One Man, One Language, One Nation
- Gedaliah Borvick
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Walk through almost any major Israeli city and you’re likely to find a street named for Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. Many people are familiar with Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street, a lively pedestrian promenade in the heart of downtown, filled with cafés, street musicians, and shops. It's a fitting tribute to the man who led the remarkable cultural feat of reviving the Hebrew language.
When Ben-Yehuda arrived in Eretz Yisrael in 1881, Hebrew had not been spoken in daily life for nearly 2,000 years. It was the language of prayer and study - not conversation or commerce. Yet within decades, it became the living, breathing language of practically an entire nation. That transformation is largely thanks to Ben-Yehuda’s vision and tireless dedication.
Born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman in Lithuania in 1858, he was inspired by nationalist movements in Greece, Italy, and Bulgaria that revived historic languages and identities. Ben-Yehuda dreamed of a modern Jewish state in its ancestral homeland, unified by its ancestral tongue.
His plan to revive Hebrew was both radical and practical. He pledged to speak only Hebrew in his home and raised his son as the first modern native Hebrew speaker. He believed that if one child could grow up in Hebrew, so could a generation. It required extreme discipline, as his son Itamar was shielded from other languages.
To build a spoken language, Ben-Yehuda coined thousands of new words. He drew heavily from Jewish texts – Bible, Mishna, and Talmud – reworking ancient roots into modern vocabulary. His aim was not to invent something new, but to reconnect the Jewish people to their past while preparing them for the future.
He launched the newspaper HaTzvi to promote the use of Hebrew in daily life and to introduce new terms. He also championed Hebrew as the language of instruction in schools, understanding that children were the key to national revival. If the next generation could learn math and science in Hebrew, the language would flourish.
As one would expect, Ben-Yehuda faced fierce resistance. Though secular, he was not anti-religious; his conflict with Jerusalem’s rabbis stemmed from his belief that Hebrew should function not only as a sacred language but also as a national one. Drawing on Biblical, Mishnaic, and Talmudic sources, he aimed to modernize Hebrew without severing it from its roots. Still, many religious leaders viewed everyday Hebrew as sacrilegious and excommunicated him. In 1893, he was briefly imprisoned after ultra-Orthodox rivals accused him of incitement. The opposition only strengthened his reputation among early pioneers, who embraced Hebrew as a unifying force bridging diverse communities.
Ben-Yehuda didn’t live to see the full impact of his work. He died in 1922, just one month after Hebrew was officially recognized by the British Mandate as the language of the Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael. But his legacy endured. His 17-volume Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew, finished posthumously by his wife Hemda and son Itamar, remains a cornerstone of modern Hebrew. He also founded the Hebrew Language Council, which became today’s Academy of the Hebrew Language – the body responsible for coining new Hebrew terms to this day.
Ben-Yehuda’s life was a study in single-minded devotion. He battled illness, poverty, opposition, and ridicule, but never wavered in his belief that the rebirth of the Jewish nation depended on the revival of its language. As he wrote in HaTzvi in 1886: “The Hebrew language will go from the synagogue to the house of study, and from the house of study to the school, and from the school it will come into the home and... become a living language.”
It’s fitting that so many Israeli streets bear his name. The Hebrew spoken on those same streets is the clearest testament to the legacy of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.
Gedaliah Borvick is the founder of My Israel Home (www.myisraelhome.com), a real estate agency focused on helping people from abroad buy and sell homes in Israel. To sign up for his monthly market updates, contact him at gborvick@gmail.com.