Israel’s Mother Tongue Has a Father – Eliezer Ben-Yehuda`s Life and Legacy (A Film by ICEJ-Germany)

is [Music] yes [Music] chants and corals unfortunately i don't understand them since they are sung in latin for centuries latin was the language of religion science and literature until the 19th century at the universities of europe lectures were held in latin can you imagine that latin would be revived today that someone would get up in germany for example and want to make latin the national language unthinkable and revived an ancient language and i would like to invite you to join me on my trip to israel in search of traces of this revival [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] hebrew it is the ancient language of the hebrews the children of israel also called the language of moses it was the national language of israel for centuries but that changed with the violent expulsion of the jewish people in the year 70 a.d scattered around the world and through the centuries the hebrew language was reduced for religious matters only [Music] but how is it that in israel today the official language is once again hebrew gottfried beulah follows a hot trail that leads him to jerusalem to the academy of the hebrew language it owes its foundation to a man who almost single-handedly brought about the revival of the hebrew language professor stephen fasberg and dr gabriel birnbaum share their specialist knowledge of a breathtaking story with godfrey beulah a gentleman we're sitting here talking about one of the biggest miracles the last 150 years how did it come that that language was revived it is connected very much to one person eliezer ben yehuda in whose room we are actually sitting now he he was actually the on the one hand the genius on the other hand the lunatic who had this crazy idea that the language that hadn't been spoken for 1700 years will be revitalized please allow me i am eliezer yetchak promen born in lithuania in january 1858 which was then part of the russian empire however i am known as eliasa ben yehuda a meaningful name to me which i adopted as my hebrew name after moving to jerusalem [Music] under the care of his uncle eliezer joins a jewish bible school a yeshiva i am however also interested in secular literature which is why i have to leave not only the yeshiva but also my uncle's home but then things happen that'll affect the rest of my life a very kind gentleman mr samwell naftali herziones takes me into his home during the almost three years that follow living with the jonas family i also get an education first he learned tradition traditional judaic studies and then he became got to know the secular studies and then he learned at the gymnasium and then he became a very nationalistic he had very nationalistic ideas during this time eliezer was taught in different languages by a young lady deborah jonas the oldest daughter of the jonas family they will eventually marry not even 20 years old eliezer developed a clear vision for zionism those days there was a war between russia and the ottoman empire and one of the goals of russia was to deliberate bulgaria from their oppressors and to give them independence and at the end they succeeded and bulgaria had its independence and he was very enthusiastic about that he had empathy for them and then all of a sudden he is describing it in his in his memoirs he says all of a sudden i said to myself if such a nation like the bulgarians could succeed to have their independence their liberty so why not our nation our ancient nation we should become again an independent nation in our own homeland which is palestine let's israel but we have to have a language of our own and actually we have a language of our own but people don't really use it for daily use so let's do it so that was he was when he thought about this first time he was 17 years old he had this idea the origin of this idea was a vision that ben yehuda saw in a dream when he was young it was as if the heavens had suddenly opened and a clear incandescent light flashed before my eyes and a mighty inner voice sounded in my ears the renaissance of israel on its ancestral soil ben yehuda later moves to paris for a couple of years to study medicine even back then he suffered from severe tuberculosis [Music] my dream of a jewish home in eretz israel with hebrew as the national language leads me to the conclusion to emigrate into palestine i convey my decision to deborah and she decides to join me on this path in august 1881 they meet in vienna and set off on a ship to jaffa they get married on the way and arrive in jaffa as a newlywed couple they then settle in jerusalem when when ben yehuda made aliyah there were people actually from all over the world what was the language there you had russian turkish english german how did they communicate you also had yiddish you also had ladino among jewish judeo-spanish and as gabi said before ben yehuda thought that the only way all these different jewish communities could communicate and also become united and unified would be through a common language and for him it was obvious that it should be hebrew could you imagine how how he felt when he arrived first time in the land 1881 do you think he felt well i'm in the wrong place i will go back well i'm sure he was in shock because after being born in belarus and spending time in paris i'm sure this was very backward for him but again his his driving desire and his total commitment to the cause [Music] led him to push forward and unlike some zionists who came to palestine he didn't leave for a few years and then come back again he made a success