Short answer: Hebrew. Hebrew is the official language of Israel, spoken by the large majority of its roughly ten million citizens. Arabic holds a special status defined in law, English is understood almost everywhere, and Russian is common thanks to one of the largest immigration waves in the country's history.
Hebrew: the official language, and a resurrection
Hebrew is the only language on Earth that died as a daily spoken tongue and came back to life. For centuries it survived as the language of prayer and study while Jewish communities spoke Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic, or the local language of wherever exile had taken them. Beginning in the late 1800s, revivalists led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda rebuilt it into a modern spoken language, coining words for things the Torah never needed, like newspapers and ice cream. Today it is the native language of millions, the language of Israeli TV, tech, and street signs, written right to left in its own alphabet.
Arabic: a special status defined by law
Arabic was an official language in the land from 1922, under the British Mandate, through 2018. In July 2018 the Knesset passed the Basic Law on the nation-state, which made Hebrew the state's official language and assigned Arabic "a special status," while stating explicitly that the change does not harm the standing Arabic had in practice before the law. Arabic remains on road signs, official documents, currency, and in the daily life of Israel's Arab citizens, roughly a fifth of the population.
English: unofficial, unavoidable
English has no official status, but you can live a full tourist life in Israel without a word of Hebrew. It appears on nearly every road sign alongside Hebrew and Arabic, dominates the tech industry, and is a mandatory school subject. Israelis famously switch to English the moment they detect an accent, which is either helpful or mildly insulting depending on how hard you have been practicing your Hebrew.
Russian, and everything else
The immigration wave from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s brought hundreds of thousands of Russian speakers, and Russian remains widely spoken, with its own media and store signage in many cities. You will also hear French, Amharic, Spanish, and Yiddish, the last especially in Haredi neighborhoods. Israel is a country of ingathered exiles, and it sounds like one.
A few Hebrew words worth knowing
Shalom covers hello, goodbye, and peace, which tells you a lot about the culture's priorities. Toda is thank you. Ahava is love. Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel live, has become the anthem phrase of Jewish pride worldwide. If a word ever earned a place on a shirt, it is these: our Shalom T-Shirt and Ahava Hebrew T-Shirt put the language itself front and center, and the full tee collection has the rest of the vocabulary covered.
The bottom line
Hebrew is the language of Israel, official and everywhere. Arabic holds a legally defined special status, English fills every gap, and a dozen diaspora languages hum underneath. The language itself is one of Zionism's quietest miracles: the only revived mother tongue in human history, spoken today by kids arguing about football.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these guides as facts change.
