- Do Jews speak Jewish?
It's a question many Jews, myself included,
have fielded from curious non-Jews
meeting a Jew for the first time.
What even is a Jewish language?
Considering that Jews have lived on nearly every continent,
we've spoken and continue to speak many different languages,
from English and Spanish to Urdu and Eskaleutian.
You're likely familiar with chutzpah, nosh, and schlep,
all Jewish words that have made their way
into the English language, but you'd be hard pressed to find
someone call English a Jewish language.
So what actually makes a language Jewish?
Here are five Jewish languages
and their origins to help us find out.
Number one, Yiddish, or as Billy Crystal calls it.
- Yiddish is a combination of German and phlegm.
- Yiddish has snuck so deeply into English vernacular,
that non-Jews might not even realize they're speaking it
while kvetching with the klutz next to them
about schvitzing in the summer heat.
(speaking Yiddish)
What originated is a mix of medieval German and Hebrew,
Yiddish evolved among 10th century Jews making the way
from northern Italy to the German Rhine Valley.
These Jews became known as Ashkenazi,
leveraging the biblical name for the place
we call Northern Germany.
Through the 14th to 17th centuries,
these Ashkenazi Jews migrated east
and incorporated Slavic elements with Hebrew
and Aramaic influences.
Later adding words from Russian, Polish,
and especially Ukrainian.
Before the Holocaust,
Yiddish dominated Ashkenazi Jewish culture.
Its plays reverberated through local theaters
and its literature captivated readers with its unique mix
of humor and heartbreak.
It was spoken so widely among Jewish immigrants
to British Palestine that there was even discussion
about making an official language of the future Jewish state
until it was cast aside in favor of Hebrew,
the language the state's founders envisioned
as representing the type of new, strong,
and self-sufficient Jew.
Even so, Yiddish literature and music continue to animate
Jewish culture today.
Ever heard of
How about its English translation, Fiddler on the Roof?
The popular musical was originally a series
of Yiddish stories that went on to become a Broadway hit
and the best picture nominee at the 1972 Academy Awards.
With over 150,000 speakers in North America today,
Yiddish is still strong and alive,
with many learning it as their first language
and using it as their primary form of communication.
Given that Yiddish is actually the Yiddish translation
of the word Jewish,
speaking Yiddish is technically speaking Jewish.
- Talk Yiddish to me.
- Number two, Ladino.
If I were to play you this kind of music
and ask you to guess which cultural group created it,
you might not guess the Jews.
Far too often people perceive Jews as Europeans
who eat bagels, babka, and kugel.
But while Yiddish was forming among Ashkenazi Jews,
another Jewish community, the Sephardim,
the were developing their own Jewish language, Ladino.
Scholars believed that Ladino began as a dialect of Spanish
with some Portuguese, Aramaic, Hebrew,
and other local flavors added on.
The separation of Spanish
and Ladino happened when Queen Isabella
and King Ferdinand expelled their Jewish population
from Spain in 1492.
The Jews who chose to leave rather than assimilate
made new homes in Amsterdam, North Africa,
and the Middle East,
where they developed entire new communities
with their own unique cultures.
There, cut off from the speakers of Castilian Spanish
and thrust together with populations speaking Arabic
or Turkish, Ladino evolved until it ended up sounding
pretty distinct from Spanish.
Sadly, when former hubs of Ladino were destroyed
in the Holocaust, the language took a major hit.
When it fell into the category of endangered languages,
the state of Israel established
an entire governmental program dedicated to reviving it.
- Dr. Bradshaw, he is alive.
- Today, anywhere between 60,000
to 400,000 people speak Ladino,
and the language boasts a profuse collection of literature
and music that still enriches many Sephardic Shabbat tables
with its beauty.
Number three, Aramaic.
The oldest continuously spoken
and written language in the Middle East,
Aramaic dominated the ancient world.
Surrounded by the Aramaic of their neighbors,
the Jews of the land of Israel
and Mesopotamia quickly adopted Aramaic
as their daily spoken language.
While Hebrew remained the language of religion, government,
and the upper class.
By the third century CE,
the study houses of the Talmud rabbis
echoed with debates in Aramaic.
It wasn't until four centuries later when the Muslims came
through the region speaking Arabic,
that Aramaic started dying out.
Even today the Jews of Kurdistan still speak Jabali,
which is a modern form of Jewish Aramaic.
Iraqi Christians also continue to speak Aramaic,
though not the Judeo Aramaic of the Talmud.
Number four, Judeo, you name it.
For nearly every community in which Jews have lived,
there's another Jewish language.
For example, Judeo Arabic sprouted all around
the Arabic speaking world, stretching from Iraq
and Yemen in the east all the way to Spain
and Morocco in the west.
Written in Hebrew characters
with elements of Hebrew and Aramaic vocabulary and grammar,
these dialects became so entrenched
in the Arabic speaking Jewish population
that even great scholars like Maimonides used them.
In North Africa, the widespread Jewish community
developed a language sometimes called Judeo Amazigh,
also known as Berber.
Mostly used by rural Jews engaging in trade
with their Muslim neighbors,
Judeo Amazigh became a second language
for Jews living in Libya, Algeria, and Morocco.
There's also Haketia,
a mix of Spanish and Judeo Moroccan Arabic.
Judeo-Malayalam and Judeo-Marathi developed
among Indian Jews.
Farsi inspired Judeo-Persian,
and central Asian Jews created Judeo-Tajik and Judeo-Tatic.
Linguists have identified many more languages
which animate the lives and speech of Jews across the world.
In fact, Moroccan Jews in Israel can still tune in
to a Judeo Arabic show on Israeli radio today.
Number five, Hebrew, the language of Judaism's most ancient
and revered texts.
Hebrew is arguably the most quintessential Jewish language.
Known as the Lashon HaKodesh, the holy language,
many believe it's not only the OG Jewish language,
but the OG language of the world.
According to Jewish tradition
it's the language God used to speak the world into existence
and the language all of mankind spoke
before God scrambled all of the languages
at the Tower of Babbel.
There are entire books dedicated to understand the power
of each letter
and a whole method of biblical interpretation,
which assigns a number value to each letter
and derives connections between words
containing the same numerical total.
Throughout Jewish history,
Hebrew consistently remained a language of prayer and study.
In the late 1700s,
zealous members of the Jewish Enlightenment
tried to revive it as a modern spoken language.
However, the full revival didn't take place
until Eliezer Ben-Yehuda took on the mission
in the late 1800s,
inspired by the Zionist vision
of Jews speaking their native language in their native land.
By 1922, Hebrew was so widespread that the British mandate
recognized it as the official language of Jews in Palestine.
The founders of Israel regarded it as so central
to their conception of the new Israeli Jew,
that they persuaded Jewish immigrants to take
on new Hebrew names.
Like all languages it's gone through many makeovers.
So while the Hebrew Bible is pretty intelligible
to a modern Hebrew speaker,
the languages had to reckon with new concepts
and borrows heavily from Arabic and English.
Most Jewish languages now fall into the category
of endangered languages at the risk of extinction.
The horrific destruction of the Holocaust and the expulsions
of Jews from Muslim lands in the 20th century
only accelerated the extinction of these languages.
And yet Yiddish debates still wind
through the streets of Brooklyn.
Ladino tunes still rise up from Sephardi Shabbat tables.
The guttural rhythm of Judeo-Arabic
still drifts through Israeli radios.
Jewish micro communities still bring their unique culture
and traditions to the countries they find themselves in,
and proud Jews continue to keep the languages
of their ancestors alive.