Hebrew is an ancient Semitic language. The original language of the Old Testament, it continued to be used by Jews throughout the centuries for literary and liturgical purposes. In the Middle Ages different pronunciations grew up among Ashkenazim (Ashkenaz being the medieval Hebrew word for Germany) and Sephardim (Sepharad being the word for Spain).
In the late nineteenth century Hebrew was revived as a secular language by the Haskalah (“enlightenment”) movement in Europe, and with the rise of Zionism it was adopted as the official language of the State of Israel, where it is spoken with a modified Sephardic accent.
The Hebrew alphabet is written from right to left, and for general purposes uses only consonants (vowel pointing exists, but is understood). Visitors need not worry, as most important signs and notices are written in English characters, or in English, as well, as are menus in many restaurants.
ELIEZER BEN YEHUDA
Hebrew was transformed in the late nineteenth century by a scholar from Lithuania, Eliezer Ben Yehuda (born Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman, 1858–1922), who settled in Israel in 1881. He refused to speak any other language and dedicated himself to the revival of Hebrew as a living tongue, able to meet modern needs. His most outstanding contribution was the “Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew.” He also founded the Hebrew Language Council to promote, regulate, and develop the Hebrew language.
The second official language is Arabic. Hebrew is the most widely spoken, but Arabic is used in Arab schools, in Muslim religious courts, and in intercity directional signage. Arabic is taught in Israeli schools as a literary rather than a spoken language, and after school is soon forgotten.
English is widely spoken, as it is well taught in schools. At higher levels of business, in the professions, academe, and government, it is almost universally understood. Since the 1990s Russian has become important and is often used in commerce.
More than 50 percent of the Jews in Israel are Israeli-born, but their parents or grandparents came from more than a hundred different countries and spoke about eighty-five different languages or major dialects. One can still hear German, Yiddish, French, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and others—languages from all the countries in which Jews lived before their arrival in Israel—including Amharic, which is spoken in Ethiopia. There are twelve different language broadcasts.
Visitors quickly learn the Hebrew word shalom, which means “peace,” and is used for both “hello” and “goodbye.” Other words a visitor will soon pick up are: hutzpah (what a cheek!); dafka (in spite of); bevakashah (please); todah (thank you); beseder (okay); betah (of course); bidiyuk (exactly); ken (yes); lo (no); boker tov (good morning); erev tov (good evening ); laila tov (good night); ma shlomcha? (how are you, to a male); ma shlomaych? (how are you, to a female); slicha (excuse me); kama ze oleh? (how much does it cost); balagan (mess, actually a Russian word); and mazal tov (congratulations).
Lost in Translation
The writer, soon after his immigration to Israel, and after studying Hebrew at an ulpan, was looking for an address. He’d been told to turn left after the first traffic lights (ramzorim), and after driving for some time and not finding the traffic lights in question, he stopped to seek help from some pedestrians. In his brand-new Hebrew he asked, “Where are the mamserim [bastards]?” “Bastards?” was the reply, “Which bastards do you want? We have more than enough around here.”
Talking with one’s hands, arm waving, handshaking, hugging, kissing, back patting, arm touching, triumphant and obscene gesticulating (you’ll know which is which), standing or sitting too close, squeezing, shrugging (Israeli kids learn to shrug at an early age), are all part of the wide lexicon of Israeli nonverbal communications. Israelis adopt few defensive postures.
Israel has two state-owned channels that operate under KAN, the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation: the main channel, KAN 11, broadcasts news, current affairs, and cultural programs; MAKAN 33 broadcasts news and cultural affairs in Arabic. From August 2018, Israel’s Educational Television will be integrated into the Corporation as a dedicated children’s and youth channel. There are three Hebrew commercial channels, Keshet, Reshet, and Channel 10. Hour-long Hebrew-language news programs are broadcast every evening on KAN 11 (channel 11), Keshet (channel 12), Reshet (channel 13), and Channel Ten (channel 14) at 8:00 p.m.
All the channels air sitcoms, soap operas, and movies, imported and local, current affairs, sports (including live coverage of soccer, basketball, and other games), news commentaries, politics, music, cooking, travel, fashion, features on cultural and social issues, programs for children, programs for new immigrants, and a host of others.
Popular talk-show topics include religion, lifestyles, gender and cultural issues, and, first and foremost, politics. Some of these programs, particularly those on politics, end in chaos, with the participants interrupting each other and the host, and all talking at the same time.
i24news is an international 24-hour news and current affairs television channel based in Jaffa Port. It broadcasts in English, French, and Arabic, and is streamed live on the Internet. Its goal is to provide a balanced account of events in Israel to a global audience.
Almost 75 percent of the population is subscribed to multichannel television, which is transmitted either by “HOT” cable company or by “YES” satellite company. Both transmit a Russian channel and an Arabic channel, as well as CNN, BBC World, and Sky News, and entertainment programs in a host of other languages. The channel numbers vary according to the provider.
Various radio channels offer news on the hour, local news in English and other languages, current affairs, sports, including live coverage, twenty-four-hour news coverage, traffic reports, and music, both popular (Israeli, mainstream, and Middle Eastern) and classical.
TLV1 is an English-language Internet radio broadcasting from Tel Aviv. Details of English-language television and radio broadcasts can be found in the English-language newspapers.
