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The present study compared the early Hebrew (L2) literacy development of three groups; two groups of bilinguals — bi-literate and mono-literate Russian-Hebrew speakers, and a third group of monolingual Hebrew-speakers. We predicted that bi-literacy rather than bilingualism is the key variable as regards L2 literacy learning. In a longitudinal design, a variety of linguistic, meta-linguistic and cognitive tasks were administered at the commencement of first grade, with Hebrew reading and spelling assessed at the end of the year. Results demonstrated that bi-literate bilinguals were far in advance of both mono-literate (Russian-Hebrew) bilinguals and mono-lingual Hebrew-speakers on all reading fluency measures at the end of Grade 1. Bi-literate bilinguals also showed a clear advantage over mono-literate bilingual and mono-lingual peers on all phonological awareness tasks. The mono-literate bilinguals also …