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| == Biography == | | == Biography == |
| Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was born as Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman on January 7, 1858 - 1858 in Błożki, Vilna Province, Russian Empire (now Vitebsk Province, northern Belarus). His parents, Yehuda Leib and Feige Perlman, maintained a Haredi-Hasidic home. When he was 5 years old, his father died, and he was sent by his mother to study in a “cheder”. Upon reaching the age of majority in 1871, he was sent to his uncle's house in the city of Polotsk to study in a yeshiva. The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yossi Bleukker, secretly supported the Haskalah movement, and the young Eliezer became very close to him. During joint studies with the rabbi, he discovered a grammar book of the Hebrew language and was captivated by the charms of studying the language. Eliezer was also exposed to general literature, and in particular to Hebrew translations created by Haskalah writers of secular foreign books, and he became interested in the idea of reviving Hebrew as a new literary language.
| | See “[https://zionism-israel.com/bio/E_Ben_Yehuda_biography.htm Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]” in Zionism-Israel.com. |
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| After a short time in this yeshiva, Eliezer moved to the town of Lubka and lived in the house of his uncle Eliezer Wolfson, a devout man who opposed the Enlightenment. Wolfson tried to supress the boy's attraction to the Enlightenment and the study of Hebrew grammar, which was associated with the Enlightenment, but he had already fallen for the charms of the Enlightenment and Hebrew, and even demonstrated this by praying aloud not in the accepted Ashkenazi syllable, but in the revised grammatical accents. At that time, the young Eliezer met Shlomo Naftali Herz Yonas, a wealthy Jew who was observant and did not oppose general culture and the Enlightenment. Eliezer took a liking to Yonas and often stayed at his house, where he became acquainted with general literature and learned Russian with the help of Yonas's daughter, Deborah. During this period, he finally decided to leave Beit HaMidrash and join the Enlightenment and secularism.
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| In his youth, his last name was changed to Elyanov to prevent his conscription into the army (the law exempted firstborn sons from conscription, and Elyanov was the name of a family without children). In 1878, he went to study Medicine in Paris, but after three years he dropped out of his studies when he fell ill with tuberculosis.
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| In April 1879 he published his first political article, "She‘ela Nichbada",<ref group="Note">Originally titled “She‘ela Lohata” (lit. “A Burning Question”) but was deemed too much by HaShahar, so it was toned down to “She‘ela Nichbada” (lit. “An Important Question”)</ref> in the monthly "HaShahar", in which he argued that the resurrection of the Jewish people would be in the Land of Israel and in the Hebrew language, because there is no nation without a common language. He signed this article for the first time with the pen name "Ben-Yehuda". He married his childhood friend, Deborah Jonas, and began to realize his vision by immigrating to the Land of Israel in 1881. Upon his immigration to the land, he settled in Jerusalem and rented two meager rooms above the Cotton Workers' Market in the Old City. Initially, he worked for Israel Dov Frumkin in his Hebrew newspaper "Havatzelet", and there he also signed himself with the pseudonym "Ben-Yehuda". He tried to revive the Hebrew language as a spoken language after it had been preserved in writing for generations and was used mainly for prayer and Torah study (it should be noted that a large part of Torah literature was written in Hebrew), but for day-to-day language. In 1884, he founded the newspapers "Mevasseret Zion" (lit. “Herald of Zion”) and "Hatzvi," which he also edited, with his zeal for the Hebrew language.
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| Ben-Yehuda worked tirelessly to make the Hebrew language the everyday language in the Land of Israel. "Speak Hebrew and you will be saved," he told an acquaintance who complained to him about his illness. His son Ben-Zion (who changed his name to Itamar Ben Avi) was born in 1882 and was "the first Hebrew child" because at home he heard the Hebrew language used in everyday language, until it became his mother tongue. In addition, he wrote textbooks in Hebrew and taught at Beit Sefer Habib (a school in Rishon LeZion, the first in the world where all subjects were taught in Hebrew). In 1890, the "Hebrew Language Committee" was founded on the initiative of Ben-Yehuda together with David Yellin, with Ben-Yehuda as its head.
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| In 1891, his wife Deborah died of tuberculosis, leaving behind five young children. Three of the children died within a few months of diphtheria. Deborah's younger sister, Hemda (formerly Paula Beila), who was a journalist and writer in her own right, offered her help in raising his young children, and in 1892 she married Ben-Yehuda, from whom she received great assistance in his work.
