“Here we slapped Golda Meir’s place, and our former people were a quarter there, ” Vladimir Vysotsky sang about the Promised Land. And it was very accurate in numbers. Moreover, in modern Israel, Russian, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, is spoken by more than 20% of the inhabitants of this Middle Eastern country with a population of eight million people. And in this indicator, it is second only to the official languages - Hebrew and Arabic. Outstripping not only English, but also three dozen or more languages and dialects used in the country.
"Jew - speak Hebrew!"
Golda Meir, the native of pre-revolutionary Kiev and the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR, who led the country's government from 1969 to 1974, knew very well Russian. Which, of course, did not stop her from owning the main language of the Israeli state - Hebrew. According to the staff of the same national statistical office, almost half of Israelis consider 49% to be Hebrew. And practically everyone speaks it, regardless of the place of birth or the former country of residence.
It is curious that once Hebrew, in which the Torah is sacred for all Jews, was called the dead language and was used only in writing or religious rituals, and its "relatives" - Aramaic and Yiddish - were considered colloquial. Hebrew gained a second life, after almost a thousand years, thanks to another native of Tsarist Russia, only from the Vilnius province. His name was Eliezer Ben Yehuda. It was he who came up with the slogan under which the current Israeli society lives, and endorsed by numerous Jewish diasporas in other countries: "Jew - speak Hebrew!"
Thanks to the many years of linguistic and propaganda activities of Ben Yehuda, a committee and an Hebrew Academy were created at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and a dictionary of ancient and modern languages was published. And in November 1922, only two and a half weeks before his death, Ben Yehuda managed to ensure that Hebrew, along with English and Arabic, became one of the official languages then under the British protectorate of Palestine. After another quarter of a century, Hebrew, along with Arabic, will be recognized as the official language in the newly made Israel. And the streets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa will be named after Eliezer.
Russian-speaking Israelis
As for the Arabic, despite its legal status of equal rights with Hebrew, it is not very popular in the country. Even the fact that almost every fifth modern Israelite named him was not affected by this. The main reason for this somewhat strange situation for the uninitiated is that since the inception of Israel, this country has been in a permanent state of armed conflict with almost the entire Middle East environment. And that it is precisely the Arab countries that provide the main support to the terrorist Organization for the Liberation of Palestine, which is at war with Israel. And once, by the way, the USSR also helped her.
While Israeli Arabs often try to hide their linguistic knowledge and use Hebrew almost exclusively in large cities, especially in large cities, then no less numerous ex-Soviet, including Russian emigrants, on the contrary, strongly emphasize their origin. And they are not at all embarrassed by the Soviet past. Since the end of the 80s, the Russian language is heard in Israel everywhere - in shops and hotels, from radios and televisions, in theaters and in public institutions. There are even newspapers and a separate television channel broadcasting not only local, but also Russian programs. Moreover, Russian-speaking citizens of the Promised Land often half-jokingly argue that every resident of Israel understands their language. Just sometimes you need to talk a little louder than usual
.Greetings from Don Quixote!
Most of the Jews who once lived on the European continent, having moved to Israel, preferred to communicate not only in the languages of their former countries, but also in Yiddish. Yiddish was created in medieval Germany and is very reminiscent of German, only with an admixture of Aramaic, as well as the languages of the Slavic and Romance groups. However, it is now widespread in Israel, but mainly among older people who do not want to say goodbye to European youth. An almost similar situation exists with the Spanish Jews - Sephardim. In their historical homeland in the Pyrenees, they spoke not so much in the language of Don Quixote and Carmen as in his mixed with Hebrew. It is called Sephardic (variants - ladino, spaniel) and is very similar to medieval Spanish. In Israel, it is under the official protection of the state as a dying language.
