From the Tanakh to Tel Aviv: Why the Call to "Decolonize" Hebrew is an Academic Fantasy

Proudly wearing a few different hats: Gay, Jewish, Zionist, Liberal, and a Hebrew teacher.

To sit in a remote activist group chat or an academic seminar and debate whether learning Hebrew makes someone "complicit in a colonial project" is to engage in a deeply detached fantasy.

Recently, an article in +972 Magazine highlighted a growing trend among certain diaspora circles: viewing modern Hebrew not as a living language, but as a weaponized tool of state ideology that needs to be "decolonized" or fundamentally dismantled. As a Hebrew language educator who spends every day helping students connect with the words, roots, and rhythms of this tongue, reading these claims feels less like serious linguistic analysis and more like a bizarre, ideological double standard.

The underlying premise of the argument—that Hebrew is a political invention inseparable from the modern conflict—reveals a profound ignorance of both linguistic history and the reality of how language actually functions in a living society.

Rooted in Text, Not Textbooks

The claim that political Zionism somehow "appropriated" or manufactured Hebrew ignores thousands of years of undeniable linguistic continuity ($רֶצֶף\ לְשׁוֹנִי$). Modern Hebrew was not constructed out of thin air in the late 19th century to serve a political apparatus. Its DNA is explicitly ancient.

When an Israeli walks down a street in Tel Aviv today, the syntax they use is rooted in the Talmud. The vocabulary they use to debate, think, and create belongs to the Tanakh and centuries of rabbinic and poetic evolution. For millennia, Jews from Al-Andalus to Italy used Hebrew for commerce, literature, philosophy, and communal life. The language did not begin with modern statehood, nor is it a clinical political science experiment. It is the reactivation of an organic linguistic matrix that survived against all historical odds. To reduce a 3,000-year-old heritage to a "colonial language" is a lazy erasure of history.

The Bizarre Standard of Normalcy

There is an exceptionalist double standard applied to Israel that is rarely inflicted on any other nation. French people speak French in France. Germans speak German in Germany. Japanese people speak Japanese in Japan. No one asks a French speaker if their daily vocabulary implicates them in the historic colonial actions of the French Republic. No one demands that German be "decolonized" from the German state.

Language and nationhood naturally go together. It is the fundamental right of a sovereign society to conduct its daily life, its culture, and its governance in its national language. Israelis speak Hebrew because they are a living society rooted in their historic homeland. To call for the "decolonization" of everyday Hebrew speech—or to guilt-trip diaspora Jews for wanting to learn it—is a thinly veiled demand for an entire society to stop speaking its own language. It is an attempt to turn a normal human reality into a political crime.

The Real Classroom vs. The Ivory Tower Caricature

The article portrays Hebrew education—specifically the ulpan model—as a hyper-nationalistic brainwashing machine designed to erase minority narratives. This is where the gap between academic theory and real-world practice becomes a canyon.

In a real classroom, language is not an instrument of exclusion; it is a gateway to a multi-layered, complex reality. As an educator, I teach Hebrew through the vibrant lens of culture—all of it. This includes secular Hebrew literature, Israeli-Jewish traditions, and crucially, Israeli-Arab culture.

The Hebrew language today does not live in an isolated bubble. It is a dynamic, living bridge. It is heavily influenced by Arabic slang, shared Semitic roots (שׁוֹרָשִׁים), and daily interaction. It is the literal medium through which the diverse, messy, and interconnected communities living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea communicate, negotiate, and share space.

To reduce language learning to an act of ideological compliance is insulting to both the teachers who pour their hearts into cultural education and the students who seek to understand the region as it actually is.

Language is a Bridge, Not a Battlefield

If the goal of the "decolonial" framework is to build understanding and peace, weaponizing the very tool of human communication achieves the exact opposite. Insisting that Hebrew must be sanitized or avoided only creates walls where there should be doors.

We do not need to "decolonize" Hebrew; we need to speak it, teach it, and live it in all its rich, historical, and cultural depth. Hebrew belongs to the prophets, the poets, the sages, and the millions of ordinary Israelis—Jews and Arabs alike—who use it every day to build a life. It is time for the critics in the ivory tower to step into a real classroom and actually listen.