- Population
- 4,500
- Location
- Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv area and small towns and villages across Israel
The Nash Didan, meaning 'our people', are the Jews of Urmia and Salmas in Iran's Azerbaijan province, who for centuries spoke their own dialect of Aramaic, Lishán Didán, alongside Turkish, Kurdish and Persian. They came to Israel in waves, from the early twentieth century through the mass emigration of 1950-1951 to the last families who fled the Iranian revolution in 1979, and today live mainly in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv area. Their Aramaic is now spoken by only a few thousand elderly people and has not been passed on to children. A community website keeps an online Hebrew-Aramaic dictionary, folk tales and the stories of each family's journey from the shores of Lake Urmia.