Israel is a country of extraordinary people and some among them are extraordinary legends. I will put Eliezer Ben Yehuda in the later category. When the modern State of Israel was formed in 1948, Jewish people migrated from more than 100 nations! The great multitude assembled in this tiny strip of land then called Eretz Israel, spoke over 80 languages! Ironically, when they had to chose a common language for communication, they selected none from these 80, but revived a dead language that was spoken by their ancestors some 2000 years ago! Yes, it was the Hebrew language in which their sacred texts were written. Biblical Hebrew has only around 8700 root words and obviously it was not sufficient to speak twenty centuries later. Here comes the significance of Eliezer Ben Yehuda. He was the biggest force behind the revival of Biblical Hebrew. Born in Lithuania in 1858, he was raised as an orthodox Jew. In 1881, he migrated to Jerusalem and together with his wife he established the first Hebrew-speaking home in Israel, and their son, Ben-Zion (who became known by his pen-name, Itamar Ben-Avi) was the first child in modern times to be nurtured with Hebrew as his native language. He worked 18 hours a day on his "Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew" and published six volumes before his death in 1922. After his death his widow and son continued publishing his manuscript, a task which was completed in 1959 (17 volumes). The dictionary lists all the words used in Hebrew literature from the time of Abraham to modern times.
(see more at
(http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/PEOPLE/BIOS/beliezer.html )
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