ABSTRACT
The earliest information available to us about the Deaf community in Israel dates from the end of the nineteenth century, when the area was part of the Ottoman Empire. At that time, small groups of deaf people that included both Jews and Arabs had formed in Jerusalem and in Safed. These deaf people apparently communicated among themselves using signs, but we have not found any information about the sign language they developed. Later, the deaf population increased together with the general population, due to violent upheavals in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, which resulted in immigration to Israel.
