MOSCOW – The great-grandson of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda revealed that one of Zionism’s most revered heroes came from a family filled with “dirty secrets,” during a lecture at the Limmud FSU (former Soviet Union) Conference in Moscow on Friday.Gil Hovav, a well-known Israeli television-personality, chef, author, publisher and journalist, attended the Jewish education conference to lecture on the history of the Hebrew language. Candidly Speaking: Sanctimonious Jewish bleeding hearts“Heavily spiced with dirty little secrets of our family, of which we have many,” he added with a smile.Ben-Yehuda was a champion of reviving Hebrew as a modern and unifying language in the State of Israel. He helped establish the Committee of the Hebrew language, still in existence today, as the Academy of the Hebrew language. Ben-Yehuda died of tuberculosis in 1922.“My great-grandfather was an unbearable man, but he was a true Zionist 20 years before Herzl,” Hovav said.
(photo credit: The Jerusalem Post)