Hebrew Language

Today I was guiding in the First Aliyah Museum in Zichron and was discussing the reinvention of Hebrew as a national spoken language. I had always known that the Hebrew language was a major part of the glue that united all the new immigrants to the New Yishuv in the Land of Israel. That Eliezer ben Yehudah was the metaphorical father of the modern language. That my grandfather began teaching Hebrew back in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century and then in Brooklyn for some 40 years. But I had no idea that the New American Colonies had thought that Hebrew might be used as the official language of the newly born country across the ocean. It seems that the Puritans that left England to settle America compared themselves to the Isarelites. The exodus from Pharoah in Egypt and crossing of the Red Sea into a new land was similar to escaping the persecution of the King of England, crossing an impassable body of water, and arriving in a new land to reep the benifits of unbridled freedom. Well almost since the laws the Puritans wanted to govern their lives, were to be strongly influenced from the bible. Yes the Hebrew bible written in Hebrew. The universities of higher learning that were cropping up in the United States like Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, Dartmouth, and others were offerring courses in Hebrew. The commencement speeches at these new learning institutions were permitted in three languages; Latin, Greek, and unbelievably Hebrew. Yes Hebrew was already being revived in the United States. Modern Hebrew would soon grow in Eastern Europe and be brought back to the streets of Jerusalem and the new city of Tel Aviv. Long live the Hebrew language.