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May 15, 2009
Ben-Yehuda visits Vancouver
Grandson of Hebrew legend to speak at MDA event next week.
DEENA LEVENSTEIN
Imagine German being Israel's national language. Now it may seem strange and unrealistic, but this is what Theodor Herzl imagined would be in his prophetic book about Israel, Altneuland. There are streets in most Israeli cities named after Herzl but there are also many streets named after another Zionist and visionary, the man who foresaw Hebrew as the country's spoken language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922).
Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who will be the guest speaker for the Vancouver chapter of Canadian Magen David Adom next week, is the grandson and namesake of Ben-Yehuda. In an interview with the Jewish Independent, Ben-Yehuda said it was not easy growing up in Jerusalem with such a famous name. He remembers arriving home once after a particularly difficult day at school and crying to his father, "I wish I could change my name and not be Ben-Yehuda [ever] again." His father told him that when he turned 18 he could change his name.
On his 18th birthday, his father said to Ben-Yehuda, "Happy birthday son. So what's your name going to be?"
"My name is going to be Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Dad. I paid my dues. I ain't giving it up."
Ben-Yehuda's grandfather was born to an Orthodox family in Lithuania. He went to a yeshivah where the head rabbi recommended studying Hebrew grammar. In most yeshivot in eastern Europe, Hebrew was learned through Yiddish but this rabbi believed that studying Hebrew in Hebrew would be helpful for understanding the Torah. This, told his grandson, was the beginning of the man's love for the Hebrew language.
One of Ben-Yehuda's concerns is that his grandfather's story is simplified. There is even a popular Israeli song with the chorus: "Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, an amusing Jew. Words upon words, words upon words he dreamed up from his feverish mind." When people sing this song to Ben-Yehuda, thinking it's an innocent song about the famous man, he asks them if they could imagine calling David Ben-Gurion or other Israel visionaries, "an amusing Jew."
"Eliezer Ben-Yehuda changed history," said Ben-Yehuda. "Eliezer Ben-Yehuda really was one of the prophets of the rebirth of the Jewish nation and the only one who actually had the full picture of the rebirth of the people: that the people will be reborn in their land and in their language."
The elder Ben-Yehuda moved away from his Orthodox upbringing as a young adult. He became very Zionistic, studying Hebrew and writing about Zionism. And despite being tubercular, he moved to Israel in 1881. To prove that Hebrew could be a spoken language, he decided that his first son would grow up hearing only Hebrew. He also spoke to Jews on the street in Hebrew. They'd answer in Yiddish, French and whatever other language they knew, and Ben-Yehuda would answer in Hebrew, using hand motions when necessary to get across a point.
Ben-Yehuda was "against the establishment that was ultra-Orthodox and chose to have blinders on their eyes so they wouldn't be able to see anything but the straight line of the narrow Jewish road that the Orthodox had travelled," said Ben-Yehuda. "For someone of the calibre of my grandfather, a man who was really a tremendous, very talented, very gifted man, with a vision that was panoramic, he refused to limit himself to the tight little role of the very, very Orthodox."
That is not to say, though, that religion wasn't important to Ben-Yehuda. "He considered himself a Jew, a Jewish person," said Ben-Yehuda. Ben-Yehuda said that his grandfather actually believed that when there would be an independent Jewish state, there would be a reestablishment of a Sanhedrin, "which would be a kind of a religious parliament that would reform Judaism."
Ben-Yehuda said his grandfather was a man of great principle, who made choices and stuck to them, even those that often seemed strange to those around him. His goal was to prove that Hebrew could be a day-to-day language, and he achieved that goal.
As for the grandson, whose calling brought him to the United States to work, among other things, as a conservative rabbi in a congregation in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., "I've been involved with everything that has to do with the historical Israel: the people, the nation, the land. So really, to a great extent, I see myself as someone who continues the call of my grandfather, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who, strangely enough, was born in Lithuania. But his call required him to live in Jerusalem."
Ben-Yehuda will speak at Congregation Beth Israel on May 21 at 7:30 p.m. The topic is How Hebrew Became Talk and there is an opportunity to help fund an ambulance for Israel. For free tickets and information, go to www.cmdai.org/vancouver or www.vanmada.eventbrite.com.
Deena Levenstein is a freelance writer from Toronto, Jerusalem and now Vancouver. You can visit her blog at deenascreations.com.
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