Zionists framed the spoken word over written texts as a national virtue.

Evidence

To Jabotinsky, this question also involved the issue of the establishment of a Hebrew, national culture as opposed to the Jewish culture of the Diaspora. While the Diaspora was a written culture that relied on the power of texts and the written word, a healthy national culture, he argued, should be based on the spoken word; the very sounds of the national language will instill national virtues in the hearts and minds of those exposed to it. Finding the correct Hebrew sounds, to Jabotinsky, was not merely a scientific endeavor, but a national mission; these sounds would invoke in the nation’s youth the true national characteristics that all but disappeared in the Diaspora. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 527

Categorization

• SEED: The claim that phonetic sound itself instills national virtues is a strong lens for a piece on how sound and language get weaponized in nationalist projects.