To hear some people tell it, you’d think that Zionism began with the
holocaust, and that our people started the return to their homeland at
the end of the second world war. There are those who will tell you that
our great leaders, Hertzl and Nordau and Usishkin, Weizman and
Ben-Gurion and Begin -- were all stooges of the great “imperialist”
nations -- France, Great Britain and the United States. How can we
fight such lies and historical distortions?
Well, we can begin by turning the spot light on one frail Jew who lived
from 1858 to 1922. His name was Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and I am his
grandson. He was born Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman in Luzhky, Lithuania, to
Feyga and Yehuda Lieb Perelman, a Habad Hasid, died when Eliezer was
only five years old. He attended Yeshivah in Polotsk, and was
introduced there to the changing ideas in Judaism, Haskalah --
enlightenment, and secular Hebrew literature. “Discovered” in this
“heresy,” he was expelled from his uncle’s home and found shelter in
Glubokoye, a small town in the Vilna district, in the home of Samuel
Naphtali Herz Jonas, also a Habad Hasid, who was quit learned, writing
and reading Russian, French and Hebrew. Jonas persuaded him to prepare
for secondary school matriculation, and his eldest daughter Deborah
taught him Russian and French. He entered the Dvinsk Gymnasium, from
which he graduated in 1877.
The second half of the nineteenth century was a time of national
turmoil throughout Europe. The Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) and the
struggle of the Balkan nations for liberation were probably most
influential in planting in young Eliezer the idea of the revival of the
Jewish people on its ancestral soil. In an unfinished autobiography
which he wrote while in the U.S. in 1917-18, he revealed that “In those
days it was as if the heavens had suddenly opened, and a clear,
incandescent light flashed before my eyes and a mighty inner voice
sounded in my ears ‘the resurrection of Israel on its ancestral soil.’
Because of that voice, which has not ceased from that moment on to ring
in my ears day and night, all my thoughts and plans which I had for my
future life were shaken up. As night visions pale in the face of the
light of day, so were my dreams of dedicating my life to the cause of
freedom in the Russian nation replaced with a single ideal, manifest in
two Hebrew words, ‘Yisrael b’artzo’ -- Israel in its own land!
I was challenged by many, and one argument said that the Jews are not
now and could not be in the future a nation -- because they did not
possess a common tongue. I tried to argue, as others did, that there
are nations such as the Swiss and the Belgians, who speak more than one
language -- but the more I thought of the national revival the more I
realized what a tongue can do to unite a people. I realized that just
as the Jews could not become a living nation except by returning to
their ancient homeland -- so also they could not become a living nation
except by returning to the language of their ancestors, speaking it not
only in prayer and study but also in all matters of life, young and old
alike, at all hours of the day and night -- just like every other
nation, each with its tongue. That was the decisive moment in my life,
when I saw that the two things without which the Jews could not become a
nation are the land and the language! ”
Eliezer began to actively ‘preach’ that the Jewish people, like all
other peoples, had a historic land and a historic language. What was
needed was to actuate a national movement that would restore Israel to
its land and to its language. He determined to settle in Eretz Israel,
and in 1878 went to Paris to study medicine so that he might have a
profession to sustain himself. He discussed his plan for a Jewish
national movement with some Hebrew writers he met there; they,
however, were not interested. His article “She’elah Lohatah” (“A Burning
Question”) was published in P. Smolenskin’s Ha-Shakhar in 1879 (after
Ha-Maggid had refused to accept it) under the name “E. Ben-Yehuda.” For
the first time the idea of a national rebirth of a Jewish nation in
Eretz Israel was clearly propounded. Ben-Yehuda linked the Jewish
national revival with the general European awakening and said that the
Jewish people should learn from the oppressed European peoples that were
fighting for political freedom and national revival. The Jewish people
must establish a community in Eretz Israel that would serve as a focal
point for the entire people, so that even those Jews who would remain in
other lands would know that they belong to a people that dwells in its
own land and has its own language and culture. In this essay, the
fundamental principles of Zionism were actually anticipated: the
settlement of the land not for the return of the entire people from the
exile (as in the days of Messiah in a fulfillment of prophecy), but for
the creation or a national entity, an independent nation designed to
save from assimilation and annihilation those Jews that are scattered
all over the world and who wish to migrate there.
