Holy Tongue Research Articles

Songs of the Nation: The Book of Psalms in Late Eighteenth-Century Jewish Enlightenment

In the early years of the Haskalah movement (the Jewish Enlightenment), an avant-garde Jewish intelligentsia, which in the 1780s began its organized activity in Berlin and Königsberg as the Society of the Friends of Hebrew Literature (Gesellschaft der hebräischen Literaturfreunde, or Ḥevrat dorshei leshon ‘ever),1 music and music aesthetics or history were practically absent from its agenda as areas of investigation, let alone practice. Following the ideational inspiration of Moses Mendelssohn, the younger generation of maskilim (scholars, proponents of Haskalah) sought to transform Ashkenazic Judaism from within, primarily through a revival of Bible study and exegesis free from rabbinic authority. Above all, they placed Hebrew Scripture at the center of a new Jewish curriculum and advanced the renewal of the Holy Tongue (Leshon ha-Kodesh) as a language of literary, poetic, and scholarly production. Their endeavors simultaneously drew on medieval and early modern non-Ashkenazic rabbinic Jewish textual traditions as well as contemporaneous European Enlightenment philosophy and scholarship.2 Yet while the second half of the eighteenth century saw an upsurge of printed literature on music criticism and aesthetics in North Germany,3 witnessing a rapidly growing participation of enlightened Jews in German musical culture, particularly in such urban centers as Berlin, the fine arts, including music, were not readily adopted as an operative means of advancing the maskilic vision. Despite Mendelssohn’s extensive contribution to European Enlightenment aesthetics from the outset of his philosophical career,4 music is practically nowhere to be found on the pages of the main organ of the Prussian Haskalah, the monthly periodical ha-Me’asef, first published in early 1784. Indeed, music and other arts had not played a significant role, if any, in the upbringing of the maskilim. Entrenched in the traditional Ashkenazic world of Central and Eastern Europe, their education had been dominated by rabbinic law that gave supremacy to Talmud and Torah learning and considered music, like other sensual temptations and vanities, a distraction to religious scholarship and a life of devotion.5

Hebrew and Aramaic Terms in the Extractiones de Talmud. The Term “Yeshivah” in the Thirteenth-Century Latin Translation of the Talmud

Abstract Translation is hardly an exceptional event. On the contrary, it is quite common and reflects the necessity of communication despite the obvious multiplicity of human languages. Therefore, it has often exhibited a practical and prescriptive nature – as a discourse characterised by instructions to translators about how, what and why to translate. In the present article, I will pay special attention to the treatment of Hebrew and Aramaic terms in the thirteenth-century Latin translation of the Talmud – better known as Extractiones de Talmud (‘Excerpts from the Talmud’). This translation is a large anthology from the Babylonian Talmud that was compiled by Christian authorities in consequence of the famous Paris process of 1240, when the Jewish convert Nicholas Donin confronted the prominent Rabbi Yehiel of Paris regarding the allegedly blasphemous, anti-Christian nature of the Talmud. This large anthology frequently emphasises linguistic difference and abounds in providing details about specific terms from Talmudic literature. Yet the Extractiones appear to neglect the complex nature of the Talmud. They never mention that the Talmud is bilingual – as it collects Hebrew and Aramaic texts – while emphasising that in it the Jews still employ the so-called ‘Holy Tongue’. I will argue that the Extractiones’ emphasis on Hebrew has both ideological and practical purposes. On the one hand, the notion that Hebrew abounds in the Talmud resonates well with the Christian expectation that Judaism is still bound to the “hebraica veritas” (‘Hebrew truth’). On the other hand, an unexperienced Christian reader might have found it difficult to come to terms with the linguistically and historically complex nature of the Talmud. Therefore, the focus on Hebrew may have been the result of an oversimplification for the readers’ sake. The case will be proven on account of one central example: the translation of the Hebrew term “yeshivah”. I will show that the treatment of this term illustrates how the Latin translator of the Talmud intended to emphasise the cultural difference between Jews and Christians, without abandoning the practical need of offering some form of cultural adaptation.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Biblical Shakespeare: King Lear as Job on the Hebrew Stage

