page_title: Demographics of Israel
section_title: Languages
hierarchical_section_title: Demographics of Israel / Languages
caption_attribution_description: Highway sign pointing to entrance of Masada. Photo taken by Bantosh (myself).
context_page_description: The State of Israel has a population of approximately 9,199,700 inhabitants as of May 2020. Some 74.24% are Jews of all backgrounds, 20.95% are Arab of any religion other than Jewish, while the remaining 4.81% are defined as "others", including persons of Jewish ancestry deemed non-Jewish by religious law and persons of non-Jewish ancestry who are family members of Jewish immigrants, Christian non-Arabs, Muslim non-Arabs and all other residents who have neither an ethnic nor religious classification.
  Israel's annual population growth rate stood at 2.0% in 2015, more than three times faster than the OECD average of around 0.6%. With an average of three children per woman, Israel also has the highest fertility rate in the OECD by a considerable margin and much higher than the OECD average of 1.7.
  The demographics of Israel are monitored by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.
context_section_description: Due to its immigrant nature, Israel is one of the most multicultural and multilingual societies in the world. Hebrew is the official language of the country, and Arabic is given special status, while English and Russian are the two most widely spoken non-official languages. A certain degree of English is spoken widely, and is the language of choice for many Israeli businesses. Hebrew and English language are mandatory subjects in the Israeli school system, and most schools offer either Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Italian, or Russian.
caption: Road sign in Hebrew, Arabic and English
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