A photograph of Eliezer ben Yehuda at work in his study.
“Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries round-about her.” - Ezekiel 5:5
This is part four of the FAI Publishing series Center of Nations which examines the history of the modern State of Israel in the midst of an increasingly hostile world.
A Painful LINGUISTIC DEATH
After the final Jewish revolt against Roman rule in the second century AD, the vast majority of surviving Jews in the Promised Land were driven out as captives or refugees, eventually settling across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Although Hebrew remained as the language of Scripture, liturgy and a large portion of Jewish religious writing, it passed away as the spoken vernacular of the Dispersion. Jewish communities instead adapted aspects of Hebrew into the languages of their host nations during the Middle Ages, such as German (producing Yiddish), Spanish (producing Ladino), Italian (producing Italkian), Qemant (in modern Ethiopia, producing Qwara), and Arabic (producing a variety of Judeo-Arabic languages), among others. Outside of the synagogue and the times of daily prayer, spoken Hebrew was very rare, and conversational Hebrew was non-existent.
An example of Ladino script, a combination of Hebrew and Spanish, from a 1902 edition of the periodical La Epoca.
By the Middle of the nineteenth century, there had been some attempts to revitalize written Hebrew. The Haskalah, often referred to as the Jewish Enlightenment, began using Biblical Hebrew in intellectual writing. However, its reach did not extend beyond the educated class. The works of Judah ben Solomon Hai Alkalai and Zevi Hirsch Kalischer, which encouraged a Jewish return to the Land, were written in Hebrew. Several Hebrew-language periodicals were circulating in Europe by the latter part of the century as well. But these all lacked the utilitarian vocabulary which was needed to make Hebrew a vernacular language once again. Such an endeavor would require a pioneer with academic discipline, grandiose vision, and incredible fortitude.
Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman was born in Lithuania in 1858. Like so many young Jewish men of his time, growing up in an educated and religious home in the Pale of Settlement, he was taught Hebrew from a young age, and was later enrolled in a yeshiva (Jewish religious school) with the expectation that he would become a rabbi. However, world events would drive Eliezer’s life in a different direction. The Russian Empire declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877, after a revival of Bulgarian language and culture led the Bulgarian people to revolt against Turkish rule. The Russians subsequently recaptured most of Southeastern Europe from the waning Ottomans, and Eliezer witnessed the rebirth of an autonomous Bulgarian nation in the Bulgarian homeland. After reading the proto-Zionist literature in circulation at the time, he came to the conclusion that the model of Bulgarian autonomy could be emulated in the reestablishment of a Jewish nation in the Jewish homeland, and that the revival of the Hebrew language as the lingua franca of the Jewish people was a necessary component of success.
A MIRACULOUS RESURRECTION
A portrait of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
While studying in Paris in preparation for his emigration to Eretz Yisrael, Eliezer attended the famed Alliance Israelite Universelle, where he received training to be an instructor at the Miqveh Yisrael agricultural academy. He became a student of Joseph HaLevy, an early proponent for the invention of an expanded Hebrew vocabulary. Eliezer also met a Jewish man from Jerusalem and conversed with him in Hebrew, discovering that his ancestral language was already used as a pidgin - a rudimentary “bridge language” - by Palestinian Jews of different linguistic backgrounds as they conducted commerce with each other. He was therefore not only convinced that Hebrew was the necessary glue for a reconstituted Jewish state and culture, but that the ancient language’s revival was actually a feasible task. After publishing several articles on the topic in Hebrew-language periodicals, which received very little public support, Eliezer set sail with his wife Devora for the port city of Jaffa at the beginning of the First Aliyah in 1881.