of it from the start palestine or israel as i prefer to call it is the place of my destiny i have to live and work among my own people the day is short and the work to be done so great having arrived in jerusalem and with complete determination ben yehuda starts his life work the renewal of the hebrew language as a gifted writer he publishes articles in hebrew as a guest author it was in these days it was forbidden to use hebrew for normal as a normal language and he got in big troubles that's right yeah there were the ultra ultra orthodox people who didn't want any secular studies at all and of course they didn't want it in hebrew they thought that hebrew is the sacred language that should be only used for prayer and for liturgy and they were aghast that someone would try to use hebrew for secular purposes and it exists even today what time was hebro spoken the last time here in the land well no one knows for sure but it's usually thought that it's sometime around the second century ce but it was spoken continually throughout the middle ages up into the modern period in the synagogue people did already write in hebrew not only sacred things but also you know novels and and and poems etc but they didn't have the idea that it should be revitalized as a spoken language but when yehuda insisted we have to make it a daily language and starting for example with his wife they swore to each other they took an oath they are not going to speak any other language and also not with their children they raised their all of their children to hear only hebrew and then he persuaded another three families to speak only hebrew a short time ben yehuda publishes his own newspaper called hatsewi he spreads his vision with fiery words and literary genius all in hebrew of course he receives relentless opposition especially from the ultra-religious circles based in jerusalem but he garners fervent followers of his vision these are found primarily among the immigrants from eastern europe i was awake all night it's the day of the birth of our first child on the same day we receive a telegram a group of immigrants urges me to come to the inauguration of the newly founded colony today not far from jaffa they claim it is also my baby after all how am i supposed to explain that to deborah but my wife understood and she said i should also be present when my second child arrives on the same day this new colony is named richon lezion [Music] we make our way to richon licion now the fourth largest city in israel there we visit the museum of these first settlers who were so inspired by ben yehuda gottfried beulah meets tal hamelech she is an expert at the rishon litzyan history museum she takes us into the classroom of the school set up by the settlers ben yehuda's plan to propagate the hebrew language among the people was through the children [Music] we're in a ancient in a original school class can you tell me more about that uh initial lesion they started teaching the hebu language in 1888. when they opened the school in 1886 they studied in french the thing was that and other friends they thought that coming here is not enough it is also very important to revive our ancient language reviving our ancient language and speaking in our own language it connects you to the land it connects you to the world to all the culture but since hebrew was considered a dead language and only when you prayed you used the hebrew the went everyday words in hebrew and men in benihuda a when he uh revived many words he took them from the bible these people who wanted to revive the language knew that the right thing to do is to go into these colonies and to teach the kids the hebrew language and why the kids because they knew that the kids come home and the kids teach the parents the new language and this is how it happened it wasn't a one-day process it was a gradual process but you know it was a very interesting process because i don't know in the history of modern times in ancient language being revived and succeeding in the revival of the hebrew language the the method of teaching hippo is also interesting it's called hebrew in hebrew meaning you don't translate let's say you have a book so you don't say sefer and a book and that's how the thing operated that you don't translate it not to german not to russian not to any other language the kid knows the kids has to understand what you mean if this water doesn't catch the ear of the kids it it fades away you know and so benny huda had an idea he always he always had a few words and so when the teacher came into the classroom he introduced the few names and what caught the child's ear that's what stayed they thought of everything of how the kids would get to like the language their way of teaching kids a new language is teaching them songs there weren't many songs in hebrew and so one of the songs that was chosen was hatikva or tikvateno it was called our hope and it was a song written by naftali herzimber was a known poet and the teachers in our hebrew school they knew him they met him and they knew his song and so they decided to teach the kids the song the kids started it immediately they loved it and it went to all other settlements in the land of israel and you know and even abroad and so this is how patik was started the first immigrants were real pioneers their lives were hard and they had to sacrifice a lot like eliezer ben yehuda they believed they were fulfilling the predictions of the old biblical prophets about the restoration of israel the idea to establish the hebrew language through education is fruitful more and more schools begin to teach