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Intangible Cultural Heritage of Israel Center
ORAL TRADITIONS
The domain encompassing oral traditions and expressions is highly varied, incorporating linguistic and performative forms such as proverbs, folktales, legends, epic poetry, invocations, songs, and dramatic enactments. These communicative vehicles serve as the primary mechanisms for the intergenerational transmission of institutionalized knowledge, cultural paradigms, societal values, and collective historical memory. However, echoing the systemic vulnerabilities shared by other sectors of intangible cultural heritage, oral traditions face acute existential threats. These destabilizing pressures are driven primarily by rapid global urbanization, large-scale demographic migration, widespread industrialization, and localized environmental changes [1].
The primary objective in safeguarding oral traditions and expressions involves preserving their active, functional integration into the daily life of contemporary society. Consequently, maintaining viable structural pathways for direct interpersonal knowledge transmission remains critical. This requires creating deliberately sustained opportunities for elders to engage with younger generations, thereby facilitating narrative transmission within both domestic settings and formal academic environments. Because oral expressions routinely constitute a foundational element of community festivals and cultural celebrations, these events require systemic promotion. Simultaneously, the development of modern performance environments, such as dedicated storytelling festivals, must be actively encouraged. These contemporary platforms allow traditional creative expressions to establish alternative, evolutionary pathways of articulation. Finally, local communities, academic researchers, and cultural institutions can leverage information technology to systematically document and archive the full semantic depth of these traditions, specifically accounting for localized textual variations and distinct performative styles [2].
Languages in Israel
The Israeli populace constitutes a highly heterogeneous demographic entity characterized by profound linguistic and cultural pluralism, within which approximately thirty-five distinct languages and localized vernacular dialects are actively spoken. Standard Modern Hebrew serves as the primary official language of the nation and functions as the foundational medium for public life, governance, and daily societal interaction. Concurrently, Arabic is heavily utilized, primarily by the Arab-Israeli citizenry who comprise roughly twenty percent—or one-fifth—of the country's total population. Furthermore, English is widely spoken as a proficient secondary language by the vast majority of Israeli citizens, while Russian remains extensively used across the country due to the massive influx of immigrants who arrived from the former Soviet Union[3].
Modern Hebrew emerged through a monumental linguistic revival initiative that commenced during the late nineteenth century. Syntactically and morphologically, it is structurally rooted in various historical dialects of ancient Hebrew, while also exhibiting lexical and stylistic influences from a multitude of foreign tongues. [4] The ideological movement dedicated to resurrecting Hebrew as a vernacular, spoken language gained significant traction among the early waves of Jewish Zionist pioneers during the 1880s. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his contemporaries pioneered this linguistic transformation by establishing the first Hebrew-medium academic institutions, circulating newspapers, and creating foundational cultural entities. [5] Following Ben-Yehuda’s immigration to Eretz Yisrael, and heavily accelerated by the sociolinguistic impetus of the Second Aliyah (1905–1914), Hebrew successfully asserted itself as the singular official and daily spoken language of the Jewish community. Consequently, upon the formal declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, the newly established government designated Hebrew as the nation's de facto official language. [6] In contrast to this mainstream linguistic trajectory, Yiddish continues to be routinely spoken within various Ashkenazi Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) communities globally, frequently serving as the primary native tongue for members belonging to specific Hasidic dynasties within those sectors. [7]
Many other languages are used by large sectors of the Israeli population, including:
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Arabic is the native language among Israeli-Arabs. Today, the figure stands at about 1.6 million, and although most are proficient in Hebrew, Arabic remains their primary native language. In addition, a significant number of Israeli Jews know spoken Arabic. Arabic is the native language of older generations of Mizrahi Jews who immigrated from Arabic-speaking countries. Arabic lessons are widespread in Hebrew-speaking schools from the seventh through ninth grades.
