Jewish-Languages Mailing List: January 2001

January 2001

It is with great sadness that I convey the following, and that such must
constitute the first posting to the group.

On November 18th 2000 Professor Michael L. Klein, Dean of the Jerusalem
school of HUC died in Jerusalem after a long illness. To those of us in the
field of Jewish languages, the impact of this notice is multiplied by the
fact that the predominant scholar of the Jewish language "par excellence",
Aramaic, is no longer with us.

I had the excellent fortune of assisting Michael (as he wished to be
addressed; the only qualities he seemed to lack, as all of us who knew him
would concur, were pretense and conceit). Not only would I gain invaluable
insites into the Targumim and the Genizah from our all too brief
conversations; his sheer delight and enthusiasm in searching and sharing
information was both contagious and inspiring. We are truly fortunate that
he was able to give so much during his all too short life, and I for one,
profoundly mourn his loss, with supreme condolences to his wife and
children, and to his extended family at HUC Jerusalem.

May our new group follow in his example.

Seth Jerchower,
University of Pennsylvania, Universität Freiburg

(Below is a tribute from a mutual colleague, Paul Flesher http://targum.org/)
"It is with deep regret that we must announce the death of Michael Klein,
the President of the International Organization for Targum Studies. He was a
scholar, a colleague, and a friend to all who studied the targumim and
related areas. Although no words can convey the depth and the breadth of a
person, or their influence on people both near and far, let us here pay
tribute to his impact on targum studies, knowing that others have and will
recall his contributions in other areas, both public and private.
Michael Klein was a strong and active supporter of the IOTS from even before
its inception. At the 1992 Targum Conference in Dublin, sponsored by Martin
McNamara at the Irish Academy of Sciences, he encouraged Ernest G. Clarke to
take the lead in continuing the spirit of Dublin and the conversations begun
there with another Targum conference. This became the first meeting of the
IOTS in 1995 at Cambridge. There, Michael was elected as a founding member
of the IOTS' Executive Council, and took the organization's reins two years
later, first as Acting President and then as President.

Far more important than what Michael Klein did for the IOTS, however, were
his contributions to the field as a whole. Every scholar and student
considers different aspects of Michael's work to be the most important. Many
will point to his work on the targum fragments of the Cairo Geniza as his
crowning achievement. Over his years of work at the Taylor-Schechter
Collection at Cambridge University, he gave us several important studies. He
edited all the manuscript fragments from the Genizah of the Palestinian
Targums to the Pentateuch then known (Genizah Manuscripts of Palestinian
Targum to the Pentateuch, 2 vols. [Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press,
1986]). This accomplishment made the sum of that material available to
scholars of the Palestinian Targums, and provided solid evidence that those
targums, in their different versions, were widespread. Michael also
catalogued every targum fragment held by the Cambridge Geniza Unit. His
manuscript list was originally published as Targumic Manuscripts in the
Cambridge Genizah Collections (1992) by Cambridge University Press and is
now available in an online version at the Taylor-Schechter Library's
website. And, since the publication of such a volume did not end his
research, an updated manuscript list of the Palestinian Targum fragments
will be published posthumously in the forthcoming volume of the Hebrew Union
College Annual. Futhermore, shortly before he passed away, Michael published
his last book, The Masorah to Targum Onqelos, which drew heavily from Geniza
finds (Targum Studies. New Series, vol. 1 [Binghamton, NY: Global
Publications, 2000]). While it is too soon to evaluate this volume's impact,
the availability of a useable text of the Onqelos Masorah should be a
inspiration to its future analysis.

Other targum scholars will point to Michael's edition of the
Fragment-Targums as his crowning achievement (The Fragment-Targums of the
Pentateuch, 2 vols. [Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980]). (In my own
studies, I consult it nearly every day.) Michael took the disparate
manuscripts, ferreted out their relationships, and presented them in a
reliable form. With this volume and his Genizah Manuscripts of Palestinian
Targum to the Pentateuch, Michael Klein joined the trio of scholars who put
the study of the Palestinian Targums on a solid basis, along with A. Diez
Macho for Targum Neofiti and E.G. Clarke for Targum Pseudo-Jonathan.

Finally, it would be remiss to leave out Michael's work on translation
technique and anti-anthropomorphisms. In much recent scholarship, Michael's
work on Converse, Associative, Complementary and other translation
techniques has been presented as the ultimate word on the matter, or, in
many ways more flattering, has formed the basis for further analysis and
inquiry. His first book and his essays on anthropomorphisms have been
debated and discussed by scholars for years and form an important part of a
debate that is still ongoing.

