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Jewish Studies

This guide will introduce concepts and resources for research in Jewish Studies at York University.

About Hebrew

Hebrew is a northwest Semitic language that originated in the Levant, and has used as a liturgical and scholarly language, and sometimes a lingua franca, in Jewish communities around the world since the beginning of the Jewish diaspora. While Hebrew has been in continual use, it was not the language of daily activity anywhere in the Jewish diaspora. In the late 19th century, movements to revitalize the Hebrew language as a literary language, and later as a spoken language, emerged. The philologist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is often credited with reviving Hebrew as a spoken language. Today, Modern Standard Hebrew is one of the official languages of the State of Israel, and is used by Jews around the world.

Hebrew