David Yellin

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
David Yellin
דוד ילין
BornMarch 19, 1864
Jerusalem
DiedDecember 12, 1941 (77)
Resting placeMount of Olives Jewish Cemetery
Known forfounding Hebrew educational institutions, Hebrew language revival, research of medieval Hebrew literature
SpouseIta Yellin
Scientific career
FieldsLinguistics, Hebrew literature
The keystone, adorned with the word "Ha-Levanon" on Yellin's house in Jerusalem

David Yellin (

Hebrew Language Committee and the Israel Teachers Union, and the Zikhron Moshe
neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Biography

David Yellin was born in 1864 in Jerusalem. He was named after his grandfather, a financier and meshulach, who moved from Poland to the Holy land in 1834. His father Yehoshua Yellin was one of the founders of the Nahalat Shiv'a neighborhood in Jerusalem and his mother Serah was the daughter of Shlomo Yehezkel Yehuda, the son of Ezekiel Judah, a Rabbi and educator from Iraq.

At the age of 14, Yellin started writing a newspaper, Har Tziyon ("

Ha-Melitz. In 1885 he married Ita, the daughter of rabbi Yechiel Michel Pines
.

In 1890 he founded the

Hebrew Language Committee together with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who served as chairman. Other members were rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn, Ze'ev Yavetz, Abraham Moses Luncz, rabbi Yaakov Meir (who later became the Sephardi chief rabbi), and Yechiel Michel Pines. The committee disbanded after one year, but was reestablished in 1904 when school teachers complained about the lack of Hebrew terminology. Yellin served as president until his death. In 1953 the Academy of the Hebrew Language
was established on the basis of the committee.

In 1903 he participated with Menachem Ussishkin in the founding of the Assembly of the Land of Israel (הכנסייה הארצישראלית)—an attempt to create a representative body of the Jews in the Yishuv. This Assembly only met once but founded the Teachers Union, the first Jewish labor union in Palestine. Yellin was the president until 1906.

Like his younger brother

Ottoman Jews could enjoy the benefits of being citizens in a multi-ethnic Ottoman state and still maintain their distinctly Jewish cultural and social traditions.[1]

In 1913, at the time of the

German-language professional education in the Technion, and founded the Hebrew school for teachers. It still functions in the Beit HaKerem
neighborhood of Jerusalem and is now named after its founder.

In 1917 during World War I Yellin was exiled to Damascus. After the Balfour Declaration was issued, and Mandatory Palestine established under the British Mandate for Palestine, Yellin began to support dividing Jerusalem into separate municipalities.[1]

David Yellin 1923
David Yellin 1923

From 1920 until 1928 he was a member of the

medieval Hebrew poetry
. In 1936 he was appointed as a professor of literature in the university. Yellin wrote numerous books about language, history, and medieval literature.

In October 1937 his fifth son, Avinoam, was murdered in the

High Commissioners for Palestine and Transjordan
in which they explained why they are returning the awards that they received from the British government:

The award of honor was given to me by this government, for which political considerations are more important than any feeling of morality, and which cause it to assist those who killed and mauled not only my people (among them my innocent son!) and their people, but even their soldiers and officials. This award of honor is now an award of dishonor for me, and I return it to you, after it was given to me 21 years ago, when the spirit of the government of his majesty the King of England was different.

— Davar, ר' דויד ואיטה ילין החזירו את אותות-הכבוד שלהם, May 23, 1939

Ita added in her letter:

Now, after the publishing of the White paper, which completely reneges all the promises of his majesty's government to help the people of Israel, I see myself obliged to return this award of honor to his majesty's government.

Yellin died in 1941 and was buried in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery. Several streets and educational institutions in Israel are named after him.

Family

His wife Ita was the daughter of Yechiel Michel Pines, and Yosef Meyuchas was his brother in law. They had seven children: a daughter, five sons, and another daughter:

  • Their second child Eliezer was an engineer, an architect, and the husband of the musician Telma Yellin. They were among the founders of the Rehavia neighborhood in Jerusalem.
  • Their third child Aviezer was the general secretary of the Teachers Union and one of the founders of Maccabi World Union.
  • The sixth child Avinoam was an educator and an Oriental studies researcher. The botanical garden in the Yellin teachers college is named after him.
  • The youngest daughter Serah Ahuva married Leo Picard, one of the most prominent geologists in Israel.

Yellin's sister Sarah was the wife of the chief justice of Hebron in the beginning of the 20th century, Yosef Mani, the grandchild of Eliyahu Mani, one of the leaders of the Iraqi Jewish community. His sister Rachel was the wife of Yehezkel Danin, one of the founders of

Ottoman Constitution of 1908 that was implemented following the Young Turk Revolution.[2][3]

Contribution to the Hebrew language

Yellin was one of the central people in the process of the

Hapax legomena, the meanings of which are not always clear, and he reused them, sometimes changing their meaning. For example, he reused the word minzar, which appears in the book of Nahum
, and probably means "king", to denote monastery (by association with the word nazir, monk). Other words that he created, and which became common in Modern Hebrew are words for photography (צילום), joke (בדיחה), agriculturalist (חקלאי), actor (שחקן), and others.

Together with Yehuda Gur he published a complete Hebrew dictionary in 1920.

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-253-01948-6
    .
  2. ISBN 978-0-8047-7678-3
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-253-01948-6
    .

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Yellin&oldid=1198306693"