Hemda Ben-Yehuda

Hemda Ben-Yehuda was born in 1873 in Vyerkhnyadzvinsk

Hemda Ben-Yehuda was born Beila Jonas in Drissa, in present-day Belarus, in 1873. She was the fifth of seven children of Shelomo Naphtali Herz Jonas and Rivka Leah. Her name was later changed to Belle and then to Paula.

In 1882 the family moved to Moscow. She attended a Russian girls' high school there and then studied chemistry at a women's college of science.

After her elder sister Deborah, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's wife, died, Ben-Yehuda asked to marry her. They married in Istanbul in 1892, and he gave her the name Hemda. That year she settled in Jerusalem, where the family spoke only Hebrew at home.

She wrote short stories in Hebrew and articles for her husband's newspapers, and at times edited them. She is credited with coining the Hebrew word for fashion, and wrote fashion columns under a pen name. She also worked as a secretary at the Bezalel art school.

After her husband's death, she and her son Ehud continued the Ben-Yehuda dictionary project and arranged for unpublished volumes to appear. She died in 1951 and was later reburied beside her husband on the Mount of Olives.