Hebrew? English? Perhaps Arabic or Yiddish? No. In Ahituv, a moshav in the northern Sharon region, the residents have chosen a more unusual spoken language—Aramaic.
And so everything is done in Aramaic: shopping at the grocery store, conversations between neighbors, even the boldest jokes are told in the ancient language. “This is our Yiddish; it is a hit here. It keeps gaining momentum year after year. This is how we speak in the moshav, in a language that is like Hebrew, and an outsider will not understand it,” one of the residents said proudly yesterday.
Aramaic is a Semitic language that has been spoken continuously from the first millennium BCE to the present day. It was widespread throughout the Middle East and Central Asia in ancient times. Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Syria, and the Land of Israel—all spoke this distinctive language.
But how is it that Aramaic is still spoken in Israel? There are several moshavim of Jews from Kurdistan, immigrants who arrived in Israel in the 1950s from Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, and they are unwilling to give up their language under any circumstances. “It is amazing. I came from Kurdistan at the age of 10 and did not know a word of Aramaic. It was דווקא here, in Ahituv, that we learned the language from our parents and preserved it at all costs,” said yesterday Shimshon Yosef of Ahituv.
This trend has been gaining momentum in recent years and has even led to some rather amusing situations. “People speak Aramaic in Ahituv, no question about it. So the children and grandchildren learned the language too, and they use it. If they want to gossip so that outsiders will not understand, they do it in Aramaic. These days there is also an influx of tenants moving to the moshav, so even the sons speak Aramaic, and a tenant cannot understand the negotiations about the price and so on,” said yesterday Beni Ben-David, the moshav secretary.
“It really is a phenomenon. I rent a house here, and at first I did not understand what this language was. I thought my landlords had invented something special. I know Yiddish from home, Hebrew, English, a little German, and suddenly here you hear only Aramaic. I had no choice, so I started learning a few words, and it is nice,” said one of the tenants yesterday.
The residents say there are 100 households in the moshav, almost all of them speaking Aramaic, and the language is used during holidays, performances, and various cultural events. “We decided that we must not become disconnected from our language and our roots. Anyone who comes from outside has no choice either, and they too begin learning the language,” Shimshon Yosef concluded proudly yesterday.
From an article by Eran Navon, published in Yedioth Ahronoth on May 15, 2008.