[lbo-talk] Re: Religious vs National struggles

[/ dave /]

Seth Kulick wrote:

>> From: "Jim Devine" <jdevine03 at gmail.com>
 >>
>> The focus on
>> Yiddish was invented, not traditional.
>> --
> 
> I don't understand  your reference to Yiddish here.  The Zionists were
> opposed to the use of Yiddish.  
> 
> There were different ways that Jewish nationalism developed, not all of them 
> Zionist.  There was the "diaspora nationaism"  of Simon Dubnow, the Jewish
> Labor Bund, and so on.  There was indeed a heavy emphasis on Yiddish among
> the non-Zionists, exactly because Yiddish was the language that many Jews,
> to understate the case, spoke.  What was "invented" about it?

Did Jim mean Hebrew?

Wikipedia sez:

Most European Jews in the 19th century spoke Yiddish, a 
language based on mediaeval German, but as of the 1880s, 
Ben Yehudah and his supporters began promoting the use and 
teaching of a modernised form of biblical Hebrew, which 
had not been a living language for nearly 2,000 years. 
Despite Herzl's efforts to have German proclaimed the 
official language of the Zionist movement, the use of 
Hebrew was adopted as official policy by Zionist 
organisations in Palestine, and served as an important 
unifying force among the Jewish settlers, many of whom 
also took new Hebrew names.

The development of the first Hebrew-speaking city (Tel 
Aviv), the kibbutz movement, and other Jewish economic 
institutions, plus the use of Hebrew, began by the 1920s 
to lay the foundations of a new nationality, which would 
come into formal existence in 1948.

(...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

-- 

/  dave  /