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| Ben-Yehuda was arrested following an article published in "Hatzvi" by Ben-Yehuda's father-in-law, Sh. Yonas, in advance of the Hanukkah holiday of 1894. In the article, Yonas called on Jews to see Hanukkah not only as a holiday of lighting candles, but as a memorial to the heroism of Judah Maccabee, who led the people through a difficult time and defeated the Greeks, and even expressed hope that his own "Yehuda Maccabee" would be resurrected in his generation. The article was not far from Ben-Yehuda's own views, and articles in such a nationalist style had been published in his newspapers before, but this time the article came to the attention of the Ottoman authorities. Yosef Rivlin initiated the sending of a petition signed by the rabbis to the Ottoman authorities, in which the latter expressed a complete disavowal of the article. According to Ben-Yehuda's associates, this petition brought the article to the attention of the authorities, but according to Rivlin, the authorities knew about it first. According to him, the petition was also beneficial to Ben-Yehuda, because it proved to the authorities that the article was not accepted by the residents of Jerusalem. Ben-Yehuda was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, but was released a few months later under pressure from Jewish organizations.
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| Ben-Yehuda aroused the wrath of the people of the old Yishuv. He published many articles against their leadership, in which he attacked their religious conservatism and presented living off the partition funds as corruption. The people of the old Yishuv declared several boycotts of Ben-Yehuda and harassed him and his family in various ways. Some of the leaders of Zionism also showed considerable hostility towards Ben-Yehuda and his innovations, especially from the "Odessa School", led by Chaim Nachman Bialik, Ahad Ha'am, Yehoshua Hanna Rabinitzky and others. Mendel Mocher Sfarim wrote that he disapproved of the "word factory" and that Ben-Yehuda's Hebrew was "infinitely artificial".
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| Even the writers of the Second Aliyah, who arrived in Israel at the beginning of the 20th century, such as S. Ben-Zion, Brenner and Agnon, clashed with him because of his innovations, which they considered inappropriate, and no less so, because of the light and yellow nature of his newspapers.
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| In 1913, Ben-Yehuda was a participant in the "War of Languages" - the debate over the place of the renewed Hebrew in the Jewish education system in Palestine. The debate erupted over the demand of the "Ezra" company, which provided funding for the establishment of the Technion,<ref group="Note">A respected university in Israel</ref> that the language of instruction at this institution be German. The debate spread to the rest of the education system in Palestine. In February 1914, the "War of Languages" ended with the victory of the supporters of Hebrew. In 1919, he convinced the British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, to declare Hebrew one of the three official languages of the British Mandate in Palestine.
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| Eliezer Ben-Yehuda died on December 16 1922, and was buried in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. | |
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| == His Advocacy work ==
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| Ben-Yehuda worked in numerous areas to promote the Hebrew language in Palestine.
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| * Speaking Hebrew within the family: Ben-Yehuda made sure to speak only Hebrew with his family, and even tried, with little success, to influence other families to do the same. According to family members, his son Itamar did not speak at all until the age of 4. His mother taught him Russian in secret, and when Ben-Yehuda found out about it, he burst into anger, and then the child began to speak. In order to raise the child, Ben-Yehuda had to create new words such as: doll, ice cream, bicycle, and more. The success in speaking Hebrew led four additional Jerusalem families to speak Hebrew (Yudelevitz, Miyuhas, Horwitz, and Gerzowski), but the success did not carry many after it. According to testimony from 1902—more than twenty years after he began his activity—Ben-Yehuda's wife baked a cake for the tenth family that took on the task of speaking Hebrew in Jerusalem.
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| * Hebrew in Hebrew: Ben-Yehuda believed that only Hebrew should be spoken, even in education and teaching. He himself taught Hebrew for a short time at the [[Alliance Israélite Universelle|Alliance]] "Torah and Crafts" school in Jerusalem, but retired after a short time for health reasons. The idea of teaching Hebrew in Hebrew found a receptive ear in some of the seettlments of the first aliyah, where Hebrew schools were established. This process also developed at a rather slow pace.
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| * Hebrew Speaking Associations: Ben-Yehuda founded several associations and groups to promote Hebrew speaking. As early as 1882, he founded the "[[Revival of Israel]]"<!-- חברת תחיית ישראל. יש ליצור על זה ערך --> society for speaking Hebrew, and in 1889 he founded the "Sefa Berura" society, from which the "Hebrew Language Committee" was established about a year later. The activities of the groups and associations encountered difficulties from various directions: from the Ottoman government's opposition to activities that had national components, from the opposition of the people of the old settlement, and also from the anti-establishment nature of Ben-Yehuda himself.
