Rejuvenation: Eliezer ben Yehuda; In His Own Words

[Music] hi everybody shovel odd tones you're listening to eat herro on my show rejuvenation for the land divisional Network it's very late on January 25th 2020 the very end of the month of Tibet 250 780 not going to talk very long right now because the interview that you're about to listen to I hope in its entirety is quite long it is with Eliezer ben-yehuda the grandson and namesake of the famous Eliezer ben-yehuda who is responsible probably more than any one individual for reinvigorating and rejuvenating if you will Hebrew as a modern spoken and written language I taped this interview already quite a few weeks ago and for a variety of reasons including the fact that I wasn't sure if I should split it into one long one or two I'm only broadcasting it now his grandfather's a hundred and sixty second birthday was just a few days ago so I thought this is an opportune time but I also needed to precede the interview with a few sentences of explanation Eliezer ben-yehuda the lovely gentleman whom I was really privileged to interview is a rabbi was a rabbi living in Florida and of course the question would be and was asked why were they not in Israel and he's not the only one one of the more difficult issues and time periods was the 1950s after the state is born in 1948 the 1950s is a hugely difficult decade we have the people who survived the the independence war one percent of our Jewish population was killed here six thousand out of 600,000 people who were joined very quickly by whoever the Nazis didn't kill in Europe with all their traumas isn't even a word that fits here as you can imagine with everything that they went through and they come here and then we have within the next few years they are joined by 650 to 700 thousand maybe even 800,000 Jews who get thrown out of the Arab world and Africa for no reason other that there are Jews or some of them flee let's say Algeria and other places where there's all kinds of uprisings and Jews always get caught in there so the 1950s is a constant influence of refugees and not enough food and terrible conditions and a lot of poverty and as I said just a lot of trauma people left some people left because it was just too difficult for them and they wanted if they had relatives somewhere else so they wanted a different kind of life there was a lack of opportunity here which is totally understandable but there were some people who very much wanted to stay and they couldn't stay because doors were closed to them if you were not a member of the Histadrut of the Union if you were politically on the wrong side of things if you weren't part of the ben-gurion camp and them up high people what we today would call left although you can't compare them to today's left today's left didn't exist because today's left would it be considered anti Zionist and anti Israel like the way I consider many of them today but let's that's another discussion they were definitely Zionists and they definitely fought very hard and the Hagana of course had taken a lead role in defending the state but after the state was declared there was also a lot of in dicta Venis and there were people who had been involved there going or the left knee or didn't have any connections and anywhere who couldn't get an education where doors were closed to them where jobs weren't available to them my long longtime listeners might remember that a few years ago I interviewed dr. mattaniah Ginosar Oh who's one of the world's experts in climate change I really should have him back and he was one of those families from lovely and you're going I believe I think was you're going who left Israel because they just were they were essentially forced out Jeremy ben-ami the head of J streets the organization it does its best to undermine Israel at every turn his father had to leave who had no opportunities here and look where that got us maybe I'm not sure but maybe some of the anger that he grew up hearing not against the people of his own are against the Jewish people but against what became then the establishment maybe that turned him so against what so many of us you know stand for him to leave so there were a lot of ramifications to what happened a lot of these people shut down they didn't talk about what what it what was going on and why they had left Israel out of loyalty and out of love for the state not wanted to bad-mouth the state any more than it was already having just a tremendous time unfortunately that's still continuing of course where Israel is to some degree a bright state and many of them did not want to add to that so they took their grief their feelings of betrayal and they made new lives to themselves in other places but it has to be talked about because it is it is not a pretty time period here and I think that we're strong enough now confident enough now and that we can unpack some of the things that happen in the past and discuss them and so this is just something that I wanted to lay out before you hear the interview with Eliezer ben-yehuda because his family was one of those who were really not treated the way they should have been given their contributions to let's say Israeli culture if you will and of course much more so while the interview as I said is it's a bit over two hours let's listen to it at your leisure however you want to do it I don't tell you guys how to do it and and I hope you enjoy it and I hope that you give me feedback I love hearing from my listeners and many of you are in touch with me if you want to see me if you're able to in person I'm going to be in the States I'm leaving next Saturday night got some personal things going on during that first week including meeting with someone who wants me to write a book and so I'll be spending a few days with him seeing how we're gonna go about doing that but then the following weekend I will be in New York City from Thursday February 6th until Tuesday the 11th my main reason for going there is to attend the one Israel funds 25th anniversary dinner on Sunday February 9th so if you want to join me there would love to see you and if you'd be in touch maybe we can get together at some other point while I'm there and then I will be back in the States at the end of February for a pack for the Shabbat own we are planning in Saturday night for the last few years we've had our own Judea and Samaria event on Saturday night that is still being planned it's kind of a crazy year because of Israeli elections most of us Israelis are going to be leaving there many Israelis aren't coming but those of us who are coming because we still think it's really important to interface with Americans both Jews and non-jews who descend on Washington for that weekend but we're going to be leaving pretty much on Sunday because Election Day in Israel is Monday and we want to get home to vote so it's going to be kind of a crazy weekend then also but be in touch if you're going to be in Washington at the end of February and maybe we can meet up and you can also keep checking my website I'll also announce it here on the show when we actually get that Saturday night the details on the Saturday night event sat down anyway Yves Harrow once again on rejuvination thanks to Ben thanks to Tabitha thanks to everyone on the station and again hope you guys have a great week it's going to be a very exciting week see what happens with the peace plan revealed shall we say in Washington but we'll hope for the best and hopefully finally finally after all these years maybe maybe maybe we'll get some justice done and and Judea and Samaria will finally and officially become or the State of Israel so we shall see not letting up on the gas though for one second still much to do hi everybody this is Eve Harrow on rejuvenation for the Land of Israel Network and I am sitting with Eliezer ben-yehuda so for those of you who are familiar with the recent Israeli history Eliezer ben-yehuda is probably the man who is primarily responsible for the rejuvenation she's the word again of Hebrew as a living language and it was not such a simple thing when before the state was even begun in 1948 already a century ago there was discussion about what language was going to be used and some people thought Germans should be used like in the Technion in Israel's MIT that was the language of science and other people said no it should be French because that's lingua franca and other people said no it should be guinness because we can't use hebrew it's a holy lang the instrument ahout is going up on a hull against a whole lot of people and I just by serendipity happenstance whatever you want to call it was with a friend the other day who said to me you know Eliezer ben-yehuda is in Israel and I said really they said yes the grandson of so I took what I thought was really a very special opportunity and called today's Eliezer ben-yehuda who very graciously agreed to sit with me and give you my listeners and also me a little bit of an education perhaps on a different side of his grandfather or maybe some things that we don't know from googling him or Wikipedia or the many many things that had been written about him over the years and even a song that was written about him a popular Israeli song so first of all Eliezer ben-yehuda Rabbi Eliezer ben-yehuda yes thank you so much for joining me here today in your Russia life absolutely I'm very happy to be here with you and as you said in your opening remarks to tell you a little bit about Eliezer ben-yehuda because while he is very well known he is also unknown the history of the rebirth of the nation the Jewish nation in its own land speaking its ancient tongue the tongue of the prophets the tongue of the Bible that I have whatever you want to call it you know the levy the language that is called Ebru now for sure one might say but wait a minute in ancient time everybody spoke Hebrew yeah I wish that all the people who live today would take cognizance of that and stop as some of them do blaming my grandfather for making a holy tongue into a sacrilegious tongue but let me begin by telling you that I was born and raised in Jerusalem and in the first 25 years of my life I lived under the thumb of being the grandson of Ilias or ben yehuda and it was very difficult was he still living did you know him no in the other Ben Yehuda died in 1922 and though I am not exactly a young man in 22 I was not even a gleam in my dad's eyes you know so I was born in 38 and lived through the Second World War and the revolt against the British that brought about the United Nation investigation and then decision to create two states in this war-torn Lange land and then I grew up in the state of Israel and I served in the Army I also served during the War of Independence when I was very young because there weren't enough people to be soldiers at that time and if you heard about the underground army that became an army the day David ben-gurion on the Friday afternoon made this State of Israel yeah you're all of 10 years old kids that were well that I know because when I guide people in Mount Herzl the the grave of the youngest person who retro actively is made in Israeli soldier Nissim Kimmy if I'm not mistaken giegi who's killed in the old city of jerusalem and there's a there's a marker of there were brought back after 67 war I knew him and we were in the same youth movement it was a youth movement we used to be like walkie-talkies they didn't have walkie-talkies and so they used messengers you know and we used to run from place one place to another and we used to sometimes carry written messages or other times we just had a spoken message you know and so on and so forth and I was on Mount Zion during a wharf independence when the Hagana opened the gate and went in but I was on top of the Dormition Abbey with the machine-gun person and I was his number two because there weren't enough people to have a soldier with him and so I stayed out and Giggy went in and of course the later on what happened was that we opened the gate but the British the