We will miss Michael's presence at our official meetings and will mourn his
absence from our more private discussions. His gentle voice recalled us to
humility when the debate got too heated, and enjoined us to enjoy our
pursuit of knowledge, even when we had not yet found it. I will ever recall
his last spoken remarks concerning my own work. "It's a nice idea, but it
needs more textual support." For Michael, the text always took center
stage."

Paul V.M. Flesher

Thank you, Seth Jerchower, for your eloquent words about Michael
Klein. It is sad to start our list on such a sad note.

I'd like to point out that we now have 14 subscribers, including scholars
of the following languages:

Judeo-Italian
Eastern and Western Yiddish
Judeo-Arabic
Hebrew
Jewish Neo-Aramaic
Jewish English
Judeo-Spanish

There may be other languages represented, but I do not know everyone who
has subscribed. Therefore, I think it would be a good time for us to
start introducing ourselves.

I'm Sarah Bunin Benor, a 3rd-year PhD student at Stanford University in
the Department of Linguistics. My research focuses on the English speech
of Jews in America, especially Orthodox Jews. I have also done some work
on Yiddish and Ottoman Judeo-Spanish. I am very interested in comparative
Jewish linguistics, especially in the Hebrew/Aramaic component of modern
Jewish languages. My work is done mainly in the frameworks of
sociolinguistics and language contact.

I am looking forward to seeing the field of Jewish linguistics grow. I
plan to be involved in a number of efforts to create infrastructure,
including a website that's currently in the works and a journal and
conferences in the (distant?) future.

Just one request: I'd like to archive the messages that go out to this
list and make them available on the web (probably on the Jewish Languages
site that will be based at Emory). Is there anyone on this list who
has good computer knowledge and would be willing to take charge of the
archiving?

I look forward to fruitful discussion on this list!
-Sarah

Thank you Sarah for the information listed below. I have passed news of the
list to a number of people, and hope that our membership increases. I would
like to bring to the members' attention that our website (CJS
Library, UPenn) has a page dedicated to "Jewish Languages and Cultures":
http://www.library.upenn.edu/cjs/cult-lang.htm

I invite all members to submit URLs and any other information that may be
relative to the site, and hope it provides us with a fair starting point.
Members may also contact me for pertinent UPenn and JTS holdings of Judeo-X
language materials.

As for myself, I am currently Librarian of the Center for Judaic Studies at
UPenn. Prior to this, I was with the Special Collections of the JTS Library
in New York. My Litt. D. dissertation was a comparative study of the
Judeo-Italian manuscript tradition of the Bible, University of Florence,
1993. I am now preparing a complete edition and linguistic analysis of the
Parma MS 3068 Judeo-Italian translation of the Prophets (post 1456), for the
degree of Ph.D. at the Universität Freiburg, Germany. I am also working on
an edition of the extant texts (all for Tisha be'Ab) of the Corfiote
Judeo-Italian variety. Finally, I am involved with the updating of the
Hebrew/Aramaic sections of Unicode, which would finally include characters
used in the representation of Jewish languages, as well as including the
Babylonian and Palestinian te'amim, and aliases for the now established
names within the Unicode standard of the te'amim and nikkudot.

Other interests lie in general and extended linguistic theory, linguistic
typology, phonology, history of the book and of printing. My personal
website may be found at http://petrarch.freeservers.com/jerchower.

Finally, until my friend and colleague Johannes Niehoff signs onto the list,
questions regarding Judeo-Greek may be forwarded to me.

Shabbat Shalom
Seth Jerchower

I'm George Jochnowitz, professor emeritus of linguistics at the College of
Staten Island, CUNY. I've written about Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Provencal
(Shuadit), and bilingualism among Lubavitcher children. At the moment, I'm
curious about whether Jews expelled from Provence could have moved to parts
of theWestern Yiddish area and contributed to the language after speakers of
Eastern Yiddish had already moved away.

Michael S. Halévy, Center for Ibero-American Studies, University of Hamburg
and Institute for the History of the Jews in Germany, Hamburg.

research interest:
Jewish Interlinguistics
Judeo-romance languages
Judezmo
Judeo-Portuguese

My major interest is in the Neo-Aramaic dialects and folk literatures of
Kurdistani Jews, and related areas (Semitic languages in general, and
Hebrew and Aramaic in particular, including Bible translations and Hebrew
elements in Jewish languages).

