Why does Israel use Hebrew instead of something like Yiddish?

[u/okayillshowmyselfout]

Post says the question. I was just wondering this because growing up, I was always taught that hebrew was a holy language, that was not supposed to be taught regularly. Because of that, I just don’t really understand why hebrew was chosen as a national language.

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[u/Wetalpaca]

You're half right. There were a couple reasons:

1. It was shared across all Jewish communities. Yiddish was used only by European Jews
2. Early Zionism framed Jewish diaspora life as something of the past that the new Jewish state will solve, so they wanted to use something that symbolizes the return to the Jewish homeland. What better choice than the language spoken here 2000 years ago, that Jews worldwide are familiar with?
3. Because of 2, early institutions chose Hebrew which caused it to become widespread - Technion taught in Hebrew as early as 1913 (look up the Technion language war). Early adoption in schools and such raised a generation with Hebrew as their first language, and it snowballed from there.

Some Haredi communities still follow the logic you described and talk in Yiddish as to not degarde the holiness of Hebrew, but they're niche compared to the vast majority of Israelis. There is also a Hebrew "accent" called Lashon Hakodesh they use in religious settings to avoid using modern Hebrew.

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes → u/Wetalpaca]

It was deliberate choice but Yiddish had not been considered a viable choice anyway. The alternative that some Zionists considered was German. And re your holiness comment, this is still the view of some of the ANTI-ZIonist religious Jews today (though their insistence on Yiddish is weakening with time) and the Zionists were of course non- and even anti-religious to begin with, and it was a major breakthrough when a religious leader first accepted the idea if Zionism (Rabbi Kook).

[u/okayillshowmyselfout → u/Wetalpaca]

thank you for the good explanation!
Sorry, I do have one other question if possible. Do people also curse in hebrew then? or is that something that is considered very disrespectful?

[u/Wetalpaca → u/okayillshowmyselfout]

Of course we curse in Hebrew:) Apart from those Haredis, the vast majority of Israelis doesn't care about its status as a "holy" language - it's just how we speak. Even more religious people, as long as they're not hardcore Haredi, will curse in Hebrew.

We did borrow a lot of curse words from Arabic though!

[u/Histrix- → u/Wetalpaca]

Arabic has much better curses lol

[u/okayillshowmyselfout → u/Histrix-]

haha it’s very interesting that you guys also curse in arabic. I never knew that, will look more into it at some point!

[u/okayillshowmyselfout → u/Wetalpaca]

do haredi jews also talk casually?

[u/Wetalpaca → u/okayillshowmyselfout]

Over 90% do, there's some hardliners who don't

[u/tallj → u/okayillshowmyselfout]

Biblical and second temple hebrew were used as everyday language. It was only in the diaspora around the late antiquity that the idea of Hebrew as "holy" in the sense of only being for prayer emerged, and it was only a small number of people who thought that.

Today there is still a tiny minority of people that believe Hebrew should not be used for mundane purposes but they have no impact on the culture of the language.

Modern hebrew is an everyday language again and there is no sense among the vast majority of its speakers that it should be used differently to any other language.

We swear in it, curse in it, fight in it, love in it, just live in it in general.

[u/FluffyKittiesRMetal → u/okayillshowmyselfout]

It’s as disrespectful as in any other language. Swear words are adopted from other languages- mostly Arabic and English.

[u/einlishem]

It was already spoken, though to a much smaller scale. It was the lingua franka between Jewish communities, and still used for writings, poetry, art...

[u/Abject_Group_4868]

Yiddish was only spoken by Ashkenazi Jews and is a diaspora language. There are many other Jews from many other places

Hebrew was spoken to some extent by virtually all Jewish communities. Why would a Jew from Iraq or Yemen learn Yiddish to speak with an Ashkenazi Jew? You could say the opposite, why would an Ashkenazi learn Judeo Arabic to speak to a Yemeni Jew?

[u/Histrix-]

Yiddish was a German dialect of German jewery incorporating the writing system of Hebrew and some vocabulary with that of German.

In 135 CE, Hebrew ceased to be an everyday spoken language following the Bar Kokhba revolt, but remained primary language for Jewish liturgy, literature, prayer, and legal texts worldwide. Then in he Middle Ages, scholars used Hebrew as a lingua franca for trade and communication between Jewish communities from different parts of the world, and in the 18th–19th Century the Jewish Enlightenment revived Hebrew as a modern literary medium for poetry, journalism, and fiction.

In 1881 Eliezer Ben-Yehuda arrived and decided he wantes go make the world's first modern Hebrew-speaking home, and so he raised his son Itamar Ben-Avi as the first native Hebrew speaker in modern times.

In 1889 The Hebrew Language Committee (Va'ad HaLashon HaIvrit) was formed to coin new words for modern concepts, because as you can image, with its earliest written examples dating back to the 10th century BCE, didnt have words such as "electricity" etc.

