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126-481: The Arabic name of the mountain is Jebel el-Qafzeh, 'Mount of the Leap', and the cave's name is derived from it, Qafzeh Cave, sometimes spelled Qafza Cave, with article becoming al-Kafza (Cave). By translation to Hebrew , the name becomes Meʿarat Har HaKfitza, 'Leap Mount Cave', or sometimes Mt. HaKfitza Cave, HaKfitza(h) Cave, or Meʿarat Qafzeh. Another Hebrew name is Meʿarat Kedumim or Kedumim Cave. The various caves in

252-544: A hypsodont jaw, it was probably a grazer, with a food selection very similar to domesticated cattle feeding on grass, twigs and acorns . Mesowear analysis of Holocene Danish aurochs premolar teeth indicates that it changed from an abrasion -dominated grazer in the Danish Preboreal to a mixed feeder in the Boreal , Atlantic and Subboreal periods. Dental microwear and mesowear analysis of specimens from

378-549: A sequence analysis in 2010, which showed that its genome consists of 16,338 base pairs . Further studies using the aurochs whole genome sequence have identified candidate microRNA-regulated domestication genes . A comprehensive sequence analysis of Late Pleistocene and Holocene aurochs published in 2024 suggested that Indian aurochs (represented by modern zebu cattle) were the most genetically divergent aurochs population, having diverged from other aurochs around 300–166,000 years ago, with other aurochs populations spanning Europe and

504-685: 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

630-509: A Polish steer. Contemporary reconstructions of the aurochs are based on skeletons and the information derived from contemporaneous artistic depictions and historic descriptions of the animal. Remains of aurochs hair were not known until the early 1980s. Depictions show that the North African aurochs may have had a light saddle marking on its back. Calves were probably born with a chestnut colour, and young bulls changed to black with

756-595: 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

882-661: 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

1008-428: A discolouration that appeared after domestication. The proportions and body shape of the aurochs were strikingly different from many modern cattle breeds. For example, the legs were considerably longer and more slender, resulting in a shoulder height that nearly equalled the trunk length. The skull, carrying the large horns, was substantially larger and more elongated than in most cattle breeds. As in other wild bovines,

1134-579: 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

1260-660: A feast held by the Natufian culture around 12,000 years BP, in which three aurochs were eaten. This appears to be an uncommon occurrence in the culture and was held in conjunction with the burial of an older woman, presumably of some social status. Petroglyphs depicting aurochs in Gobustan Rock Art in Azerbaijan date to the Upper Paleolithic to Neolithic periods. Aurochs bones and skulls found at

1386-594: 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

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1512-468: 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

1638-536: 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

1764-400: A rectangular grave carved out of the bedrock, with his arms folded alongside his body and his hands placed on either side of his neck. The Deer horns were most likely placed as an offering. The boy's skull bears signs of a head trauma that had probably been the cause of death. The site was dated to circa 92,000 ya using thermoluminescence . Human remains found in the cave were preserved at

1890-548: 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

2016-448: A shinier coat than during the rest of the year. Calves stayed with their mothers until they were strong enough to join and keep up with the herd on the feeding grounds. Aurochs calves would have been vulnerable to predation by grey wolves ( Canis lupus ) and brown bears ( Ursus arctos ), while the immense size and strength of healthy adult aurochs meant they likely did not need to fear most predators. According to historical descriptions,

2142-668: 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

2268-472: 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

2394-558: 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

2520-474: A white eel stripe running down the spine, while cows retained a reddish-brown colour. Both sexes had a light-coloured muzzle, but evidence for variation in coat colour does not exist. Egyptian grave paintings show cattle with a reddish-brown coat colour in both sexes, with a light saddle, but the horn shape of these suggest that they may depict domesticated cattle. Many primitive cattle breeds, particularly those from Southern Europe, display similar coat colours to

2646-518: 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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2772-644: 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

2898-704: Is an extinct species of bovine , considered to be the wild ancestor of modern domestic cattle . With a shoulder height of up to 180 cm (71 in) in bulls and 155 cm (61 in) in cows, it was one of the largest herbivores in the Holocene ; it had massive elongated and broad horns that reached 80 cm (31 in) in length. The aurochs was part of the Pleistocene megafauna . It probably evolved in Asia and migrated west and north during warm interglacial periods. The oldest-known aurochs fossils date to