British led Arab Legion came in and closed the gate and those who were in remained in and those who were out remained out and there was a fierce battle there and a lot of people got killed including Giggy and ultimately we lose the old city between 1948 and 1967 the Jews are all thrown out and the Jordanians do a good bit to destroy the Jewish quarter in the south of Jerusalem and in Ramat Rahel which changed hands four times and major battle with the Egyptians there yes in Ramallah a battle in the Jerusalem area the Egyptians came in from the Negev through bare Sheba and up the mountain road and they attacked Rome at Rochelle and we were able to withstand that battle and they captured actually the whole kyboots but we had a counter-attack and we came back and then the Jordanians came in and they also were repelled now they you know they took Bethlehem and everyone and everything like that but Romano hell remained the southernmost tip of the State of Israel in the Jerusalem area and that's where there's there's a beautiful hotel there now one of my sons got there and that's where I go to swim they have a nice pool indoor pool and that's right swim so I go and they have in their parking lot remains of a first temple Palace and beautiful water garden so everywhere we go there's modern history there's ancient history it's everywhere know that they had the conference there in the in the 60s I believe with the archaeologists were killed allergist and you know there were it was shooting from sirenians with snipe whenever they could so was really and now it's just a beautiful place and because thankfully jerusalem's we're sitting outside and someone sitting on his horn that's what you're here for the war I had friends in sore Bihar and her is an Arab neighborhood of just right on the other side east of rabat Raphael it's an Arab town a village you know a large village and dura for the 67 war it was in the Jordanian area and since then it's in our area and at one time in 67 68 all the way to the time when the First Intifada started it was open to Israel is and I visited there a number of times and afterwards it became unpleasant so whose son are you because Eliezer ben-yehuda had quite a few children obviously you're a son of a son because you carried the same last name correct Eliezer ben-yehuda had eleven children he had two wives the first wife was his childhood sweetheart and she was a you know in Hebrew we call it a shed heck it's it's the woman you marry because you you are very excitedly in love with her and so she married him he became sick when he was preparing to marry her by learning medicine in Paris so he intended to come to Jerusalem after he finished medicine and would marry her and be able to support her in the style in which he was going to become used but it didn't work out that way because he became sick in Paris because he lived in a very cold unheated room in a poor neighborhood in Paris and he did not have a lot of means to have three meals a day in a warm room and so in the winter he got sick and the influenza that he had turned into tuberculosis and he went to a a special clinic for poor Jews that Rothschild the great philanthropist created in Paris and they told him make your peace with the world because you're not going to survive till summer and he said well that's kind of difficult to take and they said well you know you can go to Algiers Algiers at that time was part of France and they said the Baron built a special sanatorium in Algiers for people that got sick in Paris so if you go there and you'll be warm and you'll get three meals a day maybe you'll be able to survive for a few more years and so he did he went to Algiers and the clinic paid for his trip and of course he had to give up his the medical education but he got better and he decided to go to Jerusalem because all along he had the idea of Jewish Renaissance in the Jewish land speaking the Hebrew language he said the things that are necessary to make the Jewish people into a nation our land and the language that was his motto is he and so he came to the land he came to Jerusalem he didn't come to Turkish occupied Eretz Israel or as it was called back then southern Syria you see he came to Jerusalem period and everything he published he was an author and everything he published was published by Eliezer ben-yehuda yirou shall me the Jerusalemite you'll see and he started a newspaper and people didn't know that they could learn of the news by reading a newspaper and then use it to wrap the fish the next day you know so in order to be able to have a newspaper he had to create a word because in the days of Jeremiah and Isaiah there was no newspaper surprise surprise now of course the Jews that lived in Jerusalem first of all they were not called Jews he was very funny abroad they were called Jews and they were persecuted when they came here they became citizens of the country from which they came and they had a consul who was taking care of their needs and of their issues how strange Russian Jews had a gauche console you know from Russia who came to protect them and the same is true for Polish Jews the same is true for French Jews and British Jews and American Jews etc etc etc and they had extraterritorial rights even back then under the Turks because the Turks were at the end of their empire so anyhow Ben Yehuda came to Jerusalem he had a different name in lithuania where he was born but when he came to jerusalem he have realized his name and he became Eliezer ben-yehuda Ben for those of you who don't know means son of Eleazar Ben Yehuda means the son of you who died Ben Gurion did the same thing daveed he changed his name from green his father was in Gurion but that you see that a lot Ben son of like in English John son or things like that same idea and in many other languages yes so he marries your aunt situs spoiler alert no he had a sweetheart in Russia where he came from you know Mediterranea was part of Russia so he met this girl she was three years older than he was he was a yeshiva boy and you don't meet girls in a yeshiva but an issue happened and if you want to you can buy the book and read all the stories about it your book my book I have a book in English which is called fulfillment of prophecy and it's available online from Amazon in Hebrew I also have a book that I published just this past February which is called all the loves of Eliezer ben-yehuda kolevatov surely as their penny hood and it speaks off his loves love to women and of course his love to the language to the land and to the people to make a nation here so passionate man huh yes indeed very passionate man now unfortunately not everybody first of all they people that live to Jews that lived in Jerusalem mostly came here to pray and they were greater or lesser degree of religiosity most were fanatically religious some were not quite as fanatic so when this man came to Jerusalem and didn't want to join the so-to-speak caste system where Polish Jews were polish and only talked to other poles and Jewish people from Morocco were not called anything they were not even recognized you know that when Herzl started Zionism no Jew from outside of Ashkenazi was invited to the party not that there weren't there but they nobody knew about them Eliezer ben-yehuda was sent by the Baron to Algiers and he found the Algerian Jews and he found he had learned Hebrew from h3 his father was a Hasidic Rebbe and he used to be to teach used to preach used to do whatever he could as a as a you know a acidic rabbi in a small village in Lithuania but from age three started teaching his son taurah and taurah was in hebrew and so he learned it in hebrew and from hebrew it was translated to yiddish which was called fetched that is to say made german you know we shouldn't know from such chairman but anyhow so i want to get back to his three-year-old girlfriend but i also at some point he leaves the religious world correct yes because his father died when he was five years old so his father influenced him and and and fashioned him as a hairiest you see in his childhood and by the time he died he was studying Torah and he was studying Mishnah which is also in Hebrew and then his father was teaching him the meaning of the words see so he knew the meaning of those words he knew what Bereshit bara Elohim meant he couldn't speak a language because it was not a spoken language but he knew that it's there you see now what happened was that after he died his mother was a widow she didn't have means whatsoever and so the the rich Jewish man in that little village was her uncle his name was Wolfson by the way which is a very wealthy family and I was told by Wolfson's in America that it's one family and the Wolfson's in America are very rich the wolf sons in England are very rich the second president of the Zionist movement was a Wolfson you know so anyhow she said to her uncle you know my son was born for a special purpose to be a rabbi to be a great rabbi she had the dream you can read the whole story as I said in the book but she said somebody has to help him to educate to learn and my son my husband is dead so he has to go to Heder and somebody has to pay for the Seder Seder is the school literally means a room but it was where you would learn Torah and it was it was the first non-graded primary school you know years later everybody thought that this was a real innovation but the Jews had been doing it for hundreds of years anyhow he had to go to Heder went to Heder finished Heder in less than one year so six years old instead of after mitzva you know he couldn't learn for Bar Mitzvahs real genius he was quite well you know he was smart as well then where does he go at age six again the mother went and said to her uncle he has to go to yeshiva and so they sent him to his Sheva uncle by the way was not married and didn't know his elbow from his elbow and so he did you know he said okay I'll pay for his yeshiva but he has to go there him by himself so they sent him you know to walk to the next town over and go to yeshiva there and so you know he went to yeshiva there and at age 13 he came back home and he had a Bar Mitzvah and he did very very well in the Bar Mitzvah and all the the less poor Jews in town were very jealous that Eliezer ben-yehuda the son of a widow with five kids you know has a son who goes to a yeshiva out of town and so they started telling the the uncle you know you're supporting a little boy who used to learn in a yeshiva and he went to Heder here in town in our village but now he's really becoming a non religious Jew was that true or they just told that today on through but they just wanted to trip him you know now what they'd the the reason that they told that story is because he used to read in a small book his Russia Shiva is there the principal of his yeshiva taught him grammar he said to him you know you're such a smart boy you really ought to understand the structure of the Hebrew language because if you know basically about 3,000 words you know the language because everything is connected in one way or another sometimes by the way the same word or the same route can be the exact opposite of yeah you know but anyhow so if you learn grammar everything is going to be good for you and so he gave him a little booklet which was a grammar book later on by the way in the story that was told by other people not the family they say that he was caught with the book Robinson Crusoe and that proved that he's not studying to become a rabbi he's reading something secular or something out of the realm of the religious world so the fact of the matter is and I researched it the break-up occurred when Eliezer ben-yehuda was 14 years old it is true that the book Robinson Crusoe was actually translated to Hebrew but it was translated to Hebrew the year that he was 14 years old and so the chance that the Russia Shiva the head of the yeshiva would have a brand new book that just came out he lives in a small town in in Lithuania no Amazon to order your book from and the book was published you