JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

In Paris, Ben-Yehuda met George (Getzel) *Selikovitch, a
Jewish journalist, who told him that in his travels through Asia
and Africa he had spoken Hebrew with the Jews of these lands,
so that in fact Hebrew was not dead. When Ben-Yehuda contracted
tuberculosis in the winter of 1878, he decided to discontinue
his medical studies and make his home in the more
favorable climate of Ereẓ Israel. He enrolled in the teachers’
seminary of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, to qualify for
a teaching post in *Mikveh Israel. There he attended the lectures
of the Assyriologist Joseph *Halevy who in the periodical
Ha-Maggid had advocated the coinage of new Hebrew words
as early as the 1860s. As his health deteriorated, Ben-Yehuda
entered the Rothschild Hospital in Paris, and there he met the
Jerusalem scholar A.M. *Luncz who spoke Hebrew to him in
the Sephardi pronunciation and told him that the members
of the various Jewish communities in Jerusalem were able to
converse with one another only in Sephardi Hebrew. This reinforced
Ben-Yehuda’s opinion that the Jews could not hope
to become a united people in their own land again unless their
children revived Hebrew as their spoken tongue. The Hebrew
living language must have Sephardi phonetic sounds because
that was the pronunciation which served in the transliteration
of biblical names in ancient and modern translations of
the Bible. In 1880 he published two articles in Ha-Ḥavaẓẓelet
in which he advocated that Hebrew rather than the various
foreign languages become the language of instruction in the
Jewish schools in Ereẓ Israel. In 1881, he left for Palestine. He
traveled by way of Vienna, where he was joined by his childhood
acquaintance, Deborah Jonas, whom he married in
Cairo. In October 1881, they arrived in Jaffa where Ben-Yehuda
informed his wife that henceforth they would converse only
in Hebrew. The Ben-Yehuda household thus was the first Hebrew-speaking
home established in Palestine, and his first son,
Ben-Zion (later called Ithamar *Ben-Avi), the first modern
Hebrew-speaking child.
To ingratiate himself with the Orthodox Jews who knew
written Hebrew and could, therefore, readily learn to speak the
language, Ben Yehuda at first adopted their customs. He grew
a beard and earlocks, and prevailed upon his wife to wear a
sheytl (“wig”). This did not last very long because the Orthodox
Jews of Jerusalem soon sensed that for Ben-Yehuda Hebrew
was not a holy tongue, but a secular, national language,
and that his purpose for introducing spoken Hebrew was
solely nationalist and political. They began to suspect him, and
Ben-Yehuda became an extremist in his antireligious attitude.
He registered as a national Jew “without religion.”
As early as 1881 Ben-Yehuda, together with Y.M. *Pines,
D. *Yellin, Y. *Meyuḥas, and A. Masie, founded the society
Teḥiyyat Israel based on five principles: work on the land and
expansion of the country’s productive population; revival of
spoken Hebrew; creation of a modern Hebrew literature and
science in the national spirit; education of the youth in a national
and, at the same time, universal humanistic spirit; and
active opposition to the *ḥalukkah system. During the period
1882–85, Ben-Yehuda worked on Ha-Ḥavaẓẓelet and put out
ben-yehuda, eliezer
a supplement to the periodical under the name Mevasseret
Ẓiyyon. At the same time, he taught in the Jerusalem Alliance
school, which post he accepted only after he was permitted
to use Hebrew exclusively as the language of instruction in
all Jewish subjects. The school was thus the first in which at
least some subjects were taught in Hebrew. In 1885, Ben-Yehuda
published a geography of Palestine, called Ereẓ Yisrael
(only part 1 appeared). Toward the end of 1884, he founded
a weekly, Ha-Ẓevi, which later became a biweekly, under the
new name, Ha-Or. In 1908, it became a daily, known first as
Ha-Ẓevi, and from 1910 onward as Ha-Or; it appeared until
1915. For several years, from 1897, Ben-Yehuda also published
a weekly (from 1904, biweekly) called Hashkafah. In his periodicals
he fought against the ḥalukkah system, championed
agricultural labor, the new settlement, and, especially, the revival
of spoken Hebrew. He spared no effort to enrich the language
by coining new terms and introducing transliterations
from foreign tongues. Financial difficulties in the economically
poor Jerusalem environment were mainly responsible for
the shortcomings of his magazine. Despite all its defects, however,
Ben-Yehuda’s periodical was the first in Hebrew to meet
European standards. It removed the barrier between strictly
Jewish topics and secular subjects, and discussed, insofar as
the strict Turkish censorship permitted, all aspects of general
political and cultural life.
In 1891, Ben-Yehuda’s wife died, and about six months
later he married her younger sister. She adopted the Hebrew
name Ḥemdah. A constant companion to her husband in his
literary activity, Ḥemdah Ben-Yehuda published translations
and original Hebrew stories in his periodicals. It was she who
incited Ben-Yehuda’s extremism against the Jewish tradition.
Ben Yehuda’s unorthodox behavior, and the campaign
which he waged in the columns of his periodicals against the
ḥalukkah system and its administrators, aroused the vehement
opposition of the extreme Orthodox Jews. Seeking a pretext
for revenge, they found it in an article by Jonas in the 1894
Ḥanukkah number of Ha-Ẓevi, which contained the phrase
“let us gather strength and go forward.” Some of Ben-Yehuda’s
more bigoted enemies distorted its meaning and interpreted it
to the Turkish authorities as “let us gather an army and proceed
against the East.” Ben-Yehuda was charged with sedition
and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. The affair created a
great stir throughout the Jewish world; an appeal was lodged
and he was released.
Turkish censorship of Ha-Ẓevi, however, became more
stringent from then on. As a result, Ben-Yehuda began to concentrate
more on linguistic questions to which the censors
could make no objection. He became increasingly engrossed
in his dictionary for which he had begun to collect material
from the day he arrived in Ereẓ Israel. In order to conduct research
and raise funds for its publication, Ben-Yehuda traveled
several times to Europe, and later also to the United States
where he worked in American libraries. In 1910, assisted by
various sponsors, he began to publish his Complete Dictionary
of Ancient and Modern Hebrew volume by volume; after his
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 387