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Russian: Over 20% of Israelis are fluent in Russian after mass Jewish immigration from Russia. Some Israeli schools offer Russian language courses. As of 2017, there are up to 1.5 million Russian-speaking Israelis.
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French is spoken by many Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian Jews, either as a native or second language; French is also spoken by the increasing number of new immigrants from France. The French embassy's Institut Français supports French studies in Israeli schools. Tel Aviv University is a member of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF).
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Romanian: It is estimated that 82,300 first-generation and 126,200 second-generation Romanian Jews lived in Israel by 2012
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Yiddish: The language of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe and the second most widely spoken Jewish language, Yiddish is a Germanic language, but incorporates elements of Hebrew.
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German is spoken natively by around 100,000 Israelis.
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Amharic: Spoken by most of Israel's 130,000 Ethiopian Jews
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Georgian/Judaeo-Georgian: Although most Georgian Jewish immigrants speak Russian, they converse among themselves in Georgian.
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Ladino: The Sephardi Jewish language and the third most widely spoken Jewish language, Ladino is a variant of medieval Spanish, intermixed with Hebrew and with vocabulary from various other languages where Jews emigrated after being expelled from Spain. It is spoken by many Sephardi Jews. Today there is a state-supported authority for preserving the Ladino culture.
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Polish: Polish was spoken by the large number of immigrants from Poland. Today, most were born and raised in Poland, speak the language fluently amongst themselves, and have made attempts to impart the language to their children.
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Yemenite Hebrew: In the Yemenite dialect, all Hebrew letters have a distinct sound. Yemenite Jews spoke in regional Judeo-Arabic.
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Ukrainian: While most Ukrainian Jews speak Russian, there is still a segment of Ukrainian speakers.
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Spanish: Spanish is spoken by Jews from Argentina and other olim from other Spanish-speaking countries, as well as by some Sephardi groups. The popularity of operas from Argentina and Venezuela, broadcast in Spanish with Hebrew subtitles by Viva in the 1990s, has extended the understanding of the language.
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Italian/Judaeo-Italian: In addition to being spoken by Italian Jews, Italian is also spoken by many Jews from Libya and immigrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia as a primary or second language.
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Hungarian: Hungarian is spoken by approximately 70,000 Hungarian Jews in Israel.
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Turkish: Turkish is spoken by some of the 77,000 Turkish Jews and their families. Many of the Turkish speakers in Israel also speak Ladino.
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Persian: Persian is spoken by some of the 135,000 Iranian Jews who immigrated from Iran.
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Kayla and Qwara: These languages are spoken by Ethiopian Jews in addition to Amharic.
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Chinese, Filipino, and Thai: Spoken by a few Israeli Jews and non-Jewish immigrants from China, the Philippines, and Thailand. It is estimated that there are 180,000
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Marathi: Marathi is the language of Bene Israel – Indian Jews from the Konkan coast of India. They migrated to Israel beginning in 1948. In 1977, they numbered about 20,000. Concentrations of Marathi speakers are found in the towns of Dimona and Beersheba.
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Malayalam: Judeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Jews from Kerala, in South India.
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Bukhori: Bukhori is spoken by the Bukharian Jews who immigrated from Central Asia.
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Jewish Neo-Aramaic: Jewish Neo-Aramaic is the native language spoken by Kurdish Jews who immigrated to Israel from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran during the 1940s and 1950s.
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Greek: Greek is spoken by the Greek Orthodox Church and by several Greek Jews.
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Adyghe language: spoken by the Adyghe people in two villages in the north of Israel.
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Abzakh dialect (Adyghe): spoken by Circassians in the village of Rehaniya in Israel
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Israeli Sign Language is the main language amongst deaf Israelis. It comes from Jewish educators of the Deaf from Germany who relocated to start the first school for the deaf in Israel.
