Passion And Endurance

Driven by burning ambition.

Eliezer_Ben-Yehuda_at_his_desk_in_Jerusalem_English: Shlomo Narinsky (died 1960), first published 1918 in Jerusalem (see talk) עברית: שלמה נרינסקי (נפטר ב-1960); פורסם ב-1918, ראו דף-PUBLIC DOMAIN.

Eliezer Ben Yehuda

I am fascinated to learn about people who achieve their goals despite tremendous obstacles.

For example, I read an article about a man whose name appears on street signs in Jerusalem & I wondered why he deserved such an honor. The Jews recognize Yehuda as the father of the modern spoken Hebrew language.

Here is a man who went to prison for his beliefs, suffered from Tuberculosis, gathered material for a sixteen-volume dictionary, and died while working on words for everyday conversations in Hebrew.

The Jewish man, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, was born in Luzhky, Lithuania, in 1858. He attended an elementary school where he studied Hebrew & the Bible. Then he went to Paris to study medicine but discontinued his studies due to contracting Tuberculosis.

In 1881, Ben Yehuda immigrated to Palestine, where he became devoted to the cause of a national Hebrew language.

He edited several Hebrew newspapers, formed committees to create a Hebrew dictionary & later founded the Academy of the Hebrew language.

Hebrew words had Semitic, Aramaic, Canaanite, Egyptian & Arabic roots.