Enlightenment authors breaking through linguistic barrier.
New Literature in an Ancient Language
Modern Hebrew literature, which dates back to the novel Love of Zion by Abraham Mapu, was part of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. Enlightenment authors felt that the Hebrew vocabulary at their disposal was not broad enough to convey the reality of their times. The author, Mendele Moykher Sforim, managed to break through that linguistic barrier. He created a literary Hebrew that drew on the reservoir of existing religious texts, but at the same time made Hebrew a language that could describe contemporary society.
During that same period, Odessa in Ukraine was the capital of Jewish printing in the Russian Empire. It attracted publishing houses, editorial offices of newspapers and leading authors, including Ahad Ha’am, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Micha Josef Berdyczewski and many others. All of them also made a significant contribution to the invention of new words.