Talk:Russian language in Israel

Arabic speakers?
This article deals with Russian only as a language of migrants. But Russian is also spoken by many Palestinians, as many people got university education in Soviet Union. Considering that Nazareth is a communist stronghold, there must be Russian speakers there. Any reference or article on this around? --Soman (talk) 15:56, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * My impression (though I admit that I have no source for this other than personal acquaintance) is that actually more Palestinians studied in Bulgaria or Romania than in the USSR. RolandR (talk) 20:22, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

A couple problems
I just noticed this article today (apparently I already edited it before but forgot :/) and was pleasantly surprised about how it was well-written and properly researched. I have noticed a couple problems however. For one, there is undue weight/WP:COATRACK in the history section. Even though it's a nice read, it doesn't actually describe history of the Russian language in Israel, but of supposed immigration of Russian-speakers. I think it would be more appropriate to relate to the language and also include much more information about early Zionists (pre-1948) most of whom were Russian-speakers. Also rename the section to Background which is more appropriate for the content line that it presents now.

Secondly, I checked Haim Gordon's book on Google Books, and wonder whether it's a reliable source. It doesn't seem to be an academic work, and many parts of it (those that can be viewed at least) are just opinions in favor or against certain population groups, with little hard data and nothing to back it up with. Can anyone elaborate on this book?

Thanks, Ynhockey (Talk) 11:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC)


 * more information about early Zionists (pre-1948) most of whom were Russian-speakers did any of them actually live in the state of Israel? If yes, I don't see any problem adding a section on them. In the 19th century, I would say the majority Jews in the world knew Russian, because most of the Jewish populations lived in Eastern Europe (Poland, what is now Ukraine, Belarus) and obviously Russian was the administrative language in these areas. However, the Russian language in the state of Israel didn't really have history before the 1990s wave. Note that most Jews that moved into Palestine in the late 1940s were from Arabic countries. -- Ե րևանցի talk  02:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Why does Russians in Israel redirect here?
We have Russian Jews in Israel, but what about more than a 100,000 Russian Christians in Israel? And what about probably something like 10,000 Messianic Jews of Russian heritage (who are Jews by self-definition, but not according to most Jews in the country)? I think we should rename this "Russians in Israel" or something like that, so that non-linguistic information can be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.137.105 (talk) 16:17, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Dubious
"The Russian language is spoken natively by a large proportion of the population of Israel, reaching about 20 percent of the total population by 1989"

I GREATLY doubt this. Only a trickle of Russian-speaking Jews moved to Israel in the 70s. Before that, the last significant influx were the Zionist pioneers prior to Israel's independence, and by 1989 I doubt many of their descendants still spoke Russian – if it was their native language the first place! The large majority of Russian-speaking immigrants arrived after mid-1989, because the US stopped giving automatic asylum to Soviet Jews. And yet despite the 1+ million Russian speakers who moved to Israel since 1989, only 17% of the population spoke Russian in 2017. I therefore think this statistic is wrong or that there was a misunderstanding at some point. Synotia (talk) 16:52, 3 December 2022 (UTC)