The Father of Modern Hebrew- Eliezer ben Yehuda

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda – Biography excerpts

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858- December 16, 1922), is known as the father of modern Hebrew.

He was one of the earliest supporters of Zionism.
Ben-Yehuda was born in Luzki, Lithuania, in 1858 as Eliezer Perelman. His father, a 'Habad orthodox Jew, died when he was 5.

At age 13, his uncle sent him to a Yeshiva in Polotsk. The head of the Yeshiva was a secret follower of the Haskala (enlightenment) movement, and turned Ben Yehuda into a free thinker.

His uncle tried to save him from heresy, by sending him to study in Glubokoye.
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The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, and the struggle of Balkan nations for liberation, inspired Ben-Yehuda to form the idea, of revival of the Jewish people in its ancestral soil. He held that, the Jews, like all other peoples, had a historic land and language.

Ben Yehuda was also the real father of Cultural Zionism, later popularized by Achad Haam.

He enrolled in the teachers' seminary of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, where he was to be trained as an instructor, in the Miqveh Yisrael agricultural school. He attended lectures of Joseph Halevy, who had been an early advocate, of coining new Hebrew words.

Ben-Yehuda attempted to disguise himself as an orthodox Jew, in order to maintain contact with them, and learn Hebrew and propagate it. However, they soon rejected him, and he then became actively anti-religious.

Ben Yehuda gathered friends and allies in Jerusalem. In 1881, together with Y.M. Pines, D. Yellin, Y. Meyu'has and A. Mazie, he founded the "Te'hiyat Yisrael" -- the Rebirth of Israel society based on five principles:
1. Work on the land.
2. Expansion of the productive population.
3. Creation of modern Hebrew literature.
4. Science, reflecting both a national and universalistic spirit.
5. Opposition to the halukah (charity) system, that maintained the Yeshiva students of Jerusalem.
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He researched the lost Hebrew words, that the reborn tongue required; and the coinage of new ones.

He worked 18 hours a day, on his "Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew." In 1910 he published the first of six volumes, to appear before his death in 1922. After his death, his widow Hemdah and son Ehud, continued publishing his manuscript; until all 17 volumes had been published by 1959.

The dictionary lists all the words used in Hebrew literature, from the time of Abraham to modern times, scrupulously avoiding Aramaic words, and other foreign influences, that had entered biblical and mishnaic Hebrew.
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In November of 1920, he succeeded in prevailing on Herbert Samuel (British High Commissioner of Palestine), to make Hebrew one of the three official languages, of the Palestine Mandate.

Thanks to his almost single-handed initiative, this was accomplished in the space of less than 40 years.