There are many questions on how Yiddish — which is the main language of the Jews of Eastern Europe — ended up being spoken by some 2,300 Palestinians in the Palestinian territories. It all began in the early 20th century, when many ultra-Orthodox Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe after the Holocaust to settle in Palestine. Back then, Palestinians and Jews lived in the same neighborhoods and worked together, which explains how some Palestinians acquired Yiddish.
Yiddish is the dialect of Ashkenazi Jews who hail from Eastern and Central Europe, and it combines Germanic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic elements. Before the Holocaust, there were are about 13 million Yiddish speakers in the world, but their numbers have dwindled, with current estimates standing at between 500,000 and 1 million.