Dr. Yona Sabar, Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic
Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
UCLA
Los Angeles, Ca 90095-1511
Tel. (310) 474-6430
(H); (310) 206-1389
(O); Fax (310) 206-6456

Hello. I'm doing a workshop for some Jewish grad students next week about the
"Jewishness" of Jewish languages. One of the points I plan to make is that a
piece of Jewish speech/writing can be considered Jewish even if it has no
Hebrew/Aramaic words. Jewish languages are distinct from their non-Jewish
correlates in other ways besides lexicon- substratum syntactic influence,
independent sound changes, discourse differences...

Do you think this is the case for the language(s) you work on? If so, could
you please send me a sentence of that language, pointing out how it's
different from the non-Jewish correlate, and explaining why you think those
differences exist? An example from Jewish English would be:

Jewish English: Are you coming to me for dinner?
General American English: Are you coming to my place for dinner?
("come to me" - substratum influence from Yiddish)
(source: observed from a Modern Orthodox female)

Also, could you please send a sample sentence that does include Hebrew/Aramaic
words? Translations will be much appreciated, since I have no knowledge of
Persian, Provencale, Arabic, etc. If the sentences are from texts or are
already cited in papers you've written, please send the references too.

Maybe it would be good to respond to the list as a whole (rather than to just
my e-mail).

No pressure - if you're too busy to respond, I'll understand.

Thanks in advance,
Sarah

Dear Sarah,
I am working mainly in Arabic (dialects, including Jewish ones) and Hebrew.
But I have no lexical examples right now. One thing is worth mention here,
which came up in my old dissertation: Moroccan Jews use the accusative particle
"bain, bash" ('that') much more than Muslims do. They also use these particles
more than the Muslims, who seem to prefer "belli". References for this feature:
Ph.D. diss.: Judith Rosenhouse (1974) Coordination and Subordination in Urban
Moroccan Colloquial Arabic Dialects, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, pp. 62-74,
(in Hebrew, and transcription).

This topic was also mentioned in my paper (1976) "The types of direct obejct clauses
and their subordination in some colloquial Arabic dialects and Classical Arabic," ZDMG,
126 (1) 10-24.

See also perhaps: (1978) "On the complexity of some types of complex sentences in urban
Moroccan Arabic and some other Arabic dialects" Afroasiatic Linguistics, 5 (4), 1-15.

All the best,
Judith.

In the Judeo-Italian play _La Gnora Luna_ by the pseudonymous Bene Kedem,
the expression _da fuori_ ('outside') is used to mean 'cemetery'.

As to corroborate George's last message (also used was the more archaic "de fora"),
the Christian euphemistic term in Florentine for "to die, to ruin oneself" is
"Andare/Ire alle Ballodole", the via delle Ballodole being at one time outside the
city walls (if I recall correctly, just past Rifredi and Careggi) where the comunal
cemetary was found.

In Judeo-Florentine, the traditional term for 'Arvit was "dire Ašchivenu", which of
course refers to the prayer only said at the 'Arvit service. Are there parallel references
to this type of synecdoche in other Jewish languages?

Best,
Seth Jerchower

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR 2001 MLA CONVENTION IN NEW ORLEANS

The 2001 MLA convention will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Members should familiarize themselves with the guidelines for the MLA
convention, which appear in the September 2000 PMLA (pp. 475-87), before
writing to the organizer listed below. All participants in convention
sessions must be MLA members by 1 April 2001. Organizers are responsible
for responding to all inquires. Members may participate in (i.e., organize
and chair, read papers, serve as speakers or panelists, or participate in
any other way that involves having their names listed in the Program) a
maximum of two meetings. [www.mla.org]

Discussion Group: Sephardic Studies (S2)
Session title: Sephardic Scribes and Manuscripts,
Printers and Presses, Bookmen and Readers.

Session description: Papers addressing commercial, sociological, ideological,
and other aspects of the production, distribution, and commerce in Sephardic
manuscripts and/or books, holy as well as secular.

Type of submission preferred: One-page abstract, brief bibliography, and vitae
by March 16, 2001. Only postmarked submissions will be accepted.
[papers in English, Portuguese, and/or Spanish]

Contact Information:

John Zemke
Romance Languages
137 Arts & Sciences
University of Missouri
Columbia MO 65211
Fax: (573) 884-8171
Tel: (573) 882-6977
E-mail: ZemkeJ @ missouri.edu

Hello. We now have 42 subscribers, and only a handful of us have introduced
ourselves. If you'd like, please send a brief message to the list
jewish-languages @ lists.stanford.edu telling who you are, your academic
affiliation, and your research interests.