While studying medicine in Paris Ben-Yehuda contracted tuberculosis in
the winter of 1878 and his doctors did not forecast a long and happy
life for him. He resolved to discontinue his medical studies and make
his home in the more favorable climate of Eretz Israel, where he hoped
he could continue his advocacy for a national reawakening for a while
before succumbing to his illness. He enrolled in the teachers’ seminary
of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, to qualify for a teaching post in
their agricultural school, Mikveh Israel. There he attended the lectures
of the Assyrologist Joseph Halevy who in the periodical Ha-Maggid had
advocated the coinage of new Hebrew words as early as the 1860s. As his
health deteriorated, Ben-Yehuda entered the Rothschild Hospital in
Paris, and there he met the Jerusalem scholar A. M. Lunz who spoke
Hebrew to him in the Sephardi pronunciation, and told him that the
members of the various Jewish communities in Jerusalem were able to
converse with one another only in Sephardi Hebrew. This reinforced
Ben-Yehuda’s opinion that the Jews could not hope to become a united
people in their own land again unless their children revived Hebrew as
their spoken tongue. The Hebrew living language must have Sephardi
phonetic sounds because that was the pronunciation which served in the
transliteration or biblical names in ancient and modern translations of
the Bible. In 1880 he published two articles in Hakhav’atzelet in which
he advocated that Hebrew rather than the various foreign languages
become the language of instruction in the Jewish schools in Eretz
Israel. Ben-Yehuda, alone among and unique from all the prophets of
Jewish national renaissance, saw the whole picture of the need for a
people wedded to a land, speaking its own language. In 1881, he left for
Jerusalem. He traveled by way of Vienna, where he was joined by his
childhood sweetheart, Deborah Jonas. He had written to her of his
illness and his dim chance of a long and full life. He bade her forget
him -- but she surprised him with a Ruth-like pledge, “wherever you go,
I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge...” They married in Cairo,
on their way to make a home in the once and future land of Israel. In
October 1881, they arrived in Jaffa where Eliezer informed his wife that
henceforth they would converse only in Hebrew. The Ben-Yehuda household
thus was the first Hebrew-speaking home established in Jerusalem, and
their first son, Ben-Zion (who later became known by his pen-name,
Itamar Ben-Avi) was the first modern Hebrew-speaking child.
Soon after he and Deborah arrived in Jerusalem, before the end of 1881,
Ben-Yehuda, together with Y.M. Fines, D. Yellin, Y. Meyuhas, and A.
Mazie founded the society Tekhiyat Israel based on five principles: work
on the land and expansion of the country’s productive population;
revival of spoken Hebrew; creation of a modern Hebrew literature and
science in the national spirit; education of the youth in a national
and, at the same time, universal humanistic spirit; and active
opposition to the halukkah (dole) system. During the period 1882-85,
Ben Yehuda worked on a Hebrew periodical published in Jerusalem, called
Ha-khavazzelet, and put out a supplement to the periodical under the
name Mevasseret Zi’yon. This journalistic work satisfied his need to be
politically active for the nationalist cause. At the same time, he
taught in the Jerusalem Alliance school, which post he accepted only
after he was permitted to use Hebrew exclusively as the language of
instruction in all Jewish subjects. The school was thus the first in
which at least some subjects were taught in Hebrew. Ben-Yehuda
published a geography book called ‘Eretz Yisrael,’ and translated many
texts to use in his classroom to teach everything from mathematics to
world literature. Toward the end of 1884, he founded a weekly, Ha-Zevi,
which later became a biweekly under the new name, Ha-Or. In his class
and in his papers he constantly coined new words for everything that had
no words since Hebrew was last used. He published a “list of words” in
every paper he published, but before long it became obvious that people
could not keep collecting these lists -- there was a need for a “book of
words” -- yes, even the word for dictionary did not exist in the tongue
of the prophets. Ben-Yehuda thus was launched on his greatest
undertaking: Milon Halashon Ha’ivrit ha’yshana vehakhadasha -- the
Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, ancient and modern.
In 1891, Ben-Yehuda’s wife, Deborah, died of the disease that he had
contracted in Paris. On her death bed she wrote a letter to her sister,
sixteen years her junior. “If you want to be a queen,” her letter said,
“then hurry to Jerusalem and marry my prince, my darling Eliezer.”