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UNESCO - ICH: https://ich.unesco.org/en/oral-traditions-and-expressions-00053
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Club UNESCO Compse: https://clubunescocompse.com/en/Traditions-and-oral-expressions
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Milestonelocc: https://www.milestoneloc.com/what-language-is-spoken-in-israel
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https://www.polilingua.com/blog/post/languages-spoken-in-israel.htm
Literature
The foundations of modern Israeli writing were laid by a group of literary pioneers from the Second Aliyah, including Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the only Nobel Prize winner for literature in Hebrew, Moshe Smilansky, Yosef Haim Brenner, David Shimoni, and Jacob Fichman.
In 1921, 70 writers met in Tel Aviv and founded the Hebrew Writers' Association. Great figures were Bialik, Ahad Ha-Am, and Tchernichovsky; they exerted a great influence on younger Hebrew writers. Also Yitzhak Shami and Yehuda Burla, Sephardi Jews whose families migrated to Israel in the 19th and 18th centuries, respectively. Then also the writers Uri Zvi Greenberg and Avraham Shlonsky make their Aliyah.
The main experience of this generation of artists lies in the establishment of the State of Israel; among the writers of this generation are: Moshe Shamir, Haim Hefer, S. Yizhar, Mordechai Tabib, David Shachar, Natan Shaham, Aharon Megged, Hanoch Bartov, Shlomo Nitzan, Yehudit Hendel, Yonat and Alexander Sand, Yigal Mossinson, Benjamin Tamuz, Naomi Frankel, Aharon Amir, Ida Zurit, David Shaham and more. In parallel to this generation, there was a smaller group of artists in Israel, led by Yonatan Ratosh, the Canaanites
The poets of this generation were: Avraham Shlonsky , Natan Alterman , Amir Gilboa , Zerubavel Gilad , Haim Guri , P. Hillel , Benjamin Galai , Yitzhak Shalev , Abba Kovner , Yechiel Mer , Ozer Rabin , Tuvia Rivner , Avner Trainin , Shlomo Tanai , Nathan Yonatan, and others.
The plays featured mainly Nissim Aloni, Yigal Mossinson, Moshe Shamir, Benjamin Galai, Nathan Shaham, Aharon Megged, and others.
The waves of immigration at the beginning of the state also produced artists who contributed greatly to Hebrew literature, such as Dan Ben Amotz and Ephraim Kishon, who brought cultural baggage from their country of birth and adapted it to Israeli society.
The writers of the sixties of the 20th century, called by critics of literature Dan Miron and Gabriel Moked the generation of the state, were also called the "New Wave" by Aharon Megged and Gershon Shaked.
Among the writers of this generation were prominent: Amos Oz , AB Joshua , Amalia Kahana-Carmon , Aharon Appelfeld , Yehoshua Kenaz , Shulamit Hareven , Isaac Orpaz , Kaniuk , Dan Tsalka , Pinhas Sadeh , Rachel Eitan , Amnon the use , Yeshayahu Koren ,Ehud Ben-Ezer , Shulamit Lapid , Sami Michael , Shamai Golan , Shimon Blass , Dan Shavit and more.
Among the poets were: Yehuda Amichai , Moshe Dor , Moshe Ben Shaul , Arie Sivan , Andad Eldan , David Avidan , Dan Pagis , Natan Zach , Dalia Ravikovitch , Israel Pinkas , Asher Reich , Yona Wallach , Meir Wieseltier , Yair Horowitz , Eitan Eitan , Yechiel Chazak , Israel Har , Itamar Yaoz-Cast , Jacob Besser , Israel Eliraz, and more .
The literature of the new wave tends to follow the changes in Western literature, while favoring avant-garde writing styles in fiction. There is a preference for concentrating on the individual over the human condition, and the hero wears a new figure, an anti-hero figure.
During the 1970s, among the writers of this wave were prominent Yaakov Shabtai, Yitzhak Ben-Ner, Haim Be'er, Ruth Almog, Eli Amir, Israel Hameiri, Yaakov Bochan, David Schitz, Arie Samo, Avraham Hefner, Yitzhak Laor, David Grossman, and Meir Shalev.
