Eliezer Ben-Yehuda

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was a Jewish linguist, lexicographer and journalist and the primary driving force behind the revival of the Hebrew language. Born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire, he studied in Paris and in 1881 joined the First Aliyah and settled in Jerusalem, then ruled by the Ottoman Empire. He raised his son Ben-Zion entirely in Hebrew, making him the first native speaker of Hebrew in modern times, and edited the newspaper HaZvi. A major figure in founding the Committee of the Hebrew Language, he began the first modern Hebrew dictionary, completed after his death by his wife Hemda. He died of tuberculosis in 1922.