News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has decided to include Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the "reviver of the Hebrew language," in its list of the people who have had the most influence on world culture. The list includes such notable figures as Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin.

The Israeli delegation to the UN requested Ben-Yehuda's inclusion as the 150th anniversary of his birth approaches.

Born in Belarus as Eliezer Perlman, he learned of Zionism as a young man and concluded that the revival of Hebrew language in the Land of Israel could keep Jewish youth from deserting Judaism. In 1881 he emigrated to the Land of Israel. Ben Yehuda raised his son, Ben Zion (Itamar Ben Avi), entirely through Hebrew and refused to let him be exposed to other languages during childhood. He coined innumerable new terms in Hebrew, which were published in the Ben-Yehuda Dictionary, which is still in use today.