The Hebrew lexicographer and editor Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858-1922) is known as the father of spoken Hebrew. He revived the Hebrew language and forged it into a modern and viable instrument of communication.

Eliezer Ben Yehuda was born in the small town of Lushki in the province of Vilna, Lithuania, where he received a traditional Jewish education. At an early age he moved from town to town in search of good religious and secular schooling. He completed his secondary education in Dvinsk. Realizing that he would not be accepted in a Russian university because of discriminatory laws against Jews, Ben Yehuda went to the University of Paris, where he studied medicine in 1879.

The struggle for independence in the Balkan countries made Ben Yehuda aware of the homelessness of the Jews and of the need to restore the ancient, wandering people to its homeland--Palestine. In 1879 Ben Yehuda published his...