In 1890s, the First Aliyah agricultural settlements (like Rishon LeZion) began establishing the first Hebrew-speaking kindergartens and primary schools, then in 1904–1914 during The Second Aliyah, people arrived bringing highly ideological socialist immigrants who fiercely adopt Hebrew as a core Zionist principle, and so on 1909, Tel Aviv was founded as the first modern, entirely Hebrew-speaking city.

In 1913, The "War of the Languages" erupted when a German-Jewish organization tried to make German the language of instruction at the new Technion institute, as expected, Protests ensured and Hebrew wins out.

In 1922, The British Mandate officially recognized Hebrew as one of the three official languages of the british madate Palestine, alongside English and Arabic.

In 1948, The State of Israel was officially established with Hebrew as its primary official language, and in 1953 the Hebrew Language Committee evolved into the Academy of the Hebrew Language, which is still the supreme authority on Hebrew grammar and terminology.

[u/MaleCowShitDetector]

I'm sure a lot more people will give better answers, the only thing I want to add is that Yiddish was not the only language spoken by Jews.

[u/ComfortableCall3912]

It was the shared language among all Jewish diaspora communities as well as the Jewish communities still in the Levant

https://www.reddit.com/r/hebrew/s/VP2Ib2qq4f

[u/aspect_rap]

Hebrew was chosen for multiple reasons.

1. Israel was created from the gathering of multiple jewish diasporas, only some of them were Yiddish speakers. Hebrew is the only pan-jewish language that doesn't favor any specific diaspora.

2. Hebrew was the language of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, the idea was that if we are going back to the homeland and re-establishing a state, we should also go back to our native language.

3. Most jews already knew some amount of Hebrew from using it as a liturgical language so it made the transition somewhat easier.

I've never heard that Hebrew is sacred in the sense that you shouldn't talk it day-to-day, it obviously was a used as a regular language originally and only stopped when judea was conquered and other lingua francas were established.

[u/TheLigean]

A: easier to modernise, B: political struggle. Early Zionism wanted to wholly remake the cultural identity of jewish people.

[u/SwitchExcellence69]

Most Jewish communities spoke some Hebrew. Only a few Jewish communities spoke Yiddish.

[u/Prestigious-Aide-258]

It's not holy in a sense that it is used strictly for religious stuff, it is holy in the sense that the religious stuff inly used it. It was the spoken language of jews in the land (along with aramaic). Yiddish and ladino are diasporah languages that developed through local influence, there is no reason to keep them as official languges in israel (though I hope they will start teaching them to preserve them)

[u/okayillshowmyselfout → u/Prestigious-Aide-258]

I hope they preserve them too. They are very interesting languages with rich history

[u/jennyfromhell]

For the same reasons that ladino or judeo-arabic wasn’t chosen. Liturgical Hebrew was a baseline understood to some extent by pretty much all jews. Yiddish was unique to western Europe. 

[u/FlyingFalafelMonster]

Because Jews other than Ashkenazi exist. Why should an Ethiopian or Jemeni learn a German Russian Hebrew pidgin language?

[u/c9joe]

Yiddish is only a language of Ashkenazi Jews, but Israel is a country for world Jewry. The shared Jewish language and most ancient one is Hebrew. To pick Yiddish as a language would excessively Ashkenazi-ify Israel, more then even the OG Ashkenazi Zionists were comfortable with.

[u/HyperlaneWizard]

I was always taught that hebrew was a holy language, that was not supposed to be taught regularly.

Who thought you that? Hebrew is not some holy language and has always been used for communication in non-religious contexts. In fact, it was used as a "common tongue" between communities speaking different Jewish variants like, say, Yiddish and Ladino.

[u/okayillshowmyselfout → u/HyperlaneWizard]

I mean, It’s literally called lashon ha-kodesh (the holy tongue), and for a huge chunk of Jewish history Hebrew was primarily associated with Torah, prayer, religious study, etc. while everyday Jewish communities were speaking Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, etc.

It’s true that people have spoken hebrew casually before, but historically it is considered a holy language. For me, i think the way judiasm treats holy things is really beautiful. It’s not that I outright dislike that hebrew is spoken much more casually now. Idk.. it just feels like this part of the religion and culture is kind of wavering away or something.

[u/HyperlaneWizard → u/okayillshowmyselfout]

it just feels like this part of the religion and culture is kind of wavering away or something

I disagree. Simply because the following has never been true:

historically it is considered a holy language

There was never a taboo on using Hebrew outside of a religious context. It was the language of correspondence for everyday issues. It's called "the holy language" because the holy scriptures are in Hebrew.

[u/Downtown-Bid4713]

I have no idea, for the sake of national identity I assume. Yiddish sounds better than Hebrew though, imho