Heritage Languages in Israel: A Multilingual Tapestry with Hebrew Threads

Multilingualism in Israel emerged thousands of years ago with Hebrew, Judeo-Aramaic, and Greek all playing meaningful roles. Today`s multilingualism started to take shape with the return of Jews at the end of the nineteenth century and the revitalization of Hebrew. This reverse migration has given rise to a complex multilingual tapestry of 40–50 Heritage Languages (HLs) spoken by 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation immigrants, as well as indigenous vernaculars of Arabic. In the current chapter, we select five HLs (English, Russian, Amharic, Yiddish, and Juhuri), which vary considerably in the number of speakers, social status as perceived by in-group speakers and by the outside world, the presence and transmission of literacy, and by the aspiration of the speakers to integrate into Israeli society. Despite all these differences, all HLs interact with and are influenced to greater or lesser degrees by Hebrew, the only official language of the State of Israel, giving rise to hybrid versions identifiable with bilingual speakers of the particular language pair. The chapter overviews the linguistic and sociolinguistic properties of these HLs and discusses potential mechanisms that may account for divergence from native speakers in the country of origin or dominant speakers of the HL.