a language that died, spent 1,700 years as scripture-only, then got up and ordered coffee.
means a semitic language, native to ancient israel, that is the original tongue of the hebrew bible and the modern official language of israel.
from from canaanite dialects spoken over 3,000 years ago, hebrew survived the babylonian exile as a sacred and literary language even after jews stopped speaking it daily around 200 CE, kept alive for prayer and scholarship for nearly two millennia until zionist revivalists in ottoman palestine forced it back into kitchens, playgrounds, and newspapers.
dead sea scrolls — hebrew biblical texts hidden in qumran caves, circa 150 BCE
modern israeli hebrew — spoken daily by roughly 9 million people today
ben-yehuda street — jerusalem avenue named for the man who revived the language
aleph-bet — the 22-letter script also underlying yiddish and ladino spelling