3024-574: Is depicted in Paleolithic cave paintings , Neolithic petroglyphs , Ancient Egyptian reliefs and Bronze Age figurines. It symbolised power, sexual potency and prowess in religions of the ancient Near East . Its horns were used in votive offerings , as trophies and drinking horns . Two aurochs domestication events occurred during the Neolithic Revolution . One gave rise to the domestic taurine cattle ( Bos taurus ) in

3150-567: 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

3276-627: 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. Aurochs This is an accepted version of this page See text The aurochs ( Bos primigenius ) ( / ˈ ɔː r ɒ k s / or / ˈ aʊ r ɒ k s / , plural aurochs or aurochsen )

3402-714: Is the oldest well-dated fossil specimen to date. The authors of the study proposed that Bos might have evolved in Africa and migrated to Eurasia during the Middle Pleistocene. Middle Pleistocene aurochs fossils were also excavated in a Saharan erg in the Hoggar Mountains . Fossils of the Indian subspecies ( Bos primigenius namadicus ) were excavated in alluvial deposits in South India dating to

3528-573: 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

3654-457: 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

3780-500: Is unique among Middle Palaeolithic sites, and it led researchers to look for signs of trauma or disease that might have led to their premature deaths. One child, Qafzeh 12, of around 3 years of age, by modern reference standards, had abnormalities indicating hydrocephalus . Five of these skeletons were found buried in an orderly fashion in the cave's floor, one being the remains of a 12-13 year old boy found with European fallow deer (Dama dama) horns next to his chest. He had been placed in

3906-547: 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

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4032-650: 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

4158-727: 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

4284-823: The Bovini tribe evolved about 11.7  million years ago . The Bos and Bison genetic lineages are estimated to have genetically diverged from the Bovini about 2.5 to 1.65 million years ago . The following cladogram shows the phylogenetic relationships of the aurochs based on analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial genomes in the Bovini tribe : Bubalina (buffalo) Bos primigenius (aurochs) Bos mutus (wild yak) Bison bison (American bison) Bison bonasus (European bison/wisent) Bos javanicus (banteng) Bos gaurus (gaur) Bos sauveli (kouprey) The cold Pliocene climate caused an extension of open grassland , which enabled

4410-547: 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,

4536-741: The Fertile Crescent in the Near East that was introduced to Europe via the Balkans and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea . Hybridisation between aurochs and early domestic cattle occurred during the early Holocene. Domestication of the Indian aurochs led to the zebu cattle ( Bos indicus ) that hybridised with early taurine cattle in the Near East about 4,000 years ago. Some modern cattle breeds exhibit features reminiscent of

4662-572: 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

4788-701: The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature placed Bos primigenius on the Official List of Specific Names in Zoology and thereby recognized the validity of this name for a wild species. Three aurochs subspecies have traditionally been recognised to have existed in historical times: In the 21st century, Chinese geneticists published mitochondrial DNA evidence supporting that Eurasian aurochs populations from northern China were genetically isolated for large stretches of

4914-597: The Irish elk/giant deer ( Megaloceros giganteus ). Acheulean layers in Hunasagi on India's southern Deccan Plateau yielded aurochs bones with cut marks. An aurochs bone with cut marks induced with flint was found in a Middle Paleolithic layer at the Nesher Ramla Homo site in Israel; it was dated to Marine Isotope Stage 5 about 120,000 years ago. An archaeological excavation in Israel found traces of

5040-495: 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

5166-682: 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

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5292-798: The Maykop culture in the Western Caucasus . The aurochs is denoted in the Akkadian words rīmu and rēmu, both used in the context of hunts by rulers such as Naram-Sin of Akkad , Tiglath-Pileser I and Shalmaneser III ; in Mesopotamia, it symbolised power and sexual potency, was an epithet of the gods Enlil and Shamash , denoted prowess as an epithet of the king Sennacherib and the hero Gilgamesh . Wild bulls are frequently referred to in Ugaritic texts as hunted by and sacrificed to

5418-700: The Middle Pleistocene . The species had an expansive range spanning from Western Europe and North Africa to the Indian subcontinent and East Asia. The distribution of the aurochs progressively contracted during the Holocene due to habitat loss and hunting, with the last known individual dying in the Jaktorów forest in Poland in 1627. There is a long history of interaction between aurochs and humans, including archaic humans like Neanderthals . The aurochs

5544-599: The Pleistocene , and as a result distinctive enough to be considered a separate subspecies, the East Asian aurochs ( B. p. sinensis ), even if the animals weren't morphologically distinct. At least two dwarf subspecies of aurochs developed in Mediterranean islands as a result of sea level changes during the Pleistocene: Calibrations using fossils of 16 Bovidae species indicate that