know somewhere in whether it was in in Vienna or in Paris or you know somewhere in the big cities where there were a knife and not enough people that would buy such a book for their kids I know the literati did speak and write in Hebrew but that would have been it and that would have been kind of a curio you know to bring it to your kids and say here let's see if you can read that you know so the story is that he had that book and that they stole the book from him they scared him Eliezer he was studying the grammar in a gomorrah book in a you know Talmud and it was you know it was like a little book that was you know like maybe 20 pages like a pamphlet exactly now again you know it was not Robinson Crusoe you couldn't put Robinson Crusoe inside another book you know but it was a booklet like that supposedly that's what the story is and the long and the short is that the uncle who was supporting him was a very nice man but of course he was totally ignorant of Hebrew you see so that when they brought it to him he didn't know what it was and he was all he knew was that he was wasting his money quote/unquote on a man who's on a boy that is cheating and not really going to yeshiva and becoming a great rabbi so he expelled him he came home and he grabbed him and told him get dressed as it was late at night get dressed the boy dressed and said here is your prayer shawl and you're feeling good luck I'm not here spending my money on raising a rebel so that's when he leaves organized religion when he's on his own well I don't even know if you if he would leave organized religion what happened was of course you know first of all he was very confused he didn't know what had happened why is he you know he didn't understand why he was sent away altogether but you know he started walking and he walked to the next town and in the next town he waited - there was a synagogue he went into the synagogue and fell asleep it was like four o'clock in the morning and at 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock when the men came to start the morning service you know they had the morning service he heard them coming in it walk him up and he led trilling he prayed with them and then there was a man there a very nice man you know and he looked you know like a European man and he approached him and he said you're new in town young man who are you what are you you know so he told him the story and the man said oh you're probably hungry because you walked half the night you know come to my house I will treat you to breakfast and he came to his house and he treated him to almost three years living in his house because again it's not in the storage but I think that the reason he invited him over is because he had a daughter and his daughter was 17 so this is the girl that he eventually took the boy he put him he brought him home and put him in his library he was an intellectual eventually he also came to Israel you know and was he was his name was shin nude hey just went out of my head Jonas Jonas Jones you know Jonas and he had a factory in which he was making he was brewing beer and vodka and his beer in his vodka was so good that eventually he got permission to move to Moscow but this is before he became famous you know his beer had become famous so he was in this small town in Lithuania which eventually became part of you know the Soviet Union etc etc no I never have you anyhow he had the seventeen-year-old daughter who was absolutely lovely who was brilliant she spoke the language of the country Russian she of course spoke Yiddish in the family they all spoke Yiddish she also spoke French she also spoke German and so and she just she didn't just speak it she could read and write it so Eliezer and of course the man had a library you know and he had a room like if I was a young man you know the song from fiddler on the roof you know he had one staircase going up in another going down and a third one that didn't do anything except wait to be there anyhow he had a library and in the library had beautiful books you know leather covered and everything like that and they were all of course with Cyrillic letters and Benny Oda is looking at the back of the book and he can't read it but he says you know well I don't know what it is but I'll open it now read it and he opens it up and and he can't even read the alphabet you know so when they you know that the father the the man went to inform his wife that they have a guest and probably tell her you know maybe our daughter something you know so you know anyhow he comes back to the library and vanilla is holding two different books he says how can I not read them and Jana says well it's because it's in the foreign language and he says how can I learn it and it says well I have a teacher for you and it says where's the teacher this is my daughter Emily Ezzor first of all he's really shocked you're gonna let your daughter speak with me you not teach me be my teacher and it says yes it's okay everything will be very proper you know and so he says okay my wife has dinner ready come to dinner he comes to the dining room and Yanis introduces him to his wife and then he introduces him to his daughter to for up who is three years older than his you know and she's a teenager she's beautiful well you know she's unique because he's never met a person like that he had sisters but they were sister they were respond you know they were family so you know she gives the N you know how do you do you know I don't do it this way what do you mean how do I do you know but anyhow manat says it's okay it's okay you know and so he shakes her hand you know and he says she speaks all the languages of these books you want to read the books she will teach you so that's what brings them together that brings them together they sit together at a small table by a window with bookcases on the left hand on the right in that library and of course you know they have to be somebody to watch over them Yanis family had a young daughter two years old she's going to be the one who's going to sit in the room with them so she's sitting you know in a little playpen or or a wrist chair or something I don't know wow it was you know but she's sitting like on the other side of the library and they're sitting by the window and she's looking at them and in the first part of the day in the morning the Sun was in the window and both aleeah's her and devorah were light-haired with red in the hair they were not ginger you know but they were strawberry blonde very blonde exactly I didn't want to use the word but if you want to use it that's fine yes that's exactly what it was and when she is looking at them and the Sun is in their uh in their hair they look like they're all they all have a Hello on their heads you know so to her it was the stuff of fairy tales and she sat there day after day and she saw them studying you know and speaking in French and speaking in German and speaking in Russian and reading books you know and to her it was just like fairy tale so how do you know how do you know because she told me and who was she to you she was my grandmother she was the second wife what happened was they you know they fell in love with one another and Laura and Elias she knitted for him a shawl that was so long that he could wear it almost as a blanket well because you know they were there for three years he was there for two and a half years so the long and short before he left the name of the town was globe oka and eventually the town recognized that Eliezer ben-yehuda spent time in that town and coincidence we met and you used to live in Waterbury canary and parents before I turn down the mic we were speaking lived and then we had your father lived in it yo pious Street where my grandfather lived and we also had some other town so just to fill my listeners in on a few coincidences that Eliezer and I came up with before I turn down the mic one is that my mother grew up in Waterbury Connecticut that's where my grandfather was the Cantor in the synagogue and Eliezer was telling me that he was in Waterbury Connecticut when Kennedy was assassinated and went to the synagogue then but also my father who grew up in Jerusalem on what's called ethiopia street or Ahava Kaaba shame grew up in the same house that eleazar's grandfather Eliezer ben-yehuda lived in for a while so we've got some connections here now we're talking about Rebecca and I can show it to you because it's too bright we are sitting in a beautiful almost summer day in the city of Jerusalem which usually by this time would be very cold and perchance snowy but anyhow last week I was in this park a little bit further up which is called the first station it was the first railroad station in Jerusalem and one of the first in the whole state in the whole country and there was a they have these little push carts and people have theirs they sell there where and there was a man who was making jewelry and I was I walked there with my wife and I looked at the jewelry she didn't because she knows that I'll buy for her everything will be okay so I looked at the jewelry and they had he had made silver earrings with little stones and I said oh I'm sure my wife would love it I'll ask her if she wants to have a pair of earrings and I like I asked when she said yes and she chose the ones and then I started talking with him and I said to him you know you do very beautiful work do you happen to I don't use jewelry but I use cufflinks I said do you have do you sell cufflinks and he said no but my wife does and so we started talking about his wife and I said you know this woman is my wife her name is Leia my name is Eliezer and I said I'm the grandson of Eliezer ben-yehuda he said I can't believe this we were in the former Soviet Union recently and I was in a town that you probably never heard of it's called globe oka he says and there was a statue of Eliezer ben-yehuda and I said no and he says yes and he opens his pictures in his in his smart phone and he shows me the picture I said my goodness can you transfer it to my two degrees of separation between any two Jews it is really amazing but I want to get back to the love story because we don't have too much time so he leaves he goes ends up in Paris in medical school then in Algiers how does he get back to Zamora he gets sick with tuberculosis and the doctors told him that at any rate even if he goes to over there you know in Algeria he is still not going to have a very long life and particularly because he's a young man and his poor and he doesn't have a profession or anything like that and so Eleazar who was already bitten by the Zionist concept the idea which he had as a full picture in other words his dream was the renewal of the Jewish nation in its land and in its language just like that and he was the only one we had that concept you know all the other people that thought about a return some of them wanted a religious / people renewal others want a political renewal but nobody put the whole thing together except for a laser and the laser said well you know if I only have a short period of time to live I better go to Jerusalem and maybe you know I won't succeed in doing everything I had in mind but maybe I can start a fire and somebody else will carry the flame and so he wrote a letter to his father in to the man that was going to become his father-in-law who became really his spiritual father you know and he wrote him a letter and he said my dear father Jonas I promised your daughter that I will come back for her but I'm sick and I'm dying please speak to her gently and tell her to forget about me and to find somebody else and the father goes and he tells his daughter that and she says to him no way she says I'm not I'm not releasing him from his promise and I'm going to go and I'm going to cure him and I'm gonna marry him and we'll live happily ever after and the father says no you can't do that first of all because he doesn't have long to live secondly because he specifically said I'm divorcing her before I marry her I can't marry her she