Comparisons between King Lear and the biblical Book of Job have become commonplace in scholarship. This paper traces the impact of the Lear–Job connection on the staging and reception of Shakespeare’s play in Hebrew theatre. Due to this connection, King Lear was put within the orbit of a central cultural endeavour for Zionism: the re-appropriation of the Hebrew Bible for the formation of a new national identity. In the mid-twentieth century, the play appealed to directors who searched for Hebrew ‘biblical’ theatre, and a web of intertextual allusions in the press tied Shakespeare’s tragedy to the Book of Job and to rabbinic interpretations of it. However, the equivocal position held by Job within the Zionist imagination undermined the place of King Lear as well. Ultimately, the two were intertwined in the politics of their reception in Hebrew theatre. Yair Lipshitz is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Theatre Arts in Tel Aviv University. In his research, he explores the various intersections between theatre, performance, and Jewish religious traditions. He is the author of two books in Hebrew: The Holy Tongue, Comedy’s Version (Bar Ilan University Press, 2010) and Embodied Tradition: Theatrical Performances of Jewish Texts (forthcoming).

Language of the Old Testament: Biblical Hebrew “The Holy Tongue”

Some kind of familiarity with the structure and thought pattern of biblical Hebrew language enhances translation and improved ways of working with the language needed by students of Old Testament. That what the authors of the Scripture say also has meaning for us today is not in doubt but they did not express themselves primarily for us or in our language, and so it requires training on our part to understand them in their own language. The features of biblical Hebrew as combined in the language’s use of imagery and picturesque description of things are of huge assistance in this training exercise for a better operational knowledge of the language and meaning of Hebrew Scripture. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v4n1p129

The Holy Tongue and the Tongue of the Martyrs: The Eichmann Trial as Reflected in Letste Nayes

The Eichmann trial is usually acknowledged as the first crucial turning point in the attitude of Israeli Jewish public toward Holocaust survivors in general and their possible role in the Israeli ethos in particular. The aim of this paper is to examine this view by studying the views expressed by the survivors themselves in Yiddish Israeli media. It will be shown that many of the survivors grasped their assigned role in Israeli society after the trial as a disappointment: their material loss and their heroism were indeed acknowledged for the first time by the Israeli public, and this was a partial blessed change; but acknowledgment of the magnanimity of their cultural loss was never acknowledged because the Israeli ethos was built upon its rejection.

Veiling knowledge: Hebrew sources in the Yiddish sermons of ultra-orthodox women

This article discusses a gender-based aspect of contemporary language contact among Israeli Yiddish-speaking Haredi Jews. The speakers are all bilingual, and their command of Israeli Hebrew undermines the traditional linguistic disparity between men's and women's access to sacred Jewish texts. These texts are studied solely by men, with the result that, throughout the generations, men's command of “the holy tongue” (Hebrew and Aramaic) was much higher than that of the women. Today, in contrast, the familiarity of Israeli Haredi women with Israeli Hebrew facilitates their understanding of such materials. This is a new phenomenon, giving women access to sacred texts which had formerly been available only to men. Consequently, in quoting from sacred texts, when they speak in public (for example, in giving sermons to other women in their community), Israeli Haredi women employ various strategies in order to camouflage their true linguistic competence, so as not to display knowledge of the holy tongue on a level higher than that perceived as socially legitimate for women. Linguistic and discourse-based analyses of these strategies – in marked contrast to those of their American Yiddish-speaking counterparts – illustrate a facet of the continuing Haredi efforts to preserve a traditional way of life in a changing world.

“I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. By AnthonyGrafton and JoannaWeinberg (with AlastairHamilton). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 380. Hardcover, $35.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 39, Issue 1 p. 44-45 History of Christianity (Modern) “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. By Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg (with Alastair Hamilton). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 380. Hardcover, $35.00. Henk Nellen, Henk Nellen Huygens Institute for the History of the NetherlandsSearch for more papers by this author Henk Nellen, Henk Nellen Huygens Institute for the History of the NetherlandsSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 March 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.12014_2Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume39, Issue1March 2013Pages 44-45 RelatedInformation

Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 392 pp.

Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 392 pp. - Volume 36 Issue 2

"I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (review)

Reviewed by: "I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship Dean Phillip Bell "I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship, by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, with Alastair Hamilton. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 392 pp. $35.00. In this original, highly learned, and beautifully produced volume Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, known for their important contributions to Renaissance scholarship and intellectual history, have teamed up to provide an innovative and provocative study of an intriguing, if often neglected, Renaissance Hebraist, Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614). The methodology they utilize, namely careful attention to Casaubon's marginal comments on books that he read (he annotated hundreds of books and wrote sixty volumes of notes), is powerful and, combined with a close and nuanced reading of his published works and a broad context, makes this a remarkable book that will have implications far beyond its immediate field. Better known for his philological prowess and his studies of ancient Greek and Latin literature, Casaubon was also an avid reader, student, and collector of Judaica. He read works in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and even Yiddish. The analysis in the volume proceeds on a number of levels simultaneously, as the authors assess the traditional presentation of Casaubon, place him in an historical context, and scrutinize the full range of his writings. The resulting image of Casaubon that Grafton and Weinberg re-create is of an individual in formation. They point to his accomplishments and successes and well as his failures and searching. They craft a multi-dimensional human being and explore how he thought and responded to what he read and discussed. Describing the process of his note taking, Grafton and Weinberg provide useful insights into Casaubon's thought process and methods of contextual and meaning-making reading. They point to the intricate web that connects Casaubon's thought in his published work as well as his draft publications, notes, letters (including approximately 2,500, mostly in Latin) and journal entries. Grafton and Weinberg trace his methods of reading and then move to a detailed discussion of Casaubon's study of Hebrew, a particularly useful exercise given that Casaubon taught Hebrew only briefly and was not a specialist in that field. For Casaubon, much of his interest in Hebrew writing and Jewish thought was related to his own, internal Christian polemics—especially his criticism of Hermes Trismegistus and his attack on Pietro Galatino. Much of Casaubon's impressive Hebrew learning was enlisted in a fierce battle with Cardinal Cesare Baronio. Casaubon's critique made much of what Casaubon saw as Baronio's ignorance of Hebrew and Greek and his lack of critical acumen, [End Page 178] as well as his shortcomings when it came to chronology and his lack of understanding of Hebrew and Jewish customs. For Casaubon, the study of late Antiquity and the early years of Christianity had important resonance for his day and required contextualization within the Jewish world of Jesus as well as his disciples and opponents. Grafton and Weinberg offer a nuanced account of Casaubon's engagement with Baronio, providing important discussion that measures the intellectual and religious climate and agenda of the time and that spills over into more personal issues of religion and attempts to convert Casaubon to Catholicism. In this context, Grafton and Weinberg provide particularly intriguing and useful discussion of Casaubon's interaction with Joseph Scaliger. Although they never met in person, the two scholars exchanged letters and engaged in discussion of key academic themes, with many of Scaliger's sensibilities serving as fodder for Casaubon's own approach and conclusions. Like others of his time, Casaubon appears to have been engaged in a "spiritual quest, which knew no denominational boundaries" (p. 43). While the authors generally find Casaubon to be a "dispassionate" reader, even when annotating Jewish prayerbooks, they note the appearance of hidden agendas on occasion. Despite the use he made of Hebrew texts and his great engagement with them, Casaubon like other Christian Hebraists does not appear to have been "sympathetic" to the Jews or the rabbis...

“I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship, by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg with Alistair Hamilton.

<i>“I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship</i>, by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg with Alistair Hamilton.

Isaac Casaubon, Hebraist

A review essay of Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinbegr’s remarkable ‘I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue’. The essay seeks to pay homage to their exemplary contribution to our understanding of Early Modern Christian Hebraism – and of erudition more generally – by expanding on their pioneering study through reflection on three themes: Casaubon’s early Hebrew studies; the motivation and scope of his learning; and his posthumous reputation as a Hebraist.

