Professor Bernard (Dov) Spolsky died on Saturday, August 20th, 2022, a few months after undergoing major surgery. Bernard had been in and out of the hospital, but remained optimistic that he could join his family on their vacation in France with his new great grandson Noam.

Through our conversations and emails during that period, we continued to talk, as always, about various language policy and political issues - the war in the Ukraine, language assessment issues, and the history of linguistic landscape. Bernard was concerned and eager to discuss the current turmoil in the world with Ukraine, China, the US, and the divided loyalties of the Russian speaking communities in Israel between Russia and Ukraine, wondering whether Ukrainians would go through a phase of ‘Ukranian language loyalty’ and reject Russian.

At the Israeli Language and Society conference on June 19th, 2022 via Zoom, Bernard’s 90th birthday was celebrated during the opening plenary. Bernard and his wife Ellen were present in the audience and could listen to the beautiful words of Elite Olshtain about Bernard’s unusual and broad interests, his contributions and impact on language policy, language testing, English language teaching, and so much more in Israel and throughout the world. It was a warm and emotional event, where his colleagues in Israel showed their appreciation. It somehow did not feel like it was the end, as we knew Bernard had plans to write more books on language issues that were of concern to him. Indeed, it is not possible to accept the end when a person remains so productive and prolific, so bright, and so innovative, authoring and editing a large number of new books and articles and actively participating in electronic mailing lists and webinars. It felt as if these activities and his writing could postpone or even prevent death.

The death of Bernard came as a shock. Reflecting back on the many lectures he gave at our research forum in the Multilingual Education program at Tel Aviv University, he was always happy to accept our invitations, and we were curious to find out what new topic Bernard was working on. In 2021, Bernard presented his book entitled Rethinking Language Policy and, in 2022, he shared his thoughts about the history of linguistic landscape. These lectures were memorable for the graduate students who kept referring back to them during their language policy classes. Bernard continued to be active until the last minute; he signed off the evaluation form of his last doctoral student a day before he died. Messages of sorrow and condolences have poured in from colleagues around the world, from Europe, the US, New Zealand, and elsewhere, where he had many close colleagues and was very influential and respected. Bernard’s excellent, thoughtful, and clearly written books covered many areas in applied linguistics, language policy, language testing, and language acquisition, always full of new and creative thinking that moved the field forward.

Bernard took on an activist’s role in reviving the Māori language in New Zealand, forming close relationships with the Māori community in New Zealand (where he was born), and earlier, with the Navajo community in Arizona, and also creating the TESOL Asia organization. Those attending the Sociolinguistics Symposium in Auckland in 2018 will vividly remember the standing ovation and special outstanding honor Bernard received from the Māori community and other local groups whose languages had been overlooked. Among the letters that arrived, there are many from those who never met Bernard in person, and who shared how much they were influenced by his thoughtful writing and deep wisdom. Bernard’s scholarship on language policy was pioneering, innovative, and attentive, both in theoretical and practical domains. Yet, in his last book, published in 2021 entitled Rethinking Language Policy, Bernard revised his earlier theories on language policy, starting from the individual and ending with the macro national and global levels. Bernard wrote in many other areas within sociolinguistics, including his book on Educational Linguistics (a term he had introduced), and in language testing, where his book Measured Words is a classic in the field that points to the interests of large corporations in test development and use. His book on language acquisition, Conditions of Language Learning, is a brilliant attempt to create a model of language acquisition. The book The Languages of the Jews (2018) is an extensive survey of patterns of multilingualism among the Jews both historically and geographically. These and so many other publications he authored greatly impacted scholars, students and the public at large. Bernard was constantly eager to learn new things, to gain deeper understandings of various sociolinguistic phenomena, and then to offer his nuanced interpretations.

I was extremely fortunate to have been a close colleague of Bernard’s over many years. It was a delightful journey of discussions, exciting arguments, and new ideas, long hours of conversations and of asking questions. Along with Andrew Cohen, in 1982, we founded the dynamic group The Academic Committee of Language Testing in Israel (ACROLT). Together, Bernard and I worked on the first new educational policy in Israel, and published the book The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology and Practice (1999). We worked on a research project about the academic achievement of immigrants in Israel that showed how long it takes immigrant students from various countries to acquire academic Hebrew and other school subjects. We organized an international conference on language policy at Bar Ilan University in honor of Bernard’s retirement that was attended by the most distinguished scholars of the field. Just a few days before Bernard died, Iair G. Or, Bernard, and I sent off to Multilingual Matters a new book we co-edited entitled Multilingual Israel: Language Ideologies, Survival, Integration, and Hybridization.

And then, as many readers of Language Policy would know, was the initiative to create this very journal in 2001, which was groundbreaking. Bernard shaped the journal and served as its editor for the first five years, helping to establish and grow this burgeoning field. Today, the journal serves as a major forum for new and exciting research in language policy. In this special issue of the journal, on advocacy, Bernard’s article appears first, based on a paper he presented in 2018 during an invited session organized by Stephen May at the Sociolinguistics Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand.

Bernard was a very close colleague in Israel; we agreed on many topics but also disagreed on many others. It is this mutual respect that was the essence of our relationship and the source of our creativity. In a short biography Bernard wrote in February 2022: “I also started to argue and work closely with Elana Shohamy and we developed a theory of language policy and language education policy for Israel.” It was the ‘arguing’ part which we liked the best, a way of learning that is missing from academic life today; it is very much needed as it leads to innovation and new understandings. Bernard wrote until the very end of his life, and in fact had writing plans for another century about issues that need to be traced, explored, and interpreted. The death of Bernard Spolsky is a tremendous loss, professionally and personally; his legacy lives on through his well-thought-out books, chapters, articles, speeches, list serves, and monographs that will be studied and followed by future generations. He is greatly missed by many students in Israel and around the world. May he rest in peace.

Elana Shohamy

Tel Aviv, Israel