Genre: Essay/Short nonfiction, Fiction, Non-fiction
Chapter: 19
Listen: 1
Eliezer Izhak Perlman (1858-1922) signed his articles as E. Ben Yehuda. He was a key figure in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. He regarded Hebrew and Zionism as symbiotic: “The Hebrew language can live only if we revive the nation and return it to the fatherland,” he wrote. Ben Yehuda wrote essays and articles preaching for the use of Hebrew at schools and at home. His was the first family to do so, but it took more than 20 years before there were 10 more families in Jerusalem who spoke only Hebrew at home. Ben Yehuda was the editor of several Hebrew-language newspapers and became the driving spirit behind the establishment of the Committee of the Hebrew Language, later The Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that still exists today. He was also the author of the first modern Hebrew Dictionary coining a large number of new words, many of them in use today. The following is a selection of his articles.