Liturgical Hebrew in 13th-15th century Catalonia

Abstract

One of the most important chapters in the history of the Hebrew language is concerned with the ways in which biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew were transmitted in Spain and its cultural sphere in the Middle Ages. From the decline of Hebrew as an everyday spoken language, around the 2nd century CE, until its revival toward the end of the 19th century, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language. This was the case in the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. The Jews used the Ibero-Romance language for communication with non-Jews. The Jewish masses acquired the Romance tongue in a random fashion, using it as the vernacular. Hebrew was used mainly as a written language (Schwarzwald 1992: 7). Jews in medieval Catalonia probably spoke Catalan, a Romance language in which two main groups of dialects may be distinguished:1. Eastern dialects, in the regions of Barcelona, Gerona, Tarragona, the Balearics, etc.2. Western dialects: Lérida, Valencia.