non-Jewish Languages Research Articles

Serbo-Croatian as a Language of Sephardic Literature: The Cases of Isak Samokovlija and Jacques Confino

Abstract The early twentieth century saw a rise in Jewish writers in what is traditionally considered non-Jewish languages in the Balkans like in the rest of Europe. In light of this phenomenon’s significance, we pose the question why and how Serbo-Croatian became a language of Sephardic literature. The article questions the accepted narrative of ‘linguistic acculturation’ of Sephardic Jews in the Balkans and unearths the complex cultural, but also political background of this Jewish phenomenon using the examples of two prolific, recognized, and celebrated writers of Sephardic background, Isak Samokovlija and Jacques Confino. Through historicization of Sephardic multilingualism in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the 1890s to the 1920s, it argues that the adoption of Serbo-Croatian was motivated equally, if not dominantly, by Jewish political aims in the region rather than the pressures of emancipation only. Samokovlija and Confino’s biographies and cultural choices, therefore, illuminate an unlikely Sephardic history.

Reflections on the State of Eastern European Jewish Studies: Editor’s Introduction

Reflections on the State of Eastern European Jewish Studies: Editor’s Introduction David N. Myers One of the distinctive features of the Jewish Quarterly Review over the past seventeen years—from the time that the brilliant and dearly departed Elliott Horowitz and I became coeditors—has been our reliance on the mode of the forum to debate, revisit, and probe. Our first forum in volume 94 in 2004 brought together a diverse trio of scholars, Robert Bonfil, Gavriel Rosenfeld, and Sister Carol Rittner, to analyze Daniel Gold-hagen’s book A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. Their critical and often sharp reflections inaugurated a new tradition and created a place of honor for the forum in JQR. Since that time, we have taken up many trends, themes, books, and scholars in our fora; they allow for more supple and compact engagement with scholarship in the field of Jewish studies than our formidable articles. In the last few issues, we have begun to utilize the forum as a means of exploring the wide world of Jewish studies scholarship in different geo-cultural settings. There is a certain ambiguity in our formulation that, in all honesty, we were not fully mindful of initially. That is, we did not clarify whether we meant scholarship produced in or about those distinct geo-cultural settings. The fact is that we mean both. We are interested in how a particular space within the wider field of Jewish history has been represented in scholarship. And we are interested, as Marcin Wodziński exemplifies in his bibliometric essay on Eastern European Jewish scholarship in this issue, where and by whom research in a given area is produced. This kind of exercise, we hope, can shed light both on the subjects and on the objects of research in the field of Jewish studies. The kinds of reflections we invite vary in scope and disposition, ranging from the “micro” to the “macro” and even on to the “meta.” Our first such forum in JQR 111.1 (Fall 2021) explored Jewish studies and cultural production in [End Page 215] Latin America by asking seven scholars to choose a character from the past who illuminated their own research paths. The present forum pivots to Eastern Europe, home to what was the world’s largest population of Jews until the Holocaust. As such, Eastern Europe was the site of extraordinary scholarly and cultural creativity in a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish languages. Among the devastating losses of the Nazi genocidal assault was the eradication of this remarkable space of multilingual creativity. Recent decades have seen two important developments that animate the authors in this forum: the reemergence of Jewish studies scholarship in Russia and Poland—stimulated by often heroic individuals who emerged from the shadows of Communism—and growing post-Communist contestation and dispute over the sites of memory on which Jews lived and created. The call to forum contributors asked them to address in concise fashion an important moment, piece of scholarship, or personality that has been important to this field of research. The first group of essays takes up a diverse group of key Eastern European personalities covering over a century. Israel Bartal reaches back to a foundational figure of the early twentieth-century, Simon Dubnov, and examines the surprising reception and afterlife of the historian and Autonomist in the Zionist worlds of Mandate Palestine and the State of Israel. Ellie Schainker excavates the fascinating story of master archivist Benyamin Lukin, who played a central role in unearthing critical sources related to Russian Jewish history already in pre-1989 Leningrad, later in post-Soviet St. Petersburg, and finally in Jerusalem as head of the Eastern European section of the Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People. Benjamin Nathans offers a touching tribute to a dear Russian friend and mentor, Viktor Yefimovich Kelner, who, after 1989, abandoned the study of British labor history to devote himself to building up an archive of Russian Jewish history, which he himself began to study and master; Kelner’s biography of Dubnov remains one of the best studies ever written...

