The Hebrew mother tongue has a father. 100 years to the death of Eliezer Ben Yehuda.

Born as Eliezer Itzhak Perlman on Jan 7, 1858, in Vilna, died on Dec 16, 1922, in Jerusalem, married twice, to Devora Jonas, and after she died, he married Debra’s sister Hemda. He had few kids of which only two survive, Itamar and Dola Ben Yehuda Wittmann. Ben-Yehuda was a Hebrew lexicographer, a journalist and a newspaper editor, the driving force behind the revival of the Hebrew language in the modern era, the only language to be used in everyday communication by all Jews, all over, following the prophecy: “I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call on the name of the Lord, to serve him with one accord”(Zeph. 3:19) Patterns in language shape other domains of thought and offer a window onto a culture`s dispositions and priorities. Languages are human creations, tools we invent and use to suit our needs. If you change the way people talk, it will also change the way they think. Learning a new language means looking at the world differently. The languages we speak not only reflect and express our thoughts, it also shapes them. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are. When we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures, too, can differ dramatically, depending on the languages spoken. Ben-Yehuda`s is a fascinating account of the Zionist intellectual process, one of the very few Jews who became "Zionists" (two decades before the word was invented), twenty years before Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, appeared on the scene. He met Herzl and told him of his dream to revive the Hebrew language, Herzl thought it was ridiculous and rejected the idea.