Childhood
Ben-Zion grew up speaking modern Hebrew with his parents, making him the first native speaker of the Hebrew language in over a thousand years. When he was very young, Itamar always wanted someone to play with, but his parents did not want him to speak with the other children who spoke different languages. He made friends with a dog which he called Maher, meaning "fast" in Hebrew. Ben-Zion grew up without any friends, as he was the only child who spoke Hebrew. Growing up, Ben Zion experienced many troubling situations, including the death of many of his siblings by diphtheria (which spread through Jerusalem and killed many children), and the death of his mother. He and his family were also ostracized from the ultra-orthodox community, due to their usage of Hebrew as a day-to-day language. The religious community saw this as sacrilege because they viewed it as the language of the Torah and prayers, and not for use in "idle chatter."
After his mother's death, his father married his late wife's sister, so Itamar's aunt became his stepmother. After his mother's death, he changed his name to Itamar, as that was the name his parents originally intended to give him. The name Itamar means "Island of Dates" and derives from the Hebrew root t-m-r (date or palm tree), which is a symbol of Zionism. As his last name, he used Ben-Avi. Avi (אב"י) is an acronym for Eliezer Ben Yehuda (as written in Hebrew) and also means "my father", so Ben-Avi means "my father's son".
Read more about this topic: Itamar Ben-Avi
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