says I don't care I'm going to go to him and I'm going to do because we're supposed to be together and she says please daddy please help me and he can't say no and so he has a wrote that is going to take the Orient Express train you know that goes from Paris all the way to Istanbul and he is going to stop and away to meet the publisher of a newspaper the plant that published a a an article that he had written in which he called on young people to become pioneers and come to Israel and so they arranged and again it's the story it's in the book it's very exciting the book is very an exciting book as it's a very exciting story and the long and the short of it is she meets the train when it comes to Austria to Vienna and he can't believe that she that she's there but he also doesn't want to let her go and if she chose to come to him then he has no choice but to marry her as if this was such a terrible thing you know and he marries her and they go to Jerusalem now actually they left together but not married and venya who they said I'm not gonna marry you and I don't want us to conceive a child back then you know especially Orthodox Jews when you got married oops first child is on the way already you know so he said when we get to Jerusalem we'll make the child and so they got married actually in they took a ship to Alexandria and in Alexandria they met a rabbi who married them and again there are all kinds of stories about that and the long and the short is that they're now in Jerusalem he is working on a newspaper that exists in Jerusalem except it's not a newspaper it's a journal and it's a sign typical of Judaism and of its books so people write articles about Torah or about prophets or would ever have you you know and it's published in Jerusalem but nine out of ten papers go abroad and they are sent by mail all over the Europe and so Ben Yehuda becomes the assistant editor and he wants to write news and of course the editor says no no no we write we write good stuff here you know only good stuff here you know and it's as well can I have a you know like a Friday magazine you know well ok once a month and inserts yes once a month you can have an insert and so he writes news and he writes about Zionism and he writes about you know the the people that live in the land and what are the problems and but is it true that he will only speak Hebrew to his children and no one else is speaking Hebrew so his children can't talk to anybody else there were a few people that spoke Hebrew and they became his friends and but he when his wife became pregnant which was soon after they came to Jerusalem and got married and came to Jerusalem he said to her no our son our child whoever it's going to be must be a Hebrew child he cannot hear anything but Ebru and we're doing this because people say that Hebrew is not a language Hebrew is holiness and it's impossible Hebrew is the language and it's the language that we need for the nation and you know they're saying there is no nation there are only Jews smart Jews at stupid Jews but there are only Jews you know and so it's a big controversy and he said this child has to speak nothing but Hebrew and the child and and his wife listens through him and so he doesn't start talking until he's seven until he's four and a half years old most kids start talking some somewhere around two years old you know so all his friends in Jerusalem are telling him you're gonna have an idiot son because you can't have a child hearing nothing but Hebrew so at four and a half when they have an argument laser and Torah the son can't stand it and at one point he starts hollering and his dad died Abba died and he doesn't mean died diee he means enough the Hebrew word for enough is dying by the way I had that happen to me in a supermarket in America where one of my kids said to me die EEMA die and people looked askance yes the different translation anyhow he started talking and then afterwards he actually was the first child and he as I wanted to call him Itamar Itamar was the son of the high priest our own but when the moil came you know that's was the circumcision yes he didn't ask what name are you giving him and when he said the prayer he said via Koresh mobis well Ben see on Ben Yehuda his name shall be Ben see on Venu that the son of Zion the son of Yehuda which of course that's not what the dad wanted but he had no choice because when he said excuse me what have you just said it's not it's not right and said cha-cha-cha enough and then later except explained to him that when a child is born to new parents that didn't have children before in Jerusalem Jerusalem is called Zion and Jerusalem so the child is called benzion you know and there were many bends eons in Jerusalem back in those days anyhow so they go on to have total of five children here in the rock children in ten years and after at the end of ten years she dies of his disease she marries him thinking that he doesn't have much time and in the end she precedes him yeah she told she told her dad he's gonna he's gonna live but she didn't know that she was risking her life and they were so poor that she gave her life for him because she wouldn't eat so that there would be enough for him to eat you know so she lost weight and and you know cetera etcetera etcetera and and I did some of their children also died in childhood of the five of the five children three died in the first year of her being gone there was a actually a disease that that ripped Jerusalem a lot of people died there was a kind of influenza and that's four out of the five children had the influenza the only one that did not have it was the girl that eventually became an adult and and married and and is not doesn't follow on her family did not follow on but we already know that then he marries your grandmother and that you see this is what people don't know is that the romance continues the daughter her name was Paula of Jonas you know she had that vision of this too you know like in the you know and then he leaves and then she leaves and they're living in Jerusalem and the girl grows up and the father is invited to live in Moscow and and make the brew for the Czar and she goes to the University and she goes to the University after Marie Curie so she decides she's gonna become a yes a chemist and she's going to the University to become a chemist and all of a sudden she gets a letter from her sister Devore and her sister dwara says dear sister my days with the LEAs are coming to an end I don't want you to cry for me because I lived a lifetime with Eliezer but my time is coming to an end and your time is beginning if you want to be a princess she writes come to Jerusalem and marry my prince and make a long story short that's what happens she comes to Jerusalem she forces herself on Eliezer because he's afraid that that she will catch it like devorah and lose her tail and he didn't want to do it but she said to him okay you don't want me to me you don't want to me you don't want to marry me fine I'll come to Jerusalem we live together and I'll take care of the two children of my sister of course there'll be a scandal in Jerusalem but if you can live with it I can live he says Wow I thought it was difficult to say no to Devorah but this kid is a terrorist I have to marry her sorry Marisa and the romance continues but she's a different girl from Devorah she's not a homebody Devorah was a homebody this one is a go-getter which is exactly what he needed at that point and so she goes to Europe and she finds a publisher who will publish a dictionary because if we tried to publish it in Jerusalem nothing would have happened and if she was not backing him even the things that he did with dwara would have failed because she died too quickly you see so she was really the woman of valor whose price is above rubies and she did all these things and she pushed him and she you know she put steel in his backbone and made sure that he's going to succeed and he's going to do things and they traveled together and they met all the great people that needed to be behind him you see and in the meantime she also gives him what six children and he gives her six children yes and also three died and so she's he's she's left with the two adult children of divorce really were already half grown you know and if they they're gone very quickly her first child is a girl which she calls Devorah and and who is there to comfort both aleeah's her and her because she loved forward two and when this girl was seven something happened and nobody really knows what happened but she was she was in the garden of their home in Ethiopia Street and she was on a swing and her mother went in to do something and the laser of course is working and she comes out and the child is on the ground and she's dead so maybe what a tragedy maybe she fell off the swing or maybe she went to look for something and and whatever have you or maybe some kids walked into the garden and attacked her and did something to her but whatever happened she was dead that was it you know so that was a really very very tragic event there was a child another child that died in infancy and then she had a boy and she called the boy a hood and and that is your father no he was a consolation to her into any other and she was taking good care of him and so and so but but she was also very involved and one day she puts him down to sleep you know he's six months old maybe eight months old and she comes back an hour later to see if he's up yet and he is lying he's lying in the bed and she tries to wake him up and it was crib death the child oh my god any one of these things that would have happened to any of us would knock us flat and here they have one thing after the other yes yes and she becomes pregnant again and she has a boy again and she calls him again and she hires a woman to take care of him because she can't is Eliezer ben-yehuda all of a sudden could not be the editor of his newspaper because he was put in jail and all kinds of things you have to read the book but anyhow she's busy she has to you know she's not boorish she is the go-getter and so she gets a woman to come and take care of him she's still breastfeeding him she's taking care of him but most of the time she's not there and so she tells that girl she said you put him to bed he has to sleep for an hour but you make sure you stay near him and you make sure that he's breathing and if he stops to breathe you count to 20 and if it doesn't breathe another breath but 20 you push on his chest and you push on his chest until you breathe you know and and and who knows about about crib death back then but she said you know she said well you know if this happened it can happen again okay so she took care of that you know and then she had three other kids so she had sex she had six kids and and three died and and and my father and two sisters survived no and there was another girl that was born and died you know but there were six she had six kids you know so that's the story and circle back to you so you are a who's whose son are you you're the son of the hood and we started off as the Hebrew named Ben Yehuda when we started off you said it was a burden having the name of Eliezer ben-yehuda when you were growing up it was it was because kids are very cruel and you know they don't like anybody who sticks out like a thumb even if it's a healthy thumb not sore thumb so you know I was I was a very friendly funny guy you know and they didn't one you know and so here comes that story you know I told you it's the song so when I was growing up the greatest professional singer in Israel was a Yemenite woman by the name of Susannah d'marie I loved that woman I loved that young girl you know when I was young so was she pretty much you know she was a little older than me but still you know I was very precocious so I liked her and because I was the son of a dude and the grandson of Eliezer I met her you know and I in so on and so forth and but she had a brother and most people don't know about the brother but she had a brother