Thanks,
Sarah Benor
Stanford University

To the members of jewish-languages @ lists.stanford.edu
My name is Hayim Y. Sheynin. I studied Semitic and Jewish languages in
St.-Petersburg University, Russia, Hebrew University in Jerusalem and
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

My research interests are in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Spanish, while
I feel myself comfortable also with Classical Greek and Latin), Romance,
Semitic and Slavic languages and literatures. In the last period I was dealing
with Judeo-Spanish language and literature. For long time my topics were in
research of medieval Hebrew poetry.

I am affiliated with Gratz College in Philadelphia. In my list of publications
I list about 90 items (mostly articles and reviews) in English, Russian,
Spanish and German languages. I wrote also a number of bibliographic works.

Sincerely,
Dr. Hayim Y. Sheynin
Head of Reference Services
Tuttleman Library of Gratz College
7605 Old York Rd.
Melrose Park, PA 19027
tel. 215 635-7300, ext. 161
fax: 215 635-7320
e-mail: hsheynin @ gratz.edu

FYI for List Members:
Seth Jerchower

Ed Emery ed.emery @ CWCOM.NET
To: ITALIAN-STUDIES @ JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 4:30 PM
Subject: Dante: Arabic and Judaic influences "in" and "around"...

You are invited to attend a Weekend Seminar on "ARABIC AND JUDAIC INFLUENCES
IN AND AROUND DANTE ALIGHIERI" ["Presenze arabe e ebraiche 'in' e 'intorno' a
Dante Alighieri"] to be held in the Bateman Auditorium, Gonville and Caius
College, University of Cambridge on Saturday 28 April 2001 10.00am-6.00pm
[Website: http://www.geocities.com/dantestudies]

OUTLINE
In various parts of the world, people are working on the question of Arabic and
Judaic influences in and around Dante. We are looking to break new ground in
this important area of Dante studies. In the eighty-odd years since the
publication of the ground-breaking work of Miguel Asín Palacios, isolated
individuals have been working with limited resources and within limited
disciplines, examining the relevant issues. Fortunately the climate is now
beginning to change - not least in Italy. Arabo-Italian studies, Judeo-Italian
studies and trans-Mediterranean cultural studies have become intellectually
respectable and are attracting research funding.

We are proposing to hold a small seminar, to bring together some of the people
working in this field. We shall spend a day in Cambridge (Saturday 28 April
2001) documenting the present state of research, and looking at new research
initiatives being developed internationally. All interested parties are welcome
to attend. Our discussions will be broad-ranging. In the longer term we aim to
bring in literature, science, music, architecture, medicine, cuisine, graphic
art, glassmaking, seafaring, etc. Some of these themes will be covered at the
Cambridge seminar. The intention of our seminar is to build towards a full-scale
conference, to be held in Venice in October 2002.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS FOR THE SEMINAR
[Titles of papers are provisional.]

GIORGIO BATTISTONI of Verona: The Three Rings - the Judaic, Arabic and
Christian presence at the Court of Can Grande della Scala.
DANIELA BOCCASSINI of Vancouver: "A Falcon Ready for the King's Hand":
Reassessing the question of Dante's Islamic sources via the medieval
theory and practice of falconry.
ED EMERY: The Trajectory of AABBBA from Ibn Quzman of Andalus, via the
Marian Laudes to Dante's "Morte villana di pietà nemica".
DEBORAH HOWARD of Cambridge: A Brief Overview: Issues in the transmission
of visual culture.
KURT V. JENSEN, of Odense, Denmark: Riccoldo of Monte Croce 1242-1320: a
Florentine Missionary among the Muslims: his "Contra legem saracenorum".
CARLO SACCONE of Padova: Dante and the Libro della Scala di Maometto - the
Book of the Ascent of Mahomet.
PAOLO SCARNECCHIA of Naples: Musical matters: Arabic musical influences in
Italy - 1150-1350.
SANDRA DEBENEDETTI STOW of Ramat Gan, Israel: "The problem of Free Will
and Divine Wisdom as a link between Dante and Medieval Jewish Thought."
This is an open seminar. There is no charge for admission, although you may
make a contribution on the day if you wish... The papers will be delivered
in Italian and English.

IF YOU WISH to register for the seminar
OR if you wish to receive the published papers of the seminar
OR if you wish to be on the mailing list for Venice October 2002, please
send your details
- by e-mail to: ed.emery @ cwcom.net
- by fax to: 0870 133 0145 [from outside UK 0044 870 133 0145]
- or by post to: Ed Emery [Dante Seminar], Peterhouse, Cambridge CB2 1RD 30.i.01