Palestinian-Jewish journalist and activist (1882?1943)
Itamar Ben-Avi
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Ben-Avi in 1912
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Born
| Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda
(
1882-07-31
)
31 July 1882
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Died
| 8 April 1943
(1943-04-08)
(aged 60)
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Nationality
| Palestinian (
British Mandate
)
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Occupation
| Journalist
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Known for
| Being the first native speaker of
Modern Hebrew
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Spouse
|
Leah Abushedid
(
m.
1905)
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Children
| 3
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Parents
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Relatives
| Dola Ben-Yehuda Wittmann
(half-sister)
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Itamar Ben-Avi
(
Hebrew
:
????? ???????
;
ne
Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda
,
??????? ????????
; 31 July 1882 ? 8 April 1943) was the first
native speaker
of
Hebrew in modern times
. He was a journalist and
Zionist
activist.
Biography
[
edit
]
Itamar Ben-Avi was born as Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda in
Jerusalem
on 31 July 1882, the son of Devora (
nee
Jonas
) and
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
.
[1]
Eliezer is credited with reviving the
Hebrew language
; Itamar was brought up to be the first native speaker of Hebrew in the modern era. At his father's insistence, Itamar was not permitted to hear any language other than Hebrew at home. When he was very young, Itamar always wanted someone to play with, but his parents did not want him to speak with the other children who spoke different languages. He made friends with a dog which he called
Ma'her
(
???
), meaning "fast" in Hebrew. His three siblings died in a
diphtheria
epidemic and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1891. He and his family were
ostracized
from the
ultra-orthodox
community, due to their usage of Hebrew as a day-to-day language. The religious community saw this as
sacrilege
because they viewed it as the language of the
Torah
and prayers, and not as an everyday language.
After his mother's death in 1891, his father married her younger sister, the writer
Hemda Ben-Yehuda
(nee Beila Jonas), so Itamar's aunt became his stepmother. After his mother's death, he changed his name to Itamar, as that was the name his parents originally intended to give him (named after the priest
Ithamar
). The name
Itamar
means "Island of
Dates
" and derives from the
Hebrew
word
tamar
(
???
,
date
or palm tree), which is a symbol of Zionism. As his last name, he used Ben-Avi.
Avi
(
????
) is an
acronym
(as indicated by the use of the character
?
) for
E
liezer
B
en
Y
ehuda (as written in Hebrew) and also means "my father", so Ben-Avi means "my father's son".
At the age of 19, Ben-Avi sailed to
Europe
and studied at universities in
Paris
and
Berlin
. He returned to Palestine in 1908 as a
journalist
, joining his father in editing and writing Hebrew newspapers.
[1]
Ben-Avi married Leah Abushedid (1889?1982), born in Jerusalem to a wealthy
Moroccan-Jewish
family. Ben-Avi met her when he was 23 and she was 16. Due to his poor financial situation, his
Ashkenazi
background, and their age difference, Abushedid's parents did not approve of their marriage. Hoping to convince her parents, he published poems proclaiming his love for her in
HaOr
. After three years, when he published a poem about suicide, they relented and permitted the marriage. After two years of negotiating the marriage contract, the couple married in 1914.
[1]
They had three daughters: Dror-Eilat (1917?1921), Drora (1922?1981), and Rina (1925?2016).
[2]
Drora and Rina became radio news broadcasters.
In 1919, he founded a Hebrew daily newspaper called
Doar HaYom
(The Daily Mail), and ran it until 1929. In addition, he was a Zionist activist and officer with
Bnei Binyamin
and the
Jewish National Fund
.
[1]
He served as a Jewish National Fund emissary to various countries. Together with
Oved Ben-Ami
, he helped raise the funds for the founding of
Netanya
.
Unlike many Zionists, Ben-Avi favored establishment of a canton system for Palestine instead of a single Jewish state or a single Arab state. He based his proposal, which included equal rights and free movement between different ethnic and religious groups, on the Swiss model. In 1930, for example, he called for dividing the British mandate of Palestine into six Jewish, six Muslim, and three Christian cantons. “The spirit in Palestine among Jews and non-Jews,” he declared, “is very much in favor of the plan, because it would lead to peace and harmony.”
[3]
In 1939, as his financial situation deteriorated and in need of a steady income, Ben-Avi left his family for the
United States
to take up a posting as the Jewish National Fund representative in
New York City
.
[1]
He died there in 1943 at the age of 60, five years before the establishment of
Israel
. His body was brought back to Eretz Israel for burial in 1947, and was buried on the
Mount of Olives
in
Jerusalem
.
Journalism and literary career
[
edit
]
He was the chief editor and journalist of
Doar HaYom
, the then Hebrew style-twin of the British
Daily Mail
, from 1920 to 1933. In his numerous opinion and commentary articles in
Doar HaYom
he also advocated the widespread use of the International language
Esperanto
.
Ben-Avi was an advocate for the
Romanization of Hebrew
. He favored the
Latin alphabet
, a full alphabet with vowel letters, rather than the traditional
Hebrew alphabet
, a consonantal orthography of Hebrew (with limited
matres lectionis
) using "squared Assyrian letters". The Hebrew writing system dates back to the time of
Ezra
the scribe, 500 BCE.
He wrote a Hebrew biography of his father. This biography was titled
Avi
("My Father") and was printed in his own made-up version of a Hebrew alphabet using Latin letters and some variations thereof. He pioneered and was chief editor of two short lived Hebrew weeklies in reformed Latin script. The first was
Hashavua Hapalestini
(The Palestinian Week, 1928) and the second was
Dror
(Liberty, 1934).
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
- The personal papers of Ben-Avi are kept at the
Central Zionist Archives
in Jerusalem. The notation of the record group is A43.
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