Israel recently decided, at the behest of Christian religious leaders, to recognize those Arabic-speaking Christians who wish to identify themselves as “Arameans.” This has raised the prospect of their also reviving Aramaic, the language of Jesus, the Talmud, Judaism’s most well-known prayers (kaddish and kol nidre), and the long-ago Christian communities of the Middle East. Such an outcome is unlikely but not impossible, writes Philologos:
Many Christian denominations in Israel, such as the Maronite and Eastern Orthodox churches, still use Aramaic as a language of prayer, just as Jews used Hebrew liturgically long after they had ceased to speak it. (The survival of ancient languages that are no longer spoken in prayer and sacred texts is common all over the world, such as Latin in Catholicism, Sanskrit in Hinduism, Pali in Buddhism, Ge’ez in Ethiopian Christianity, and so on.) There is no reason that Israeli Christian Arabs should not learn to understand the language in which they pray and have a large religious literature, which is something that very few of them are able to do now. Just as many Jews in America study Hebrew, say, not in order to be spoken but in order to be comprehended as the language of the synagogue and Jewish tradition, so Aramaic could become a focus of study in Israel.
Read more on Forward: http://forward.com/articles/208168/culture-dispute-is-all-aramaic-to-us