Słowo i obraz – teksty i związane z nimi motywy ikoniczne na nagrobkach kobiet na cmentarzach żydowskich na historycznych obszarach Rzeczypospolitej

Word and Image: Texts and Related Iconic Motifs on Women’s Gravestones in Jewish Cemeteries in the Historical Areas of The Republic of Poland The research material in the article covers the period from the earliest gravestones from the fourteenth century to contemporary ones of the twenty-first century. Among iconic motifs taken into account are those which are specific for women’s gravestones, and from texts in inscriptions—those corresponding to artistic motifs. The aims of this study are the following: to distinguish thematic groups, determine the range of iconic motifs used and the chronology and frequency of their occurrence, as well as to juxtapose them with normative content from religious writings of Judaism and with rites and customs. The following conclusions emerge from the research: In the early period (until the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century), there was no differentiation on tombstones between separate motifs ascribed to men (except for the Kohanim and Levites) and separate motifs ascribed to women. Among the common motifs, the bird motif dominated on women’s gravestones, while the crown motif acquired its specific character. In the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, the motif of a candlestick appeared on women’s gravestones; it spread very quickly and became a visual identification feature. In the nineteenth century, with the introduction of vanitas motifs on gravestones, they began to be used on women’s gravestones. The connection of motifs with the names of the deceased is also noticeable (e.g. Feigl–bird, Rachel–fairy, Royza–rose, or scenes related to biblical namesakes). The contents of women’s epitaphs presented as praise or description of virtues largely concern traditional female duties toward the home, husband, and children. Women’s gravestones contain no attributes or references to the study of Torah and scholarship, or else to activities in the public sphere—to professions, both religious and later secular—which obviously results from the position and role of women in the patriarchal community. Such information does not appear until the interwar period on the tombstones of women from families assimilated into the surrounding culture which is also evidenced by non-traditional tombstone forms and inscriptions in non-Jewish languages.

Afterlife of the Hebrew/Aramaic Component of Judeo-Greek in Non-standard Varieties of Modern Greek

Abstract The article presents fourteen case studies of the Judeo-Greek lexemes of Hebrew and Aramaic origin that have passed into the dialects and sub-standard sociolects of Modern Greek, and aims at improving their lexicological and etymological analysis. Starting with a brief description of the sources, it continues with a reconstruction of the semantic development of Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords and their derivatives on the background of typological parallels from other Jewish and non-Jewish languages.

O literaturze żydowskiej w językach nieżydowskich — wprowadzenie

ON JEWISH LITERATURE IN NON-JEWISH LANGUAGES: AN INTRODUCTION The article is an introduction to a special issue of the journal Archiwum Emigracji devoted to Jewish literature written in non-Jewish languages. It briefly presents the sources of multilingualism of Jewish culture and characterises Jewish Diaspora literature as a “minor literature,” for it is: a) dispersed among various national literatures, b) trans-linguistic, c) highly sensitive to the problems of identity, difference, language, space, anti- or allo-Semitism, proper names and the heritage of the Holocaust. The author offers a general definition of this literature as a literary expression of autobiographic (i.e. subjectively expressed) Jewish experience in exile.

Language Politics: The Boundaries of Homeland and Translingual Israeli Literature

Historically, Zionism posited a fundamental connection between Hebrew language and Israeli culture and identity. Recent developments in Israeli literature, in particular the rise to prominence of both Israeli authors writing in non-Jewish languages and Hebrew writers living abroad, have begun to test the link between language and homeland. This article reads a recent work of translingual Israeli literature in English, Shani Boianjiu’s 2012 novel The People of Forever Are Not Afraid , through an earlier fictional and theoretical work in English by the Israeli writer Rela Mazali. Through their approach to translingualism, these texts question the naturalness of the assumed bond between language and homeland and offer a contemporary challenge to the Zionist negation of exile.

