Tongue of the Prophets The Fascinating Biography of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the Father of Modern Hebrew.

New York: Country Life Press, 1952 0879801662. Softcover. VG. Slight creasing to front cover. Stated first edition. First printing. A rare genuine First Edition. (No other such a copy on the Net.) 393 pages including a detailed index. Previous owner's neat inscription inside front cover. Otherwise, no annotations or inscriptions etcetera. Black and white illustrations. In the midst of modern-day Middle East politics, very few give any consideration to the miracle of Israel's "rebirth" as a nation. But even among those who do acknowledge this phenomenon, an even lesser number can recite the major players in Israel's rebirth and there is one of those players whose role has been for the most part relegated to obscurity: Eliezer Ben- Yehuda. The political entity that was once "Israel" was not simply a nation; it was a people. And this people had, among their various ethnic and community ties, a language. . .a language that had been essentially dead for the previous 2,000 years. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, at great cost to himself and almost single-handedly, resurrected and established again the language of Hebrew to the Jewish people. Author Robert St. John has deftly and expertly interwoven the personal story of this humble man with his great accomplishment. . .that literally cost him his life. For historians and patriots alike, this is a must read. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman; 7 January 1858 – 16 December 1922. He was a Hebrew linguist, grammarian, and journalist, renowned as the lexicographer of the first Hebrew dictionary, and the editor of HaZvi, one of the first Hebrew newspapers published in the Land of Israel. He was the main driving force behind the revival of the Hebrew language.