TikZ and Babel disagree when Hebrew is loaded

Question

As with most things related to LaTeX, when Hebrew (and I assume other RTL languages too) tend to completely break everything.

\documentclass[10pt]{article}

%\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
%\usepackage[english,hebrew]{babel}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}

\tikzstyle{testbox} = [rectangle, rounded corners, draw=black,
  fill=blue!20, inner sep=10pt, drop shadow={fill=black, opacity=.4}]
\tikzstyle{titlebox} =[fill=gray!20, text=black!80, draw=black]

\begin{document}
  \noindent\begin{tikzpicture}%
  \node [testbox] (box){%
    \begin{minipage}{.7\textwidth}%
      I am Lrrr, of the planet Omicron Persei Eight.%
    \end{minipage}%
  };
  \node [titlebox, right=5pt] at (box.north west) {\textbf{Lrrr}};%
  \end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

This compiles just fine.

But if I remove the % from the inputenc and babel packages, nothing is drawn. Seeing how the entire code is just a TikZ picture, that seems to be a problem.

It seems that just removing the hebrew from the babel options makes everything work, so that must be the culprit.

Any idea how to fix this?

Added:

If I put the tikzpicture code inside an \L{} environment of babel (which treats the text as left-to-right), then everything works again. But the whole purpose is to have such scenario where the text is in Hebrew, so that defeats the purpose.

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{/var/lib/texmf/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./123123123.aux) ) 
Here is how much of TeX's memory you used:
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{/usr/s
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Output written on 123123123.pdf (1 page, 22419 bytes).
PDF statistics:
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Answer 1

I was looking for a solution because I knew one must exist. The original TikZ code was from some example for using ntheorem shady theorems environment, and I had a working example of that.

So obviously something in the ntheorem preamble was making the TikZ code work. But after a couple hours of sleep, my brain cracked up the mystery.

\documentclass[10pt]{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}

\tikzstyle{testbox} = [rectangle, rounded corners, draw=black,
  fill=blue!20, inner sep=10pt, drop shadow={fill=black, opacity=.4}]
\tikzstyle{titlebox} =[fill=gray!20, text=black!80, draw=black]

\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english,hebrew]{babel}

\begin{document}
\L{  \noindent\begin{tikzpicture}%
  \node [testbox] (box){%
    \begin{minipage}{.7\textwidth}%
      \raggedleft\R{אני לררר שליט הכוכב אומיקרון פריסיי שמונה!}%
    \end{minipage}%
  };
  \node [titlebox, right=-35pt] at (box.north east) {\R{\textbf{לררר}}};%
  \end{tikzpicture}}
\end{document}

I realized that setting everything into a babel \L{} group, and adding a modifying \R{} group for the text itself might work. And it does. Beautifully.

Answer 2

Not remotely an expert on RTL languages and LaTeX, and also not remotely and expert on Hebrew, but my "experience" (based entirely on one answer to questions on this site), suggests that compiling with lualatex and using the fontspec package may be helpful.

You will need to replace freesans with a different font name if you don't have it on your system.

Apologies for the (probably rubbish) Hebrew translation.

\documentclass[tikz,border=5]{standalone}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\hebrewfont[Script=Hebrew]{freesans}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}

\tikzset{%
  testbox/.style={
    rectangle, 
    rounded corners, 
    draw=black,
    fill=blue!20, 
    inner sep=10pt, 
    drop shadow={fill=black, opacity=.4}
  },
  titlebox/.style={
    fill=gray!20, 
    text=black!80, 
    draw=black
  },
  hebrew text/.style={
    align=right,
    font=\hebrewfont,
    execute at begin node={\luatextextdir TRT}
  }
}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}%
  \node [testbox, text width=3in] (box1)
  {%
      I am Lrrr, of the planet Omicron Persei Eight.%
  };
  \node [titlebox, right=5pt] at (box1.north west) {\textbf{Lrrr}};%

  \node [testbox, text width=3in, hebrew text] at (0,-2) (box2)
  {%
אני לררר, של כדור הארץ אומיקרון פרטאי שמונה
  };
  \node [titlebox, left=5pt, hebrew text] at (box2.north east) {\textbf{לררר}};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}