"With his customary versatility and lucidity Harshav has given us . . . a host of new and provocative insights into modern Jewish history. . . . This book is an outstanding attempt to juxtapose the revolution in Jewish life with that of the Hebrew language in such a way that each informs our understanding of the other."--Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Columbia University

Preface; A note to the reader; Part I. The Modern Jewish Revolution: 1. Transformations: extrinsic and intrinsic; 2. The internal response to history; 3. A new period in history; 4. The centrifugal movement; 5. The force of negation; 6. The new cultural trends; 7. The secular polysystem; 8. Assimilation; 9. A jewish century; 10. The continuous rainbow; 11. The individual; 12. Flashback: collapse and victory of the enlightenment; 13. Politics and literature; 14. Consolidation; 15. Two endings to one revolution; 16. The age of modernism; Part II. The Revival Of The Hebrew Language: 17. The miracle of the revival of hebrew; 18. The social existence of language; 19. Theory of twin systems; 20. Language as a unifying force; 21. The pitfalls of scholarship; 22. The beginnings of the language revival; 23. Three factors in the revival of the language; 24. The life of 'dead' hebrew; 25. The revival of written hebrew; 26. New cells of society in a social desert; 27. Ashkenazi or sephardi dialect?; 28. Remarks on the nature of israeli hebrew; 29. Principles of the revolution: a retrospective summary; 30. Remarks towards a theory of social revolution; Part III. Sources On The Hebrew Language Revival: References; Index.