Eliezer Ben-Yehuda

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Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (אליעזר בן־יהודה) (January 7, 1858-1922), was responsible for the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language

He was born Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman, in a Lithuanian village and was later an ardent revolutionary in Imperial Russia. He joined the Jewish national movement and emigrated to Palestine in 1881. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop a new language that the Jews could use for everyday communication.

While at first many considered his work as fanciful, the need for a common language was soon understood by many. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was 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). Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population in Israel.

Table of contents

1 See also
2 Quotes
3 External Links

Quotes

Before Ben-Yehuda... Jews could speak Hebrew; after him they did (Cecil Roth in: Was Hebrew Ever A Dead Language?).

External Links

[http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/ben_yehuda.html Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the Revival of Hebrew]