subject: How The Hebrew Language Was Restored [print this page] Hebrew is the language of the the Israelite, children of Abraham, who went to Egypt during a famine, were enslaved there, and who were taken out by Moses. They lived in Israel approximately 1700 years. Hebrew is of course the language of Hebrew scriptures, called the "Torah", often attributed as the "five books of Moses."
Hebrew basically ceased to be a spoken language in 70 C.E. when the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem and the temple. However, Hebrew remained alive, via the study of the Torah and use in Jewish prayers.
Eliezer ben Yehudah (1858-1922) was one of the first Zionists, and is credited with the revival of Hebrew as a modern language. Soon after his arrival in Jerusalem, Ben-Yehuda accepted a teaching position at the Alliance School which became the first school where some courses were taught in Hebrew.
As many young boys of that time period, he began learning Hebrew at a young age. He excelled in his studies, attended a Yeshiva (Talmud academy) in hope that he would become a Rabbi. However, he become interested in the secular world, and attended a Russian "gymnasium" and later the Sarbonne in Paris.
Ben-Yehuda created a three-part action plan: "Hebrew in the Home," "Hebrew in the School," and "Words, Words, Words." Before he moved to Israel, he had successfully tried several lengthy conversations in Hebrew. He made the decision to speak only Hebrew with every Jew he met. Although he was able to speak Hebrew with little problem, there was indeed a shortage of Hebrew words on certain topics.
In 1882, he son Itamar Ben-Avi was born. He got his wife Deborah to agree to raise Itamar as the first all-Hebrew speaking child in modern History. Ben-Yehudah had to invent words for household objects that did not exist in Biblical or prayer-book Hebrew, such as: ice-cream, omelet, towel, and bicycle.
The resurrection of an ancient language to a modern society would only succeed if the younger generation would learn to speak Hebrew fluently. Upon moving to Israel, he started teaching at the Alliance Isralite Universelle School, where the children were from a variety of Jewish communities around the Europe and the mid-East, and thus Hebrew was their only common language. Ben-Yehudah began to use the "direct system" of learning Hebrew (this means teaching the HEbrew language without translations from other languages). After a short time, the students were able to chat with each other about daily topics.
After a few years of writing articles in the local paper, Hahavatzelet, he began to publish his own newspaper Hatzvi, in 1884, to serve as an instrument for teaching adults, both via its content and its language. Ben-Yehuda also used his paper as a means to introduce new words which hitherto were missing, such as: newspaper, soldier, fashion and many others.
As a revived language, Hebrew needed an academy and a dictionary in order to standardize the new words. Ben-Yehuda founded "Va'ad HaLashon", the predecessor of the Hebrew Language Academy, and worked laboriously on his "Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew." He published the six volumes in 1910, but after his death, his second wife and son brought the work to an entire 17 volumes.
In 1922, the British mandate authorities recognized Hebrew as the official language of the Jews in Palestine. This culminated in his life-long dream being fulfilled, but one month later, he died from tuberculosis which had plagued him numerous years. Cecil Roth's penned the famous quote: "Before Ben-Yehuda... Jews could speak Hebrew; after him they did.