5670-536: 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

5796-750: The evolution of large grazers. The origin of the aurochs is unclear, with authors suggesting either an African or Asian origin for the species. Bos acutifrons is considered to be a possible ancestor of the aurochs, of which a fossil skull was excavated in the Sivalik Hills in India that dates to the Early Pleistocene about 2  million years ago . An aurochs skull excavated in Tunisia's Kef Governorate from early Middle Pleistocene strata dating about 0.78  million years ago

5922-399: 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

6048-507: 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

6174-484: 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

6300-441: 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

6426-454: 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,

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6552-535: 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

6678-495: 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

6804-579: 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,

6930-503: 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

7056-416: 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

7182-432: 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

7308-437: 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

7434-404: The Iberian Peninsula during the Last Glacial Maximum , with the Holocene also seeing mixing between previously isolated aurochs populations. The aurochs was widely distributed in North Africa , Mesopotamia , and throughout Europe to the Pontic–Caspian steppe , Caucasus and Western Siberia in the west and to the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in the north. Fossil horns attributed to

7560-400: The Institut de paléontologie humaine (IPH) de Paris and the largest part of Neville’s lithic series was preserved at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. Skeletons, isolated bones and teeth found in the cave belong to at least 28 people. Remains of Qafzeh 9 and 10 that were found in a double burial, are nearly complete and belong to a young male and a child. An additional important find was

7686-454: 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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7812-541: The Middle East to East Asia sharing much more recent common ancestry within the last 100,000 years. Late Pleistocene European aurochs were found to have a small (~3%) ancestry component from a divergent lineage that split prior to the divergence of Indian and other aurochs, suggested to be residual from earlier European aurochs populations. Towards the end of the Late Pleistocene, European aurochs experienced considerable gene flow from Middle Eastern aurochs. European Holocene aurochs primarily descend from those that were present in

7938-417: 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

8064-427: The Middle Pleistocene. Remains of aurochs are common in Late Pleistocene sites across the Indian subcontinent. The earliest fossils in Europe date to the Middle Pleistocene. One site widely historically suggested to represent the first appearance of aurochs in Europe was the Notarchirico site in southern Italy, dating around 600,000 years ago, however a 2024 re-examination of the site found that presence of aurochs at

8190-405: The Pleistocene of Britain has found these aurochs had mixed feeding to browsing diets, rather than being strict grazers. Mating season was in September, and calves were born in spring. Rutting bulls had violent fights, and evidence from the Jaktorów forest shows that they were fully capable of mortally wounding one another. In autumn, aurochs fed for the winter, gaining weight and possessing

8316-449: 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

8442-406: 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

8568-422: 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

8694-411: 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

8820-415: The aurochs main predators during the Holocene. During interglacial periods in the Middle Pleistocene and early Late Pleistocene in Europe, the aurochs occurred alongside other large temperate adapted megafauna species, including the straight-tusked elephant ( Palaeoloxodon antiquus ), Merck's rhinoceros ( Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis ), the narrow-nosed rhinoceros , ( Stephanorhinus hemitoechus ) and

8946-434: The aurochs survived in the region until at least 5,000 years BP. Fossils were also excavated on the Korean Peninsula , and in the Japanese archipelago . During warm interglacial periods the aurochs was widespread across Europe, but during glacial periods retreated into southern refugia in the Iberian , Italian and Balkan peninsulas. Landscapes in Europe probably consisted of dense forests throughout much of

9072-531: The aurochs was swift despite its build, could be very aggressive if provoked, and was not generally fearful of humans. In Middle Pleistocene Europe, aurochs were likely predated upon by the "European jaguar" Panthera gombaszoegensis and the scimitar toothed-cat ( Homotherium latidens ), with evidence for the consumption of aurochs by cave hyenas ( Crocuta ( Crocuta ) spelaea ) having been found from Late Pleistocene Italy. The lion ( Panthera leo ), tiger ( Panthera tigris ) and wolf are thought to have been

9198-1252: The aurochs were found in Late Pleistocene deposits at an elevation of 3,400 m (11,200 ft) on the eastern margin of the Tibetan plateau close to the Heihe River in Zoigê County that date to about 26,620   ±600 years BP. Most fossils in China were found in plains below 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in Heilongjiang , Yushu, Jilin , northeastern Manchuria , Inner Mongolia , near Beijing , Yangyuan County in Hebei province, Datong and Dingcun in Shanxi province, Huan County in Gansu and in Guizhou provinces. Ancient DNA in aurochs fossils found in Northeast China indicate that

