# Jewish, Israeli and Hebrew, which is which? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 24, 2018, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421 "2018-10-24T06:26:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/21 "2018-10-24T23:15:19Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Jesus did not speak Hebrew as his native language. He spoke Aramaic. … He also probably knew some Hebrew, although it was just a ceremonial religious language then and not the native language of anyone: > > [Language of Jesus - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_Jesus) According to St Luke, he knew enough Hebrew to be able to read from the Book of Isaiah in the synagogue, to the surprise of the congregation: Luke 4:16-22. > **[Bible Gateway passage: Luke 4:16-22 - New International Version](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2B4%3A16-22&version=NIV)** > > He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is... ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/22 "2018-10-24T23:18:29Z")
Sidebar: why did Hebrew get replaced by Aramaic as the common language? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/23 "2018-10-24T23:37:37Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Sidebar: why did Hebrew get replaced by Aramaic as the common language? It was the common imperial lingua franca of successively the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid empires and persisted beyond that. Basically it was the Latin of its heyday and persisted long afterwards, only gradually being replaced with Greek, Persian, Arabic, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/24 "2018-10-24T23:44:30Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Broomstick** : > > Ladino - the every day language of Jews in Spain and other Sephardic Jews (that’s a subdivision of the group “Jew”, essentially Western Europe although some of them wound up in South America and other places). It’s derived not from Hebrew but from Spanish (but with Hebrew influence and using the Hebrew alphabet) > > Yiddish - the every day language of Eastern European Jews. Again, not from Hebrew (although still influenced by it and using Hebrew script) but rather largely German. As an aside, this is largely why Hebrew was chosen as the official language of Israel. It was a compromise between the Yiddish-speakers and the Ladino-speakers so that neither of the two groups would be privileged over the other, because all could agree that Hebrew was universal to all Jews (even if, at the time, it was universal by virtue of being universally unspoken). ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/25 "2018-10-25T00:11:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > As an aside, this is largely why Hebrew was chosen as the official language of Israel. It was a compromise between the Yiddish-speakers and the Ladino-speakers so that neither of the two groups would be privileged over the other, because all could agree that Hebrew was universal to all Jews (even if, at the time, it was universal by virtue of being universally unspoken). NB Hebrew and Arabic were already spoken in Israel before the establishment of an independent state there in the 1940s. I think it would have been cooler had they picked Akkadian as an official language; that was probably more unspoken. ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/26 "2018-10-25T00:21:21Z")
There is a very good Straight Dope Staff Report that addresses the question of what it means to be Jewish: [Can you be an atheist and still be Jewish?](https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1503/can-you-be-an-atheist-and-still-be-jewish/) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/27 "2018-10-25T00:33:33Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I mean, the only place you’ll encounter usage of “the Hebrews” to mean a people is in the title of that book. Honestly, no. There are multiple uses of “the Hebrews” or “Hebrew people” just as book titles. History of the Hebrews: Their Political, Social and Religious … - Page 4 > **[History of the Hebrews](https://books.google.com/books?id=AIs4AAAAMAAJ)** Frank Knight Sanders - 1914 - ‎Read - ‎More editions Student’s History of the Hebrews - Page 23 > **[Student's History of the Hebrews](https://books.google.com/books?id=TgoTAAAAYAAJ)** Laura A Knott - 1922 - ‎Read - ‎More editions The Theology and Ethics of the Hebrews - Page 259 > **[The Theology and Ethics of the Hebrews](https://books.google.com/books?id=eAkRAAAAIAAJ)** Archibald Duff - 1902 - ‎Read - ‎More editions The Evolution of the Hebrew People: And Their Influence on Civilization > **[The Evolution of the Hebrew People](https://books.google.com/books?id=Hbv7nyxXMI4C)** Laura Hulda Wild - 1917 - ‎Read - ‎More editions A History of the Hebrew People …: From the settlement in Canaan to … > **[A History of the Hebrew People ...: From the settlement in Canaan to the...](https://books.google.com/books?id=OZE3AQAAMAAJ)** Charles Foster Kent - 1912 - ‎Read - ‎More editions ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/28 "2018-10-25T05:16:47Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Honestly, no. There are multiple uses of “the Hebrews” or “Hebrew people” just as book titles. > Frank Knight Sanders - 1914 > > Student’s History of the Hebrews > Laura A Knott - 1922 > > Theology and Ethics of the Hebrews - > Archibald Duff - 1902 > > Laura Hulda Wild - 1917 > > A History of the Hebrew People …: From the settlement in Canaan to … > Charles Foster Kent - 1912 Well…yeah, there may be multiple uses of “the Hebrews”–but look at those dates! Your cites are all a century old. As **Chronos** said upthread, the word is “musty”, and not in use today. Sort of like saying “colored” or “Negro”. For the past 50 years or so, the term Hebrew has been used exclusively as the name of the language. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/29 "2018-10-25T16:42:34Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Well…yeah, there may be multiple uses of “the Hebrews”–but look at those dates! > Your cites are all a century old. > > As **Chronos** said upthread, the word is “musty”, and not in use today. > Sort of like saying “colored” or “Negro”. > For the past 50 years or so, the term Hebrew has been used exclusively as the name of the language. **I** was the one who said musty. I also said that the usage was common _before Israel became a nation_, which happened 70 years ago. So when else would you expect my cites to be from? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/30 "2018-10-25T16:56:22Z")
> [@JakeRS](#): > > All in all, back to the original topic, I guess that the best way is to call them simply Israelis, since anyone can become a Jew, but no one can become a Israeli ethnic group member, that term currently sometimes gets used on Arabs as well, but that’s apparently the closest word there is. If you’re invited to join the Cherokee tribe, are you a real Cherokee or not? Israeli means a citizen of Israel. Israeli is not an ethnicity, it is a nationality. Judaism is both a religion and an ethnic group, a fact which is confusing to modern people but would make perfect sense to ancient people. The only requirement to being Jewish is to have a Jewish mother, and to not convert to another religion. It might be confusing because while you can acquire Italian nationality by becoming a citizen of Italy, you wouldn’t become ethnically Italian by doing so. But Italian isn’t a tribe, like Judaism. You can become Jewish by joining the tribe. I don’t know if joining the Cherokee tribe would get you kicked out of the Hebrew tribe. Lots of Jews used to play Indians back in the old Hollywood days, so maybe it actually happened. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/31 "2018-10-25T17:43:44Z")
