From: MASH@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL (Michael Shimshoni)
Subject: Re: Is the Hebrew Language a new Language?
Organization: Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 11:45:29 +0300

 In: <4115@bimacs.BITNET>
 rothberg@bimacs.BITNET (Danny Rothenberg) comments on some aspects of
the revival of  the Hebrew Language.  I agree with  most of the points
Danny makes, but wish  to add a couple of mine  and correct some minor
matters (as this is about history it should as correct as possible :-))

>In article <1992Aug13.030749.21351@ll.mit.edu> shoham@ll.mit.edu (Daniel Shoha
>>
>>Modern Hebrew is the same as the biblical one with modern vocabulary and
>>gramer added in the past 100 years or so. For the ~2000 years between the
>>biblical era and modern Israel, hebrew was used for religious purposes only
>>(much like latin's use today by other religions).
>>
>>The language was revived by one Ben Yehuda, who was an early zionist. His
>                                 ^^^^^^^^^^
>
>For a non-Hebrew speaker  it surely would have been better to have
>written 'ben-Yehuda' as the 'ben' prefix means 'son' (or more
>gramatically in this case, for reasons I do not want to go into here,
>'son of') and his first name was Eliezer.
>
>He was an immigrant from
>France and might very well, like many early Zionists have
>'Hebraicised' his name,

His former family  name was Perlman.  I do not  think that B.-Y. being
"an immigrant  from France",  although technically correct,  gives the
real background  of that man.  He  was born in Lithuania  in 1858.  In
1881 he went  to France to study medicine, but  three years later went
from there to Palestine.  Thus basically he was a Litvak.

>                        eg. David Grynbaum=David ben-Gurion,

Here I disagree with Danny (and also with Ben who suggested Guren) and
support Aryk who stated that B.-G.'s  former name was gruen, or green,
or any other spelling one likes as  long as it sounds like the Yiddish
way the colour green is pronounced.  As we are with G's, Motta Gur the
present Assistant Minister of Defense  had changed to his present name
from Gorban.  Grynbaum (or Grynboim)  mentioned by Danny, was till his
death the  unchanged name of  a prominent Zionisty  leader, originally
from  Poland,  first name  Yitzhaq,  and  Israel's first  Minister  of
Interior.

>                                                             Golda
>Myerson=Golda Meir, and Yitzchak Shamir was something else before as
>well, but I cannot remember.

Golda, quite correct and Shamir's  I cannot remember either, something
very Polish starting Zare.. ending "obviously" with a ..ski.

>                              Ben-Yehuda (and to many, especially
>young, Jerusalemites, Ben-Yehuda is the main pedestrian-mall in the
>centre of Jerusalem where buskers play, there are open-air cafes, etc)
>decided that the Zionist movement needed to have a modern language,
>and most definitely NOT Yiddish as it was reminiscent of everything
>the early NON-religious Zionists were trying to escape.  He had great
>difficulty persuading others to use it,  but once he persuaded the
>Technion, the prestigious institute of science and technology in
>Haifa, to use it as the langauge of instruction instead of the then
>current language of science, German, it then took off and led to where
>we are today (see below).

Ben-Yehuda Street in  Jerusalem had a long history before  it became a
mall.  In  it some British soldiers  planted a huge bomb  in 1948 near
the  offices  of the  Palestine  (now  Jerusalem) Post  causing  heavy
casualties in lives  and enormous damage.  There are  B.Y.  Streets in
practically every Israel town or village.

I think  that Danny over  emphasizes the role  of the Technion  in the
revival of  Hebrew.  There  was a  language battle  about it,  and the
German  Jewish  sponsors  of  it   (called  something  with  the  word
Hilfsverein  in it)  tried there  best,  shortly before  WWI, to  make
German its language.  This fight and  the war postponed the opening of
the Technion till  the early 1920's, and then teaching  was in Hebrew.
By then  B.Y. may have been  dead already.  Anyhow, also  before that,
Hebrew was the language spoke by  most Zionists long before that (with
the exception of  one group which stuck to Yiddish  on principle), and
no doubt  Ben Yehuda's role  in that was  enormous.  In his  fight for
Hebrew, and inventing very many new  Hebrew words, he tried his utmost
to rid Hebrew of many of the  Aramaic words which had crept into it in
its long history.  In that effort he was not completely successful.

>-Danny Rothenberg

  Michael Shimshoni