When the ancient Israelites were slaves in Egypt, they assimilated into Egyptian society — with three key exceptions: They never lost their distinctive Jewish mode of dress, they maintained their Jewish names, and they kept their Jewish language. These three features enabled them to hold on to their Jewish identity.

Scattered far and wide, Jewish communities have carved out distinctive languages, often keeping them apart from the larger non-Jewish communities surrounding them. Dr. Mary Connertey, a teaching professor emeritus at Penn State Behrend, explained to Aish.com, an online resource for Jewish content, that “Anywhere Jews have lived, they have created their own language.”

Here are six Jewish languages that helped to preserve their communities through the years:

Yiddish

Yiddish evolved among Jewish communities in Slavic and Germanic-speaking lands in the Middle Ages, incorporating German, Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic and other language elements. It was widely spoken in central and eastern European communities from the early Middle Ages and continues to be spoken today in Jewish communities in Europe, Israel, and in North and South America.

 

Ladino [pictured]

Ladino, variously called Judeo-Spanish, Judezmo, Judio, Jidio, or Spanyolit, is a language that has been spoken by Sephardi Jews around the world for generations. It has its origins in Medieval Spain, where the country’s large, vibrant Jewish community developed a unique way of speaking, blending Hebrew and some Arabic words with Medieval Spanish. Today, Ladino is still spoken by thousands of mostly elderly Jews.

 

Yevanic

Jews living in the northern regions of Greece developed their own language called Yevanic, also known as Judeo-Greek. The area was home to Romaniote Jews, who traced their origin to Jews from the ancient Byzantine empire.

The name Yevanic derives from the Hebrew word for Greece: Yavan. Yevanic contained many Greek words and also incorporated Hebrew, Arabic and Italian.

A pocket of Yevanic speakers exists in Turkey, and some in Iran, perhaps only a few hundred worldwide. Today, the language is kept alive by a few families in Jerusalem and New York — and by scholars who continue to research Yevanic and other still-existing Jewish languages.

 

Bukharian

For generations, Bukharian Jews lived in scattered communities across Central Asia, primarily in present day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. They trace their history back to Biblical times, when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia conquered ancient Israel, destroying the first Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and exiled many Jews north into Babylonia.

Although many Jews returned to Jerusalem and other Jewish lands, some Jews remained in exile, migrating even farther north into Central Asia. These Jews were sometimes known as Bukharian Jews because many lived under the reign of the Emir of Bukhara. Today, more than 200,000 Bukharian Jews live in Israel and also in the United States. While Bukharian is no longer widely spoken, many older Bukharian Jews continue to remember and speak this distinctive Jewish language.

 

Judeo-Arabic

Distinct forms of Arabic spoken by Jewish communities in the Middle East began to evolve as early as the 8th century. Judeo-Arabic is considered a “language variety” rather than a fully distinct language, heard today in parts of Yemen, the Maghreb, Iraq, and Egypt. Judeo-Arabic dialects incorporate Hebrew and Aramaic words, and sometimes older Arabic words that have fallen out of use.

Some of the most notable works of Jewish literature were written in Judeo-Arabic. Judah Halevi (1075-1141), for instance “composed his 12th-century classic work, The Kuzari (Kitab al-Xazari), in Judeo-Arabic, the language of the educated Jewish classes. Maimonides wrote his classic Jewish work, Guide for the Perplexed, in Judeo-Arabic

 

Judeo-Italian

In the Middle Ages, Italian Jews developed a unique mode of speaking known today by scholars as Judeo-Italian. Written in Hebrew letters, Judeo-Italian flourished after Jews were confined to small ghettos.

Since Italian Jews were so restricted in the Middle Ages, the language traditions they developed were intensely local. What the Jews spoke and wrote was mainly the dialect spoken in their places of residence, so we speak of Judeo-Roman, Judeo-Piedmontese, Judeo-Venetian, etc.

Beginning in the Renaissance, Judaic languages in Italian became more Italianized; soon they were simply dialects of local forms of Italian. Although no speakers of Judeo-Italian remain in Italy, a movement among some younger Jews in Rome wants to revive Judeo-Italian and its traditions.

 

Languages reflect history

Today, most of these Jewish languages — and other yet smaller and lesser known Jewish languages — are considered endangered, their native speakers aging and dwindling. In part, this abandonment of traditional Jewish languages reflects the robust state of Israel as the homeland of the world’s Jewish communities.

As Jews have moved to Israel from across the globe, their children grow up conversing in Hebrew. In some cases, Jews have abandoned their traditional languages, owing to a decrease in anti-Semitic activity with Jews allowed to socialize and educate their children in the dominant language of their native country.

But these various Jewish languages reflect the history of our ancestors around the world. The poetry, songs, sayings and writings in Jewish languages are a crucial record of how our ancestors lived; they are a tribute to the rich Jewish lives our forebears led.

—Excerpted from an article published in Aish.com/February 2021

Submitted to The Shofar by Ken Stein