:"I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, The Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship

:<i>"I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, The Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship</i>

“I have always loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. By Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg., Carl Newell, Jackson Lectures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Belknap, 2011. Pp. xii+380. $35.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews“I have always loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. By Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg., Carl Newell, Jackson Lectures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Belknap, 2011. Pp. xii+380. $35.00.Alvin SniderAlvin SniderUniversity of Iowa Search for more articles by this author University of IowaPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 84, Number 1March 2012 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/663141 Views: 17Total views on this site © 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

I have always loved the holy tongue. Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a forgotten chapter in Renaissance scholarship. By Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg (with Alastair Hamilton). Pp. xi+380 incl. 42 ills. Cambridge, Ma–London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. £25.95. 978 0 674 04840 9

I have always loved the holy tongue. Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a forgotten chapter in Renaissance scholarship. By Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg (with Alastair Hamilton). Pp. xi+380 incl. 42 ills. Cambridge, Ma–London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. £25.95. 978 0 674 04840 9 - Volume 63 Issue 1

"I have always loved the holy tongue": Isacc Casaubon, the Jews, and a forgotten chapter in Renaissance scholarship

"I have always loved the holy tongue": Isacc Casaubon, the Jews, and a forgotten chapter in Renaissance scholarship

Il Purim-shpil: origini e trasformazioni

The Purim-shpil: Origins and Transformations In this paper I consider the origins of the most venerable form of Yiddish theatre, the Purim-shpil. In particular, I note the first attestations of the term Purim-shpil, from its initial appearance in Yiddish texts from 16th-century Italy, to subsequent examples: 1. a Purim-shpil from Germany, from the years 1595-1605 and 2. Eyn sheyn Purim-shpil from Wagenseil’s collection (1697), both published by Chone Shmeruk in 1979. I endeavour to interpret these texts – which cannot yet be defined as fully theatral – within the rich parodic tradition of Purim in Ashkenazi society, and propose that this tradition should be seen not in terms of ‘popular’, but rather as the fruit of a skilled use of different registers, ‘high’ and ‘low’, in a way that parallels the parodies of sacred Christian texts in European Medieval literature. Indeed we know that the actors were often students of the Talmudic Academies, and thus among the most cultured intellectuals of Ashkenazi society. The use not only of quotations and references from the Hebrew Bible, but from Midrash and prayers in the Holy Tongue as well, prove that these texts are a refined product of a rooted patrimony that continues to bear its fruit to this very day.

Performance as Profanation: Holy Tongue and Comic Stage in Tsahut bedihuta deqiddushin

Previous articleNext article No AccessPerformance as Profanation: Holy Tongue and Comic Stage in Tsahut bedihuta deqiddushinYAIR LIPSHITZYAIR LIPSHITZ Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Renaissance Drama Volume 36/372010Italy in the Drama of Europe Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/rd.36_37.41917456 Views: 17Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright © 2010 Northwestern University PressPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Raffaele Esposito Bibliografia, (): 231–239.https://doi.org/10.4000/books.aaccademia.2063

Another Look at "The Life of 'Dead' Hebrew": Intentional Ignorance of Hebrew in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society

