Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
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Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (Hebrew אֱלִיעֶזֶר בֶּן־יְהוּדָה) (January 7, 1858-1922), was principally responsible for the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language from its previous state as a liturgical language.
Born Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman (Russian: Элиезер Ицхак Перельман, Yiddish: אליעזר יצחק פערלמאן) in Luzhki (Лужки), a shtetl in Wilno Guberniya of Imperial Russia (now Northern Belarus), he began to study Hebrew and the Torah at age three, like many young Jewish boys in Eastern Europe. By the age of twelve he had been studying in Hebrew for nine years and had read most of the Torah, Mishna, and Talmud, giving him much familiarity with both Biblical and Talmudic Hebrew. His parents hoped he would become a rabbi, and sent him to a nearby yeshiva (Jewish parochial school). There, he continued to study ancient Hebrew and was also exposed to the later Hebrew of the enlightenment, including secular writings. Later, he learned French, German, and Russian languages and was sent to Dünaburg for more education. There he read the Hebrew language newspaper Ha-Shahar, from which he learned of Zionism and concluded that the revival of Hebrew language in the Land of Israel could protect and unite the Jewish diaspora against external assimilation.
Upon graduation he went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne University. Among the subjects he studied there were history and politics of the Middle East, but the one that had the most lasting effect was Hebrew. Specifically, his advanced Hebrew classes taught in Hebrew. It was this use of Hebrew in a spoken form that convinced him fully that the revival of Hebrew as the language of a nation was practical. From Paris he went to Algiers, and there he had only Hebrew for a language in common with the Algerian Jews. In Algiers he got much practice in using Hebrew in secular contexts for everyday communication.
While in Paris and later in Algiers, Ben-Yehuda published several articles in the Hebrew language press. He tried to convince people of the practicality of Hebrew as a reborn spoken language and of how a Hebrew revival in Palestine would keep the Jewish youth from deserting Judaism for gentile cultures. Despite receiving a mixed response, he decided to go to Eretz Yisrael (Palestine) and try to effect this revival.
In 1881 he emigrated to the Land of Israel, then a province of the Ottoman Empire. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop a new language that could replace Yiddish and other regional dialects as a means of everyday communication between Jews who made aliyah from various regions of the world.
Ben-Yehuda raised his son, Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda (the first name meaning "son of Zion"), entirely through Hebrew. He refused to let his son be exposed to other languages during childhood, and supposedly included among these the "languages" of livestock. On one occasion, it is said he beat his wife, after he caught her singing a Russian lullaby to the child. His son was the first native speaker of modern Hebrew; his autobiography, written under the pen name Itamar Ben-Avi (איתמר בן אב“י "Itamar, son of Avi", Avi is an abbreviation created from the 3 first letters of the name Eliezer Ben Yehuda), is still widely read in Israel.
While at first many considered his work as fanciful, the need for a common language was soon understood by many. In 1884 he started publishing The Deer, a Hebrew language newspaper which advocated Zionism. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was then established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that still exists today. The results of his work and the Committee's were published in a dictionary (The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew).
Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population in the Land of Israel throughout the years of the British Mandate of Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel.
[edit] Quotes
- Before Ben-Yehuda... Jews could speak Hebrew; after him they did. (Cecil Roth in: Was Hebrew Ever A Dead Language?).
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Fellman, Jack (1973). The revival of a classical tongue: Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the modern Hebrew language. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton ISBN 90-279-2495-3
- Robert St. John. Tongue of the Prophets, Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 1952. ISBN 0-8371-2631-2