also saying his name was Adam Ari and he also wrote Yemenite songs and when I was in first grade he sang a song on the radio about Eliezer ben-yehuda and I didn't hear it because on Shabbat I didn't hear radio my grandfather on the other side was very Orthodox so I was from a mixed marriage in Israel it makes marriage is somebody who is not religious at all marrying somebody who is from a very very religious home and so I didn't hear those songs and I did Amaury introduced his new song which was a song about Eliezer ben-yehuda and it went this way Eliezer ben-yehuda Meshuga Eliezer ben-yehuda Meshuga and he has a renewed emission gamma nu gamma suga Meshuga Meshuga Asif ah hey whit Eliezer ben-yehuda is crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy for the Hebrew tongue and my friends who sang it to me because they were able to very quickly from the radio never got to the last line so they just went after me and saying Eliezer ben-yehuda is crazy and I proceeded to fight the whole first grade and came home bruised and bleeding but satisfied that I protected the memory of my grandfather fifty years later by the way this song of Sade d'marie did not become a very popular song I don't know why maybe because there was a story in the paper about the grandson beating up all the kids in its class but anyhow or maybe not I really don't know whether I made the paper back then but the point is that it did not become a very famous song and you know but the attitude of the students in class with me didn't change and they hounded me in an absolutely difficult way for me to sustain I see how many years later it still hurts you I see it on your face more than just that for example the teachers I was supposed to in in third grade maybe even it was second grade the Hebrew teacher told us to write it Cebu a little composition and so you know like I had a friend by the name of Danny and then he wrote the story about his grandfather and he says I have a grandfather my grandfather comes from Germany he is a very sad man because he is the only one that survived from his family that was his keyboard this was his composition and the teacher said nice boy Danny I'm sorry to hear about your grandpa so I wrote a a story too you know and I wrote about my grandfather and the story was about how sad my grandfather was when his first wife Vora died and how Devorah knew that he was going to be very sad and that he in fact might die if she doesn't get him another wife and so she wrote the letter to her sister and her sister decided to drop out of the University and come to Jerusalem and take care of her niece and nephew and marry him and have children with him and they lived happily ever after and I wrote a real super you know I wrote a real story it was two pages long and the teacher collected a couple of people read I was not invited to read mine you know but the whole class had the homework and it was collected by the teacher and a couple of days later she returned the papers and mine said interesting but I expected more Wow you could take that I suppose as a backhanded compliment in some way no no I didn't and that's just an example and this is the way I went through and then of course the war came and even before the war you know we had most people don't know but we really had kind of three wars in 46 47 we had a war that nobody talks about it was called the revolt Ameri you know and everybody fought Hagana palma everybody was together at that point you see and then what happened was that we got very daring you know the first thing that we did were all destruction of property and no lives now in at one point they blew up a little section of the King David hotel nobody knows why do you know why they blew that I'm from what I understood that was the military headquarters of the British Army and that's why the here going although the Hagana also that this is the story that's true it was a military was a special place that section that was you know it was cut like you cut the cake you know it was amazing how they did that was the offices of CID Criminal Investigation Department that's what it was you see and in that building were the files on every Jewish boy from age 9 I was 9 years old you know and I'm sure they had my file because I was doing things you know little things you know carrying a gun from here to there you know I buy a pistol not a gun you know the pistol in my pocket like it was a toy you know nobody knew and I brought somebody who needed you know a pistol or I was carrying a message or something you know this was before there was a war you see I want to just give my listeners a little bit of a background during World War two there's a very big difference between the paramilitary groups here at Israel the Hagana they are gone de Leslie and one of the major differences of opinion they have is what to do about the British because the British are here have slammed the gates shut and are not allowing Jews who are fleeing the camps to come to the Land of Israel even though that that's the whole reason they got the mandate for Palestine and in spite of the fact that Jews are volunteering to serve in the British Army so therefore you have certain people that say the Hagana who say we have to lay off the British because they're fighting the Germans who are killing our relatives in Poland and others here saying what does it matter like beggin because they're not letting the Jews in here they also did not attack the British the Etzel also did not attack the British during the war you see it after 1945 when the war is over enough the British need to let them people in the only people that did we're lucky you see and they did they only did they attack Lord Moyne in Egypt Lord Moyne was the one who was in charge of the foreign policy in the Middle East cause England you know had an troubles with the Luftwaffe they didn't need to worry about Palestine let's see so no you know what happened with the with the lucky is that they assassinated a man who was really carrying out a hateful policy a of Jewish children came through from the Black Sea from Romania to Turkey on the way to Israel the British forced the Turks to send it back and luckily there was a Catholic prelate you know like the ambassador true Turkey who later became John the 23rd and people from the Jewish Agency went to him and they said look you gotta help us these kids are gonna be sent back and they're gonna go to a certain death yeah yes and so he went it's a miracle he went and he faked baptismal certificates for all these children and he went to the Portuguese ambassador in Turkey and he said I have a ship of Catholic children and we have to get them out of Turkey and not have them go back and they were all taken to put to Portugal and at the end of the war in Portugal they were all brought to this room and that is why john xxiii was a blessed man who became Pope and who really changed the hateful policy of Catholicism against Jews so you know maybe was because of what left he did I don't know whatever it was you know there were miracles so let hit did what it did the British caught the two men that that shot him and they executed them they executed them you know did they deserve to be in prison I suppose so but they were soldiers and they were in war against the British they wanted to save those children they didn't know that they're going to be sent to Portugal and they wanted to decry the fact that the British will not allow children look what the British did here in terms of not saving Jewish lives in the 1940s it can be discussed ad nauseam and I'm going to emphasize ad nauseam and that's something that's really not I don't think she's spoken about enough there are crimes of omission and times of commission and I do it I do it as well because there were many things that should have been done and weren't know that they really betrayed the trust they were given a trust for this land and they betrayed the trust despite them in 1948 and with lots of people 1 percent of the Jewish population being killed here during the War of Independence and tremendous tremendous difficulties and some people were killed here were the last survivors of their family who had made it out of the camps and then died here and that whole time period is just an incredible time period but is 1948 and now we have in Israel and you are now an Israeli in living in Jerusalem but not having such an easy time because of the family name despite the tremendous contribution your grandfather made you know the Jews didn't know how to create the state the Jews didn't have a chance you know America it had a couple of hundred years as colonies you see and other countries you know had their ways you know and many of them didn't succeed either you see but now Israel came into being in nineteen hundred and forty-eight everybody says the UN created Israel it's not true the UN did not create Israel do you the UN exposed the issue in Palestine in British mandatory Palestine but number one the people in the UN by and large didn't really care about Israel secondly refreshing that nothing changes yeah no no but but the thing is that even then the partition plan was merely a theory it was merely a plan the only part of the UN that could mandate that could create something is even today the Security Council the partition plan never went to the Security Council never and had it gone it would not have passed it would not have passed because British would have had a veto you see so it never went to the UN to the Security Council it succeeded because the Arabs made mistakes they did not meet with the unscoped accompany the group that came to investigate the issues and when the vote was taken they said we don't care at all we just don't recognize your right to make a decision you see they didn't go to the Security Council they never went to the Security Council luckily for us the one man who was really the life force of the new United Nation was the secretary-general trick Valley and trick Valley wanted to help the Jews and so he said well you know we voted and the British said they will leave on the 15th of May so on the 15th of May you have a United Nation decision whatever you want to call it you know cuz it's kind of like a theory it's like you know if you go if you go to your kindergarten teacher and say I go to the bathroom I want to go to her bathroom and she said sure when I go to bed and go to the bathroom you know you're three years old you don't know how to do it anyhow you know and now she's given you permission to do what you know you have to do it yourself if you know how if you know how wet your pants so I was given the chance to have a state but all those new academicians that tell you that it was a an even battle between Arabs and Jews it's just not true I had to be a soldier at age ten I carried a gun certain times not all the time but I carried a gun we used to have a gun called the Sten gun which was supposed to be a machine gun you could shoot 3 bullets one off to the other if you shot the fourth one the barrel would Bend because the the the steel was not properly finished it was a homemade machine gun you see so it was before we learned how to make an Uzi now Israel is I don't know if it's good or not but we are at the top of of knowing how to defend ourselves and make these guns but I want to get back to more of your personal story you know why am I in Israel or what am i doing actually today in the United States I guess that's what I wanted to ask you so here you are the grandson of Eliezer ben-yehuda and you live in the United States why am i living it first of all why did I go to the United States in 1955 I was a soldier and you know Uncle Sam is the one that runs the United States and Uncle David was the one who ran Israel David ben-gurion you blamed him for everything and you give him credit for everything and so I was at Soldier and I was sent abroad and I was sent abroad first because I spoke French and I spoke German and I spoke English and I was somebody who spoke not only as a