with Lily Kahn, Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Languages at UCL

£2.50 (members)
£3 (non-members)
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The revival of the Hebrew language in late 19th- and early 20th-century Ottoman Palestine is commonly regarded as a miracle, believed to be the world’s only dead language to have come back to life.

This miraculous revival is widely attributed to the incredible work of a single individual, the Lithuanian Jew Eliezer ben Yehudah, whose name graces streets in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Like many popular stories, this well-known narrative is actually a myth, but the true story of the revival of Hebrew is no less fascinating. This talk will explore the various factors that led to Hebrew becoming the mother tongue of many millions of people after 1,700 years of existing as a purely written medium.

Lily Kahn is Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Languages at UCL. Her main research areas are Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish languages, as well as minority languages more broadly. She has recently published Jewish Languages from A to Z (co-authored with Aaron Rubin; Routledge, 2020) and is currently working on a book on the history of Hebrew.

We’d love to be able to welcome you into the building, but if you cannot join us in person, it’s possible to do so online:
https://zoom.us/j/6861340661
Meeting ID: 6861340661
Password: siddur

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