Episode Details

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 return. Plus the kitchen-table argument between sound and meaning, the Golda Meir and Herzl Vardi anecdotes, the IDF order, and the haredi reluctance that split the country along secular and religious lines. Key sources: • Gershom Martin, Some preliminary notes on Israeli family names, Weizmann Institute (dated 2000-03-05) — https://webhome.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israelinames.txt • Wikipedia, Hebraization of surnames — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebraization_of_surnames • Wikipedia, Jewish surname — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_surname Episode 5820 — myweirdprompts.com/n/5820 (permanent short link: myweirdprompts.com/978148)