hebrew years later the first only hebrew speaking high school is opened in jaffa with increasing success new words have to be invented for everyday needs how was it to create new words the hebrew language in these days they didn't have a word for locomotive or automobile or theater or tomato how how did he manage to create words one of his first words to coin was the word for newspaper it's it's iton in hebrew how did he coin it he took the word in german saitung zaitung is as you know sight plus so inside he took the word sight in hebrew 8 plus suffix and and and there is a word the german language gave him literally a yes in a way yes but other other languages as well well there were a few possible sources one was going through ancient hebrew sources finding words that were not properly understood or were rare and using them infusing them with new meaning another source was taking words from aramaic now aramaic was a semitic closely related semitic language that accompanied hebrews since about a thousand bce since the time of king david so he spoke aramaic well he spoke aramaic as a learned language like latin in the middle ages another source was arabic and ben yehuda loved to go to arabic because of its large vocabulary and his view was that if it's in arabic it might have been or it must have been in hebrew two in ancient times and just didn't survive in hebrew and so he would frequently turn to arabic use arabic roots and other times he would be influenced by european languages and if a word sounded like something common in a european language he would create it so he created the word for doll bouba in hebrew exactly exactly and he did that with many other words too or he must have been fluently in many languages he was very fluent in many languages both ancient and modern so he he was really in in this way he was really a genius and he used all these things [Music] in order to spread hebrew among his people yet another way shall open up to ben yehuda boris schatz an art professor who immigrated from sofia is founding the betsalal academy of arts in jerusalem ben yehuda promises his full support providing that at the academy only one language will be spoken hebrew schatz agrees today the betsal academy of art and design is the only one of its kind in the middle east gottfried beulah pays a visit to the betseller arts academy and talks to adi stern the school principal boris schatz established this institution here in jerusalem he was from sofia why did he come in these days to palestine establishing a school for art and design it's an interesting story this guy professor schatz came from sofia that's correct but initially he was born in latvia in lithuania and he was called to sofia in order to establish the royal art school art academy the bulgarian art academy and then so we had some experience so to speak in establishing art schools and but in the those years he became a zionist and uh he was in close contact with zionist leaders and they together came up with this idea of creating an art school in jerusalem at the time and it is indeed very forward thinking to create such an institution here in jerusalem at that time because it was a very poor city so the your name is very interesting bitzer and it appears also in the bible absolutely um does it has a meaning today for you for the students well uh the name is it comes from the bible and betsal was the first artist mentioned in the bible he was the one who designed planned the tabernacle and actually the name itself means in hebrew in the shadow of god does it have a meaning today i think it does because we hold a very unique history and tradition for this country and we are the oldest institution in the country we were established way before other institutions way before the country was the state was established founded and this connection to history to heritage to tradition is important to us and in a way it's still the heritage of shots you're working with old hebrew letters yeah why that i think again it has to do with the the history and the heritage and the fact that the hebrew script was basically the vehicle that enabled the transformation of the jewish religion the jewish philosophy the everything that was had to do with judaism along the the centuries because jews were not concentrated on in one place and one they were spread around the world and the the vehicle was actually the script the alphabet that enabled that i learned that the old qumran attacks can be read by 10 year old students what do you think why this language was preserved over thousands of years it's interesting that we can read quite easily texts that were set up or written 2 000 years ago the fact is that the usage of hebrew during almost all those 2000 years was dedicated and focused on religious texts on the bible and the torah and were not used for everyday secular newspapers books etc etc this only changed like 200 years ago so the development of the script was was quite restricted it was not developed developed as the latin script for instance wonderful thank you very much in addition to all his other activities eliezer ben yehuda now also starts to teach hebrew lessons at the bedsale art academy working up to 19 hours a day since my youth i struggled with tuberculosis i work as if i only have a few hours to live i feel like i don't have enough time my motto hanging on my wall above my desk says the day is so short the work to be done so great he records his word research and notes on thousands of small pieces of paper and cards he made millions of notes and we have now we have original material here can you explain it