Jewish Languages

Although Hebrew is the original language of the Jewish people, for the vast majority of Jewish history, its use was limited primarily to performing religious rituals and reading sacred texts. Starting in the 6th century BCE with Aramaic, Jewish languages have developed in relationship with the languages of non-Jewish neighbors. Linguists have documented dozens of Jewish diasporic languages, with influences as diverse as German, Malayalam, Berber, Greek, Arabic, Spanish, Persian, and Provencal. Common to most is their incorporation of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic components, and the use of the Hebrew alphabet (as opposed to Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, etc.) in writing.  

Jewish languages serve as a record of the experiences of the communities that speak them. Change over time hints at levels of integration with or isolation from non-Jewish communities. For instance, the expulsions and eastward migrations of Ashkenazi Jews transformed the Judeo-German born in medieval Rhineland into the Slavic-inflected Yiddish spoken in Eastern Europe. Displayed below are items in four Jewish languages: Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian. 

Yiddish

The language of Ashkenazi Jewry, Yiddish had approximately 11 million speakers (75% of world Jewry) on the eve of World War II. Yiddish literature developed primarily as a medium for Jewish women, who were traditionally not literate in Hebrew. Embraced in the 19th century by cultural activists such as Sholem Aleichem (pseudonym Sholem Abramovitsh), more than 50,000 literary titles and 3,000 periodicals were published in Yiddish during the period between 1860 and 1940. The number of Yiddish speakers (fewer than 1.5 million as of 2015) is growing for the first time since the Holocaust due to the ultra-Orthodox population growth and a proliferation of language courses and cultural programs.

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Photo of Sholem Aleichem (Sholem Abramovitsh) (1859-1916)

Sholem-Aleykhem's ale verk: ibergearbeyt un rekht oysgebesert un dos ershe mol aroysgegeben [“The Collected Sholem-Aleichem: revised and emended, first edition'] (Warsaw, 1903-1904)

Seder tehinot u-vakashot fir fromme Yidishe froyen [“Order of Psalms and Supplications for Pious Jewish Women"] (Roedelheim, 1854)

Ladino (Judeo-Spanish, Judezmo)

Ladino developed in medieval Spain and served as the language of the Sephardic diaspora in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Approximately 4,000 books and 380 newspapers were published in Ladino between the 16th and 20th centuries. The number of current speakers is estimated at between 60,000 and 400,000. With its large Sephardic population, and the establishment of the Sephardic Studies Program at University of Washington, Seattle is currently a center of Ladino cultural activity in the United States.

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Leket ha-Zohar en Ladino ("Gleanings of the Zohar, in Ladino”] (Izmir/Smyrna, 1876-77)

Eliezer ben Isaac Papo, Pele Yo'ez (Vienna, 1870)

Judeo-Arabic

Judeo-Arabic has been spoken by Jews in the Arabic-speaking world since the Middle Ages. In the modern period, Jews in the North African states of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria published a range of religious and secular literature, including the Jewish women's religious manual Dat Yehudit bilArabi, published in 1854-1855 by the first Hebrew press in Algeria. Today Judeo-Arabic has approximately 500,000 speakers, nearly all based in Israel. The language is endangered due to the flight and expulsion of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries during the mid-20th century and the subsequent language pressures brought upon immigrants to the State of Israel.

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Avraham Laredo, Dat Yehudit bil-'Arabi: dine nidah ve-halah vehadlakat ha-ner ... ["Information for Jewish women in Judeo-Arabic"] / translated from the original Spanish Arabic by Ya'akov Ankava (Algers, 1854-55)

Mattuk ben Kalifa Hatab, Orah ve-simhah [“Light and Gladness”] Pt. II (Djerba: David Aydan, 5675 / 1914-15)

Hai Sitruk, Hikayat al-bankir Alfons di Logik (Susah/Sousse, ca. 1930)