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Lag BaOmer Yom Yerushalaim |
Hebrew |
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Some people suggested that everyone speak Hebrew,
which everyone knew from their prayers and studies, but many thought that
Hebrew was impractical. After all, no one had spoken it on the streets for
thousands of years. “How can you ask for a cup of tea with two spoons of
sugar in Hebrew when there are no words for tea, spoon, or sugar.” One man, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, refused to be discouraged. He searched through all the books he could find for Hebrew words that people had forgotten, and wrote them down in his dictionary. When there were no words, Ben Yehuda simply made them up. He also insisted that his son, Itamar, be spoken to only in Hebrew. For many years Itamar was not allowed to go to school or even play with children who could not speak Hebrew. At first people thought Ben Yehuda was insane. “It’s impossible to bring a dead language back to life,” they told him. Ben Yehuda would not give up, and in a few years a number of other families began speaking Hebrew in their homes. Within just forty years, Hebrew had become the official language of the Jews of the British Mandate of Palestine.
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When
large numbers of Jews started returning to Israel about a hundred years
ago, they discovered that the different communities could not understand
each other. Some spoke Russian or Yiddish while other spoke Arabic or
Spanish. Just in the little city of Jerusalem Jews spoke over twenty
languages.