For the street named for Eliezer Ben Yehuda in Jerusalem, Israel, see Ben Yehuda Street.

Eliezer Ben?Yehuda (, 7 January 1858 ? 16 December 1922) was a key figure in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. He was born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman, in Luzhky, Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Vitsebsk Voblast, Belarus).

Early Years

Ben-Yehuda attended heder where he studied Hebrew and the Bible from the age of three, as was customary among the Jews of Eastern Europe. By the age of twelve he had been studying in Hebrew for nine years and had read large portions of the Torah, Mishna, and Talmud. His parents hoped he would become a rabbi, and sent him to a yeshiva. There, he continued to study ancient Hebrew and was also exposed to the Hebrew of the enlightenment, including secular writings. Later, he learned French, German, and Russian, and was sent to Dünaburg for more education. Reading the Hebrew language newspaper HaShahar, he became acquainted with Zionism and concluded that the revival of Hebrew language in the Land of Israel could unite all Jews worldwide.

Study in Paris

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 abandoning Judaism. Despite a mixed response, he decided to go to Palestine and try to effect this revival.

Move to Jerusalem

-Cecil Roth, Was Hebrew Ever A Dead Language? In 1881 Ben-Yehuda traveled to Palestine, 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 and wife Hemda, 1912

While at first many considered Ben?Yehuda's work as fanciful, the need for a common language was soon understood by many. In 1884 he started publishing HaZvi, 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).

By the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of Palestine, and later, the State of Israel.

Ben Yehuda married twice, to two sisters. His first wife, Deborah (nee Jonas), died in 1891 of tuberculosis and six months later he married her sister, who took the Hebrew name "Hemda".^[1]

In December 1922, Ben Yehuda died of tuberculosis, from which he suffered most of his life. He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.^[2]

See also

• Netiva Ben-Yehuda
• Revival of Hebrew language

References

Bibliography

• 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

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