A free press is a key component of Israel’s democracy, and nothing is held sacred. Seven Hebrew-language papers are published daily, plus an additional eleven in other languages, including two in English. The five leading Hebrew-language dailies are Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv, Haaretz, Yisrael Hayom (a free daily newspaper, first published in 2007), and Globes, Israel’s equivalent of the Financial Times. All the papers except Maariv are published on the Internet in Hebrew and English. Yedioth Ahronoth’s Internet site is called Ynet. The two English-language daily papers are the veteran Jerusalem Post and the English version of Haaretz, which is delivered together with the same day’s International New York Times. The leading national dailies of the USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and other Western countries are also available in Israel on the day of publication, or the day after.
There are numerous glossy Hebrew-language magazines featuring lifestyle, fashion, cuisine, travel, economics, army, Internet, sports, computers, motor vehicles, and entertainment. There are Russian-language magazines, and for English speakers, in addition to the wide choice of international magazines, there are the weekly Jerusalem Post and Haaretz lifestyle magazines, The Jerusalem Report, and the magazines published by the English-speaking residents’ associations.
The Times of Israel is a Jerusalem-based online newspaper founded in 2012. Numerous magazines catering to special interests are also published on the Internet.
Owned and operated by a government ministry until 1985, Israel’s telephone network was pathetically unable to meet the country’s needs. By 1980 the waiting list for telephone lines had reached 208,000. Local and international calls were outrageously expensive, and the time it took to install a new line or repair an existing line was excessively long.
In 1985 a state-controlled telecommunications company, Bezek, took over responsibility for the network, and in 1991 the company was floated on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, with the government selling 13.8 percent of its shares. During the 1990s private-sector companies were permitted to enter the cell phone and international calling services market. The competition led to vastly improved communication services and lowered cell phone and overseas tariffs to among the lowest in the world. The waiting list for telephone lines is a thing of the past, and there are many innovative services being developed in Israel.
The official telephone directory is the Yellow Pages, a combination of subscriber telephone numbers and advertisements printed in Hebrew, with English versions for different postal areas. One can dial 144 for directory information.
The cellular phone market is served by numerous companies. More than 90 percent of Israelis own a cell phone, one of the highest per capita rates in the world. In 2013, a Google survey showed that 57 percent of Israelis owned smartphones. The survey showed that Israelis use their phones often and in numerous settings, such as at home, at work, and walking in the street, and more than 50 percent are comfortable using them at social gatherings.
Cell phone numbers are freely given out, and Israelis will answer calls at all times. A successful television ad with the slogan “Israelis love to talk to each other” showed a group of friends standing side by side on a balcony, each engrossed in their own cell phone conversation. Interrupting a face-to-face conversation to answer a cell phone may seem rude in many countries, but in Israel it is quite normal and not seen as particularly discourteous.
Although smartphones entered the Israeli market in 2009, two years after they were launched in the rest of the world, Israelis have overtaken most other countries when it comes to smartphone usage. According to the 2014 study by Google and Ipsos MediaCT of smartphone use worldwide, 93 percent of Israelis search the Internet by means of their smartphones; 80 percent use them to update social networks and for applications and maps; 77 percent use them to watch YouTube and video clips; and 48 percent to watch TV programs.
In 1987 the Postal Authority took over responsibility for mail from the Communications Ministry. Over the next ten years the postal services improved, with the number of items delivered in Israel and abroad increasing by 70 percent, cutting delivery time from five to one or two days, and the establishment of messenger and security courier services. The number of annual express-mail items grew from 20,000 in 1987 to more than three million at the turn of the century.
But beware. If a mailed item is too large for the home mailbox it will be returned to the post office, from where it must be collected. Two reminders will be sent, and if the item is not collected within a certain time it will be returned to the sender. On the other hand, postal clerks, once abrupt and unhelpful, now live up to the image of the smart red-and-white post offices and their service is generally friendly and professional. Their customers now wait patiently for attention in disciplined lines.
Postmen don’t wear uniforms.
In this overview there has inevitably been a reliance on many generalizations—unavoidable when writing about a country as diverse as Israel—but the facts are remarkable. In seventy years Israel has grown from a strip of land containing little more than 600,000 Jewish inhabitants to a Jewish population numbering more than 6,000,000 and a diverse non-Jewish population that participates in all areas of public life. A country of immigrants, it has absorbed people from all corners of the globe. Some came in waves and others in trickles, many of whom, in the early years, were damaged in mind and body by their experiences of persecution, whether in Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East..
From an agriculture-based, poor economy, Israel has developed industries, particularly in high technology, and innovative products and services that are world leaders in their fields. In the course of defending itself in wars and with continuing threats to its security, the Israel Defense Force has become a formidable fighting machine, while retaining its “citizens’ army” ethos. Israel’s infrastructure in almost all areas matches those of the most advanced of modern states. Despite a pronounced political and social polarization in recent years, the country’s democratic institutions remain among the most enlightened, their integrity an ever more critical counterbalance to the whims of ambitious politicians and populist platforms. Seismic changes in the wider regional power balance will also require adept statesmanship to improve the country’s political and security standing as old threats take on new significance.
These facts alone might not be enough to persuade the reader to pack his or her bags for a visit, other than for business or some other specific purpose. More compelling are the attractions of Israel’s cities, its historical and religious landmarks, its rich cultural life, its countryside, its beaches, seas, and almost year-round sunshine, and, finally, its people. For along with the energy, courage, intelligence, and resourcefulness that in a brief span of history have produced so much change and progress, there is openness, spontaneity, and an irresistible passion for life that makes every visit an enjoyable and stimulating experience.
Copyright © 2018 Kuperard
Revised and updated edition 2018
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