Jews never forgot Hebrew. Jewish prayer and scripture have always been in Hebrew (well, and Aramaic . . . ). Jewish boys (not girls, of course—ask Yentl) went to school to learn Hebrew. They wrote their Diaspora languages (Yiddish, Ladino) in the Hebrew alphabet. Medieval Jews of different lands used it as an international lingua franca, like Latin in the Christian world.

What the early Zionists returning to Israel did do was revive Hebrew as a living tongue of daily life. But they didn’t need to relearn it; it has always been alive in the Jewish world as the language of scripture and liturgy, literally since time immemorial.