Hebrew or Israeli? Linguist stirs Zionist debate

TEL AVIV, Nov 30 (Reuters) In an Israel that often gets tongue-tied trying to define national identity, Hebrew can be said to speak for everyone.

By harking back to the Bible, the language offers for many Israelis a sense of both continuity and renewal, as well as a vibrant, vocal counterweight to divisive contemporary debates.

But one maverick linguist wants that changed, and his campaign has drawn the wrath of established scholars who see him as a politicised threat to a pillar of the Jewish state.

Ghil'ad Zuckermann, a 35-year-old graduate of Tel Aviv University with doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge, argues that modern Hebrew should be renamed ''Israeli'' and give up its claim of pure descent from holy writ.

''Israelis are brainwashed to believe they speak the same language as (the prophet) Isaiah, a purely Semitic language, but this is false,'' Zuckermann told Reuters during a lecture tour to promote his soon-to-be-published polemic ''Hebrew as Myth''.

''It's time we acknowledge that Israeli is very different from the Hebrew of the past,'' said Zuckermann, who points to the abiding influence of modern European dialects -- especially Yiddish, Russian and Polish -- imported by Israel's founders.

Zuckermann's lectures are packed, with the cream of Israeli academia invariably looking uncertain on whether to endorse his innovative streak or rise to the defence of the mother tongue.

Some critics throw Zuckermann in with revisionist academics who made their names questioning the justice of the 1948 war of Israel's founding in what had been British Mandate Palestine.

Early Zionists were quick to assume Hebrew as part of an ancient birthright to land also claimed by Palestinian Arabs.

''His attitude toward modern Hebrew is less that of a professional linguist than of someone driven by the agenda of post- (if not anti-) Zionism,'' wrote an Israeli contributor to the American newspaper Jewish Daily Forward.

Professor Moshe Bar-Asher, president of Israel's Hebrew Language Academy, likened Zuckermann to Noam Chomsky, a renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist who in recent decades became a freewheeling critic of US foreign policy.

''I think Zuckermann is a very good scholar, but he risks wasting his efforts by mixing up linguistics with politics,'' Bar-Asher said. ''He stirs up a lot of antagonism.'' More Reuters AKJ DS1120