Front cover image for Hebrew in America : perspectives and prospects

Hebrew in America : perspectives and prospects

"Among the millions of Jews who immigrated to America in the early twentieth century, there were the few for whom Hebrew culture was an important ideal. Reaching a critical mass around World War I, these American Hebraists attempted to establish a vital Hebrew culture in America. They founded journals and wrote Hebrew poetry, fiction, and essays, largely about the American Jewish experience, and they succeeded in putting a Hebraist stamp upon most of the Jewish education that took place between the two world wars." "Hebrew in America is the first book to fully explore the Jewish attachment to Hebrew in twentieth-century North America. Fifteen leading scholars in Judaic studies write about the legacy of American Hebraism and the claims it continues to make upon the soul of the American Jewish community. While they might commonly lament the eclipse of Hebrew in America, they speak with many different voices when it comes to the analysis of problems and the prospects for change." "Several writers look backward to the impact of the Hebrew movement in America on literature and education. Others consider the implications of Hebrew's arrival on the college campus. Another emphasis of the book is the relationship between language and culture in the case of Hebrew from anthropological, educational, and linguistic perspectives. And finally, several essays assess the role of Hebrew in the development of Jewish leadership in America as regards the relationship with the classic past and with contemporary Israel."--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, ©1993
Wayne State University Press, Detroit, ©1993
Congress
337 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780814323519, 0814323510
25747573
Pt.1 Enterprise of Tarbut Ivrit
Sanctuary in the Wilderness: The Beginnings of the Hebrew Movement in America in Hatoren / Alan Mintz
Ameriquiyut in American Hebrew Literature / Ezra Spicehandler
World Apart: Hebrew Teachers Colleges and Hebrew-Speaking Camps / Walter Ackerman
National-Cultural Movement in Hebrew Education in the Mississippi Valley / Daniel J. Elazar
Hebrew-Yiddish Utopia in Montreal: Ideology in Bilingual Education / David G. Roskies
Pt.2 Hebrew on the Campus and Beyond
From Sacred Tongue to Foreign Language: Hebrew in the American University / Arnold J. Band
Language Is Not Enough / Gilead Morahg
Language and Culture in the Teaching of Hebrew at American Universities / David C. Jacobson
Hebrew from Symbol to Substance / Lewis H. Glinert
Toward Hebrew Literacy: From School to College / Ruth Raphaeli
Pt.3 Hebrew in the Future of American Jewish Culture
Hebrew Imperative / Ruth R. Wisse
Judaism in Translation: Thoughts on the Alexandria Hypothesis / Gershon Shaked
Eclipse of Hebrew as the National Language of the Jewish People / Stephen Philip Cohen
Hebrew among Jewish Communal Leaders: Requirement, Elective, or Extra-Curricular Activity? / Deborah E. Lipstadt
"Papers given at a conference ... held on the campus of the University of Maryland in March 1990"--Preface