Carlos M. Grünberg's Circumcision of the Tongue

Carlos M. Grünberg's Circumcision of the Tongue Alan Astro (bio) Neo-Sephardim Seeking to naturalize their place in a former dominion of the Inquisition, in the first half of the twentieth century several Argentinean Jewish writers—Ashkenazi immigrants or sons of immigrants—began unearthing the vestiges of a Jewish presence in Spanish texts dating from before the expulsion of 1492. This strategy has occasionally earned them the label "neo-Sephardim," a concept promoted within Latin American Jewish studies by one of the field's founding scholars, Judith Laikin Elkin.1 These "neo-Sephardim" styled themselves as continuers of such Jewish or converso literary forbearers as Santob de Carrión, Fernando de Rojas, or even Miguel de Cervantes.2 The writer in this category best-known to English speakers is Alberto Gerchunoff, whose 1910 novel Los gauchos judíos [The Jewish Gauchos], a paean to Jewish agricultural settlement on the pampas, has become a veritable classic of Argentinean literature. Another writer who could be called neo-Sephardic is the poet Carlos M. Grünberg.3 Biographical Overview The son of an immigrant watchmaker from Jaffa, hailing from a Russian Jewish family long established in Palestine, Carlos M. Grünberg was born in Buenos Aires in 1903.4 Holding degrees in the humanities and in law, he made a living as a literature teacher and as a jurist. Though he collaborated on a treatise on estate law in 1930, Grünberg's greatest passions were poetry and Jewish rights, which he combined in a way that few writers in non-Jewish languages have managed. He began publishing works in the art pour l'art vein favored by the Buenos Aires literary group "Florida," far from the socially-committed writing employed by the contemporaneous "Boedo" circle of Argentine authors. Grünberg's work has received little public notoriety, despite the praise given him by no less a figure than Jorge Luis Borges. The Argentinean master penned an enthusiastic preface to Grünberg's 1940 poetic volume Mester de [End Page 1] judería [Jewry's Art], the title of which plays upon the names of two medieval Spanish literary genres: the mester de clerecía [clergy's or scholar's art] and the mester de juglaría [minstrel's art.]5 The title suggests a desire to stake out a Jewish presence within the Spanish language and, by extension, in Argentinean society. Praise for the freedom granted Jews there abounds in the book, as do warnings of residual anti-Semitism gathering new strength from political developments in Europe at the time. In 1946, Grünberg published Narración de la Pascua, a version of the Passover Haggadah. The title, a literal rendering of Haggadah shel Pesach, reflects the unique status of the work as a modern, nearly verbatim translation of the Seder ceremonial; the major concession to Spanish usage is the addition of the verb "to be," which is lacking in the Hebrew present tense. The reproduction of Hebrew word-order in Spanish partakes of the neo-Sephardic texture of Grünberg's work by mirroring the language of Torah study in medieval Spain. In this same decade, Grünberg fulfilled another career wish, to become a diplomat, a wish stymied no doubt by the anti-Semitic and generally anti-progressive atmosphere reigning in the Argentinean Ministry of Foreign Relations. In 1948, the newly created State of Israel named Grünberg the liaison officer to the Argentine government, which had abstained from the United Nations vote on the partition of Palestine. His efforts led to the establishment of relations between the two countries a year later. Though Grünberg continually published poems and essays, another volume of his work did not appear until 1965. Its title, Junto a un río de Babel [By a River of Babel], ironically echoes the biblical injunction not to forget Jerusalem, for the twin Zions in the author's life—Argentina and Israel—had shown themselves to be flawed, and recent Jewish history all too catastrophic. Some poems—"Ultratumba," "Testamento," "Codicilio," "Inmortalidad" ["Beyond the Grave," "Last Will," "Codicil," "Immortality"]—prefigure all too clearly the author's death three years later, in Buenos Aires. Onomastics The...

