Itamar Ben-Avi

Itamar Ben-Avi
איתמר בן־אב״י‎
Ben-Avi in 1912
Born	Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda (1882-07-31)31 July 1882 Jerusalem,Ottoman Empire
Died	8 April 1943(1943-04-08)(aged 60) New York City,New York, U.S.
Nationality	Palestinian (British Mandate)
Occupation	Journalist
Known for	Being the first native speaker ofModern Hebrew
Spouse	Leah Abushedid ​ (m.1905)​
Children	3
Parents	Eliezer Ben-Yehuda(father) Devora Jonas (mother)
Relatives	Dola Ben-Yehuda Wittmann(half-sister)

Itamar Ben-Avi(Hebrew:איתמר בן־אב״י;néBen-Zion Ben-Yehuda,בן־ציון בן־יהודה;31 July 1882 – 8 April 1943) was the firstnative speakerofHebrew in modern times.He was a journalist andZionistactivist.

Biography

Itamar Ben-Avi as a child

Itamar Ben-Avi was born as Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda inJerusalemon 31 July 1882, the son of Devora (néeJonas) andEliezer Ben-Yehuda.Eliezer is credited with reviving theHebrew language;Itamar was brought up to be the first native speaker of Hebrew in the modern era. At his father's insistence, Itamar was not permitted to hear any language other than Hebrew at home. When he was very young, Itamar always wanted someone to play with, but his parents did not want him to speak with the other children who spoke different languages. He made friends with a dog which he calledMa'her(מהר), meaning "fast" in Hebrew. His three siblings died in adiphtheriaepidemic and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1891. He and his family wereostracizedfrom theultra-orthodoxcommunity, due to their usage of Hebrew as a day-to-day language. The religious community saw this assacrilegebecause they viewed it as the language of theTorahand prayers, and not as an everyday language.

After his mother's death in 1891, his father married her younger sister, the writerHemda Ben-Yehuda(née Beila Jonas), so Itamar's aunt became his stepmother. After his mother's death, he changed his name to Itamar, as that was the name his parents originally intended to give him (named after the priestIthamar). The nameItamarmeans "Island ofDates"and derives from theHebrewwordtamar(תמר,dateor palm tree), which is a symbol of Zionism. As his last name, he used Ben-Avi.Avi(אב״י) is anacronym(as indicated by the use of the character״) forEliezerBenYehuda (as written in Hebrew) and also means "my father", so Ben-Avi means "my father's son".

At the age of 19, Ben-Avi sailed toEuropeand studied at universities inParisandBerlin.He returned to Palestine in 1908 as ajournalist,joining his father in editing and writing Hebrew newspapers.

Ben-Avi married Leah Abushedid (1889–1982), born in Jerusalem to a wealthyMoroccan-Jewishfamily. Ben-Avi met her when he was 23 and she was 16. Due to his poor financial situation, hisAshkenazibackground, and their age difference, Abushedid's parents did not approve of their marriage. Hoping to convince her parents, he published poems proclaiming his love for her inHaOr.After three years, when he published a poem about suicide, they relented and permitted the marriage. After two years of negotiating the marriage contract, the couple married in 1914.They had three daughters: Dror-Eilat (1917–1921), Drora (1922–1981), and Rina (1925–2016).Drora and Rina became radio news broadcasters.

In 1919, he founded a Hebrew daily newspaper calledDoar HaYom(The Daily Mail), and ran it until 1929. In addition, he was a Zionist activist and officer withBnei Binyaminand theJewish National Fund.He served as a Jewish National Fund emissary to various countries. Together withOved Ben-Ami,he helped raise the funds for the founding ofNetanya.

Unlike many Zionists, Ben-Avi favored establishment of a canton system for Palestine instead of a single Jewish state or a single Arab state. He based his proposal, which included equal rights and free movement between different ethnic and religious groups, on the Swiss model. In 1930, for example, he called for dividing the British mandate of Palestine into six Jewish, six Muslim, and three Christian cantons. “The spirit in Palestine among Jews and non-Jews,” he declared, “is very much in favor of the plan, because it would lead to peace and harmony.”

In 1939, as his financial situation deteriorated and in need of a steady income, Ben-Avi left his family for theUnited Statesto take up a posting as the Jewish National Fund representative inNew York City.He died there in 1943 at the age of 60, five years before the establishment ofIsrael.His body was brought back to Eretz Israel for burial in 1947, and was buried on theMount of OlivesinJerusalem.

Journalism and literary career

Ha Şavuja ha Palestini (in Hebrew: השבוע הפלשתיני, modern transliteration:ha-Shavua ha-Palestini(11 January 1929).

He was the chief editor and journalist ofDoar HaYom,the then Hebrew style-twin of the BritishDaily Mail,from 1920 to 1933. In his numerous opinion and commentary articles inDoar HaYomhe also advocated the widespread use of the International languageEsperanto.

Ben-Avi was an advocate for theRomanization of Hebrew.He favored theLatin Alpha bet,a full Alpha bet with vowel letters, rather than the traditionalHebrew Alpha bet,a consonantal orthography of Hebrew (with limitedmatres lectionis) using "squared Assyrian letters". The Hebrew writing system dates back to the time ofEzrathe scribe, 500 BCE.

He wrote a Hebrew biography of his father. This biography was titledAvi( "My Father" ) and was printed in his own made-up version of a Hebrew Alpha bet using Latin letters and some variations thereof. He pioneered and was chief editor of two short lived Hebrew weeklies in reformed Latin script. The first wasHashavua Hapalestini(The Palestinian Week, 1928) and the second wasDror(Liberty, 1934).

External links

• The personal papers of Ben-Avi are kept at theCentral Zionist Archivesin Jerusalem. The notation of the record group is A43.