Speaking Jewish Jewish Speak

As the world of Jewish studies continues to expand, Studia Rosenthaliana enters a new phase with this 36th volume, the first in a series of yearbooks. In this edition, an international panel of authors takes an innovative look at the theme of Jewish multilingualism from various, multidisciplined perspectives. Several research projects on various aspects of Dutch Jewish history and culture are currently under way at academic institutions in Amsterdam and elsewhere, while Dutch academics are regularly involved in extensive international research projects. The research that resulted in the articles presented in this volume of Studia Rosenthaliana was carried out by the Menasseh ben Israel Institute and the University of Amsterdam in collaboration with the Solomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute in Duisburg and forms part of a larger programme on Yiddish in the Netherlands currently being conducted together with the Abteilung fur Jiddische Sprache, Kultur und Literatur at Heinrich Heine Universitat, Dusseldorf.

With remarkably original formulations, Naomi Seidman examines the ways that Hebrew, the Holy Tongue, and Yiddish, the vernacular language of Ashkenazic Jews, came to represent the masculine and feminine faces, respectively, of Ashkenazic Jewish culture. Her sophisticated history is the first book-length exploration of the sexual politics underlying the "marriage" of Hebrew and Yiddish, and it has profound implications for understanding the centrality of language choices and ideologies in the construction of modern Jewish identity. Seidman particularly examines this sexual-linguistic system as it shaped the work of two bilingual authors, S.Y. Abramovitsh, the "grand-father" of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature; and Dvora Baron, the first modern woman writer in Hebrew (and a writer in Yiddish as well). She also provides an analysis of the roles that Hebrew "masculinity" and Yiddish "femininity" played in the Hebrew-Yiddish language wars, the divorce that ultimately ended the marriage between the languages. Theorists have long debated the role of mother and father in the child's relationship to language. Seidman presents the Ashkenazic case as an illuminating example of a society in which "mother tongue" and "father tongue" are clearly differentiated. Her work speaks to important issues in contemporary scholarship, including the psychoanalysis of language acquisition, the feminist critique of Zionism, and the nexus of women's studies and Yiddish literary history. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.

Call It English identifies the distinctive voice of Jewish American literature by recovering the multilingual Jewish culture that Jews brought to the United States in their creative encounter with English. In transnational readings of works from the late-nineteenth century to the present by both immigrant and postimmigrant generations, Hana Wirth-Nesher traces the evolution of Yiddish and Hebrew in modern Jewish American prose writing through dialect and accent, cross-cultural translations, and bilingual wordplay. Call It English tells a story of preoccupation with pronunciation, diction, translation, the figurality of Hebrew letters, and the linguistic dimension of home and exile in a culture constituted of sacred, secular, familial, and ancestral languages. Through readings of works by Abraham Cahan, Mary Antin, Henry Roth, Delmore Schwartz, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Philip Roth, Aryeh Lev Stollman, and other writers, it demonstrates how inventive literary strategies are sites of loss and gain, evasion and invention. The first part of the book examines immigrant writing that enacts the drama of acquiring and relinquishing language in an America marked by language debates, local color writing, and nativism. The second part addresses multilingual writing by native-born authors in response to Jewish America's postwar social transformation and to the Holocaust. A profound and eloquently written exploration of bilingual aesthetics and cross-cultural translation, Call It English resounds also with pertinence to other minority and ethnic literatures in the United States.

Basics of Biblical Hebrew Video Lectures provides 36 easy-to-follow lessons introducing the grammar and language of the Hebrew Bible. Integrated for use with today's bestselling Hebrew text, it is an ideal resource for traditional students in need of additional instruction; for professors, who can now utilize precious classroom time for discussion and exercises--and have students watch lectures at home; and for self learners and homeschoolers with an interest in learning Hebrew on their own. Each lesson is approximately half an hour and is taught by experienced teacher Miles V. Van Pelt using a logical and simple method of learning biblical Hebrew, an approach he's refined over more than 20 years of studying and instructing students in biblical languages. Focused on the structural pattern of biblical Hebrew instead of tedious memorization, each video session will give students in formal language classes and self-learners alike the basic understanding they need to begin studying the Hebrew Scriptures.

This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.

What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

When non-Orthodox Jews become frum (religious), they encounter much more than dietary laws and Sabbath prohibitions. They find themselves in the midst of a whole new culture, involving matchmakers, homemade gefilte fish, and Yiddish-influenced grammar. Becoming Frum explains how these newcomers learn Orthodox language and culture through their interactions with community veterans and other newcomers. Some take on as much as they can as quickly as they can, going beyond the norms of those raised in the community. Others maintain aspects of their pre-Orthodox selves, yielding unique combinations, like Matisyahu’s reggae music or Hebrew words and sing-song intonation used with American slang, as in “mamish (really) keepin’ it real.” Sarah Bunin Benor brings insight into the phenomenon of adopting a new identity based on ethnographic and sociolinguistic research among men and women in an American Orthodox community. Her analysis is applicable to other situations of adult language socialization, such as students learning medical jargon or Canadians moving to Australia. Becoming Frum offers a scholarly and accessible look at the linguistic and cultural process of “becoming.”

A vivid commentary on Jewish survival and Jewish speech communities, investigating difficult questions about language varieties and choices.