William Schniedewind, a UCLA professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures, recently published his fifth book, a look at the connection between Jewish faith and culture and the Hebrew language. "A Social History of Hebrew: Its Origins through the Rabbinic Period" is a comprehensive look at the perseverance of the Hebrew language through political strife, the languages biblical and cultural history, and the remarkable ability of the language to die and be revived.
In a review of the book that appeared in San Diego Jewish World, Schniedewind described his motivation for writing as coming from a commenter during a lecture who said, “I am only interested in the languages, not the people who spoke them.” For Schniedewind the purpose of studying languages is “to understand people, their societies, and their culture.”
