What Language is Spoken in Israel?

David Svetsky Jan 03, 2025 3 min read

Short answer: As of July 2026, Hebrew is Israel's sole official language. Arabic, which was co-official for decades, holds a legally defined "special status" following the July 2018 Nation-State Basic Law, and it remains the mother tongue of roughly one-fifth of Israeli citizens. English is not official but functions as the everyday language of business, tourism, and academia, and Russian is widely spoken thanks to the roughly one million Soviet-era immigrants who arrived from 1989 onward.

The timeline: how Israel's languages got settled

1881: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, born in Lithuania in 1858 and now widely credited as the father of Modern Hebrew, immigrates to Ottoman Palestine and begins a deliberate program to revive Hebrew as a spoken language, insisting on Hebrew at home and coining hundreds of new words for modern life, as the Jewish Virtual Library records.
July 24, 1922: The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine designates English, Arabic, and Hebrew as the three official languages of the territory, formalizing Hebrew's official standing alongside Arabic, according to the Center for Israel Education.
1948: With Israel's establishment, Hebrew is already the dominant spoken language of the Jewish community (the Yishuv), and the new state carries forward Hebrew and Arabic as its two official languages, as the reference overview of Israel's languages documents.
1989 to the late 1990s: Roughly one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrive in Israel, making Russian the third-largest language group after Hebrew and Arabic, with its own newspapers, media, and schools, per Ethnologue.
July 19, 2018: The Knesset passes the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People by 62 votes to 55, making Hebrew the sole official language and downgrading Arabic from official status to a "special status," while stating that this does not harm the status Arabic held before the law took effect. Both NPR and Al Jazeera reported the vote.

Hebrew, Arabic, and the languages of daily life

Israel is one of the few places on earth where an ancient language was brought back into everyday use. Modern Hebrew is built on Biblical Hebrew and adapted with new vocabulary for modern life, and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858 to 1922) is widely credited as its father. The Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, remains central to Jewish practice, and many everyday Hebrew expressions still trace back to those texts, which is part of why the language carries so much national identity.

On official status, the picture shifted in 2018. Before then, Hebrew and Arabic were both official, a standing that reached back to the British Mandate. The Nation-State Basic Law made Hebrew the sole official language and gave Arabic a special status rather than co-official status, and the law itself states that this does not harm the status Arabic held before the law took effect. Arabic remains the first language of roughly one-fifth of Israeli citizens.

Beyond the two, daily life in Israel is genuinely multilingual. English, while never official, functions as the de facto language of international business, tourism, and academia, according to Ethnologue, so visitors usually get by comfortably. Russian is spoken by a large share of the population, estimated around 15 percent as of 2022, a legacy of the former-Soviet immigration wave. And Israel's wider linguistic diversity, with dozens of languages catalogued by Ethnologue, reflects an immigrant and multicultural society drawn from communities across the world.

The bottom line

Israel's linguistic reality is warm and layered. Hebrew, a revived ancient language and a symbol of national identity, is today the country's sole official language. Arabic holds a legally defined special status and remains the mother tongue of a large minority. English and Russian are widely used in daily life. The single most important update to the old picture is this: Hebrew and Arabic are no longer both official. Since the July 2018 Nation-State Law, Hebrew stands as the sole official language, and Arabic's status is "special."

Carry the language with you

If Hebrew is the heartbeat of Israeli identity, you can wear a little of it. Our Shalom cotton tee puts one of the language's most beloved words, shalom (hello, goodbye, and peace all at once), right where people can read it. For more designs built around Hebrew phrases and Israeli pride, browse the Am Yisrael Chai collection, and every purchase supports Israel directly.

Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.