Functioning Within a Diasporic Third Space: The Case of Early Modern Yiddish

Yiddish plays a particularly important and intriguing role in Ashkenazi history. It is a language that originated on German soil and subsequently became a powerful Jewish language that had the potential to foster cohesion among the various Ashkenazi communities and thus also supported the formation of an Ashkenazi diaspora. While Yiddish is assumed to have emerged by the end of the first millennium, and Yiddish writings were penned in manuscripts from the thirteenth century on, the following arguments focus on the period after the invention of print, when books became a vital cultural medium. Their growing distribution became a crucial factor in standardizing Yiddish and its usage, and made it a central communication instrument within Ashkenazi society and culture. Despite a certain reluctance to accept Yiddish as a legitimate vehicle of Jewish culture on the side of the rabbinical elite, Yiddish books (like books in nonJewish languages) became an instrument of change, a modernizing force. l How should we then understand the Ashkenazi diaspora in the early modern period?2 How did Yiddish play a role in formation of this dia-

Survivors : Postholocaust Yiddish Poems in Non-Jewish Language

This article, dealing with the translation of Postholocaust Yiddish poetry into non-Jewish languages like French, English and German, must necessarily sketch in a linguistic, literary and social background to prepare the ground for the complete understanding of the special task involved in the rendering of Jewish expression. (Conversion into Hebrew presents a far different challenge, described in a related study). Discussed here are literary movements like European Expressionism and Yiddish “Introspectivism” as practiced in the United States as well as the linguistic basis of these in Yiddish speech and poetic prosody and embodied in the translations of Cynthia Ozick (English), Charles Dobzynski (French) and Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz (German).

The Remnant Word

This article deals with the meaning of contemporary Yiddish poetry and its translation into several non-Jewish languages — French, German and English — stressing the perfected realization of this meaning through educated insight into a completely different culture and language. Also discussed are the contributions of Hasidism, Expressionism and Yiddish Introspectivism as well as the fact that both poetry and language are in the process of disappearing and thus require special care.

REVIEW: Ruth Wisse. <strong>JEWISH LITERATURE BETWEEN FUTURE AND PAST</strong>: <em>THE MODERN JEWISH CANON: A JOURNEY THROUGH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE</em>. New York: The Free Press, 2000.

Jewish Literature between Future and Past Mikhail Krutikov Ruth Wisse . The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Language and Culture. New York: The Free Press, 2000, 416 pp. The Modern Jewish Canon is a lucidly written, stimulating, and polemical book. "I have written this book with the illusion that it will interest others," confesses the author, Ruth Wisse, and her illusion is justified. In this work, a leading American scholar and critic of Jewish literature has a twofold goal: to present the general reader with a clearly defined conception of Jewish literature, accompanied by a list of the most important texts; and to make this conception critically and scholarly sustainable. This is a courageous attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice. The tension between the author's critical insight and her ideological agenda makes the book fascinating in some places but disquieting in others. [End Page 409] Ruth Wisse sets out "to explain the phenomenon of a multilingual Jewish literature through a discussion of some of its greater works of the twentieth century." Multilingualism is, in the author's view, the "most complicating feature of modern Jewish literature" (5). The complex relation of the writer to the language makes Jewish literature a special case among other, monolingual national literatures. Rejecting both Harold Bloom's aesthetic approach to the canon and the "essentialist definition [of Jewish literature] based strictly on Jewish language" (10), Wisse describes modern Jewish literature rather vaguely as "the repository of modern Jewish experience" (4). Yet she adds an important qualification: "[W]hat I mean by Jewish experience will emerge from the books I have chosen rather than from any theoretical model that attempts to subsume the whole" (14). This helps her to draw the boundaries of the phenomenon in question and to separate the "universalism, which seeks to eliminate tribal categories" from the "universality, which is the global resonance of a tribal work" (19). The Modern Jewish Canon is concerned with the latter category. However, this definition raises at least one practical and one theoretical question. How can today's predominantly monolingual contemporary Jewish audience (or audiences) have access to this multilingual literature? And what are the links that hold all the monolingual branches of Jewish literature together? It is the author's way of dealing with these issues that makes the overall argument problematic. At the end of the book, the reader finds a reference guide of more than fifty titles, and these include "only works that are available in English, translated from Ashkenazic-European and Jewish languages" (382). This suggests that access to "the repository of modern Jewish experience" is limited by the availability of English translations, whereby the first, technical question of accessibility is resolved automatically. Indeed, Wisse grants English a privileged status among "Ashkenazic-European" languages not only for practical but for ideological reasons. By virtue of being the "world's most powerful language" (266), English appears to occupy the intermediate position between the Jewish languages on top and other non-Jewish languages at the bottom in the author's peculiar linguistic hierarchy, based on each language's ability to convey the Jewish experience. English alone among non-Jewish languages is capable of telling the Jewish story in a positive way (265). Other non-Jewish languages are either alien (Russian, French, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Ukrainian) [End Page 410] or hostile (German) to Jews. German is not only antisemitic but also immoral; Jews had to forge their own Germanic language, Yiddish, as "a moral alternative to German civilization, to protect their self-disciplining way of life" (8). In this hierarchical conception of multilingual Jewish literature, the writer's choice of language predetermines the direction and character of his or her writing: Yiddish confronts the decline of the traditional way of life, German reflects antisemitic discourse, Russian is the language of revolutionary illusion, and French and Polish convey the alienation of the Jews of Europe, whereas the powerful English tells the American success story as well as narrates "the return to the Land of Israel and the resumption of effective Jewish self-defense" (24). Israeli Hebrew, however, does not live up to its promise and brings us back to the old Jewish predicament...

