On a radiant spring morning in Jerusalem, a group of visitors walked into the Cultural and Educational Center at the Academy of the Hebrew Language, nestled in the pastoral Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University.

Inside, the group was welcomed by a colorful wall mural depicting a concise history of the language. The room darkened and a unique installation featuring a map of the Old World lit up with various centers of the Jewish Diaspora over the centuries. For each spot — Yemen, Poland, Italy, Morocco and more — a seemingly distant but powerful voice recited the opening verses of the book of Genesis.

The voices only spoke one language, Hebrew, but each reading carried a distinct accent and intonation, revealing the tongue as both a thread uniting Jews across two millennia of dispersion but also a reflection of the rich local flavors of the communities who used it in prayer or other aspects of spiritual life.

“For many centuries, nobody spoke Hebrew as their first language,” said Doron Yaakov, a researcher in charge of the Jewish Oral Traditions Collection at the Academy. “At the same time, Hebrew was preserved as the language of culture by Jews across the world, who learned, wrote, and, crucially, read Hebrew texts out loud. If this had not been the case, the language could not have been revived in modern times.”

Today, as modern Hebrew and globalization steamroll those local variations, it has fallen to the Academy — the very body in charge of Hebrew’s standardization — to document and preserve these traditions through its Jewish Oral Traditions Collection, a mission that is crucial to both saving vibrant pages of Jewish history from oblivion and opening new doors for researching and understanding Diaspora life.

Established in 1953 as the continuation of a Language Committee that had existed for almost five decades prior, the Academy is the pivotal institution for Hebrew in Israel and the world, developing new words, setting the standards for grammar, orthography, and punctuation, and preserving its history.

The earliest instances of Hebrew come from a handful of inscriptions found on stones at various sites throughout the........

© The Times of Israel