Russian as a heritage language in Israel by

lizaketal — 2024-12-22 09:21:20 UTC

A heritage language is a language that isn’t the dominant language of a region, but is still spoken by immigrants in their homes. Any language can be a heritage language, depending on the surrounding social context. Let's look closer at the Russian language in Israel. As of 2022, Russian-speakers number around 1,300,000 people, or 15% of the Israeli population. This number includes immigrants from the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states other than Russia.

https://cal.org/heritage/pdfs/briefs/What-is-a-Heritage-Language.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Israel

lizaketal — 2024-12-24 09:48:14 UTC

Three decades have passed since the 1990s when the largest Aliyah in Israeli history happened. One million Russian-speaking Jews immigrated, increasing the country’s Jewish population by 20%. Many Russian immigrants to Israel held academic degrees from their country of origin. Around 150,000 Russian children under 17 immigrated in this wave, were enrolled in Israeli education. The largest population of Russian immigrants live in the coastline city of Ashdod in southern Israel. Also, many Russian Israelis reside in Haifa, Ashkelon and Jerusalem. Russian Jews are proud of their Russian culture; however, they are mostly assimilated into Israel's society.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738059319308235

lizaketal — 2024-12-27 15:43:54 UTC

Maintaining Russian as a heritage language among children in Israel presents several challenges. In school Hebrew is dominant and at home children speak Russian. Another challenge is language attrition (the process of decreasing proficiency in or losing a language) and limited Russian-language media access for children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language_in_Israel?utm_source=chatgpt.com

lizaketal — 2024-12-27 16:04:11 UTC

Russian speaking Israelis wanted to feel at home in their new land and as a result enriched Israeli culture. One of the first institutions with a cultural connection to Russian was the Gesher Theater. It was founded by Russian immigrants in Tel Aviv in 1991. It used to be a bilingual theater with the same group able to perform a play in two languages.

The Hebrew language was also influenced by the introduction of Russian music in translation. In 1989, Arkadi Duchin, who had immigrated to Israel in 1978 at the age of 15, translated the music and poetry of Vladimir Vysotsky to the Hebrew language.

Additionally, Israelis began to be interested in classic Russian literature, which began to be translated into Hebrew. Many works by Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy were brought to a new life.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/a-russian-infusion-406784

lizaketal — 2024-12-27 16:12:50 UTC

lizaketal — 2025-01-10 09:18:35 UTC

I moved to Israel with my family from Belarus in 2017, knowing only the word "shalom" in Hebrew. Since then, I’ve become a fluent Hebrew speaker, but Russian still plays a significant role in my life. I continue speaking Russian with my parents and extended family, though I mostly speak Hebrew and English with my friends. With my Russian-speaking friends in Israel, we often mix Russian and Hebrew, switching between the two languages without even noticing.

When I visit Belarus, I’m reminded that I speak Russian with an accent, which gives me a slight feeling of not fully belonging to my first motherland. For that reason, I keep reading Russian classics to maintain the high level of my first language and to make fewer mistakes.

Another example is my niece, who came to Israel at the age of two. She was placed in a Russian-speaking daycare and learned conversational Russian very well. Now she is nine, and her writing is full of mistakes. Nevertheless, I love the birthday cards she writes for me in Russian. They are dear and special, just like her Russian spelling.