I'll answer in the affirmative. The Roman average has been estimated around 10-15%, and the nearest Jewish estimate is lower than that, due to the rural nature of Palestine and the fact that rabbinic schools appear not to have taught writing but rather reading (and some other sundry reasons). Meir Bar-Ilan estimates literacy as low as 3% but that is an 'open question' according to Hezser, but we're really not any higher than the average Roman estimates (cf Harris).

So, /u/Flubb kind of missed a number of things here.

The source you'll want to take a look at is A History of the Hebrew Language by Saenz-Badillos (sp?). By the time Jesus shows up on the scene, Aramaic is the language of choice for Semites. Literacy rates were assuredly low (definitely lower than estimates for Roman literacy). The only people who know how to read and write Hebrew by this point are those we would call the literati (religious elites: proto-rabbis, scribes, Pharisees, Saducees, etc.).

As far as HEBREW is concerned at this point--it's largely a literary language, likely not spoken much at all, so the literacy rate for Hebrew is going to be lower than it will for Aramaic.

So, the odds that someone wouldn't know how to read and write in Hebrew are pretty high.