young soldier but also as the grandson of one of the people that started the state and see so I went to Europe I spoke at conferences I spoke at children you know teenagers you know with a bony man with no head it and youth groups of different kinds you know Scouts in Hebrew schools Jewish schools all over Europe and then they decided to send me to the United States and so I went to the United States and all in all I spent about it not a year and a half in outside of Israel and a little over a year in the in the United States I went to the United States in December of 55 and I stayed there until June of 57 right there was a year and a half and when I went there the last school that I was in was a yeshiva and so when I went to United States I wanted to go to the University and I went to the University and I thought that you know they could I could take an exam and get into the university of course this doesn't work that way and they said you know do you have a high school diploma and I said well you know it's kind of difficult because I lived during a war period and very often the school didn't function and one thing in another but I do have you know I did go to school for a while and in the school that I go to recommends they give a paper that recommends a person you know and I said I have this paper enjoy showed it to them they looked at it you know it's in Hebrew you you know can you translate it I said yes and said can you get it notarized that the translation is correct I said yes so they said okay so did you study biology I said no okay did you study math and it said well I studied math back in you know in my third grade I said no no no we're talking about you know calculus and high level you know I said no okay did you study history I said oh yeah I'm very good in history you know I know a lot in history you know I know I lived it also yeah I know French history I know English history Great Britain you know British history I know American history I studied I read I read voraciously you know starting before age 10 I started voraciously anyhow I said yeah I know history no no but did you studied it in that school where you have this paper from and I said no you see it's it's it's hard to explain you know it's like I heard that that you have a school at University in England called Cambridge and you go to the school for four years and then you take an exam and then they give you a bachelor's degree obviously well we don't do it that way here you have to go to school and you have to have X amount of credits and on so forth you know I said well I'm sorry I don't have that and they said well you know here in the in New York there is a thing called prep school where they prepare you to get a baccalaureate you know in New York State high school diploma and you can go there and and working children go there working working teenagers go there it was a high school you know and if you can get if you can pass the exams and take the thing they exams then you'll have a high school diploma and you can come to the University I said well you know okay I'll go and talk to them but can I get in here in the meantime and they said sure you can be a non matriculated student so may I ask where you had the money for this I know the tuitions weren't what they are today right and and actually I took the first exam I took was the SAT and I got 1600 in SAT so after I got 1600 everywhere I went and I said can I take classes here and I said oh sure welcome please where do you why do you want to sit you know yeah anyhow so you then stay you whoop you got educated and then stayed in America so no no no no no no because I came here really for my government I came to United States and I knew that it's temporary so I went to the to this prep school it was called Rhodes school and it was a real fancy school on 54th Street right off Fifth Avenue and kids there were kids that were in the theater and in the ballet and you know all kinds of things like that you know and of course it was a private school and they had a tuition there which was quite high but when I introduced myself I met with the Dean and I introduced myself and I explained to him that I'm an officer in the Israeli service and that time your incentive Eliezer ben-yehuda etcetera he said if you want to come here we will accept you and we will give you a scholarship where did you live at the time and I assumed were you still my observant or your still Judaism was still a big part of your life I I had a place I was provided with the place you know so well it was part of me let me guess they had a daughter three years older and then a little baby no you weren't replaying that part was not replaying that I was you know I was still really on duty and the good thing about that school is that if you didn't attend every day or every week or whatever have you you know so you didn't you know so I used to float and I did things you know and when I could I used to take a class here class there but they they gave me the they gave me the material that I had to know in order to take the exam so in three semesters I did 16 Regents examination of the state of New York and I aced most of them and a couple of them I got 98 or 97 instead of 100 you know and I got I got a high school diploma and of course after I got this I screwed diploma everywhere I went you know I had a copy of my records and they all said oh sure please come in you know so they let me in but then Uncle Dave me called David called me back see he said okay it's time for you to go back so I went back I had to go back I went back I went back to Israel and they wanted to reassign me [Music] in the army at this point in time I was already in the Regular Army you know and they wanted to reassign me in a manner that I didn't that I did not want and I said no I don't want to do that I want to stay in Israel and they said well you know but we your talents fits better out of Israel we think you are to go out of Israel in the service and said no you know I've had four years now three out of them outside of Israel I don't want to do this I'm sorry I know I'm very young and you may say that you can get another 10 years or more out of me but I'm not interested in that I can't do it I I need to be grounded here I want to meet a girl I want to get married I want to start a family I want to do it now and I said in anyhow I've been doing this like since 1946 really that's it so you know I mean I was stupid I started very young and I lied to you about my age and everything like that you know but you know I'm tired it's been a very long time where my life was held her skelter and I don't want to do it anymore so they said well we want you to do it and if you don't want to do it then we're putting you back in uniform and you're going back to active duty that's it okay you can have me I had eight more months that I had signed for I said I'll go for the eight more months and as it worked out after six months I was on a on a vehicle in the RFR and it went over a mine and I was wounded and that was the end of my service and then they they released me and they said goodbye do whatever you want you know and so what did you do I went abroad I went to his rayul I mean I went out of Israel I went out of Israel and I went to the United States and I had met a good number of people when I was there who were not aware of anything about me not being quote-unquote kosher and so when I came back you know came back I was still getting over my wounds because I was wounded and in what way weren't you kosher I misunderstood because I was really part of the military you know but they didn't they didn't know me as a soldier you know they were just I was just a young man you know so in that sense a lot of those people were by the way it's Jewish Theological Seminary conservative movements had organization after awhile they said to me why don't you take a pulpit and work become a conservative rabbi so I did you had here fought the the establishment here that he wants you to live in Israel and then when you were out of the army on your own you go to the States and become a conservative rabbi there but I I could not at that point in time I could not have lived in Israel number one I didn't have a profession I couldn't become a rabbi here sure for sure not right number two I needed help to become whole again you were traumatized from all these years of battling and I had a bad physically home physical I had a physical issue and I had to find a doctor who was going to do an extra operation and and helped my one leg that was really bad you know and it was done you know but so that was a second issue and the third thing was that I didn't have a home my parents were my dad was traveling out of the country and he rented the home that they had in Jerusalem and I didn't have a place to stay in Jerusalem see once I got out of the army you know good luck buddy you know it was very difficult and if I had stayed here for sure I would have needed something you know to have seed money so that I could get a mortgage and get an apartment or something like that you know and that didn't work out so I said well I'm going to go abroad and I'm gonna continue my college education which I started during that one and a half year that I was in the United States and I'll get a profession that I can use to you know to earn my living in this country and you know like it was kind of a thing where my talents sent me in one direction and I found that it's much easier for me and is necessary I became a necessary commodity in the United States that was not for sale in Israel at all so to that to be a little bit provocative here the army wasn't wrong when they had they just wanted you to come out to be outside of Israel under their authority but the idea that your talents were better served beside the country they were on to something there well no if I would have stayed in the army you know it would have been a different thing they do it they did not want me in the army anymore really they were trying to you know do a Uriah on me you know Maria yeah so they didn't want me they wanted to look up that biblical reference on your own everybody it's with David and but Sheva we'll leave that for now yes and so you know that's the kind of thing that happened to me and I you know pulled the embers out of the fire you know and I decided to do something else you know to go somewhere else and ask how your family felt about that I mean here you have a family that's Israeli in so many in so many ways siblings parents I don't know if your grandmother was still alive at the time my grandmother was not alive my parents were very struggling to survive to they had their issues with the State of Israel [Music] we became transparent nobody cared nope really nobody cared it's just like you know Ben Yehuda Street is one of the three main streets in Jerusalem and the shine on Ben Yehuda Street says Ben Yehuda Street it doesn't even give a first name one time I was walking in Jerusalem on Ben Yehuda Street and there were two soldiers walking behind me and I'm listening to them and one says to the other so who's this ben yehuda and the second one said well you know nutiva native avenue that the one was on the radio well first of all she's nobody to be very proud of she was a pulmonic she was a nice one of the heavier you know but that's not been yahoo the street so I just want to interject something from my listeners who are I would imagine most you're not aware of a lot of the tensions of the 1950's first of all this is an incredibly poor country with no friends struggling if you have if you're not a survivor of the Holocaust you've just been thrown out of the Arab world in North Africa for reasons having nothing to do with anything that you did or you survived the years here in the war which were it wasn't just a six-month war it was it was many years and even decades of suffering and pogroms so everybody here in the 1950s is hungry is traumatized from one way or the other and not only that but the leadership of this new State