Itamar ben avi autobiography example

Like most Jewish Israelis of my generation, I was familiar with the name Itamar Ben-Avi first and foremost thanks to his role as the “son of ”: he was born Itamar Ben-Zion (literally “son of Zion”), the eldest son of Deborah and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the famous Zionist lexicographer and journalist who acquired, rightly or wrongly, the status of “reviver” of the Hebrew language as a modern vernacular. It was from his entrepreneurial, restless father, who founded several newspapers and associations to spread his views in favour of national and linguistic renewal, that Itamar Ben-Avi learned the power of the written word and the importance of the free press. Yet Ben-Yehuda senior was also a short-tempered and exceedingly strict parent. He treated his firstborn as part of his cultural nation-building project, homeschooling him and prohib- iting contact with other children to make him the first Ashkenazi child to speak uncontaminated modern Hebrew. The experiment yielded the expected results: at the age of three, Itamar uttered his first word, aba (father); at eleven years old, he sent Lord Rothschild a letter notifying him about his plans to establish a Hebrew army; and when he was fifteen years old, he launched his own Hebrew-language newspaper, called Hayeled (“The Child”

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