Eliezer Ben-Yehuda

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was the pioneer of the revival of the Hebrew language as a living spoken language, Journalist and linguistic researcher. He was one of the founders of the “Hebrew Language Committee,” which years later became the “Academy of the Hebrew Language.” Ben-Yehuda was born in the Vilna region in 1858 and went to Paris to study medicine. Influenced by the national movement in Europe, he published his article “A Noble Question” in Peretz Smolenskin’s newspaper HaShahar. In the article he expressed his nationalist views—the return to Zion and the revival of the Hebrew language as a spoken language. In 1881 he immigrated to Eretz Yisrael. He became close to the circles of the educated and participated in various newspapers. Around 1884 he founded his own newspapers Mevasseret Zion and Hatzvi. He fought with stubborn zeal for the leadership of the speech. 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.

See “Eliezer Ben-Yehuda” in Zionism-Israel.com for a more comprehensive article.

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.’
  • In “Revival of Israel”
• 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.
  • In “A Burning Question”
• 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.
  • Quoted in Unified Jewish Religious Education Curriculum
• 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.
  • In HaTzvi.
• 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.
  • In HaTzvi, 4 may 1888, “The Horn For the House of Israel: The Revival of Our Language”
• 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.
  • In HaTzvi, 26 October 1888, “The Horn for the House of Israel: Hebrew Language, Studies Language”
• 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.
  • In HaTzvi, 10 February 1888, “The Chronicles of the Week”