This book deals with two remarkable events--the worldwide transformations of the Jews in the modern age and the revival of the ancient Hebrew language. It is a book about social and cultural history addressed not only to the professional historian, and a book about Jews addressed not only to Jewish readers. It tries to rethink a wide field of cultural phenomena and present the main ideas to the intelligent reader, or, better, present a "family picture" of related and contiguous ideas. Many names and details are mentioned, which may not all be familiar to the uninitiated; their function is to provide some concrete texture for this dramatic story, but the focus is on the story itself.