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The new language awakens

Up until 100 years ago, the people of Israel were scattered around the
world. The State of Israel had not yet existed. In fact, just then did the

idea of forming a state for the Jews started [being heard of]. (One of the)
young men, who the idea of a Jewish state fascinated him, was a Russian
student who called himself – Eliezer Ben Yehuda. While Ben Yehuda

studied medicine in Paris, in the coming of his immigration to Israel, he
thought of a revolutionary idea: to make it possible for the Jewish people

to return and to reunite in its own state, it is necessary for it to have one
common language, a language which everybody will speak daily. He
thought that the Jewish people should return and speak its old language,

the same language it spoke while sitting freely in its home land – the
Hebrew. Eliezer Ben Yehuda even published his thoughts in the news

paper saying "because we have a language which we can write with all
that we think of, if we want to we can talk with it too."

Alone in the Battle Field

Today this idea is taken for granted. To us it is crystal clear that Jews in
Israel should speak Hebrew. But in Ben Yehuda's age it wasn't clear at
all. Moreover, one must have been brave, revolutionary, naïve or almost

insane in order to come up with such an idea.
Ben Yehuda was alone in this battle. The idea of renewing the usage of

the Hebrew language raised strong [difficult] objections: many religious
Jews thought [preserved] this idea is a violation of sanctity. The Hebrew
language, in their minds, was the holly language, since it was (the

language) written in the Tanach (the Bible). That is why they thought it
should be forbidden to be used for daily needs: it is offensive to the value

of holiness. Many others objected to reviving the Hebrew language on the
grounds of it not being suited as a every-day language: you can't buy
things in the market in Hebrew and you can't learn calculus in Hebrew,

because it lacks words.
Also writers, who wrote books and articles in Hebrew, objected to

renewing the Hebrew speech. Even Herzel, who thought of the idea of
founding a state for the Jews, thought that renewing the Hebrew language
is an impractical idea and impossible to achieve. In his book "The Jewish

State" Herzel wrote that Hebrew is out of the question, because "who of
us knows enough Hebrew to buy a train ticket?"

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