The pioneer schools in the land of Israel and the rescue of hebrew as a vernacular language: assertion and resistance of jewish nationalism

Abstract

This research investigates the link between the teaching of modern Hebrew in pioneer schools in the agricultural colonies of the Land of Israel and the affirmation and resistance of Jewish nationalism at the end of the 19th century. The expansion of knowledge of Hebrew and its adoption as a vernacular language established political identity processes that diverge between Zionists and Hebraists. The ethnic-symbolic legacy of the Hebrew language emerges as the core of the cultural and institutional rooting of the nation, reinforcing the aspects of domination and linguistic imposition of those who defend modern Hebrew as an instrument of self-affirmation and autonomy. The study comprises linguistic dynamics as an articulator of social relations, of domination and symbolic power, according to Bourdieu’s theory. Resistance as a social need is characterized from historiographical sources that arrange the scenario in which Hebrew teachers are identified as social and political agents active in the engendering of renewed cultural mechanisms, which establish the basis of Israeli cultural education, which the Hebrew language provides such a status.