It also didn't hurt that as children, they had to learn some Hebrew (enough to read the bible and the prayers). They may have liked it as much as American students would love mandatory latin lessons, but they still had this prior knowledge, and a whole bunch of books to read in ancient Hebrew.
On 10/24/07, Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
> When Ben Yehuda created the modern Hebrew partially constructed
> language the way that language came to life was by gathering people
> willing to speak it together.
It didn't hurt that the people speaking the language already had a
shared culture, and the shared ancient Hebrew literature. These
communities of common interest also lived together to start with, and
had social pressures from outside to motivate their common association.