academy of hebrew language
institute to develop the hebrew language, 1953
Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the founder of modern Hebrew, established a Hebrew Language Committee in 1890 to help develop the language for modern usage. The Committee’s functions were taken over by the official Academy of Hebrew Language in 1953.
The Academy’s job is to oversee all things Hebrew — researching the history of the language, establishing standards for grammar, setting style guides, and making new Hebrew words. The Israeli government saw the use of Hebrew as a deliberative act of national identity formation, and so Hebrew became a major national project to develop a secular Jewish identity, a language unique to this new Jewish state.