of Israel is also not being very kind to people who there were their political rivals during the time and I've spoken over the yeah I don't know if your family falls into that category just something I want to add that I've spoken to amazing people whose families were associated with your going and Alesi and more the Menachem Begin the revisionist side of politics in the priests eight years who left Israel incredible people who have made such a contribution to the country but couldn't get jobs because there was a union here that only took the like-minded people that he stood to vote and and there were many people who had poured heart and soul into this country who ended up believing not because they didn't care about the country but because it was just too difficult to deal with the bureaucracy and with other people and so I don't know if your family if you fell into that category but it is absolutely you know now my parents they had a place here you know but my parents had two families they had me and a sister and both of us left and they were alone and they were still you know they certainly thought they were young and so they had another child he and that child they raised very differently from us very protected very you know kept in very safe and secure situation she went to school here after school she went to the University after the University she was she went for a PhD after the PhD my dad was gone but my mother took her to America and she was post doctorate at University of California Berkeley you know so she was lived if she lived differently well you'd say is a normal childhood not a child of war a normal Israeli childhood and I loved her I love her very dearly and get along with her fine but I couldn't come back to my parents home again the issue is I don't have a home so you stayed in the United States with welcoming people in the United States I created a career for myself in the United States I found a love in the United States I got married I have children with her you know and we have you know so it's just the way things work out sometimes you told me that I like to be here I love to be here would I be willing to at this point in time come back here without adopt but I have a wife and the wife is American and if it was only she she would also move here but we have kids and the kids are in the United States we have one boy here but all the others are in the United States and she has grandchildren I have we have children grandchildren in the United States and she wants to be near them you see so this becomes an issue it becomes a dilemma you see and at this point you know I don't have the wherewithal to have two homes one here and one there really you didn't get a fabulous salary as a conservative pulpit rabbi I'm so surprised well you know you're you're you sound very entertaining but no but I know I know very well know very well that that's not the way it works it's really public service in every sense but when I met with you before before the mic went on and you told me you're actually here because a grandson got married and the grandsons that are here got married and you're here because you just published a book in Hebrew so your heart is still here your past the language is still alive I was here I was here for the book in February you see so you know and I'm very proud that the book was published the book was published by a delta Hornet which is the biggest publisher in Israel I don't get a penny out of it because I don't earn money in Israel when I come to Israel I give my time freely yesterday I was I spent the whole morning in a school in Mercer etzion before that last week I was on TV in Yafo on i-24 you know so I'm doing these things I have no problem doing them and the only thing I don't ask for payment you know I didn't ask you will you pay me for this long interview you know I I don't do that I come here I come here proud to be in Jerusalem happy to be in Jerusalem proud to speak about Eliezer ben-yehuda so people will understand that Eliezer ben-yehuda was not a crazy man that just had this strange worm in his head that made him fanatic for Hebrew Eliezer ben-yehuda had so much vision you know for example one of the stories about Ben Yehuda is that the people that bought land that became tel-aviv Levantine was one of them he came to see my grandfather before he bought the lands and my grandfather told him a lot about his experience because he had been here by then two years and you know two years in Israel you're an expert so he told him about Israel and he said well I'm sure you'll find land here in Jerusalem I said oh no we already have land that we decided to get it's right near efo if everybody can come off the ship at Yafo and they'll they'll to come there you know and when you hula who was not a graduate of West Point he said no if we want to conquer this land said to him if we want to conquer this land we have to establish ourselves on the hilltops a Ashima baahar from Vilnius from near Vilnius has the the brain to understand that he who has the top of the mountain is also going to be the king of the valley he said she couldn't live near yaffo sure rusev estephe all Jerusalem is Jerusalem arid see only Rochelle I'm no no this would be better so it was better and I live on one of those hilltops in Gaza nine mile state imagine if that was all we had imagine if some of us weren't crazy enough to fight for Jerusalem so this book that you've published in Hebrew are there any plans to translate it into English the love I have an English book but it's not the trend it's the oh it's pretty much the same same story but the emphasis is different if you are fluent in Hebrew read the Hebrew book and read the English book you can get it from Amazon and then give the name again of the English book the English book is fulfillment of prophecy and it's published by Amazon today they have a different name they changed names I don't know what but anyhow it is available from Amazon and the Hebrew book is called call Ahava Tov shall Eliezer ben-yehuda it's available in every stomata store it's available in every other store you know it was just recently published so it's not if they don't have it in the store they can certainly get it for you do you have pictures in the book pictures that you have of your family nothing all my pictures all the menu of the pictures are in the Zionist archives and I have to pay to get pictures of my family and it's an exorbitant price you don't have pictures that the family had of their own everything went into the National Archives yes yes my father god bless him you know I love Shalom may his memory be blessed was a baby in the woods and after he finished publishing his dad's dictionary proceeded to create a pocket book Hebrew English pocket book which was published in the United States and he went to the United States to publish it that's why he wasn't here you know but then he came back and he lived the rest of his days here he after the creation of the State of Israel the government spread its protection over the Ben Yehuda undertaking of the dictionary it doesn't mean that they hired my dad it means that they provided from the Ministry of Education they provided an office in which the editorial staff could sit and go over his handwriting and get the the last few volumes ready for prints so that they would be published my dad had to publish them my dad had to pay for getting them printed and bound and everything else not the government you see and then when he finished it they told him thank you very much mr. ben yehuda you are dismissed never got a no royalties or anything like no there were no royalties but it's not a question of right he should have gotten a retirement from the government didn't get it see ya so but that's the way that's the way it went back then and from the pocketbook and from going abroad and lecturing they made ends meet the government arranged for the ben yehuda home to be purchased by the municipality of jerusalem with the purpose understood that it's going to be a Benihana Museum and a place for scholarship of the Hebrew language low-beam villa we are not not bears and not woods that has to do that has to do with Elisha go look that up in the Bible awesome yeah so the thing is the thing is that it killed my dad my dad died of a broken heart because the house was neglected and the house almost came to the same ending as the house of Yosef Klausner Yosef Klaus has left his house to the state and it was plowed under and the land was sold and somebody went and built a little an apartment building Hartmann building there the only person all the people that famous people that lived in tell Fiat and our Nonna were all people who came after Ben Yehuda because he had a home there Benny who the home luckily still stands because my dad provided when they didn't make a museum out of it in the house was starting to crumble he met a German minister Protestant minister the name of croup you know the same name as the man that used to make all the arms for German military and this Minister wanted he established a society to atone for the crimes of Germany young people that were willing to come and work with Holocaust survivors and they created a house of peace parks house in German and he was looking for a house and my dad met him and convinced him that the place for him was the Ben Yehuda house enthalpy oat and so he came he accepted it he asked Teddy Kollek to give him the house the mayor at the time of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek gave him the house with the least for 99 years and the man repaired the house and again strangely enough he got the right to build a dormitory an extra house behind the house there was we had a big backyard and they built another house there you have to go and see it have you seen do you know that no and I'm going to go if you want to go if you if you do it quick soon we can go together go with you you know cuz they know me and and they're friendly with me there are German people living in that house and the would happen over the years that they have fewer and fewer volunteers they still have some volunteers and they will I think they will have that house for 99 years but they don't have people living in that back of the house which is like a dormitory type you know it's like a for want of a better word it's a bed-and-breakfast place and they started the back and brave bed-and-breakfast place and they have rooms because what they were going to have classes to teach their people who come the volunteers to teach them a little bit about the history of Jerusalem they should have teach Hebrew if there is no nowadays they teach you - my poor grandfather must be must be turning in his grave which is on the Mount of Olives yes overlooking the old city again that that is also a story have you been to the vineyard yes grave so do you know how it was how it came about well I know it wasn't destroyed by the Jordanians who destroyed many graves between 1948 and 1967 right but but how come he has a house he has a he has a property mausoleum almost which is very unusual for that for there what happened there is Eliezer ben-yehuda was put in harem excommunicate has communicated and so when he died by the ultra-orthodox in Jerusalem when he died first of all when his thought his wife died the first wife they didn't want to bury her and so he went and he got the Sephardic barrier people to come and bury her in the Sephardic area and the Ashkenazim said no you can't do that she is Ashkenazi and he said are you gonna bury her and they said no and it said well fine we're gonna bury her we have a dead body here we have to decide what are we gonna do with it what are you gonna do with it are you gonna throw it out for the dogs so he was put in he was excommunicated because he was decent to fiying the holy tongue yes he argued with a rabbi and he said to the rabbi you mean to tell me that Hebrew is only for prayer he said yes he said so how did Jeremiah said I want to go to the bathroom and the rabbi had no answer