The Origins of Israeli Deaf Ethnicity

Abstract

At the first school for deaf children in the Yishuv, established in 1932, teachers used oralist methods developed in Germany to instill the Hebrew language in pupils. Graduates joined a Hebrew-speaking Deaf community that included orally trained Jews returning from Europe. This Deaf elite envisioned an extensive oral education system for children and adults, but the sudden influx of deaf immigrants in the 1950s disrupted their plans. The resulting demographic shift accelerated the development of modern Israeli sign language and an indigenous Deaf culture. By examining the role of the Deaf community in the socially and ethnically diverse context of Palestine and early Israel, this article argues that the Deaf community not only constituted a distinct linguistic minority who enriched the linguistic landscape of Israel, but it also functioned as a cultural minority. Furthermore, this article examines how the Deaf community intersected with other social groups in the highly stratified Israeli society of the 1950s, suggesting that it could be inscribed into the social fabric of Israel as an ethnic minority in its own right.