[ihm]

Hebrew is a much broader linguistic phenomenon than just modern Hebrew. Hebrew existed as a spoken language thousands of years ago and has existed continuously since then in many different forms in different Jewish communities primarily as a liturgical language.

Modern Hebrew (or probably “Israeli Hebrew” would be more accurate) was then constituted as a vernacular fairly recently as part of the Zionist project of creating a new national identity, distinct from the existing identities of the Jewish populations would emigrated to Israel.