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• In fact, a cultural shift from one national language to another is a shift that typically takes several generations, if it happens at all. The shift of the Jews’ language from Hebrew to Aramaic, for example, took more than seventy years to take place. That was a very short period of time, and there were many positive reasons for it to happen so quickly - Aramaic and Hebrew are very closely related languages and therefore Aramaic would have been easy to learn, the Jews were forced to learn Aramaic because they were forcibly immersed in the language and culture of the Chaldeans, they would have had little or no resistance to learning Aramaic because they were treated extremely well in Babylon. Aramaic may even have been a deliberate choice, in that it allowed the Jews to make a distinction between the Holy (worship of God, reading the Hebrew Bible, the Temple service) in Hebrew, and the secular (using Aramaic for everyday purposes). Even today in Israel, Ultra-Orthodox Jews reserve Hebrew for holy use, and use Yiddish for everyday secular purposes.