Upon arriving in Jerusalem, Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman, who would come to be known by the moniker Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, formed a society with friends called Te’hiyat Yisrael, or “Rebirth of Israel.” It was founded on the principles of Jewish agricultural production and expansion in the Land, as well as the publication and dissemination of Hebrew-language literature and scientific texts. After a brief attempt to work amongst the ultra-Orthodox yeshivas of Jerusalem as a means of enhancing his Hebraic understanding, Ben-Yehuda fell out with the Haredi community and remained at odds with them for most of his career. They opposed his attempts to develop the sacred language of Judaism into a modern language, and he opposed the system of charitable welfare that allowed their cloistered yeshivas to operate. Eliezer also received opposition from the “Yiddists,” or Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi community, who believed that their Germanic variant should be the official language of Jews in the Land. Nonetheless, Ben-Yehuda remained steadfast, taking a position at the Alliance Israelite’s school in Jerusalem on the condition that he could teach his courses in Hebrew. Within months, his young pupils could converse casually in their ancestral tongue, paving the way for future Hebrew-language education programs. The teacher was also a journalist, publishing “Hatzvi,” a Hebrew newspaper. It was the first Hebrew-language periodical to report on events inside of Ottoman Palestine, and it had enemies on every side. The orthodox Haredi leadership of Jerusalem managed to shut down its presses for a time, and the Turkish Ottoman authorities restricted its circulation, opposing any hint of Jewish nationalism within the borders of their empire.
Ben-Yehuda and his wife also raised their son in a Hebrew-speaking home, refusing to speak other languages in his presence, and requiring their guests to do the same. And so, young Ben-Zion Perelman became the first native Hebrew speaker in modern times. Eliezer saw his son’s linguistic formation as a critical experiment, later writing, "If a language which has stopped being spoken…can return and be the spoken tongue of an individual for all necessities of his life, there is no room for doubt that it can become the spoken language of a community.” As his son grew, Ben-Yehuda followed the teaching of his mentor Joseph HaLevy, inventing Hebrew words for bicycle, doll, ice cream and eggplant, most often developing the new vocabulary from Semitic root words in Hebrew, Aramaic, and even Arabic.
A legacy OF LANGUAGE
In 1889, Eliezer and his partners formed the Clear Language Society, which focused on Hebrew-language education for both boys and girls. The society in turn gave birth to Va'ad HaLashon, or “The Hebrew Language Committee,” which endeavored to systematize the rapidly growing lexicon of modern Hebrew. Gradually, the efforts of Ben-Yehuda and his company began to bear fruit. Hebrew-language boys and girls schools opened in Jaffa in 1893, followed by a Hebrew kindergarten in the new Jewish settlement of Rishon LeZion. Another Hebrew kindergarten opened in Jerusalem in 1903. Although Hebrew wouldn’t begin to flourish throughout Eretz Yisrael until the time of the Second Aliyah between 1903-1918, Eliezer’s work laid the foundation for his linguistic successors, and Va'ad HaLashon continued to guide the development of modern Hebrew until 1953.
Ben Yehuda with his second wife, Hemda.
Ben-Yehuda lost his first wife to tuberculosis in 1891. Shortly afterward, he married her younger sister at his late wife’s request, to help him raise their two children. But Devora’s younger sibling proved to be much more than just a godmother to her children. Paula took the Hebrew name Hemda and committed herself to supporting her husband’s work, learning Hebrew and becoming editor of his newspaper so that he could focus on Hebrew lexicography. Eliezer worked long hours for most of the remainder of his life to compile the first modern Hebrew dictionary, in which he sought to standardize the spelling, punctuation and pronunciation of both ancient and modern Hebrew. Six volumes of the dictionary were published before Eliezer finally succumbed to tuberculosis in 1922, after which Hemda and his sons continued compiling and publishing from his manuscripts. The last of the 17 volume work was finally published in 1959, completing the most astounding philological achievement of the modern era.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. There were reportedly over 30,000 in attendance for his funeral. His home in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem is today a conference center and a guest house. The Hebrew Language Committee was eventually succeeded by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, which currently oversees the development of Hebrew lexicography in Israel. Today, modern Hebrew includes a vocabulary of over 60,000 words, compared to the relatively limited Biblical vocabulary of less than 3000 words. Although Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was not solely responsible for this modern miracle, he was the primary catalyst for it. As one commentator remarked after his death, “Before Ben-Yehuda, Jews could speak Hebrew; after him, they did.”
The title page of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew: Vol 1
Gabe Caligiuri is the editor of THE WIRE, as well as an occasional contributor to other FAI digital content on the subjects of history and geopolitics as they relate to the Great Commission. Gabe and his family live in California.