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A few questions about the history of Jewish spoken languages

I was referred here from /r/history and I wonder if you could help answering these questions. If you’re interested in the context this is the original thread which was quite interesting in its own right.

Apparently Hebrew was a liturgical language pre-Israel times, and in parts of Europe it was taboo/forbidden to be spoken. It seems the prevailing answer from the thread that this was primarily it was a taboo due to being seen as Holy, although of course there was persecution at points in earlier parts of history which also made it infeasible to use. Does this summary seem about right?

Now a question I didn’t find as well answered in the original thread. If it was regarded as Holy then was there much in the way of push back to it being adopted as lingua franca for Israel? I’m wondering if it came became the choice language due to a formal in law adoption, or just happened organically with people and schools of their own accord starting to pick it up. And even in the case that it happened organically, I’m still curious if maybe more Orthodox (or other groups) were against it.

Was there ever a possibility that Hebrew wouldn’t be the main language, and say Yiddish/English/French/German would be taken up? One of the great answers in their mentioned on of the leading figures of Zionism suggested using German as a national language. Was this prior to WW2, and what stopped his suggestion, or other possibilities, taking place over Hebrew? Was there ever a chance English could have been used?

One thing I read was that a lot of Russian Jews came in the past couple of decades. Has this group largely avoided assimilation, or is it happening at a certain speed?

Hope that all makes sense, happy to clarify my questions 🙂

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