Ben Yehuda's birthday

YESTERDAY: Israelis offer a 'Yom Huledet Sameach' to Ben Yehuda, resurrector of Hebrew language: Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who transformed Hebrew from the rusty language of ancient Israel and the Bible into the dynamic, dominant language of modern-day Israel, would be 155 years old today (CSM Global News blog).

Of course, Hebrew was the language of the Torah – the biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – as well as other religious writings. So many Jews were familiar with it. But they didn’t use it to talk about things like grocery shopping or even politics.

Not so fast. Those "other religious writings" often had a lot to say about daily life and all the little halakhic details pertaining thereto. Politics certainly featured in them sometimes and I would be very surprised if the Talmud and the Responsa literature didn't discuss grocery shopping from time to time. See also my post on Hebrew as a dead language from five years ago.