Keren Mock is a research associate at the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes, a research unit of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the École normale supérieure de Paris; adjunct faculty at Sciences Po Paris; and a clinical psychologist.Armine Kotin Mortimer has translated many works of literary fiction and nonfiction from French, including Julia Kristeva’s Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death (Columbia, 2023).

• Foreword: Keren Mock, a New Voice in Critical Thinking, by Pierre-Marc de BiasiForeword: The Signifying Nature of Language, by Julia KristevaIntroductionPart I. The Age of the Pioneers Appelfeld and Michael: Edification of a New Mother Tongue1. Hebrew as a Mother Tongue Among Languages2. Hiatus and Reconstructive Narration in the Work of Aharon Appelfeld3. Sami Michael’s “Literary Fall” Through TranslationPart II. The Ben-Yehuda Worksite: Literary Excavations and Lexicographical Matter4. The “Resurrection” of Hebrew?5. Spectra and Corpus of a New Mother Tongue: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s Vision6. Words as Language “Bricks”Part III. Spinoza’s New Concept: The Philosophical Foundations of Secular Hebrew7. To Be Jewish and Multilingual in Amsterdam in the 1660s8. From Scriptures to Writing9. Regularity as the Foundation of Immanence10. The Nature of Words: The Omnipotence of the Noun11. Hebrew as a Mother TongueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Keren Mock's book offers a new and illuminating perspective on the modern revival of Hebrew. Working in reverse chronological order, she begins with two contemporary Hebrew writers who came from the background of another language, then proceeds to the foundational enterprise in renewing the language of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda at the beginning of the twentieth century, and concludes with Spinoza, who extracted Hebrew from its status as a holy tongue. This is a work of exemplary scholarship.

Keren Mock is a research associate at the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes, a research unit of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the École normale supérieure de Paris; adjunct faculty at Sciences Po Paris; and a clinical psychologist.Armine Kotin Mortimer has translated many works of literary fiction and nonfiction from French, including Julia Kristeva’s Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death (Columbia, 2023).

• Foreword: Keren Mock, a New Voice in Critical Thinking, by Pierre-Marc de BiasiForeword: The Signifying Nature of Language, by Julia KristevaIntroductionPart I. The Age of the Pioneers Appelfeld and Michael: Edification of a New Mother Tongue1. Hebrew as a Mother Tongue Among Languages2. Hiatus and Reconstructive Narration in the Work of Aharon Appelfeld3. Sami Michael’s “Literary Fall” Through TranslationPart II. The Ben-Yehuda Worksite: Literary Excavations and Lexicographical Matter4. The “Resurrection” of Hebrew?5. Spectra and Corpus of a New Mother Tongue: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s Vision6. Words as Language “Bricks”Part III. Spinoza’s New Concept: The Philosophical Foundations of Secular Hebrew7. To Be Jewish and Multilingual in Amsterdam in the 1660s8. From Scriptures to Writing9. Regularity as the Foundation of Immanence10. The Nature of Words: The Omnipotence of the Noun11. Hebrew as a Mother TongueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Keren Mock's book offers a new and illuminating perspective on the modern revival of Hebrew. Working in reverse chronological order, she begins with two contemporary Hebrew writers who came from the background of another language, then proceeds to the foundational enterprise in renewing the language of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda at the beginning of the twentieth century, and concludes with Spinoza, who extracted Hebrew from its status as a holy tongue. This is a work of exemplary scholarship.

Keren Mock is a research associate at the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes, a research unit of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the École normale supérieure de Paris; adjunct faculty at Sciences Po Paris; and a clinical psychologist.Armine Kotin Mortimer has translated many works of literary fiction and nonfiction from French, including Julia Kristeva’s Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death (Columbia, 2023).

• Foreword: Keren Mock, a New Voice in Critical Thinking, by Pierre-Marc de BiasiForeword: The Signifying Nature of Language, by Julia KristevaIntroductionPart I. The Age of the Pioneers Appelfeld and Michael: Edification of a New Mother Tongue1. Hebrew as a Mother Tongue Among Languages2. Hiatus and Reconstructive Narration in the Work of Aharon Appelfeld3. Sami Michael’s “Literary Fall” Through TranslationPart II. The Ben-Yehuda Worksite: Literary Excavations and Lexicographical Matter4. The “Resurrection” of Hebrew?5. Spectra and Corpus of a New Mother Tongue: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s Vision6. Words as Language “Bricks”Part III. Spinoza’s New Concept: The Philosophical Foundations of Secular Hebrew7. To Be Jewish and Multilingual in Amsterdam in the 1660s8. From Scriptures to Writing9. Regularity as the Foundation of Immanence10. The Nature of Words: The Omnipotence of the Noun11. Hebrew as a Mother TongueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Keren Mock's book offers a new and illuminating perspective on the modern revival of Hebrew. Working in reverse chronological order, she begins with two contemporary Hebrew writers who came from the background of another language, then proceeds to the foundational enterprise in renewing the language of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda at the beginning of the twentieth century, and concludes with Spinoza, who extracted Hebrew from its status as a holy tongue. This is a work of exemplary scholarship.