Modern industry emerged in

16368-438: 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

16500-531: Was one of several coastal cities controlled by the Jews, including Straton's Tower , Apollonia , Iamnia , and Gaza . Archaeological evidence from this period is limited but includes remnants of walls, tombs from the early first century BCE, and hoards of coins. Incidents of piracy before the Roman conquest are mentioned by Josephus , who accused Aristobulus of instigating raids and acts of piracy. These claims are echoed by Diodorus and Strabo, though their reliability

16632-502: Was predominantly Jewish. Strabo , writing in the early 1st century CE, describes Jaffa as a location from which it is possible to see Jerusalem , the capital of the Jews, and writes that the Jews used it as their naval arsenal when they descended to the sea. Excavations suggest urban expansion during the Hellenistic period under Ptolemaic rule, followed by contraction under Seleucid and early Roman rule, and renewed expansion later in

16764-629: 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

16896-531: 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

17028-551: 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

17160-408: 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

17292-592: Was unified into a single municipality with Tel Aviv in 1950. Today, Jaffa is one of Israel's mixed cities , with approximately 37% of the city being Arab. The town was mentioned in Egyptian sources and the Amarna letters as Yapu . Mythology says that it is named for Yafet (Japheth), one of the sons of Noah , the one who built it after the Flood . The Hellenist tradition links the name to Iopeia , or Cassiopeia , mother of Andromeda . An outcropping of rocks near

17424-570: 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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