אליעזר בן־יהודה
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922)
The Hebrew revival’s household, press, and dictionary — the man who made his home the first Hebrew-speaking one of the modern era.
Born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman in Luzhky (Vilna region), Ben-Yehuda arrived in Jerusalem in 1881 and made his home the first intentionally Hebrew-speaking household of the modern era; his son Ben-Zion (Itamar Ben-Avi) is remembered as the first modern native Hebrew-speaking child. He published the newspaper HaZvi (from 1884), coined hundreds of words, co-founded the Va’ad ha-Lashon language committee (1890), and began the dictionary his family completed after his death (17 volumes, 1959).
Historiographical note: the revival was a movement, not one man — see the Hebrew-returns route for the honest framing.
IN THE ATLAS
Connections
Sources & review
- Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
- Ben-Yehuda materials (Encyclopaedia Judaica)