Among the poets are: Maya Bejerano, Yosef Sharon, Roni Someck, Amir Or, Alon Altres, and others.
Yehoshua Sobol, Hillel Mittelpunkt, Shmuel Hasfari, and others were prominent in the theater.
Yotam Reubeni, Hezi Leskali, Ilan Schoenfeld, and other modern religious poets: Hava Pinhas-Cohen, Miron Isaacson, Admiel Kosman, and others.
Writers of the other wave is the title given by Professor Avraham Balaban to the writers of the second half of the eighties of the 20th century and the nineties of the twentieth century in his book "Another Wave," published in 1995. The other wave writers belong to the postmodernist stream, and the differences between them and the previous wave writers were described in Uri Bernstein's book, "The Literature of a Constant Present."
Among the writers of this group are Orly Castel-Bloom, Etgar Keret, Dudu Bossi, Moshe Ofir, Dror Burshtein, Ran Yagil, Dan Benaya-Seri, Savyon Liebrecht, Nava Semel, Gabriela Avigur-Rotem, Yitzhak Bar-Yosef Levi, Hannah Bat-Shachar, Yehudit Katzir, Yuval Shimoni, Ronit Matalon, Dorit Abush, Albert Suissa, Ilana Bernstein, Leah Ini, Mira Magen, Gidi Nevo, Hagai Linik, Yael Hadia Rabinian, Eshkol Nevo, Sami Bardugo and others.
'Yiddish writers
Apart from Hebrew writers, there is considerable creative productivity in Israel in other languages, notably in Yiddish. Yiddish writing in Israel can be marked by generations, similar to those in Hebrew literature. The first consisted of writers such as David Pinski and Sholem Asch. The second generation, led by Abraham Sutzkever, started its career in Eastern Europe but continued in Israel. The third generation was centered on "Young Israel", a modernist group of poets and prose writers, most of whom are kibbutz members, whose work has been influenced by the avant-garde schools of English and French writing. Yiddish authors in Israel are organized in a Yiddish authors' association.
Arabic writers
The presence of Arabic-language literature in Israeli society can be initially attributed to Emile Habibi, an Israeli-Palestinian writer and a communist politician. In 1992, he was awarded the Israel Prize for Arabic literature. Habibi helped create the Israeli Communist Party and established Al-Ittihad, a communist daily Arabic-language newspaper published in Haifa.
Intangible cultural heritage
Sacred stories and Holy books
The sacred and traditional stories are part of Judaism, while Jewish folklore refers to the folk tales and legends that existed in the general Jewish culture. Initially, folklore was virtually indistinguishable from the Haggada, the rabbinical exegesis of the scriptures. It has subsequently developed within the Jewish people in all places and at all times in its history.
The basic history of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) contains the earliest and most sacred Jewish stories about the original creation, the story of the creation of the world in seven days; the creation of Adam and Eve; the miracle of Abraham and Sarah having a son in their old age; the story of Joseph's incredible rise to power in Egypt; the miracle of G‑d dividing the waves of the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews to escape from slaveryin Egypt, and the manna provided by G‑d during the crossing of the desert. In these stories and many others, G‑d speaks or intervenes directly to save or help their ancestors and is among them. He even has a place to live and travel with them, the Ark of the Covenant. The twelve tribes of Israel, like the rest of humanity, trace their lineage to Adam and Eve.
The Talmud is the mainstay of the Jewish oral tradition, is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, and the primary source of Jewish religious law (halakha) and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish cultural life and was foundational to "all Jewish thought and aspirations", serving also as "the guide for the daily life" of Jews.
The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah, a written compendium of Rabbinic Judaism's Oral Torah; and the Gemara, commentary on the Mishnah.