9324-410: The aurochs, including the black colour in bulls with a light eel stripe, a pale mouth, and similar sexual dimorphism in colour. A feature often attributed to the aurochs is blond forehead hairs. According to historical descriptions of the aurochs, it had long and curly forehead hair, but none mentions a certain colour. Although the colour is present in a variety of primitive cattle breeds, it is probably

9450-491: The aurochs, such as the dark colour and light eel stripe along the back of bulls, the lighter colour of cows, or an aurochs-like horn shape. Both "aur" and "ur" are Germanic or Celtic words meaning "wild ox". In Old High German , this word was compounded with ohso ('ox') to ūrohso , which became the early modern Aurochs . The Latin word "urus" was used for wild ox from the Gallic Wars onwards. The use of

9576-561: 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

9702-598: The base, then swinging forwards and inwards, then inwards and upwards. The curvature of bull horns was more strongly expressed than horns of cows. The basal circumference of horn cores reached 44.5 cm (17.5 in) in the largest Chinese specimen and 48 cm (19 in) in a French specimen. Some cattle breeds still show horn shapes similar to that of the aurochs, such as the Spanish fighting bull, and occasionally also individuals of derived breeds. A well-preserved aurochs bone yielded sufficient mitochondrial DNA for

9828-547: 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,

9954-729: The body shape of the aurochs was athletic, and especially in bulls, showed a strongly expressed neck and shoulder musculature. Therefore, the fore hand was larger than the rear, similar to the wisent, but unlike many domesticated cattle. Even in carrying cows, the udder was small and hardly visible from the side; this feature is equal to that of other wild bovines. The aurochs was one of the largest herbivores in Holocene Europe. The size of an aurochs appears to have varied by region, with larger specimens in northern Europe than farther south. Aurochs in Denmark and Germany ranged in height at

10080-478: The climate in this region was more humid than during the African humid period . Following the most recent deglaciation , the range of the aurochs expanded into Denmark and southern Sweden at the beginning of the Holocene, around 12-11,000 years ago. According to a 16th-century description by Sigismund von Herberstein , the aurochs was pitch-black with a grey streak along the back; his wood carving made in 1556

10206-602: 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

10332-468: 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

10458-568: 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;

10584-423: 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

10710-513: 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

10836-532: 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

10962-484: The finds on the site are stoves , stone tools belonging to the Mousterian culture , and also human and animal bones, which attest to the fact that the cave had been used both for residence and as a burial site . The remains of 15 human skeletons were discovered on site, in a Mousterian archaeological context. Seven of them are skeletons of adults and the rest - of children. The high proportion of children skeletons

11088-711: 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

11214-406: 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

11340-530: The god Baal . An aurochs is depicted on Babylon 's Ishtar Gate , constructed in the 6th century BC . Petroglyphs depicting aurochs found in Qurta in the upper Nile valley were dated to the Late Pleistocene about 19–15,000 years BP using luminescence dating and are the oldest engravings found to date in Africa. Aurochs are part of hunting scenes in reliefs in a tomb at Thebes, Egypt dating to

11466-462: 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

11592-465: 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

11718-471: 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

11844-578: The last few thousand years. The aurochs is likely to have used riparian forests and wetlands along lakes. Analysis of specimens found in Britain suggests that aurochs preferred inhabiting low lying relatively flat landscapes. Pollen of mostly small shrubs found in fossiliferous sediments with aurochs remains in China indicate that it preferred temperate grassy plains or grasslands bordering woodlands . It may have also lived in open grasslands. In

11970-469: The late Middle Pleistocene are estimated to have weighed up to 1,500 kg (3,310 lb). The aurochs exhibited considerable sexual dimorphism in the size of males and females. The horns were massive, reaching 80 cm (31 in) in length and between 10 and 20 cm (3.9 and 7.9 in) in diameter. Its horns grew from the skull at a 60-degree angle to the muzzle facing forwards and were curved in three directions, namely upwards and outwards at

12096-668: The locality was unsupported, with the oldest records of aurochs now placed at the Ponte Molle site in central Italy, dating to around 550-450,000 years ago. Aurochs were present in Britain by Marine Isotope Stage 11 ~400,000 years ago. The earliest remains aurochs in East Asia are uncertain, but may date to the late Middle Pleistocene. Late Pleistocene aurochs fossils were found in Affad 23 in Sudan dating to 50,000 years ago when

