When award-winning writer, Ben Judah, embarked on a pandemic-fuelled mission to learn Hebrew, he did not anticipate the immensely personal internal shift that would occur in him. With Hebrew came a deepening of Jewish identity, of connection to religion and culture. To ancestry and community. 

It also led him to deep reflection on crucial role of modern Hebrew in defining and reshaping the Jewish people. In this ground-breaking essay featured in the latest edition of the Jewish Quarterly, Judah delves into the remarkable evolution and revival of Hebrew – a language whose trajectory charts the recent history of the Jewish people.

Judah will speak with critic and writer Tali Lavi about his experience of longing for and learning the language, and of his belief in Hebrew as the missing connection between Israel and the Diaspora.