The Mishnah is a compilation of legal opinions and debates. Statements in the Mishnah are typically terse, recording brief opinions of the rabbis debating a subject; or recording only an unattributed ruling, representing a consensus view. The rabbis recorded in the Mishnah are known as the Tannaim. Since it sequences its laws by subject matter instead of by biblical context, the Mishnah discusses individual subjects more thoroughly than the Midrash, and it includes a much broader selection of halakhic subjects than the Midrash.
Much of the Gemara consists of legal analysis. The starting point for the analysis is usually a legal statement found in a Mishnah. The statement is then analyzed and compared with other statements used in different approaches to biblical exegesis in rabbinic Judaism, in exchanges between two disputants, termed the makshan (questioner) and tartzan (answerer). Another important function of Gemara is to identify the correct biblical basis for a given law presented in the Mishnah and the logical process connecting one with the other: this activity was known as talmud long before the existence of the "Talmud" as a text.
The entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Mishnaic Hebrew and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic and contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects, including Halakha, Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, and is widely quoted in rabbinic literature.
Originally, Jewish scholarship was oral. Rabbis expounded and debated the Torah and discussed the Tanakh without the benefit of written works. This situation changed drastically, mainly as the result of the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth and the Second Temple in the year 70 and the consequent upheaval of Jewish social and legal norms. As the rabbis were required to face a new reality, there was a flurry of legal discourse, and the old system of oral scholarship could not be maintained. It is during this period that rabbinic discourse began to be recorded in writing
The process of "Gemara" proceeded in what were then the two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Galilee and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud or the Talmud Yerushalmi. It was compiled in the 4th century in Galilee. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled about the year 500, although it continued to be edited later.
Jewish folk tales
Jewish folk tales usually tell stories with supernatural beings and have spread among the people through traditional stories of the ancients. The tales are characterized by the presence of unusual characters (dwarfs, giants, fairies, etc.), by the sudden transformation of men into animals and vice versa, or by other supernatural phenomena (flying horses, sleep of one hundred years, and others).
Few specifically medieval Jewish legends can be considered folk tales, such as that of the Jewish Pope (Andreas) and the Golem, or that concerning the wall of the Rashi Chapel which has receded to save the life of a poor woman who was in danger of being run over by a cart passing narrowly. Many of these legends were assembled by Abraham Tendlau in his Sagen und Legenden der Jüdischen Vorzeit (Tales and legends of the Jews of old).
Towards the end of the XIXth century, many folk tales gathered by Jews or published manuscripts from Hebrew by Israel Levi in the Journal of Jewish Studies, in the Journal of Popular Traditions, and Melusine; by Moses Gaster in Folklore and in the reports of the Montefiore College and by M. Grunwald in Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Jüdische Volkskunde; by L. Wiener in the same periodical and by Friedrich Salomon Krauss in Urquell.
In all, some sixty to seventy folk tales were recovered among the Jews of the time. The first of the stories gathered by L. Wiener is the well-known tale of "The Man in the Bag", who manages to escape by telling passersby that he was sentenced against his will to marry a princess.
Compilations of Haggadot and folklore
The Legends of the Jews, by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, is an original synthesis of a large amount of Haggadot, the Mishnah, and both Talmud and Midrash.
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The Ein Yaakov is a compilation of the Haggadic material of the Babylonian Talmud with commentaries.
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The Sefer Ha-Haggadah is a classic aggadot compilation of the Mishnah, the two Talmuds, and the Midrash. It was edited by Haïm Nahman and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky. They worked to give an understandable and representative compilation of Haggadot; they spent three years compiling their work. The Sefer Ha-Aggadah was first published in November 1908 in Odessa, in Russia, and then reprinted many times in Israel. It was translated into English in 1992 by William G. Braude as The Book of Legends.
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Mimekor Yisrael, by Micha Josef Berdyczewski. He was interested in compiling the folklore and legends of the Jewish people from ancient times to the dawn of modern times. His collection includes a large number of Haggadots, although he has limited them to what he considered to be folklore.