In a conversation with Karen Mock regarding her recent book From Sacred Language to Mother Tongue, hosted at USC, we explored the proposition that Hebrew cannot be reduced to a neutral instrument of communication. Rather, it functions as a historically layered and symbolically charged vehicle that carries collective memory, cultural desire, and ideological formation. In this sense, Hebrew can be understood, following Kramsch (2009), as a symbolic system through which speakers construct meaning and position themselves within cultural and historical worlds. The book’s title gestures toward a process of transition—indeed, a form of linguistic and cultural movement—from sacred language to mother tongue. Within the context of modern Hebrew literature, this shift is neither linear nor unidirectional; instead, it reflects an ongoing negotiation between continuity and tension, preservation and reinvention.

Historically, Hebrew functioned primarily within prayer, scripture, and ritual. It carried authority, tradition, and continuity, yet its use remained largely confined to religious and scholarly contexts, accessed and preserved through study. From this perspective, sacrality is not solely an inherent property of the language but is produced through cultural practices and interpretive traditions. As a mother tongue, however, Hebrew became the language of everyday life—of home, childhood, discourse, memory, and public conversation. The language thus evolved into a dynamic and creative vehicle that not only reflects the historical depth of the Jewish people but also adapts to contemporary realities, enabling new forms of cultural expression, identity formation, and literary innovation.

From the perspective of Hebrew literature, the movement from sacred to vernacular Hebrew is deeply intertwined with the emergence of modern Jewish subjectivity and Zionist ideology. Hebrew literature, particularly from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries onward, stages this transformation by reworking the linguistic registers of sacred texts into new aesthetic, ideological, and narrative forms. In this sense, the “desacralization” of Hebrew does not signify a loss of meaning but rather its redistribution across new domains—national, cultural, and political.

The Haskalah movement played a pivotal role in this transformation. While challenging rabbinic authority, Maskilim writers adopted linguistic structures influenced by biblical Hebrew, while simultaneously addressing themes drawn from the everyday lives of European Jews. Their work activated earlier layers of Hebrew in an effort to generate new meanings rather than preserve fixed forms. In this context, the question of what constitutes a “sacred language” becomes more complex: is sacrality inherent to the language itself, or does it emerge through its use in thought, writing, and emotional expression? The case of Hebrew resists a singular answer, revealing instead a multilayered linguistic history shaped by the foundational principles of Jewish tradition. Within this broader transformation, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s lifelong work can be understood as a reformative project of singular importance, particularly in his efforts to create new vocabulary through connections to biblical sources.

The question of sacrality thus becomes inseparable from literary practice. Hebrew literature continually invokes, reshapes, and at times subverts the sacred textual tradition. In both utopian and dystopian representations, language itself becomes a site of tension: utopian texts elevate Hebrew as a vehicle of renewal and collective aspiration, while dystopian works expose fractures in this vision, revealing the limits and contradictions of linguistic revival.

Accordingly, Hebrew resists singular definition. It emerges as a dynamic literary and cultural system in which sacred texts, historical memory, and modern expression coexist, generating a complex linguistic field through which Jewish and Israeli identities are continuously shaped, contested, and rearticulated. The trajectory of Hebrew thus reflects a profound transformation in identity—from reverence and preservation to embodiment and lived experience.

In her book From Sacred Language to Mother Tongue, Mock traces layers of transformation through the journeys of two significant authors, Sami Michael and Aharon Appelfeld. Although shaped by distinct diasporic experiences marked by displacement and linguistic rupture, their trajectories converge in their acquisition of Hebrew as an additional language, highlighting the complex interplay between language, memory, and identity. From the perspective of second-language acquisition, their writing can be understood through the lens of interlanguage, as they creatively navigate between linguistic systems and shape a unique expressive repertoire. At the same time, their engagement with Hebrew reflects a profound identity investment (Norton, 2013), in which language learning is inseparable from questions of power, access, and belonging. In their works, Hebrew thus emerges not merely as a tool of communication but as a dynamic site where linguistic development, diasporic memory, and identity formation are deeply intertwined—even when it is not the speaker’s mother tongue.

Mock’s study presents a nuanced and insightful analysis of Hebrew’s transformation, weaving together linguistic, cultural, and historical perspectives. It offers a powerful framework for understanding how language functions as a site of memory, identity, and ideological formation.

When Hebrew became spoken nationally, how sacredness played a role?

Kramsch, Claire. The Multilingual Subject. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Mock, K. (2025). Hebrew: From sacred language to mother tongue (A. K. Mortimer, Trans.). Columbia University Press.

Norton, Bonny. Identity and Language Learning: Extending the Conversation. 2nd ed., Multilingual Matters, 2013.

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