Tsarphati
French Israel

Treading Fences writes:

One more thought - not all innovations are secular in nature or loazit in origin. How do the writings of HaRav Kook, who created words himself, fit into your "modern hebrew" scheme. The words of HaRav Kook are new, and yet are arguably a lashon of/for kodesh if not lashon kodesh itself (solely tanachik in strict def?)

The answer is, of course, that I don't know. I cannot afford to be a hardliner yet because languages are incredibly complex creatures, and this one (Hebrew) has extra features. And as soon as I take a position, there will be someone with good evidence to the contrary.

I will throw out a few more thoughts à propos in hopes of eventually getting somewhere close to answer these kinds of questions:

• I don't see any problem with secular word inventions per se. Eliezer Ben Yehudah invented a lot of modern Hebrew terminology for the needs of modern society, and presumably the Academia follows in his footsteps. Yes, he is often belittled by the frum crowd for doing his thing, and in fact faced a lot of rabbinical opposition to his championing of the Hebrew language for modern usage. But I have no reason to criticise him as of yet, and the descendants of those rabbanim seem to be using modern Hebrew with no qualms.


• There is a story, maybe aprocryphal, that some persons in the ḥarédi world refused to use the word ḥashmal for "electricity". There was of course no explicit mention of electricity in the Tanakh, so someone (maybe Ben Yehudah) had to come up with a word. The word ḥashmal apparently came from the Navi (Yeḥezkel maybe? I am too lazy to look it up at this moment) and was thus strictly considered Lashon HaKodesh.


• I do not know what the outcome of the above two anecdotes has been, except that modern Hebrew and the word ḥashmal is used widely, even in the ḥarédi population, in Israel. Outside of Israel, the old opinions may be held more strongly because it is possible for those people to go about their daily lives without using Hebrew, except in Torah study.


• Naturally I am highly receptive of whatever Rav Kook did in this regards, since his holy sensibilities were higher than those of Ben Yehudah's.


• I think I just don't like Hebrew speakers using English (French, German, Latin...) words when perfectly good Hebrew words exist for the same ideas.

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