even a language is subject to the force of fate. its value in life and its meaning for the life of a people change constantly with the great changes of life. only one hundred and twenty years ago there were those who believed in the possibility of the realization of the medieval idea that a day would come when all the peoples of the earth would speak one language and all linguistic barriers would soon disappear. today language stands next to the state as the most important factor in the life of a nation; in many cases it is as strong a factor as the economical and political forces. this is especially true of the so-called nationality states where the various peoples can show their line of national demarcation chiefly by the language they use. today language is not only one of the strongest factors in the national life of a people, but is also of great weight in universal politics. the future historians, in describing the ups and downs of the present war, will not fail to observe that one of the causes that threatened, for a time, the existence of the hapsburg empire was the apparently unimportant fact that the people in germany and bohemia could not come to terms about the linguistic barrier. the language quarrels in bohemia were the cause of so many political upheavals that they shook the very foundations of austria; they have influenced, to a large extent, the international crisis during the last three years.
since language has developed into such a tremendous force, all the meditations and calculations of the philosophers of the eighteenth century about the possibility of one language for the entire human race have proven to be empty visions—soap bubbles of philosophic and humanitarian dreamers. if the living provincial languages of small peoples, the bohemians, lithuanians, armenians, and so forth, have become important political factors in the lives of the nations, and, in consequence thereof, an important momentum in international life, the so-called dead languages, such as hebrew, gaelic, welsh and many others, have become driving forces in the lives of their peoples and may even decide their fate and future. the development of these dead[72] languages during the nineteenth century is as interesting and fascinating as the growth in political importance of such living, provincial languages as bohemian, lithuanian, and so forth. most remarkable of all is the development of the importance of hebrew during the nineteenth century.
one hundred years ago, hebrew was a purely philological and theological proposition. the knowledge of hebrew had quite a different value from what it has today. to the eastern jew, hebrew had the meaning of a holy tongue only; to the western jew, hebrew was a sort of a cultural luxury which was very much appreciated as such, but had no national value. the love for hebrew in the west, which, by the way, was stronger than we today imagine, smelled faintly of a museum. these conditions prevailed in the west for several centuries. in the east, however, conditions changed with kaleidoscopic rapidity. with the spread of the haskalah eastward, hebrew achieved another value altogether; it had a different function to perform. the adherents of the haskalah used hebrew not as a holy tongue, as did the orthodox, nor as a theological proposition, as did many of the western jews, but as a medium to spread culture among the jews and to introduce european ideas in the ghetto. the hebrew writer of the middle of the nineteenth century considered himself a sort of cultural missionary. the best means to enlighten the people and to counteract superstition was, at that time, hebrew literature. by the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, hebrew experienced another transvaluation, chiefly because of the failure of the haskalah and the awakening of the national spirit among the jews. the writers of that time considered hebrew no longer a means to an end—that is to say, an agency to spread culture among the jews—but an object in itself. people began to realize that hebrew is not only a linguistic theological proposition, as was thought at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but that it is the woof and warp of national culture. the hebrew writers of the last third of the nineteenth century, consequently, began to speak of the hebrew tongue as a certain culture and hebrew ideas as the ideas of the jewish people. in short, hebrew became the national cultural force in contradistinction to the humanitarian cultural force that it was[74] thought to be in the middle of the nineteenth century.
the hebrew writers of the eighties and nineties no longer considered themselves cultural missionaries of the jews, as did the writers of the preceding generation, but rather as the representatives of hebrew thought and hebrew culture. the most conspicuous representative of this school of thought is ahad ha'am, the father and systematizer of hebrew cultural nationalism. ahad ha'am himself witnessed the transition from cultural hebrew to political hebrew. although about twenty years ago he was the embodiment of hebrew thought, his school had to make room for another conception of hebrew, a conception to which, we think, the future belongs. it is the national political conception of hebrew in opposition to its purely cultural conception.
to the modern hebraist, hebrew is neither a holy tongue nor a medium to spread culture among the jews, nor yet a national cultural idea, as it is to the disciples of ahad ha'am, but a national political force; accordingly, he strives to secularize hebrew and to introduce into it all the elements of secular civilization and to make it the expression of the movement of life of his people. the modern hebrew writer would think in hebrew not only on subjects jewish, would not only philosophize in hebrew on jewish cultural and theological problems, but would write in hebrew on all secular subjects and try to find the hebrew expression for all the movements of life, especially the life of our people. this striving to secularize hebrew has enriched our national tongue enormously. we now know more hebrew than did our forefathers one hundred years ago. because of our striving to secularize hebrew we were compelled to go to all the hebrew sources of antiquity and to find hebrew terms for things which, for the last two thousand years, have not been described in hebrew, because the writing of hebrew was concentrated on theological and philosophical subjects. a few years ago a russian jew wrote an agricultural text book in hebrew, which created a sensation among hebrew circles because the author re-created hebrew agricultural terminology. since the ancient jews were agriculturists, they had of course an agricultural terminology of their own which had, however, been forgotten during our diaspora life. the author of the above[76] mentioned book re-established that hebrew agricultural terminology. other hebrew writers have produced similar results in other literary and scientific endeavors. a small booklet by the late dr. schereschevsky, for instance, surprised the hebrew public by the abundance of hebrew scientific terms and by his re-establishment of a hebrew scientific terminology. the modern hebrew writer is conscious of the fact that hebrew is bound some day to become a concrete political force and that, to gain that end, it must admit all the elements of life and establish the life of our people as the only agency of our general and jewish education. this necessitates the secularization and, one might say, the humanization of hebrew. the real modern hebrew writers are, therefore, not those who can write a treatise in hebrew on medieval jewish philosophy but those who can write a hebrew essay or hebrew book on scientific or sociological topics.
the tendency to secularize hebrew is spreading all over the world; it is to be hoped that the day is near when a considerable section of our people will use hebrew with the same ease as any other people uses its national tongue. the secularization of hebrew is a clear sign of our approaching national liberation.
