Throughout “The Israelis” reading by Rosenthal, I found a consistent subject that cut across every group discussed in the “One nation many tribes” section of the book. What really got my attention were the many different languages that can be found in Israel, which continued to resurface in the reading. As I continued to read the chapters it become clear that Israel is a country full of linguistic diversity. In the first section, Rosenthal discusses the birth of Hebrew as a spoken language (Rosenthal, P. 101). Ben-Yahuda wanted to make Hebrew the language of the Jews to unite them through a language. He only spoke Hebrew to his son, and his son was the first Jew to speak Hebrew in thousands of years (Rosenthal, P. 102). Ben-Yahuda, revive Hebrew and now it is one of the official languages of Israel.
It is especially interesting to read about the different pronunciations of Hebrew. Rosenthal says that Ben-Yahuda wanted to keep the Sephardi dialect. Ben-Yahuda believed that this dialect would bring the Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi Jews closer together and would created less linguistic differences. What is interesting is that even though there was an attempt to create a Hebrew dialect that everyone spoke, there were still certain distinctions in accents. Another major reason Israel is so linguistically diverse is the fact that it is a nation of immigrants. In the reading, Mizrahi Jews could still notice a difference in the Ashkenazi accent, and did not consider it “ ‘real’ Hebrew” (Rosenthal, P. 115). Rosenthal also describes the Mizrahi Jews often using their own way of pronouncing words. She describes Meir a soccer coach as using “Mizrahi Arabic Slang” this is a great example of how many extremely diverse Israel is, and what better way to see it but through the languages spoken there. Rosenthal describes Meir entering his home and his wife is cooking and they greet each other in Hebrew and Judeo- Moroccan (Rosenthal, P. 127). Another example of this great diversity in the book was that of the Mizrahi Parents being spoken to about their children by educators in Hebrew and North African Arabic.
As I mentioned before there was a major change in language when the Russians arrived in Israel as well as the Ethiopian Jews. In the introduction of the Russian population in Israel, Rosenthal first and foremost mentions the few Hebrew words a Boris Katz knew upon arriving in Israel. The Russian population as we have discussed in class and in read in many of the readings for class discuss the fact that Russian immigrants had received superlative educations and came to Israel as doctors, engineers and scientists. The influx of Russian immigrants changed the Israeli language demographics, according to Rosenthal one out of five Israelis speaks Russian. Stores have signs in Cyrillic (Rosenthal, P.131). There are even cities (Ashkelon is one) in Israel where Russian is the dominant language (Rosenthal, P. 132). In this cities the people do not keep kosher and do not hold many Jewish practices.
Gregory was a Russian immigrant who recalled wanting to study Judaism but his grandfather would not teach him because he feared they would be persecuted. Gregory describes his experience with Hebrew as “…I feel in love with Hebrew; it awakened a strong Jewish feeling inside me” (Rosenthal, P.135). It is really interesting how a language really does unite people, but can also separate and make us different from one another.
In looking at Israel and the many languages it has, I must mention the story of the Ethiopian man on the bus. An older Ethiopia Jew was riding the bus when there was a bomb threat the bus driver instructed everyone to get out, the Ethiopian man did not speak any Hebrew and lost his life (Rosenthal, P. 159).
In a haaretz.com article written about a year ago, Making Hebrew the only national language of Israel was up for debate. In the reading the article I could not understand how a small, yet colossally diverse country could make legal changes to the national language. Israel’s national languages are Hebrew and Arabic, yet the state is full of so many more different languages. It really shows how diverse a country it has become over the years.
Overall, I think Rosenthal is a reliable, to begin with these chapters do not have anything to do with the language these different groups speak, this is not the focus of the chapters, yet the chapters are sprinkled with these language differences, and how they often stigmatize groups in Israel. I attempted to find map that would show the Israeli states different language demographics but had a very difficult time finding it. There is not a lot on the web about Israel in a linguistic sense, and most of the material was academic journals that were impossible to access and link to.
Here is a fun video I found that teaches you some Hebrew words!
0 comments:
Post a Comment