The American tribes don’t hold the same sort of connection between tribe and religion, at least not in modern days (considering that most Native Americans are some flavor of Christian). So I don’t see why a native tribe would have any problem with a Jew joining the tribe but retaining the Jewish religion, nor do I see any reason why other Jews would not accept that person as remaining Jewish. I don’t see the relevance of Jews playing Indians in the old Hollywood days, though, since accuracy was a very low priority for the old Hollywood portrayal of Native Americans. For that matter, it may seem odd to us Westerners, but there are a lot of people in the world who identify as being multiple religions. Is the trigger for ceasing to be a Jew just joining another religion, or is it specifically joining a religion which is in some way contradictory to Judaism? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2018, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/32 "2018-10-25T20:09:36Z")
Not to confuse the issue I remember reading about a guy named, IIRC, Benjamin Greenberg who was black and had just been named chief of police somewhere in the south (maybe Texas). His ancestors had been slaves on a plantation owned by Jewish Mr. Greenberg and had simply adopted their religion the same way most slaves had adopted Christianity. He was generally accepted as a Jew despite not being able to trace his maternal line to a Jewish ancestor. And it turns out that most Ashkenazy Jews can’t either. Because mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother (with rather rare exceptions) you can trace that maternal line and in most northern European (and therefore American) Jews it leads to European ancestry. For males, you can follow the paternal line from the Y chromosome and that line does trace to the middle east. So most of us aren’t Jews by that rabbinic definition and neither are those rabbis. Just for the record, I consider myself a secular Jew as defined by Broomstick. I am at least an agnostic and the idea of god seems absurd. But who knows? I consider quantum theory absurd too, but so what? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2018, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/33 "2018-10-26T01:10:16Z")
Well… if those Eastern European women had _converted_ to Judaism then their children would still be Official Jews or however you’d refer to such - the ancient Hebrews (and to an extent their descendants) didn’t define tribal membership or “ethnicity” in quite the same way we do. And people have converted to Judaism since pretty much the beginning - that’s one reason why, after a time, the Jews in an area start to resemble the non-Jews in the area. Folks marry across that line. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/34 "2018-10-26T22:39:01Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Not to confuse the issue I remember reading about a guy named, IIRC, Benjamin Greenberg who was black and had just been named chief of police somewhere in the south (maybe Texas). [Reuben Greenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuben_Greenberg) was the police chief of Charleston, South Carolina, from 1982 to 2005. I remember seeing him profiled on _60 Minutes_. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/35 "2018-10-27T15:02:07Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Just to confuse things further (on the Turk issue) the Turks migrated into the area now called Turkey in the relatively recent past (about a thousand years ago). That’s nobody’s business but the Turks. mmm ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/36 "2018-10-27T15:47:07Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > That’s nobody’s business but the Turks. Sure, but it’s the reason they call them the “young Turks.” ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2018, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/37 "2018-10-27T15:49:54Z")
> [@JakeRS](#): > > No, Bulgar\* doesn’t exist as a word, only Bulgarian does, at least I’ve never heard “Bulgar” and I live next to Bulgaria and I see them mentioned in English at least once every few days. Then why do many respected dictionaries and encyclopedias have the word as an entry? > **[Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data](https://languages.oup.com/)** > > Explore Oxford Languages, the home of world-renowned language data. > **[bulgar](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bulgar)** > > 1. grains of wheat that are boiled, dried, and used in cooking 2. grains of… > **[Bulgar | People, Language & Religion](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bulgar)** > > Bulgar, member of a people known in eastern European history during the Middle Ages. A branch of this people was one of the primary three ethnic ancestors of modern Bulgarians (the other two were Thracians and Slavs). Although many scholars,... ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2018, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/38 "2018-10-27T16:42:24Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > Then why do many respected dictionaries and encyclopedias have the word as an entry? Bulgar( excluding the grain )seems to be used pretty much exclusively for the medieval tribes. While Serb and Croat are still used today as interchangeable synonyms for Serbian and Croatian, no one really refers to modern Bulgarian as Bulgars. So a non-historian is unlikely to run across the word in daily usage. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/39 "2018-10-29T01:11:06Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > **I** was the one who said musty. I also said that the usage was common _before Israel became a nation_, which happened 70 years ago. So when else would you expect my cites to be from? It has been brought to my attention that the May 16, 1948 issue of “The Observer” [a right-wing, nationalist, religious newspaper associated with religious Zionism and the Mizrachi movement] has, next to the masthead and above the main article (“The state of Israel is established”), a report headlined “the Hebrew army is bravely repulsing enemy attacks”. Musty pre-state-of-Israel usage? Deliberate choice of word by the editors? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2018, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421/40 "2018-10-29T05:27:03Z")
When I put the word “Israeli” into Google Ngram, it only gives two uses of the word before 1955. Note that I’m not counting uses of it in Benjamin D’Israeli’s name. So the use of the word “Israeli” as an adjective applying to the nation slightly lagged the use of the word “Israel” as a noun. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-israeli-and-hebrew-which-is-which/823421.md?page=3)