Ben-Yehuda was a broken man after the death of his Deborah -- but the
sister began her campaign to fulfill her sister’s wish. She wrote to
him, pretending an interest in Hebrew -- which he, of course, could not
resist. She chose a Hebrew name for herself -- Hemda. It meant
“darling” -- and that’s how she unlocked his heart. About six months
later he married her, and she became his constant companion in his
political and literary activity. Hemda Ben-Yehuda mastered Hebrew
quickly, published translations and original Hebrew stories in his
periodicals, and wrote columns for his papers on everything from fashion
to cooking to advice for love-struck maidens.
Ben Yehuda’s unorthodox behavior, and the campaign which he waged in
the columns of his periodicals against the halukkah system and its
administrators, aroused the vehement opposition of the extreme Orthodox
Jews. Seeking a pretext for revenge, they found it in an article by his
father in law, Samuel Naphtali Herz Jonas, in the 1894 Hanukkah issue
of Ha-Zevi -- which contained the phrase “let us gather strength and go
forward.” Some of Ben-Yehuda’s more bigoted enemies distorted its
meaning and interpreted it to the Turkish authorities as “let us gather
an army and proceed against the East.” Ben-Yehuda was charged with
sedition and placed in jail where he spent a year. Condition in the
jail were, of course, appalling, as befits a prison in the Turkish
Empire in those days. Eliezer, whose health was never good, began to
cough blood. Hemda turned heaven and earth trying to enlist influential
people in his behalf. The affair created a great stir throughout the
Jewish world: an appeal was lodged, aided by a large bribe to the
governor of Jerusalem, and Eliezer was suddenly released. However,
Turkish censorship of Ha-Zev’i became more stringent from then on, and
Ben-Yehuda ceased his journalistic work and began to concentrate more on
linguistic questions to which the censors could make no objection. He
became increasingly engrossed in his dictionary for which he had begun
to collect material from the day he arrived in Eretz Israel. In order
to conduct research and raise funds for its publication, Ben-Yehuda
traveled several times to Europe together with his wife Hemda. Turkey
joined the First World War on the side of Germany, and Eliezer’s
continued presence in Jerusalem was a risk not worth taking. He was
whisked away to Egypt in a caravan of camels, and from there to the
United States in a U.S. Navy ship. He was a house guest of the
Whorthiem family in New York, where he worked in American libraries,
being the only man ever to be given a room to do research at the New
York public library on 42 street and Fifth Avenue. In 1910, assisted by
various sponsors, he began to publish his dictionary volume by volume;
Having finished the manuscript for the entire dictionary -- but not the
editing, his life came to an end on the second night of Hanukkah, the
Festival of the Maccabees, those ancient champions of the Jewish
nation. After his death in 1922, Hemda and his son Ehud, my father,
continued his publication which, because of the ravages of the
depression and the second World War and the battle for Israel’s
independence, was completed, in sixteen volumes plus an introductory
volume called Ha-Mavo-ha-Gadol (the great introduction) in 1959.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda has been recognized by history -- Jewish and
non-Jewish, for his role in the revival of the tongue of the prophets.
His role in the rebirth of the Jewish nation is much less known or
acknowledged. However, it needs to be -- it should be proclaimed from
the rooftops daily! Why? Because it lends legitimacy to the Zionist
enterprise and dates its beginning beyond any reasonable doubt. His
work of the Hebrew was a tool for Zionist success. It is doubtful if
the Jews returning from the four corners of the world could have agreed
in a national language for their reborn state had Hebrew not been
prepared for them ahead of time by Ben-Yehuda. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is
buried in the Mount Olives cemetery in Jerusalem, in a family
grave-sight bordered by a wrought iron fence with a gate above which
there is an inscription in old Hebrew characters -- the same type of
characters that he used on his family crest -- a map of eretz yisrael
framed in the shape of a house. In is the Hebrew Homeland -- and above
its roof is the legend, “ein zo agada” -- it is no dream! Why is it not
a dream, you ask? Maybe because he willed it so much, dedicating his
life, his wife, his children, to that cause.
Go to LEV's Homepage
You can reach Lev Software by e-mail at: lev@bellsouth.net
