Language distribution in Israel - from Amharic to Yevanic

Ilan Stavans' Resurrecting Hebrew (Schocken 2008) quotes Bar Ilan's Professor Bernard Spolsky (page 78), who cites his language policy work analyzing the 1983 census question on language, From Monolingual to Multilingual? Educational Language Policy in Israel by Elana Shohamy and Bernard Spolsky (2002, Tel Aviv University) and cites work done in the 90's.

approximately

4,500,000 Israelis are estimated to have functional competence in Hebrew (500,000 or 9% as a second language)

910,000 speakers of Palestinian Arabic and

1,600,000 speakers of Arabic in Gaza and the West Bank

800,000 of Russian

485,000 of Judeo-Arabic (which includes Moroccan Judeo-Arabic, Iraqi Judeo-Arabic, Yemeni Judeo-Arabic, Tunisian Judeo-Arabic, Tripolitanian Judeo-Arabic)

250,000 of Rumanian

215,000 of Yiddish

200,000 of French

100,000 of English first-language users

100,000 of Spanish

60,000 of Hungarian

60,000 of Persian

60,000 of Amharic

50,000 of other languages of the former Soviet Union

200,000 of other languages of foreign workers ; 300,000 according to Haaretz (July 2009)

and an unspecified number of speakers of

Ladino, Polish, German, Judeo-Persona (Dzidi) Bukaric, Judeo-Georgian, Judeo-Tat(Juduri), Judeo-Neo-Aramaic, Bulgarian, Turkish, Indian languages, Tigrinya, Italian, Israeli Sign Language, Portuguese, Circassian (Adyghe), Armenian, Dutch, Greek, Serbian, Czech, Judeo-Berber, Aramaic, and Judeo-Greek (Yevanic).

Why and Wherefore / למה ומדוע

[madu'a מדוע, la-mah למה]
"In Hebrew, there are two expressions for 'why' - madua and lamah. Madua means Mah dei'ah - What do I learn from this? And Lamah means 'L'Mah? - To what end?' How do I grow and become better from this?"

from Nothing is as simple as it looks, by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis (Sep 23 2009)

Others have also asked "why and why": http://translate.google.co

m/translate_s?hl=en&clss=&q=why+and+why&tq=&sl=en&tl=iw