Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's newspaper comes to life in the new series 'The Deer'

One of the most amazing aspects of the story of the founding of Israel is the revitalization of Hebrew as a spoken language, and that story is dramatized in a very interesting way in a charming and entertaining new series from KAN 11, The Deer, which is running on Tuesdays starting March 5 after the news.

Episodes will be available on kan.org.il after they air.

The series – created by Keren Margalit, who made the wonderful show Yellow Peppers, about a family in the Negev with a son on the autism spectrum a few years ago – is inspired by actual events, although a sly disclaimer at the beginning states that there is no way now to know what really happened and what didn’t.

The Deer (HaZvi in Hebrew) was a newspaper founded by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the leading proponent of making Hebrew into the language of the Jewish homeland. He is played by Or Ben-Melech, who portrays him as a driven but charismatic figure filled with boundless energy, fighting an illness, apparently tuberculosis.

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