Shalom, shalom, shalom… what's going on 'ere? Police officers could soon be speaking Hebrew on the beat in Golders Green and Stamford Hill.
Under a pilot scheme run by the Metropolitan Police, new recruits will have to learn a second language from a list of 14, one of which is Hebrew.
The police say that bilingual coppers will be able to solve more crimes and communicate better with victims.
Other languages chosen for the scheme include Arabic, Italian, German, Turkish, Greek, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Sinhala (Sri Lanka), Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi and Yoruba (Nigeria).
Surprisingly, commonly-spoken London languages such as Gujarati, Japanese and Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese were excluded.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said: "I am committed to providing a police service that looks and feels more like London. We know that almost 300 languages are spoken in the capital.
"We need to recruit and deploy officers with second languages in areas where those languages are spoken.
"I believe it will help boost confidence, help to solve crime more effectively and support victims and witnesses."
Yael Breuer, co-author of Hilarious Hebrew, a language-learning book, urged prospective officers to learn the language, saying: "I'm not rushing police officers to the ulpan, but it's no more difficult to become fluent in Hebrew than in any other language.
"It can be intimidating and scary to approach a language that has a different alphabet and sound to English, but if someone is serious about learning Hebrew then they should know it is a logical language. It follows the rules; it has fewer exceptions to the rules than other languages."
The move comes a week after Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis urged members of the community to join the police , asking British Jews to "be part of that protection force, for all of our society".