12222-727: 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

12348-534: 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

12474-530: The plural form aurochsen in English is a direct parallel of the German plural Ochsen and recreates the same distinction by analogy as English singular ox and plural oxen , although aurochs may stand for both the singular and the plural term; both are attested. The scientific name Bos taurus was introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 for feral cattle in Poland. The scientific name Bos primigenius

12600-591: 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

12726-635: 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

12852-401: The remains of ochre that were found on human bones, and, also, 71 pieces of ochre that were associated with burial practices, which indicates that ceremonial funerary rites that included symbolic acts which held special meaning had already been common around 100,000 years ago. Ochre was used for body dyeing and ornamentation . It was also used during the burial of a brain damaged child that

12978-734: 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

13104-749: The settlements of Mureybet , Hallan Çemi and Çayönü indicate that people stored and shared food in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B culture. Remains of an aurochs were also found in a necropolis in Sidon , Lebanon, dating to around 3,700 years BP; the aurochs was buried together with numerous animals, a few human bones and foods. Seals dating to the Indus Valley civilisation found in Harappa and Mohenjo-daro show an animal with curved horns like an aurochs. Aurochs figurines were made by

13230-687: The shoulders between 155–180 cm (61–71 in) in bulls and 135–155 cm (53–61 in) in cows, while aurochs bulls in Hungary reached 160 cm (63 in). The African aurochs was similar in size to the European aurochs in the Pleistocene, but declined in size during the transition to the Holocene; it may have also varied in size geographically. The body mass of aurochs appears to have shown some variability. Some individuals reached around 700 kg (1,540 lb), whereas those from

13356-769: The site - side scrapers , disc cores and points - were of the Levallois - Mousterian type. These tools are often associated with Neanderthal settlements. Animal remains of horse , woodland-adapted red deer , rhinoceros , fallow deer , wild ox and gazelle , land snails were also found at the site stand for Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic period. 32°41′00″N 35°17′50″E  /  32.68333°N 35.29722°E  / 32.68333; 35.29722 Hebrew language Hebrew ( Hebrew alphabet : עִבְרִית ‎, ʿĪvrīt , pronounced [ ʔivˈʁit ] or [ ʕivˈrit ] ; Samaritan script : ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ‎ ʿÎbrit )

13482-493: 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

13608-474: 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

13734-637: The system are separately numbered using Roman numerals . Excavations of the site began in 1932, led by Moshe Stekelis and René Neuville , but were interrupted due to a collapse. In 1936, during the Arab rebellion in Palestine , the British blew up the cave because it was being used as a hideout by gangs associated with the rebels. Excavations were renewed in 1965, by Bernard Vandermeersch , Ofer Bar-Yosef , then continued, intermittently, until 1979. Among

13860-470: 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

13986-580: 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

14112-515: The warm Atlantic period of the Holocene, it was restricted to remaining open country and forest margins, where competition with livestock and humans gradually increased leading to a successive decline of the aurochs. Aurochs formed small herds mainly in winter, but typically lived singly or in smaller groups during the summer. If aurochs had social behaviour similar to their descendants, social status would have been gained through displays and fights, in which both cows and bulls engaged. Since it has

14238-505: 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

14364-595: 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

14490-474: 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

14616-550: Was based on a culled aurochs, which he had received in Mazovia . In 1827, Charles Hamilton Smith published an image of an aurochs that was based on an oil painting that he had purchased from a merchant in Augsburg , which is thought to have been made in the early 16th century. This painting is thought to have shown an aurochs, although some authors suggested it may have shown a hybrid between an aurochs and domestic cattle, or

14742-457: 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

14868-500: Was found in the cave. Red, black and yellow ochre-painted seashells were found around the cave. According to C. Loring Brace : "Qafzeh represents the pattern still found in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly West Africa. Although the craniofacial configuration in both is 'modern', the dentition of Qafzeh is archaic in size and form. Qafzeh is a logical representative of the ancestral form for sub-Saharan Africans but not for Cro-Magnon and subsequent Europeans." The stone tools discovered at

14994-491: 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

15120-510: Was proposed for the aurochs by Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus who described the skeletal differences between the aurochs and domestic cattle in 1825, published in 1827. The name Bos namadicus was used by Hugh Falconer in 1859 for cattle fossils found in Nerbudda deposits . Bos primigenius mauritanicus was coined by Philippe Thomas in 1881 who described fossils found in deposits near Oued Seguen west of Constantine, Algeria . In 2003,

15246-566: 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

15372-629: 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

15498-531: 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

15624-551: 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

15750-408: 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

15876-570: 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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