yes actually this is the way he worked so he worked with cards by the way this is actually the stutt this is actually the myth yes yes yes so what he did he started to read books from the beginning up to the end he even says he complains some of them were so boring but i had to read it because i had to extract all the words and then he took he he put this word i have already this one so and then he put this in this note card which is this is his handwriting but so this is this is the way he worked [Music] [Music] foreign how many of these cards i didn't count it but it preserved probably thousands of them we can't imagine our life without his work without his ideas that's the important thing for years since eliezer and deborah ben yehuda arrived in jerusalem they have been living in great poverty in late summer 1891 eliezer ben yehuda experiences the worst tragedy of his life his beloved deborah dies of tuberculosis since my youth doctors have told me that i don't have long to live but now my dear deborah has died before me from my illness which is why i didn't want to marry her at first to save her from becoming an early widow deborah leaves eliezer with five young children however just two months after deborah's death his son avi and his two little daughters atara and shlomit fall ill of diphtheria all three die within 10 days eliezer in his newspaper quotes only one short verse from the book of jeremiah about deborah's tragic death i remember the devotion of your youth how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness through a land not sown [Music] jerusalem 1891 the young couple eliezer and deborah ben yehuda immigrated to egypt's israel and lived in jerusalem the young pioneers dream of a reunited israel and the restoration of the hebrew [Music] language deborah died of tuberculosis in 1891 nearing the end of her life she wrote a final letter to her younger sister paula in moscow the last sentence of her letter reads if you want to be a princess come to jerusalem and marry my prince [Music] six months later paula arrives in jaffa she now adopts her hebrew name gemda i can hardly believe that she's here she knows about my tuberculosis from which her big sister died infected by me but to my great joy despite all of these bleak prospects it doesn't stop her from marrying me she will become an indispensable help by my side [Music] gotribula traces ben yehuda's life in jerusalem he wants to find out more about this unique man who was set out to reawaken the hebrew language [Music] so [Music] godfrey bula looks forward to a very special encounter as the first german television moderator he gets access to the house eliezer and hemda move into with their growing family i am now here in the house where eliezer ben yehuda lived with his family for the last few years of his life this house was bought by the friedenberg family a few years after ben yehuda's death and i am now here with the grandson of the bayer family benjamin friedenberg the extraordinary thing about the friedenberg family is that they have placed great importance on leaving the house in its original state so benjamin thank you very much for your time and actually letting us in in your living room because you're living there in this house it's not a museum how is it for you to live in a house from such a let me say famous person well uh it's an honor uh to live in this house and to have this historical place to be preserved by my family we're not related to the benioda family but we we would like to preserve the the house that as it was um and if even if it's a private home we try to keep the the historical story here then yehuda became very famous about reviving that language what do you think today 70 years after the establishment of the new state of israel speaking hebrew well this was a huge project that really was engraved in israeli society and was a really huge part of of the state reviving the language and let everyone talk this language and create a common uh common denominator between people who came from many many countries and it was a very important project a very interesting one i think a very unique one in world languages he studied 24 hours a day and he read thousands or ten thousands of books and he had to deal with many obstacles what do you think or why do you think he succeeded well it wasn't as as easy in the beginning i mean he succeeded because he had i think a lot of uh a lot of power around him it wasn't just him it was a project of many many people he was one of the leaders and i think what uh what really helped is that the system of the schools and how children are are learning the language was uh was thanks to his to his project i mean um the his project was really reviving the language and bringing uh words uh and vocabulary from other languages to the the old biblical uh hebrew he was working very close with the people in rishon lezion and they were asking the children in in the school classes when they needed a new word for example how would you name the word eisenbarn for example yeah i mean it was it was a project that was coming together that i think what's interesting about hebrew that it really evolves very very fast till this day every language goes through a long process of development in hebrew you have a language that was revived and now going through a lot of changes that other languages are went through and in hundreds of years and and in hebrew really a very short time you have from biblical to modern and it's it's really fascinating children learn hebrew at school for the first time in richonne licion the first settlement founded by immigrants