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| * Press: Ben-Yehuda founded the newspaper "Hatzvi" to demonstrate the possibility of making modern everyday use of Hebrew and to disseminate his ideas to the public, especially among the youth. The newspaper's work also led to the creation of many words and idioms. The newspaper's reputation declined over time, both because it had a rather sensational nature and because it took positions that were not acceptable to the people of the Second Aliyah (it supported Baron Rothschild's activities in the settlments and also supported the [[Uganda Plan]]). "Hatzvi" was replaced by "HaPo‘el Hatza‘ir", the newspaper of the people of the Second Aliyah, which also introduced a different Hebrew style that became established in Hebrew.
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| * The Dictionary: To demonstrate the large vocabulary that could be used, he began compiling the Hebrew Dictionary, which later became known as the Ben-Yehuda Dictionary, which includes many of his linguistic innovations. Five volumes were published during Ben-Yehuda's lifetime, and the work on the dictionary, which eventually included 16 volumes, was completed by Naftali Hertz-Tor-Sinai only in 1959. The dictionary is a historical dictionary, and for each word in it is given a long list of citations from ancient Hebrew sources in which it appears.
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| * Vocabulary Revival and Word Innovations: When Eliezer Ben-Yehuda renewed the Hebrew language, he did not do so out of thin air. The Bible preserved the language of the ancestors for generations, and extensive Torah literature was also written in Hebrew over the generations. And Ben-Yehuda had to pull the language out of the vessel in which it was preserved and bring it back to life. Sometimes he took words that had a different meaning during the Bible period and adapted them to the needs of today, such as: gun, crossword, and mortar, which found their place in a new incarnation. The number of words that Ben-Yehuda innovated does not exceed 300, and they include: sidewalk, brush, ice cream, and train. Among the words he proposed that were not absorbed into the language are: bedorah - tomato, mequlit - turntable, ‘amonot - democracy, parqa - division, abhametz - oxygen, abhanak - nitrogen, abamim - hydrogen, madleq - match (lighter match), sah rahoq - telephone.
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| ==Quotes== | | ==Quotes== |
| *To conquer the land of our forefathers before us, not by force, nor by the power of weapons and war, but through a spirit of loyalty to the ruler of the land and by the power of money; and he calls it by the name: ‘The Society for the Redeemers of the Land.’ | | *To conquer the land of our forefathers before us, not by force, nor by the power of weapons and war, but through a spirit of loyalty to the ruler of the land and by the power of money; and he calls it by the name: ‘The Society for the Redeemers of the Land.’ |
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is the revivor of the Hebrew language. He has created new words, and have wrote many Hebrew articles and essays in many places, including his own newspaper HaTzvi. Along with Aḥad Ha‘am, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was an advocate of Cultural Zionism.
Biography
See “Eliezer Ben-Yehuda” in Zionism-Israel.com.
Quotes
- To conquer the land of our forefathers before us, not by force, nor by the power of weapons and war, but through a spirit of loyalty to the ruler of the land and by the power of money; and he calls it by the name: ‘The Society for the Redeemers of the Land.’
- If we wish that the name Israel be not extinguished, then we are in duty bound to create something which may serve as a center for our entire people, like the heart in an organism, from which the blood will stream into all the arteries of the national body and fill it with life.
- One people, one land, one language!
- Quoted in Hemda Ben Yehuda, New Palestine, Dec. 1950.
- The Hebrew language can live only if we revive the nation and return to the fatherland.
- The Hebrew language will go from the synagogue to the house of study, and from the house of study to the school, and from the school it will come into the home and... become a living language.
- The idea of reviving the Hebrew language on the lips of the people, which we have preached since the day we first began to speak of the nation’s revival, is—by the help of God—steadily advancing and taking root in our land. From day to day this idea clothes itself with more flesh and sinew, ceasing to be a mere spiritual notion and beginning to become something tangible and real.
- If there is in Jerusalem a language of the land for the Jews—that is, a language shared by all—it is only the Hebrew tongue. The number of Jews in Jerusalem is greater than that of all the other inhabitants combined, and it alone unites all the members of the different communities. Only through its power can one heart and one spirit be given to all. [In short:] for the Jews, it is the language of the land.
- As long as our people dwelling in the Holy Land speak foreign tongues—each man the language of the land from which he came: Spanish, Ashkenazic, Norse, Arabic, Greek, and so on—there is no hope that we shall here become one people, of one heart and one counsel.
- We are a rabble, we are the generation of Babel, who cannot understand one another’s speech; and thus our hearts have grown distant from each other.
- Only when the day comes that we all speak one language — then we shall be one people.
External links
References