The languages of Israel

Israel has one official language, Hebrew, and one language with formal "special status", Arabic. In daily life this understates what is on the street. The country runs in at least seven significant languages, each the trace of a different immigration wave or community. This piece sets out the legal frame and the working picture.

Hebrew: a revived language

Hebrew is the unusual case in modern linguistic history of a language that was successfully revived as a daily spoken tongue. For most of the eighteen centuries between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the late nineteenth century, Hebrew survived primarily as a liturgical, scholarly and inter-community lingua franca rather than a day-to-day spoken language. The revival is conventionally associated with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who arrived in Ottoman Palestine in 1881 and pursued a deliberate programme of speaking only Hebrew at home and coining new vocabulary for modern life.

By the time the State of Israel was established in 1948, Hebrew was already the dominant spoken language of the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community). Hebrew was given equal status with Arabic and English in the 1948 declaration of independence and was the working language of every state institution from the start.

The 2018 Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People made Hebrew the sole official language of the state. Arabic, previously co-official, was given "special status".

Arabic: from official to special status

Arabic is the first language of approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens, including most Muslim Arab citizens, almost all Christian Arab citizens, and all Druze citizens. It was an official language from the British Mandate period through 2018, when the Nation-State Law downgraded it.

The "special status" formula in the 2018 law is unusual. The law specifies that the practical status Arabic held before the law (signage, court access, broadcast obligations) is not weakened. Critics argue that the symbolic change matters regardless; supporters argue that the change brought the law into line with the everyday role Arabic plays as a community rather than a national language.

Israeli Arabic differs in important features from Modern Standard Arabic and from neighbouring Levantine dialects. Public broadcasting in Arabic runs on Israeli state and commercial channels; a separate Arabic-medium school system runs in parallel to the Hebrew-medium system through secondary level.

Russian: the largest immigrant language

Between 1989 and the late 1990s, approximately one million people moved from the former Soviet Union to Israel. By the late 2010s, Russian-speakers were the third-largest language group in the country after Hebrew and Arabic. The community runs Russian-language newspapers (the largest is "Vesti"), television channels, theatres, schools and political parties.

The Russian-speaking second generation is now in its 20s and 30s and is bilingual in Russian and Hebrew. Russian remains a working language of family life, ethnic media, and a significant share of the Israeli technology workforce, but Hebrew has become the dominant language outside the home.

English, Amharic, French, Yiddish, Spanish

The four next-largest language communities, in rough order of size, each trace to a distinct wave or context:

English. The de facto language of international business, tourism and academia in Israel, and a substantial part of secondary education. English-speaking immigration from North America, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand has been continuous for decades and concentrates in Jerusalem and a handful of other centres.

Amharic. Spoken by the roughly 170,000 Ethiopian-Israeli community, who arrived primarily in two waves: Operation Moses (1984 to 1985) and Operation Solomon (1991), with continued smaller-scale immigration since.

French. Spoken by a community estimated in the hundreds of thousands, the result of two main flows: post-1956 Suez emigration from Egypt, North Africa and Morocco, and a more recent flow from metropolitan France since the early 2000s. Concentrated in Netanya, Ashdod, Jerusalem and parts of greater Tel Aviv.

Yiddish. The historical language of much of Ashkenazi European Jewry. Yiddish is in decline as a language of daily life but persists in parts of the Haredi community, particularly in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem neighbourhoods such as Mea Shearim.

Spanish / Ladino. A smaller but historically important presence. Spanish proper through Latin American immigration; Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) through Sephardic communities, now confined to a few thousand elderly speakers but actively preserved by the Israeli National Authority for Ladino.

What you see in public

Public road signage in Israel is conventionally trilingual: Hebrew, Arabic, English. Government forms and official communications are typically available in at least Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English; many also publish in Amharic and Tigrinya. Currency, postage stamps, identity documents and public-broadcaster channels reflect the same multilingual frame.

In one paragraph

Hebrew is Israel's sole official language since 2018; Arabic holds "special status" as a community rather than state language. Beyond the two, Russian (~1M speakers from the Soviet aliyah), English (international and academic), Amharic (Ethiopian community), French (North African and recent French immigration), Yiddish (Haredi communities) and Spanish/Ladino (Latin American and Sephardic communities) each carry the trace of a different immigration wave. Public communication runs in at least four languages by default.

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Sources

[1]: Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People (2018), Knesset. https://main.knesset.gov.il/

[2]: "Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the revival of Hebrew." Academy of the Hebrew Language. https://hebrew-academy.org.il/

[3]: Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 14 May 1948. https://www.gov.il/

[4]: "Nation-State Law: text and analysis." Israel Democracy Institute. https://en.idi.org.il/

[5]: "Arabic in Israel: legal status and daily use." Israeli Ministry of Education / Adalah analysis. https://www.adalah.org/

[6]: "Russian-speaking Israelis." Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities; CBS data on language of origin. https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/

[7]: Statistical Abstract of Israel 2025, Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/

[8]: "Operations Moses and Solomon: Ethiopian aliyah to Israel." Jewish Agency archive. https://www.jewishagency.org/

[9]: Israeli Government Service Portal, multilingual communications policy. https://www.gov.il/en/