In the 21st century, most longstanding Diaspora Jewish languages are endangered. If we do not document these languages in the coming decades, the last native speakers will no longer be available. This urgency led to an assignment in Sarah Bunin Benor's class at USC, "Jewish Language in the 21st Century." Students were asked to select an endangered Jewish language, research it, interview a native speaker, interview a descendant of a speaker, and post their work on this website. Click on the buttons above to see the fruits of the students' labor.

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Why are many Jewish languages endangered?

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The 19th and 20th centuries saw major shifts in Jews’ language use due to Jews’ emancipation and enlightenment, as well as governments instating nationalist policies that required official languages for education. Jews in Italy, Greece, and Iran, for example, learned standard Italian, Greek, and Persian, gradually reducing the distinctive features of their longstanding Jewish language varieties. Another major factor in language shift during this period was massive waves of immigration, sparked by persecution and economic factors. When Jews moved from Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia to the Americas, Israel, Western Europe, and elsewhere, they felt economic and social pressure to learn the new local languages – English, French, Swedish, etc. As in previous centuries, Jews spoke these languages with Hebrew words and other distinctive features, but in most cases they did not write them with Hebrew letters because of more widespread literacy. In Israel, language policies required immigrants to learn Modern Hebrew, and Diaspora languages were stigmatized and disincentivized. The Holocaust also led to language changes, as millions of Yiddish speakers, as well as smaller communities that spoke Ladino, Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Greek, Karaim, and Krymchak, were murdered.

 

Today, most longstanding Jewish languages are endangered, spoken primarily by the elderly and not transmitted from parent to child. The major exception is Yiddish, which is vibrant in Hasidic communities around the world. In addition, young people in one town, Qırmızı Qəsəbə, Azerbaijan, still speak Juhuri, but all also speak other languages. The endangerment of most longstanding Jewish languages has led to some “postvernacular engagement” – people interacting with and celebrating a language even when they have limited speaking ability. Jews in Rome attend theatrical performances in Judeo-Italian, and Jews in several countries sing and listen to songs in Ladino and create and consume new Yiddish culture. Israeli Jews of various ages participate in nostalgic, metalinguistic activities surrounding their ancestral Yiddish, Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Malayalam, including singalongs, lectures and conversations about the languages, and sometimes even language classes.

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