and that was the end of the argument of course so that's how this family plots it's an Islamic section when when the mother was when when his wife died she was buried quote-unquote somewhere on mount Olive's for all the years that that my grandmother knew about burial in Hera's a team in Mount of Olives she didn't know where her sister was buried this ever Kadisha lost the papers supposedly and only when the Jordanians gave us back the Mount of Olives together with all of Jerusalem give it we liberated it but go ahead okay yeah but I you know I'm being kind to them then the people who are in charge of the area started going one little place after another and they found the little stone that was placed on her grave it's all the way on the top right near the hot oil is her burying ground and that of a couple of children they buried the children your grandmother is buried near her near Eliezer ben-yehuda mother was actually buried in sand adrià because she died when the state was here and we've lost access to the Mount of Olives and when when when it was liberated they tricked a trap they moved her over to the burial ground but if you you know it's interesting about this grave because this grave is the only one that you can tell from a distance you know why there is a frame around it there is a small fence a small fence and over that fence there is a wrought iron friends with a door with the gate with a triangular top and on it is written in Hebrew characters ancient Hebrew characters is written the Messiah Lashon annually as Avenue des McGinnis a favorite so the people yeah fought the Battle of languages that that special sign on his grave Germans who had really sure shul which is now Betsy Farah Ali they wanted to have a German MIT and the Hebrew teachers said no is going to be Hebrew or it's not going to be and they went they had a war and the war was was fought from Abyssinia Street from Ethiopia Street from the balcony where Eliezer spoke to a street full of Hebrew teachers anyhow when he died they asked my grandmother what she wanted to do my grandmother was the LA was also a lover of Eliezer ben-yehuda you know she was the the child that had this dream you know that had this vision of these people both her sister and her boyfriend she said I'm interested in keeping Eliezer ben-yehuda alive and now he's going to be alive through his dictionary this is what I want to concentrate on so you decide what you want to do I don't want to fight with anybody so this group of defenders of the Hebrew language with you the leverage you know who is one of the first presidents of the teachers organization and other people from the thick line from the Moshe vote in the Galilee you know they all went there and they and they told the heifer kanesha we hope you're not going to do shenanigans about the the honor he deserves the burial of Ben Yehuda because we're gonna have a state funeral and really they had the first state funeral there were over 20,000 people who followed his his yes his body you know in Jerusalem they don't put you in a box you know they wrap you up in the shrouds and in the cover and they carry you like that on a stretcher and that's what they did to him and what they did is they went and in an area that was open at that time they said this is Ilias her Ben Yehuda he needs something special so we want to sell you nine graves three three and three so that you can bury him in the middle and that's going to be a special grave this will be more than anybody else that's going to be buried it was never done nobody else has that like a family plot it's not they're going to build a fence around it and they're gonna bury ben yehuda outside the fence and you know what that means it means they're really saying here's mortar he doesn't belong in the cemetery and so he was buried there in the middle you know on every line you know he was in the middle and he was the only one to be buried there the children that died were not buried there and it - Marvin AVI was you know they was still alive everybody was still alive you know so here was the only one right in the middle there now 1942 Marvin of you went to America working for the Zionist Organization tell meri behna V has been CEO and it's it's that first son who's only speaks Hebrew so he goes to the United States to raise funds for Israel he was the first person to go in the second one of course was Golda you know but anyhow he goes to the United States and he raises funds and he's stuck in the United States after Pearl Harbor Day and he continued to work and he overworked himself and he had a trombonist he had a stroke in the in the in the head and was left alive but unconscious for close to a year nobody paid any attention to him his wife and his two daughters were with him and nobody cared for them except for some friends that they had the two daughters went to work to earn some money so that they could support themselves with a little you know food and things of that nature and they came back to Israel immediately after the Second World War in 1945 so where is he buried and he was left in the United States he was buried in a special cold box so that he left instructions that he will only be buried in Jerusalem in 1946 my dad went to America to raise money to publish the last three volumes and to bring his brother Oh his brother was home was brought home and he had a funeral that started in Haifa his remains were in a box you know in Haifa came off the ship was put on a car on a special pickup and there was a funeral in Haifa Itamar banoffee was one of the founders one of the two founders of Netanya Netanya was started with banoffee and venom II enemy became the mayor and been a V went to America to raise money for Israel the property that been aviod in Netanya was expropriated by the british to make a military camp so that his wife and his daughters when they came couldn't go and live there either and they came to Jerusalem and they lived in their family you know the woman he married was one of the nobles of Jerusalem Jews that had nine generations in Jerusalem the family abou she did Sparty family that was a big deal in those days a mixed marriage ashkenazi started they didn't want to marry Ashkenazim back then you know Bardem didn't want to marry Ashkenazi because they were the royalty and Ashkenazim with the riffraff we saw he's buried too then in Jerusalem in the end my dad came back brought him and buried him in the Ben Yehuda plot he said hey we have nine plots we're gonna bury him there and so he was buried on the right side of his father so it's Pena who dies in the middle and then the middle right line is a Tamar benefit still plots family plots open there yes now what happened was that the next person there was the reconnection of Jerusalem and they brought creme de the second wife and buried her to his left okay so he has second wife and his first son so you should live to be a hundred and twenty is there a place for you there the next one to be buried was layin a V ambush did she was buried at the head of her husband the next one who died was my dad so he was buried at the feet of his brother of his brother then my mother passed away she was buried at the head of her mother-in-law okay so now there is a spot behind the head of Eleazar and there's a spot at the bottom of Eleazar and there is a spot at the bottom of hem de there's three more places there and most of the venue who does don't want to be buried there how do you I don't really care when I died you know I think it depends where I'm going to die if I happen to die in Jerusalem there's a good chance that I will be buried there but if I'm gonna be died in America there's a good chance that I will be buried there because I have children there you know whatever have you and I don't really know what I want I don't I haven't I haven't bothered - can I have a lot of cuts planned give my opinion some kind of closure to be here with with your relatives who did so much but if I die even in Europe to bury a person from Europe in olives in the Mount of Olives costs in excess of thirty thousand dollars because you have to import the dead body and you have to get all kinds of documents my next suggestion is don't go to Europe it's fine yes stay here right stay in Jerusalem and wait until you die like I said up until 120 I want to thank you so much and I want my listeners to get the book and read the book and you just got a little bit of a glimpse of the stories difficult to hear we would like to sugarcoat a lot of things that have happened but the reality is different and it's been a real honor for me to have sat with you in here from you clewd I didn't conclude why I'm what I'm doing back here you see because Ben Yehuda is well known obviously there's a popular song about Ben Yehuda that was written not by Sajid Amari but by the author of very very wonderful Israeli songs you're on London and the song became very very popular hava al Burstein sang it and and made it famous a number of men sang it including the man who wrote the melody Matti Caspi but and and the song the words of the song are wonderful except the refrain the refrain is written in a language that can be understood in two different ways the first line says Eliezer ben-yehuda you who deep me vedera now the author says that Bovada means in funny Jew a funny man he has a joke in modern he yeah you see but but what does it mean a funny man and to me it suggests that he was a clown and he has a penny hood that the clown Eliezer ben-yehuda that the funny guy you know the guy that had this you know zoom in to be taken to Syria so he had he had a fly that went into his ear and drove him crazy and so he went around telling people speak Hebrew speak Hebrew you know he did he did tell him to speak Hebrew the language was so necessary I go and I tell people story a story about the world the war of independence you know we were the we won the war of independence you know like a miracle everything we tried worked right people don't know that we had one huge failure the failure was to open the door the gate to Jerusalem to open the road to Jerusalem we had two battles on the road to Jerusalem in a place called Latrun it started right after the state came into being the Latrun fortress military fortress the British built okay very quickly okay no no but very quickly the battles failed because the soldiers didn't know Hebrew didn't have a common language to speak to each other they've come from different places some spoke polish some spoke Russian some spoke Yiddish exactly so I said I have to erase that he's not a funny man and the second line of the refrain says words upon words he drew out of his feverish mind so again feverish mind you know it's like very active mind is what the author the poet wrote but it doesn't say that you know Mahadev means his crazy mind his feverish mind and feverish mind is not nice so I said I have to go and I have to tell people that he was not a joker and that he didn't have a feverish mind he had a calculating mind he had a an amazing mind photographic memory very focused on what he wanted to do so that's what you're doing here in Israel is making sure that the song is understood proper Lord I also do it abroad because you know I work a lot with Christians I speak to Christians evangelicals Catholics Lutheran's you know and I say to them I'm telling you that this is the finger of God you are the people that believe you know that Jesus came to you but Ben Yehuda came to us he's not God we don't think he's a god you know but it was the right man in the right place at the right time you have to recognize that he was a man with the mission you know he was a man with him and you as his grandson are as well thank you I really want to thank you this was really an honor to be able to sit with you and I hope that we meet again and we'll go visit the house okay thank you everyone for listening Eliezer ben-yehuda Eve Harrow on rejuvenation thanks to Tabitha and Ben and to all of you and I hope you learned a lot in the last two hours