Jewish interlinguistics: Facts and Conceptual Framework

Since the 6th century B.C., Jews have created unique variants of many coterritorial non-Jewish languages with which they came in contact; Aramaic, Greek, Arabic, Spanish, Persian, and German are just a few examples. Widespread shifts to non-Jewish languages throughout the world and to revived spoken Hebrew in Israel are now resulting in the obsolescence of contemporary Jewish languages and putting an end to 2600 years of Jewish language creation. The present paper proposes a typology of Jewish language phenomena, explores the common linguistic components and processes attending their genesis and development, formulates urgent research tasks in comparative Jewish interlinguistics, and assesses the contribution of Jewish language study to general linguistics. A shift in the language of a community can have three effects on the identity of the speakers: (a) Language shift might be accompanied by a shift in ethnic identification; e.g., the Turkic-speaking Bulgars who emigrated to the Balkans in the late 4th century A.D. eventually assimilated fully to the local languages and cultures. (b) Language shift can take place without the loss of ethnic identity; e.g., the Egyptian Copts switched from Egyptian to Arabic, but retained some elements of a distinctive national culture, in particular a Christian identity. (c) Finally, cultural and ethnic assimilation can take place in the absence of language loss; e.g., various Balkan populations, in the wake of widespread intermingling and language contact over a millennium, have developed a large body of common ethnic, cultural, and even linguistic features, though there is little tendency to give up individual Balkan languages.' In any typology of linguistic and cultural shift, the Jews occupy a unique position. On the surface, the original Hebrew-speaking Jews in Palestine who adopted Aramaic and Greek as their spoken and written media would seem straightforward representatives of the second type-language shift without full ethno-cultural submersion. However, two factors render these and most other instances of Jewish language shift distinctive from the Egyptian Coptic experience: the Jews have had a tendency (a) to create a unique variant from the adopted coterritorial non-Jewish language, while (b) retaining written forms of Hebrew (the original language of the Jewish people in Palestine) and of Aramaic (the first successor language to Hebrew) as liturgical and literary languages and as potential sources of enrichment for the new vernaculars. Hebrew-Aramaic elements take the form of adstratal borrowings and occasionally even substratal retentions, transferred through successive Jewish languages and thus partly erasing the effects of the loss of spoken Hebrew and Aramaic. Hence language shift among the Jews-unlike that of the Egyptian Copts and Balkan