Chariots, Cable Cars and Israel

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How do you get a street named after you?  In the United States you can be a president who successfully wins a world war and saves his nation’s economy from certain disaster, as in the FDR Drive, eponymously named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  In France, Napoleon can ask you to renovate and realign all of Paris, indeed it was Georges-Eugene Hausmann who conceived what makes Paree Paree…hence Boulevard Hausmann.

And in Israel, you can envision making a nearly dead language, a language like Latin for Roman Catholics, reserved for ritual and study, an Ancient Near Eastern language not spoken colloquially for 2000 years, you can assert the force of your personality and muster your passion to make a case that this language, could and should be remastered, resurrected, reinvented and reshaped and remolded into a modern tongue, incorporating the matrix of its ancient form yet, while at the same time giving it flexibility, to become a language both completely new and completely old.  The street is Ben Yehudah Street and it is in the center of Israel’s completely new and completely old capital city, Jerusalem. 

After one visit to Jerusalem you know all about Ben Yehudah street, currently a 100% pedestrian mall where in pre-Covid days musicians play late into the night, and any tchachke a tourist could dream of would be at their fingertips, Ben Yehudah street is a place where you can sit at a sidewalk cafe for too long with too strong coffee or tea with honey in a glass and fresh mint swirling around at the bottom.

Israel was declared the State of Israel in 1948.  90 years earlier, Eliezer Ben Yehudah was born, he grew up Orthodox and his rabbi literally sneaked him secular literature.  He replaced his religion with nationalism for the Jewish People called Zionism. 

Ben Yehudah asserted that just as the Italians had Italy and the Italian language, just as the Greeks had Greece and the Greek language, both “ancient lands with ancient languages”[i], this one man, Eliezer Ben Yehudah is both personally and individually responsible for having an idea, one which became a reality we hardly think twice about, but which seemed crazy at the time…

Ben Yehudah said: We dream of a Jewish State, yes?  A Jewish State needs a Jewish culture, and any culture worth its salt needs its own language.  Yiddish is too German and Ladino, the old spoken language of Sephardic Jews is too Spanish, we are Hebrews, and Hebrew will be our language.

His private home became his laboratory and he and his wife made a decision which every Israeli knows about: they would raise their only child to speak this new language.  They would cut their child off from other children lest he learn other languages and raise him exclusively in Hebrew…the first person to be raised in an exclusively Hebrew speaking home in an exclusively Hebrew speaking world.  And Ben Yehudah thought that if a child can do it, so can a nation.

What happened psychologically to this first Hebrew speaking child is its own meshugganeh story and a part of Israeli lore culture that Tmima and Eli Grinvald know well…but Ben Yehudah said, Jews from around the world will be coming to the Jewish State, they will speak every language of the world, we need a language which will unify our nation.

And so -- it came to be.  I lived in Israel for a few years and because I spoke OK Hebrew I could speak Hebrew with volunteers from Finland, I could speak Hebrew with Holocaust survivors from Poland and Kibbutzniks from Yemen, I could argue in Hebrew with bus drivers who are never shy about arguing back, and get recipes from cab drivers born in Morocco.   Eliezer Ben Yehudah was absolutely right, he saw further ahead than anyone else at the time and dedicated his entire being to a vision of a Modern Hebrew for the new Jewish State.

But permit me to dive a little deeper here…Ben Yehudah finished the first 11 volumes of what would become a 17 volume first dictionary of modern Hebrew and founded the institutions that still keep Hebrew fresh and responsive to the modern world.

Biblical Hebrew and prayerbook Hebrew of course have no word for ice cream, no word for television, no word for meteorology, Eliezer Ben Yehudah not only created a way to think about how to create words for new things using the structure of Hebrew, he created the Academy for the Hebrew Language which to this day brings new Hebrew words forward. 

Any one of us who has spent any time in Israel has been to the top of the Masada, home to one of King Herod’s palaces and the place where deeply principled Jews stared down the Romans for as long as they could until a very bitter end.

There are only two ways to the top of Masada, walk up or take the cable car.  But how can you have a cable car in in country with no word for cable car…and nowhere in the Bible or the Talmud is there anything even close to a cable car…but maybe there is. 

Allow me to take this even deeper dive with you into how it is that Israel has a Hebrew word for cable car based on linguistic principles both ancient and modern…it’s something of a Hebrew lesson I know but worthy one because understanding how came up with a Hebrew word for cable car is a window in to understanding Israel and Israelis.  Here’s how they did it in three steps

STEP ONE: Hebrew is based on words with three letter roots, often consonants…which represent a general meaning, like K-D-SH.  The ancient Hebrew word for camel is GAMAL.  The ancient Hebrew word for a caravan of camels is GAMELET.  Ah—Eh—Et

STEP TWO…Hebrew as you might imagine, had no word for train, so Ben Yehudah took the biblical word for Chariot, RECHEV, and placed the R, the CH and the V into the matrix for GAMELET and made RAKEFET,

AND STEP THREE…now fast forward to 1972, What do we call a cable car they asked, take the three letters from the word CABLE, which derives from the Latin word for horse halter, take the K sound, the B sound and the L sound and put it into the same matrix of RAKEFET, and you get RAKEVEL.  A Hebrew word that merges the modern with the ancient.