from eastern europe if new words were not accepted by the children another word had to be used my idea to establish hebrew as an everyday language through education in the end was very successful however it was a long and difficult road to travel the hebrew language has a root in every word we don't know that in our german language what what is the advantage or the meaning behind that so the root system is very common among middle eastern languages especially semitic languages here in this area and it's a very fun and creative system where you have three four consonants constructing together a word and the semantic field around it is created from this root in the bible you have the word light in hebrew o so many many of the words relating to light are coming from the same root and menorah which is the candelabra uh is the same word as as light coming from the same root so you have uh in the center you have words coming from the same root and it's very creative even with some small successes ben yehuda understands something more fundamental needs to happen to establish hebrew as an everyday language we urgently need an up-to-date hebrew dictionary we try to teach people a language for which there is no reference book there is not even a hebrew word for dictionary so we have to create a word for it first and then the dictionary itself it is a colossal endeavor but i have to do it [Music] at the academy of the hebrew language in jerusalem gotri biula discusses ben yehuda with professor steven fasberg and dr gabriel birnbaum talking about the dictionaries how was the worked or the creation of his dictionaries it was published by the way by a german publishing house language language this is also a miracle in a way because he did it himself first he he actually almost didn't have he had some people who helped him but even when he told people that i'm going to to compile a dictionary of all the strata of hebrew they again they said no but they did this before you can make a dictionary for the bible a dictionary for the mishnah the but the dictionary encompassing the whole of the hebrew language yourself but he was a man and said if we need it i'll do it they started to do it it started and actually in his lifetime only five volumes were published but two volumes were already actually they were ready they had only to be published he went around from library to library looking at manuscripts ancient hebrew manuscripts and see the hebrew preserved in those manuscripts as he could to insert them into his dictionary which was to be a historical dictionary of the entire hebrew language so he he went from capital to capital looking for more material for the dictionary and actually the the years of the first world war 14 to 18 he spent in new york he had to be there there's a different reason so he was there and he did a large amount of his uh dictionary he wrote there so there of course there were more libraries than those days and more manuscripts and more material so he could advance quite well there the first world war breaks out in 1914 during the war eliezer and hamda ben yehudah live in the united states however as soon as the war is over they take the first opportunity to move back to jerusalem there ben yehuda begins building a new house for his large family he however shall not be able to inhabit it himself today the house is in german ownership and gothrid bula visits the house to find out more about it we meet ingrid enot lavi she has been living in israel since 1981 she is married with three children and lives in jerusalem with her family so ingrid thank you for your time it is a great honor to be here what is it like for you to work in a house that has such important historical significance it's wonderful to work in such a beautiful place and it has been for many years and then there is the ambiance of it being eliezer so did he design the house did raise the funds for this house it was his dream to build it he planned and designed it together with the templars of course he was present at the laying of the foundation stone and continued to follow the construction the special thing about the house obviously is the fact that his work could be continued here which was the completion of the dictionaries that he started putting together yes the office was on the top floor and all of his papers were stored in that office his wife continued to work on it because it was very important to her to continue his work and to finish it as far as was possible at the time what do you think about the fact that there was a man who revived a language that was believed dead it's just fantastic at the present time it is totally normal for people to speak hebrew that hebrew is the colloquial language but at you came to israel in 1981 as a german and you had to learn this language that ben yehuda revived how was that for you yes that was really difficult learning hebrew has not been easy because every hebrew word has a completely different sound than the words we know from german english or french so it was not easy to learn hebrew it is even more difficult to write because most of the letters you don't write most of the vowels are not written at all his wife moved in here after the death of eliezer ben yehuda albeit her main work was to complete benjuda's vision namely to finish the dictionaries that he had started putting together did she finish this job actually isn't here she did a very large part of the job because it was her dream she very much appreciated ben yehuda for his work and commitment in this task there are many more words today than there were in her days and