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Hebraizing the Jewish Name: Ivrut's Rise and Cost
In 1944 the Jewish Agency published a booklet with five methods for Hebraizing a Jewish surname. By 1950, Ben-Gurion had made it a binding order for state officials, and 17,000 people changed their names in a single year. This episode traces Ivrut — the Hebrewization of names — from the First and Second Aliyah through the Committee for Hebrew Names, the homophone problem, and the Ekelnamen: degrading names like "liar" that families were finally allowed to hand back. It sits inside the tension the whole project lives in: one bureaucracy's imposed names replaced by another's, framed as a…
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