Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922)

Eliezer Ben‑Yehuda, né Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman, was born to a Jewish family in Luzhki, present-day Belarus. He was the main driving force behind the revival of Hebrew as a modern language. He was a talented linguist and grammarian who spoke Hebrew, French, German, and Russian. He worked as a journalist and writer for Jewish newspapers in Europe and, after he emigrated in 1881, in Israel, then part of the Ottoman Empire. His household was the first exclusively Hebrew-speaking home established in the country. He became famous as the lexicographer of the first Hebrew dictionary, and the founder and editor of Ha Zvi, one of the first Hebrew newspapers published in Israel.