there were many more words in her days than there were in biblical times the dictionary is still alive but she has contributed a very large part to it the first world war changed the middle east forever in december 1917 british troops under general allenby marched into jerusalem the ottoman empire is defeated after the balfour declaration in november 1917 the collapse of the ottoman empire and the decision of the league of nations in san remo in 1920 to establish a jewish homeland in palestine ben yehuda immediately recognized the scope of these events [Music] after nearly 2 000 years of diaspora an independent israel on its ancient home soil is within reach they have signed in san remo israel is alive we will live in justice we and the stranger among us we will watch over the holy sites of others as if they were our own israel was dead but now it is alive again the new high commissioner for jerusalem samuel herbert who is a jew reads the well-known lines from isaiah at his inauguration at the herva synagogue comfort comfort my people in addition to english and arabic he introduces hebrew as the new national language of palestine no other has worked so hard for so many years in order for hebrew to be spoken again in the streets of jerusalem haifa and jaffa ben yehuda's dream of establishing hebrew as an everyday language has come true however he should not see his dream of an independent state of israel being fulfilled during his lifetime in 1922 his tuberculosis worsens again this time though he should not recover from it eliezer ben yehuda dies on december 16 1922. over 30 000 people accompany the pioneer and the tireless zionist on his last journey [Music] he is buried on the mount of olives next to his first wife deborah we have to have a hebrew language in which we can talk about everyday life it will not be easy to revive a language that has been dead for so long these are the words of eliezer at whom's grave i am standing here on the mount of olives and i think it is fair to say that the revival of the hebrew language is nothing less than one of the great wonders of the modern era [Music] [Music] do you think that the [Music] two stone plates the torah was written in hebrew there's no doubt about it the hebrew language is the foundation for the scriptures of the bible even if the script has evolved over the centuries the language remains the same it was the language of the patriarchs and of the prophets it has been preserved by jewish scribes for thousands of years without them there would be no bible today even with the new testament some church fathers tell us that the gospel of matthew was originally written in hebrew the letters were different from the letters of of our hebrew what we call the ancient hebrew or the phoenician script that was those days the only the r script is only from about 400 bce you know the which actually was the aramaic script which uh people adopted but it's the same language of course yes same language it is the same language since 2200 years students can read it students can read it quite easily because as gabi said the alphabet they use is basically the alphabet we use today and during the second temple period around 400 or so we find that the judeans or the jews adopted a slightly different type of alphabet which was related to the older alphabet and until this day we still use the same version do you think for christians worldwide it would be helpful to study hebrew to understand more about the tanakh about the bible definitely to better understand the the hebrew bible or the old testament you have to understand the language in order to understand the nuances yes i think everyone should study these works in their original in their original tongue what would benihuda say if he could see israel in these days well i i think on the one hand i think he would be very proud that everyone speaks hebrew and it's a very developed language so would you say that christians all over the world it would be a helpful or a big advantage to learn hebrew to understand better the bible totally i i recommend that um highly to to study hebrew and to i think language is culture and and tradition and i i think one can understand more his or hers religion if going back to to the origins of the scripts would you agree that the knowledge of the hebrew language is helpful for christians worldwide to better understand the bible but i really got a completely different understanding after getting to know at least some hebrew to have some knowledge of hebrew is definitely an asset [Music] hardly anyone would have believed 150 years ago that the hebrew language the language of the bible the language of the prophets could be revived and today hebrew is the national language here in israel [Music] fascination israel has brought to you today an exclusive report perhaps this film has encouraged you to get to know more about the hebrew language a creative interesting language the language of the bible and may i ask you we are on the road here in the country to bring such reports to you may i ask you to help us with your donation so that we can continue to make programs like this the international the international christian embassy supports fascination israel and if you would like to learn more about this organization please visit their website icej.org for today i say goodbye to you from israel from jerusalem the capital of israel from the ben yehuda street with a heartfelt shalom [Music] i

Channel: האקדמיה ללשון העברית

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Length: 53min 35sec (3215 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020