“Here is the place of Golda Meir we slammed, and there is a quarter of our former people,” - Vladimir Vysotsky sang about the Promised Land. And he was very accurate in numbers. Moreover, in modern Israel, more than 20% of the inhabitants of this Middle Eastern country with a population of eight million speaks Russian, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. And according to this indicator, it is second only to the state languages - Hebrew and Arabic. At the same time, ahead of not only English, but also more than three dozen languages and dialects used in the country.
Jew - speak Hebrew
A native of pre-revolutionary Kiev and the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR, Golda Meir, who led the country's government from 1969 to 1974, knew Russian very well. That, of course, did not prevent her from knowing the main language of the Israeli state - Hebrew. According to employees of the same national statistical bureau, almost half of Israelis - 49% - consider Hebrew to be their native language. And almost everyone speaks it, regardless of place of birth or previous country of residence.
It is curious that at one time Hebrew, in which the Torah, sacred for all Jews, was written, was called a dead language and was used only in writing or religious rites, and its "relatives" - Aramaic and Yiddish, were considered colloquial. Hebrew, after almost a thousand years, found its second life thanks to another native of Tsarist Russia, only from the Vilna province. His name was Eliezer Ben Yehuda. It was he who came up with the slogan under which the current Israeli society lives, and which is approved by numerous Jewish diasporas in other countries: "Jew - speak Hebrew!"
Thanks to the many years of linguistic and propaganda activities of Ben Yehuda, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, a committee and the Academy for the Study of Hebrew were created, a dictionary of ancient and modern languages was published. And in November 1922, just 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 of Palestine, then under the British protectorate. After another quarter of a century, Hebrew, along with Arabic, will be recognized as the state language in the newly minted Israel. And the streets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa will be named after Eliezer.
Russian-speaking Israelis
As for Arabic, despite its legal status as equal to Hebrew, it is not very popular in the country. This is not even affected by the fact that almost every fifth modern Israelite called him family. The main reason for such a somewhat strange situation for the uninitiated is that since the inception of Israel, this country has been in a permanent state of armed conflicts with almost the entire Middle East environment. And that the main support for the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization, which is at war with Israel, is provided by the Arab countries. And once, by the way, the USSR also helped her.
If Israeli Arabs often try to hide their own linguistic knowledge and in everyday life, especially in large cities, use Hebrew almost exclusively, then no less numerous ex-Soviet, including Russian emigrants, on the contrary, in every possible way emphasize their origin. And they are not at all embarrassed by the Soviet past. Since the late 1980s, the Russian language has been heard everywhere in Israel - in shops and hotels, from radios and televisions, in theaters and in government agencies. There are even newspapers and a separate TV channel broadcasting not only local but also Russian programs. Moreover, the Russian-speaking citizens of the Promised Land often half-jokingly assert that their language in Israel is understood by every inhabitant of Israel. It's just that sometimes you need to speak 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 similar to German, only with an admixture of Aramaic, as well as the languages of the Slavic and Romance groups. However, it is now common in Israel, but mainly among older people who do not want to say goodbye to European youth. Almost a similar situation developed with the Spanish Jews - Sephardic. 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, Spagnol) and is very similar to medieval Spanish. In Israel it is under the official protection of the state as a dying language.
From Adygea to Ethiopia
According to statistics, more than eight million people live in Israel, and its citizens speak 39 languages and dialects. It is sometimes difficult to understand them even for indigenous people. Moreover, few people have ever heard of some languages - with the exception of their "carriers" themselves. This, of course, is not about English, French, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian and other European languages, which are quite common thanks to numerous immigrants from Europe and America.
In a country popular for its democracy and tolerance towards foreigners, including those looking for work, there are many immigrants from other states of the Asian continent - China, Thailand and the Philippines. In particular, the latter brought the Tagalog language to the Middle East. A certain proportion of the exotic to Israeli society is brought by the use of a small part of its population "imported" from Ethiopia Amharic, "arrived" from Uzbekistan Bukhara Persian dialect, "native" of the North Caucasus Adyghe and many others. A real "Babylonian mixing" of peoples and languages!
