Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

On October 13, 1881 (127 years ago today, hence my post) Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his friends decided to speak Hebrew exclusively, marking the beginning of the revival of the language in modern times. Rabbi Malka Drucker wrote this extraordinary Lithuanian Jewish medical student’s life story in the “Jewish biography series,” titled “Eliezer Ben-Yehuda: The father of Modern Hebrew.” As an introduction and appetizer let me quote two paragraphs from the author’s short essay about the topic of the book:

All beginnings are hard, and the language of Torah was not a language that could be spoken. In fact, it was like Latin, a dead language, until a man of extraordinary passion, singlehandedly resurrected it as a modern, spoken language. Growing up in Russia, Ben-Yehuda was a brilliant yeshivah student whose passion for the Hebrew language had little to do with religion. The nationalism he saw rising in Europe convinced him that it was time for the Jewish people to revive their native land and language. Only a 20 year-old could believe that he could forge a movement of seven million Yiddish-speaking Jews to leave Europe and speak a new language.

Ben-Yehuda knew that Hebrew had once been the daily language of his people. They told jokes, sold horses, and courted each other in this language. When the Temple was destroyed and they were scattered throughout the world, they abandoned Hebrew for the language of their respective countries. Hebrew was reduced to sacred texts and prayer. It became a substitute for the land of Israel, a sweet reminder of a time when Jews were safe and proud of their place in the world.