Alek D. Epstein. Not Only in Hebrew: The Multilingual Mosaic of the Israeli Printing Press

Not Only in Hebrew: The Multilingual Mosaic of the Israeli Printing Press  

By Alek D. Epstein

(Center for Research in Contemporary Art, Jerusalem – Moscow – Paris)

Source: Judaica Ukrainica 4 (2015): 109-121

Publication date: December 1, 2015

Publication type: article

Language: English

Full text:

 

Abstract

This paper purports to study the development of the printing press in various languages in Israel. The country’s newspapers and magazines have been published not only in Hebrew, but also in Arabic, English, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, French, German, Amharic and other languages. Despite the dominance of the “melting pot” approach, Israeli society has always been multicultural and multilingual, and during the last decades this fact has been recognized both by the state authorities and civil society institutions, which have given various languages legitimacy to co-exist side by side with Hebrew. After a century of Hebrew revitalization efforts this language is undoubtedly Israel’s most used and widespread language. Multilingualism within its Jewish population does not threaten the future of Israel as a unified society.

Keywords: Israeli Studies, Israeli printing press, languages in Israel, multilingualism

 

References

Ben-Rafael, Eliezer. Language, Identity, and Social Division: The Case of Israel. Oxford: Clarendon / Oxford University Press, 1994.

–-. “A Sociological Paradigm of Bilingualism: English, French, Yiddish and Arabic in Israel.” Israel Social Science Research 9, no. 1–2 (1994): 181–206.

Caspi, Dan, and Yehiel Limor. The In/Outsiders: Mass Media in Israel. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1999.

Caspi, Dan, Hanna Adoni, Akiba Cohen, and Nelli Elias. “The Red, the White and the Blue. The Russian Media in Israel.” Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies 64, no. 6 (2002): 537–556.

Frenkel, Erwin. The Press and Politics in Israel. “The Jerusalem Post” from 1932 to the Present. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Lehman-Wilzig, Sam, and Amit Schejter. “Israel.” In Mass Media in the Middle East, edited by Yahya R. Kamalipour and Hamid Mowlana, 109–125. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Spolsky, Bernard, and Elana Shohamy. The Languages of Israel. Policy, Ideology and Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1999.

 

 

DOI 10.14653/ju.2015.07