The study of language had always stood at the forefront of every Jewish movement of revitalization and cultural renewal. It served as bridesmaid as each new spiritual period began, accompanying it along up to its full ascendancy. —Reuven Fahn (1937), 31 The Hebrew Language—A "Lost Tongue" One hundred and fifty years of arduous attempts to revive Hebrew as a modern literary language preceded its revival as a spoken language. Yet, from its incipience to the end of the nineteenth century, modern Hebrew literature could barely gain itself a narrow circle of devoted readers. One of the more acute expressions of the distress of Hebrew authors in the last third of the century was voiced by Yehudah Leib Gordon (1830-92), the greatest of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) poets.1 In 1871 Gordon published the poem "For Whom Do I Labor?" out of a sense that, lacking an audience, he was perhaps the last of the Hebrew poets: [End Page 171] For Whom Do I Labor? Whilst poesy's muse upon me comes stealing Whilst heart conceives and with right hand composing Poems composing and in a language forgotten Where triumph, what bliss, may ever prevail And for whom do I spend my best years in travail Depriving my person of quiet and gain? My parents—adhering to their Lord and nation Commerce, Commandments, their life's occupation Reason revolts them, good taste never found "Deathly is poetry, and rhetoricheathen! "To lodge near a poet is strictly forbidden!" Thus do they taunt us, viciously hound.2 Gordon avers that his best years have been devoted to composing poetry in a "language forgotten"—a language in demand by no one. His lament is that the traditional Jewish society of his day treats writing poetry in Hebrew as an act of apostasy and attacks and isolates those engaged in it. This lament may strike the modern reader as odd. Scholarship on the origins of Hebrew, like research on the traditional Jewish educational system, rejects as superficial the characterization of Hebrew as a "dead language." Yet if Hebrew was not dead, why were there no readers for modern Hebrew texts? The conventional view can accommodate this difficulty: traditional education indeed prepared potential readers in the Hebrew language, but the community also imposed strict social sanctions on those who read the new Hebrew literature.3 Indeed, many researchers dwell on the preservation mechanisms that sustained the Hebrew language over the generations and kept it in continual use.4 Benjamin Harshav's "Essay on the Revival of the Hebrew Language" is a case in point.Harshav expounds on "the life of 'dead' Hebrew" and claims that explication of Hebrew texts, a central activity in religious life, served to sustain "awareness of the meanings of words and of the parallels between various texts in the Hebrew library."5 In his opinion, such "Education emphasized the understanding of texts" (his emphasis), both in the heder and in the yeshivah. Language comprehension was reinforced by the methods of study employed within the education system, which included reading and translating the Torah in the heder, quoting texts and interpreting them as part of Talmudic studies, and the dialogic method of study employed in the yeshivahs. Hebrew, furthermore, was the language used in religious literature, in responsa, in rabbinic decisions, and in community documents. All these, along with the Hebrew component of Yiddish, show, [End Page 172] in Harshav's opinion, that "unlike Latin, which the common folk did not know and whose primary students were monks, all Jews were required to study texts in the Holy Tongue. ... Even if in the lower classes of society the level of study was not advanced, in fact every male knew—or was supposed to know—how to read. Hebrew texts served also for daily prayer, blessings and so forth. Hebrew was understood well...

スピノザと中世のヘブライ文法論争

Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae, as written in Spinoza's final years, is a hurried sketch of Hebrew grammar. Not satisfied with the popular Hebrew grammar at his time, Spinoza tried to reform it with a logical-historical thinking, so much as to account for the arbitrariness of all exceptions, and to free the study of the language from the myth of Hebrew as “Holy Tongue”. Modern critics, however, are quick to point out “mistakes” of Spinoza's grammar in light of today's understanding of Biblical Hebrew. Vloten and Land also shared the same critical view, so that they changed the text of the first print of 1677 in various essential points.Questioning such a hyper-critical approach as of Vloten and Land who eventually made the “text” more sounding to the modern readers, the present author contends that Spinoza's grammar is misunderstood by modern critics due to the lack of attention to the medieval dispute on Hebrew grammar among the Jewish scholars; in particular, the paper attempts to illustrate the case with the Vloten's emendation which makes the text read “every shewa is a vowel which cannot be heard by itself, ” arguing that the emendation is wrong and unnecessary in light of the dispute between the two camps of medieval Hebrew grammarians (Joseph, Moshe, David Kimhis vs. the traditionalists such as Ibn Ezra, Abraham de Barmes) concerning the Hebrew vowels, and concluding that Spinoza responded to the medieval dispute by thinking of every shewa as “a vowel which can be heard by itself.” Thus, the paper demonstrates the significance of medieval Jewish sources to the study of Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae.