what is the dominant language in israel?
Hebrew Language
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 Hebrew and Arabic are the only official languages of the State of Israel . 

entailment
 For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language , and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism , with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath . Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda , who arrived in Palestine in 1881 . It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times . Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Modern Standard Arabic . 

entailment
 Russian and a number of other immigrant languages are widely used in Israel , because ethnic Jews from dozens of countries from all around the world have settled in the area . Russian is the major immigrant language of Jews living in Israel . Since 1967 , millions of Russian Jews have settled in the country , and a great influx of Jews from the post @-@ Soviet states took place in the 1990s . Today , Russian is used in cultural events , the educational system and other public domains . 

entailment
 Biblical Hebrew after the Second Temple period evolved into Mishnaic Hebrew , which ceased being spoken and developed into a literary language around 200 CE . Hebrew continued to be used as a literary and liturgical language in the form of Medieval Hebrew , and Hebrew began a revival process in the 19th century , culminating in Modern Hebrew becoming the official language of Israel . Currently , Classical Hebrew is generally taught in public schools in Israel , and Biblical Hebrew forms are sometimes used in Modern Hebrew literature , much as archaic and biblical constructions are used in Modern English literature . Since Modern Hebrew contains many biblical elements , Biblical Hebrew is fairly intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers . 

contradiction
 Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people , knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora . Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature , and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century , most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars . The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew , English , and Russian . Some Romance languages , particularly French and Spanish , are also widely used . Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language , but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel . In some places , the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group . For example , in Quebec , the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English , while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language . Similarly , South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans . Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies , Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews , but these policies have also affected neighboring communities . Today , Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post @-@ Soviet states , such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan , as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan , Georgia , and Tajikistan . Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling , Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one ( or nearly so ) , speaking French in Algeria , Morocco , and the city of Tunis , while most North Africans continue to use Arabic as their mother tongue . 
