Hebrew

Hebrew, the language of the ancient Israelites and later the quintessential language of the Jewish people, has its origins in the ancient Near East. It followed the Jewish people through exile and dispersion, evolving in Jewish communities throughout the ages. A Northwest Semitic language, written first in a derivative of the Canaanite script and later in the square Aramaic script, it became a language of liturgy, commerce, scholarship, and correspondence during the early centuries of the first millennium of the Common Era. It regained its status and power as a spoken language with the revival of Jewish nationalism in the nineteenth century, and became the mother tongue of generations of native speakers even before the establishment of the State of Israel, where it serves as one of the two official languages.  The creativity of writers, scholars, and teachers working in Hebrew found expression in the Tarbut (culture) Hebrew schools of Eastern Europe; the communal lives of Maghrebi and Sephardi Jews in the Middle East, Mediterranean Europe, and North Africa; the Tarbut Ivrit movement in Europe and the United States, and many other social groups of modern times. The language is currently spoken in Israel, the US, Europe, and other world regions by some nine million people who acquired it as a native tongue or a second language. The “revival of Hebrew” is often noted as an example of the remarkable staying power of a dead language, but the perception of Hebrew as dead and then revived is often questioned by those who observe its vitality throughout the ages.

Hebrew has been taught at UT Austin for decades—Hebrew characters are fixed to the Tower building, symbolizing the status of Hebrew as a language of civilization and representing, together with four other alphabets, the intellectual aspiration of the University. The Hebrew program finds a home in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies (formerly the Department of Oriental and African Languages and Cultures and the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures). The program regularly offers HEB 601C and 611C, intensive courses in Modern Hebrew, at the conclusion of which students are expected to reach an intermediate-high level of proficiency; HEB 602C and 612C, intensive courses in Biblical Hebrew; and upper-division and graduate-level courses that focus on Hebrew culture throughout the ages, on Israeli society as a locus of technological innovation, and on social and political issues related to the dynamics of Israeli, Jewish-diasporic, and Middle-Eastern societies. The Hebrew instructional website, in place as of the 1990s, includes a large volume of open-source materials, and has been used extensively in the US and throughout the world. The Perry-Castañeda Library contains a sizable collection of Hebraica and Judaica in Hebrew, which supports the research and teaching of the center and department of Middle Eastern Studies, the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, the Institute for Israel Studies, and the UT community at large. 

The University of Texas also offers an an online extension program called the Hebrew Summer Institute, that is designed to help students reach the intermediate level of Hebrew in one summer of intensive Hebrew instruction.

Visit: the Hebrew instructional website
Hear from our students: Why Study Hebrew at UT Austin?
Read: The Hebrew letters adorning the UT Tower
Explore: Hebraica library collection
Apply: Hebrew Summer Institute