This facility of mind, this dogged vision to create something that is both new and deeply rooted, this impossible tenacity, this is why Eliezer Ben Yehudah is one of Israel’s first heroes.  In many ways, much like George Washington set the tone and tenor of what would be generations of United States Presidents after him, Ben Yehudah would plant the seeds of so much of what Israel has become, a state that merges creativity with tenacity, ancient seeds bearing new fruit.

So why the long Hebrew lesson on Yom Kippur?  Because just as I am passionate about all things American, I am also passionate about all things Israel, because I love Israel, because I want Israel to be healthy and vibrant and democratic, and to courageously take on some pretty serious internal issues for her healthy longevity.  And because I think we each have a part in that process. 

Jews born before Israel came to be know what the world was like for Jews anywhere without a Jewish State, Jewish vulnerability without an Israel has no bottom as history has teaches us.  Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who made peace with Egypt in 1979, knew what it was to fight Jew hatred in Europe with his hands, with his own hands.  The man who shook the hand of Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat also deeply held that now, when someone says that they want to destroy us, we believe them.

I am not naïve about Israel’s need to stay steely strong and Israel’s need to wrestle hard with injustices perpetrated in her name, my message today is not about keeping Israel strong, or chiding Israel for failing to live up to her highest self…and both of those are issues about which I feel strongly and have strong opinions.

I come to you this morning, on this Yom Kippur morning with my Hebrew lesson for another purpose.  We are alive in an era when there is a Jewish State, and if your Jewishness means something to you, then the hard won reality of a Jewish State and your connection to it can also be a source meaning of Jewish meaning. 

As a matter of Jewish continuity and vitality, what I’m saying is that none of us cannot afford to be disconnected from Israel…honestly, I don’t mean this a guilt trip.  I mean it as an article of Peoplehood, if you want to call yourself Jewish, a person who takes their Jewishness seriously, than a bridge to Israel, some bridge to Israel is worth building and maintaining.  How can you build a bridge to Israel?

For those of you in the stock market…there’s nothing like owning stocks that focuses your attention and For those of you in the world of finance, you don’t need me to tell you that Israel, with one tenth of one percent of the world’s population, is third with NASDAQ listed companies, and by the way, who’s number one and number two, the US and China, that Israel invests more in venture capital per capita than any other country and that Israel has more start ups per person than any other country.  Learn about Israel’s energy sector, her agricultural sector her pharmaceutical sector…Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals is the largest producer of generic pharm in the world.

For those of you who love to read, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s fiction centers on morally ambiguous men, and Amos Oz’s work sometimes centers on morally ambiguous women, subscriptions to Israeli newspapers, on-line, hard copy, Haaretz is my favorite

For those of you whose conscience wants to see Israel be more of a light to herself when it comes to social justice issues, connect with our own Reform Movement’s Association for Reform Zionists of America, with Rabbis for Huan Rights, Women of the Wall

For those of you interested in medical research, learn about new epilepsy treatments discovered at Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute, Technion

For those of you interested in the past, learn about biblical archeology, for those of you interested in nature and conservation, connect with Israel’s Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel

For wine lovers, Israeli wines particularly from the soil of the volcanic north are delicious

Filter a piece of your life’s interests through Israel and see what you see…

I am asking you to see some piece of your life’s interest to Israel not because Israel is asking us to fill up JNF boxes with change to plant trees in the desert…and while replanting the forests cut down by the Turks during the Ottoman period has truly re-greened so much of Israel, putting our coins into Jewish National Fund containers just don’t seem to build a meaningful connection to Israel

Of course, when it comes to building a relationship with Israel, nothing comes close to spending time in Israel, to walking breathing seeing hearing and living Israel to feeling Israel.

And spending time in Israel is not just for our sake, it is so good for Israelis to spend time with American Jews who care not only take their own Jewishness seriously, who not only hold progressive and liberal values, but who care deeply about Israel.

Israelis no longer have their induction ceremonies at the top of Masada…they no longer see themselves as a David against a Goliath

Israel and Israelis want relationship, partnership, connection with us in any and every way we can…not because they or we needy, but because they are part of our extended family, and an integral part of our extended identity.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius asks Hamlet: What do you read my lord? Hamlet cynically answers words, words, words, his famous response reflects that he is terminally stuck between thoughts and deeds, between revenge and inaction, between fate and free will[ii], between decisive action or letting nature take its course.

There is a song about Eliezer Ben Yehudah known by every Israeli and the lyrics turn Hamlet on its head, words words words no longer reflects indecision but decisive acts of purpose

Eliezer, when will you sleep, Hebrew has waited for 2000 years, it will still be waiting in the morning, Words Words Words You invent with your feverish brain, you go on creating words, and your quill knows no rest and the language grows and doesn’t recognize itself in the morning.

Everything that is Israel has an Eliezer Ben Yehudah behind it and a story, a true story just as rich.  

At some point our COVID time will us.  It is my intense hope that at the very top of your post COVID bucket list is the simple act sipping a cup of tea on Ben Yehudah Street in Jerusalem.

[i] David Saiger on Ben Yehudah

[ii] https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/plot-analysis