Ben Yehuda and Hebrew

To those of you who follow our blog closely, this entry might look familiar to you. In past blog entries, I have written about Ben Yehuda and Hebrew. This entry, however, I have specially designed to be included in the book I am writing about Middle Eastern manners and customs.

From our apartment in Jerusalem we can see Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem's lively pedestrian mall. Here you can purchase anything from Cuban cigars to flowers to Judaic gifts. At night, the street becomes even livelier, as people come out of the woodwork and street musicians set up camp. A harpist frequents the plaza with her lovely music. Further down the street you might hear a clarinet or drums. A small group of young people might gather to sing a cappella. At the end of the street is Zion Square, a site that hosts political demonstrations from time to time. It is not uncommon to see a group of Haredi men plying pamphlets across the street from dreadlock-wearing hippies making a statement by strumming box guitars and singing American songs from the ‘60s.

Ben Yehuda Street in many ways is much more than a tourist trap. It is the modern expression of youthful hope and activity. The little alleys and roads that meet it beckon pedestrians to explore them. Bounded on one end by Jaffa Street and the other by King George Street, Ben Yehuda Street is a tidy rectangle of bustling activity, where friends meet for a French crepe or an elegant dinner. Since I am really a city girl at heart, I find it fun to step out of our apartment building each day, walk a few steps onto Ben Yehuda Street, and go from there to our destination. At night, voices and horns blend with the calls of cats and doves, creating quite an interesting backdrop as we close our days.

When we first arrived in Jerusalem, we were told about a Hebrew language class. Unfortunately, the level of most of the students was far beyond ours, so we did not continue with the lessons. But the elderly instructor told us something interesting. At some point in her life, she had lived with Eliezer Ben Yehuda's daughter for a while. The two of them studied Arabic together.

I had read a biography of Eliezer Ben Yehuda and became mildly fascinated with his life. He was born in Lithuania as Eliezer Titzhak Perelman. His parents were Hassidic Jews, but eventually Ben Yehuda became less religious and more politically attuned, especially in regards to Zionism. He changed his name to the more Hebrew-sounding Eliezer Ben Yehuda.

Ben Yehuda is the father of modern Hebrew. Hebrew had fallen out of use. Because Jews had been dispersed throughout the world for almost 2,000 years, many of them had adopted the language of the country where they lived, whether it was Germany, Russia, Romania or some other place. Many of them did not speak Hebrew.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as Zionists became more aggressive and Jews began returning to the land of Israel, Ben Yehuda knew that a united language was necessary to bond the people. He devoted his entire life to creating this language and writing a dictionary. He was opposed and persecuted by many people, even Jews, who at the time could not envision the necessity of a common language among them. He persevered, despite battling tuberculosis and bearing the grief of the deaths of his wife and several children. He was persecuted by Haredi Jews who believed that he was profaning the sacred by making Hebrew a language for common use.

Yiddish is a German-based language spoken by Ashkenazi Jews since the 10th century. It was highly influenced by other languages besides German, including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Eastern European languages. These days, it is primarily spoken by Haredi Jews. Ben Yehuda rejected Yiddish because he considered it a corrupted language.

Ben Yehuda Street is named for Eliezer Ben Yehuda. The man who endured poverty, ridicule, and rejection is now celebrated for contributing to the modern nation of Israel’s success, where Hebrew is one of the official languages. (Arabic is the other.) But in a strange twist of irony, through the years since Israel's inception in 1948, Ben Yehuda Street has become a preferred location for terrorist bombings.

One day, as Bill and I were working in the school office, we heard someone speaking Hebrew over a loudspeaker. We didn't pay a lot of attention to it, since our neighborhood is noisy, and we didn’t understand much Hebrew anyway. But a few minutes later, we heard it again so I stepped out onto the small balcony to see what was going on.

A police van was parked on Ben Yehuda Street, with a ramp lowered. As I watched, a robot came down the ramp onto the street. It was black and bulky, about the length of a motorcycle. It went down Ben Yehuda Street to “sniff” for bombs. Thankfully, the coast was clear. The next day, however, we heard a bomb explode near the central bus station, about a mile away from our apartment. Bus #74 was hit, about 20 people were injured, and one woman died. The bombing was a sober reminder to us to always be aware and cautious, especially when walking down Ben Yehuda Street and when in other congested areas.

Eliezer means “God helps” and Ben Yehuda means “Son of Judah” or “Son of Praise.” Truly, God did help Ben Yehuda and used his life to provide a unifying language for modern Jews.

When Ben Yehuda died, finally succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of 64, 30,000 people came to his funeral over a three-day mourning span. Before His death, the last word Ben Yehuda restored was “nefesh” which means “soul.” This word is used many times throughout the Bible. One of the first mentions is Genesis 2:7, which reads, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” It seems fitting that nefesh was Ben Yehuda’s final word to study. God is truly the One who gives and takes the breath of life. He alone is the Source of life eternal. Nefesh is a reminder to us of our frailty when contrasted to God’s greatness and power.

Zephaniah 3:8 is the only verse in the Old Testament that uses all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.(1) The very next verse says, “For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.” The placement of these verses hardly seems coincidental. I find it interesting that “pure” in this prophetic passage translates to mean “to examine, to cleanse, to choose, to polish.” This is what Ben Yehuda did. Though modern Hebrew differs from biblical Hebrew, Hebrew is once again the language of the land of Israel, the tongue by which “they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.”

1. http://torahlawform.com/Documents/Hebrew_the_pure_language_of_Zephaniah_3_9.pdf

Photo: http://truthpraiseandhelp.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/eliezer-ben-yehuda.jpg