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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

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