Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922)
hebrew Language Dictionary
Jerusalem-Berlin, 1911
Museum Collection
Must Know
“Dictionary” is the first hebrew word which Eliezer Ben-Yehuda invented, hence the name ‘The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern hebrew’. It was not the first hebrew dictionary; however, it was the first to include all the periods and all forms of biblical writing, Chazal literature, poetry, songs, legal literature and modern hebrew literature. Another innovation was the arrangement of the dictionary according to the hebrew alphabet; previous dictionaries were sorted by the roots (shoreshim) of the word. Ben-Yehuda knew that people would not necessarily know the roots of the word and found a new, more effective form of arrangement which is still used today.
Ben-Yehuda identified a shortage of words as by the end of the 19th century there were only about 25,000 words in hebrew compared to around 800,000 in the english language, and he began to invent words based on their necessity and modelled on existing words in hebrew. he believed that the resurrection of the hebrew language was necessary for the recognition of the Jewish people as a nation and to shape their identity, and therefore acted to return the hebrew language to a day-to-day language and not as a sacred language, despite many objections.
More Info
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was born Eliezer Isaac Perlman in 1858 in Belarus. he received a religious education and as a teenager was exposed to ideas of the Jewish enlightenment (Ha Haskalah) and hebrew grammar (which was forbidden to learn). In 1881 he and his wife moved to Palestine, he changed his name to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and decided to only speak hebrew thus raising his son as a native hebrew speaker. Ben-Yehuda valued and founded hebrew newspapers and published articles in the press following the revival of the hebrew language. he wrote and translated popular literature for the younger generation and established the Committee of the hebrew Language which would later become the Academy of the hebrew Language. His work on ‘The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern hebrew’ began when he was in Paris, where he studied from 1877 until 1881. The dictionary consists of 16 volumes. Ben-Yehuda managed to edit and arrange seven of them, whilst the other volumes were edited by Moses Hirsch Segal (Moshe Tzvi) and Naftali hertz Torchiner. The first volume was published in 1908 in Berlin and the last in 1959.
