TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES:
JEWISH LANGUAGES,
IDENTITIES AND CULTURES
GEORGETOWNUNIVERSITY
Riggs Library
FEBRUARY 18-19, 2007
Sponsored by the Program for Jewish Civilization,
Faculty of Languages and Linguistics,
Department of Linguistics at GeorgetownUniversity,
and National Resource Center on the Middle East
TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES:
JEWISH LANGUAGES, IDENTITIES AND CULTURES
GEORGETOWNUNIVERSITY
FEBRUARY 18- 19, 2007
Organized by Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown) and Elana Shohamy (Tel Aviv)
Jews have been making and remaking identities and cultures through language and other symbolic media over time, across place and within genres. Relationships among Jewish languages, identities and cultures have been reshaped, and have been reshaping one another, for thousands of years. Each facet of Jewish life has been woven and rewoven together over time and across the many different places where Jews have lived, from ancient Israel, the wide ranging Diaspora in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, to modern Israel. Likewise, Jewish representations of selfhood, nation and culture appear within a wide variety of genres ranging from religious texts to oral story telling, oral history, fiction, poetry, drama and music, each of which provides different formal and performance options for weaving language together with identity and culture.
When we started planning this conference, our goal was to explore the issuesabove by bringing together our interests in language policy (Elana) and language use (Debby). Elana had researched and written about various issues related to language policy, language acquisition by immigrants and language ideologies in multilingual Israel. The languages of Israel: Policy, ideology and practice (with B. Spolsky) documents the rich repertoire of languages (Jewish and others) used and practiced in Israel today in the midst of conflicts and paradoxes associated with the Hebrew ideology. Elanaalso spearheadedthe multilingual language education policy that became official in Israel. Debby’s wide range of interests in discourse (language in text and context) had included an interest in the way Jewish Americans tell stories and argue with one another; she had recently begun analyzing the stories told in Holocaust oral histories and the formation of public discourse about the Holocaust. When Elana came to Georgetown as a Visiting Professor in Spring 05 and 06, a mutual interest in Jewish language policies and uses was kindled and we decided to put together a short symposium. One topic led to another and we became convinced thata conferenceon the many ways that Jewish identity and cultureareinterwoven with language would be interesting not just forscholars,but also forpeople outside of the ‘academy.’We were fortunate enough to have PJC director Yossi Shain, and then PJC Acting Director Jacques Berlinerblau, share our vision for the conference.We arealso immensely grateful for the intellectual and material support provided by the Program for Jewish Civilization, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, and the National Resource Center on the Middle East.Assistance provided byJacques Berlinerblau, Amber Kurtz, Yossi Shain, Melissa Spence, Inge Stockburger and Rabbi Harold White is also greatly appreciated.
On the next pages, you will find the conference schedule (3-4)- and then (in keeping with the schedule), the list of speakers, some information about who they are, a brief abstract of their presentations(5- 18) and a map of GeorgetownUniversity (19). Enjoy!
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Sunday, February 18, Riggs Library
9:00Coffee and light breakfast
9:30Welcome: Marjory Blumenthal (Associate Provost, Georgetown)
9:45 Introduction: Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown)
Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown) and Elana Shohamy (Tel Aviv)
“I Talk, Therefore I Am: Jewishness as a Linguistic Enterprise,”
Lewis Glinert (Dartmouth)
10:30 Panel: Speaking Jewish in the United States
“Jewish American English,” Sarah Bunin Benor (HebrewUnionCollege)
“Who Am I?: Jewish and Russian Cultural Identities among Third-Wave Soviet
Émigrés in the United States,” David Andrews (Georgetown)
“Learning and Using Hebrew in the United States,” Jonathan Paradise
(University of Minnesota)
Moderator: Elana Shohamy
12:00 Lunch, Healy Hall
1:00 Panel: Performing Jewish Languages, Identities and Cultures
“Ladino: Performance, Survival and Resurgence,” Gloria Ascher (Tufts
University)
“Yiddish as Performance Art”, Jeffrey Shandler (RutgersUniversity)
“Language and Immediacy in the Hebrew Cinematic Lens,”
Eric Zakim (University of Maryland )
Moderator: Jacques Berlinerblau
2:45 Panel: Performing Memory (I)
Ari Roth (Artistic Director; Theater J, WashingtonD.C.)
Henry Greenspan (Psychologist and Playwright, University of Michigan);
Moderator: Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown)
3:45 Coffee Break
4:15Panel: Speaking Jewish in Israel
“Interpreting 'Jewish' Languages in Israel Today: Language Policy in Israel ,”
Elana Shohamy (Tel-AvivUniversity)
“Language Policies and Practices of Palestinian Arabs in Israel”,
Uri Horesh (GeorgetownUniversity)
“Judeo Arabic in Israel and Elsewhere”, Benjamin Hary (EmoryUniversity)
Moderator: John Myhill (University of Haifa)
6:00 Dinner, ICC Galleria
Machaya Klezmer Band
8:00 Keynote Event: A Conversation with Cynthia Ozick
Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown)
Riggs Library
Monday, February 19, Riggs Library
9:00 Coffee and light breakfast
9:30 Panel: Jewish Languages, Past and Present
“Language Loyalty and Language choice;Yiddish and Hebrew in the Aftermath
of the Holocaust”, Miriam Isaacs (University of Maryland)
“Broken Hearts, Broken Homes:The Holocaust and Its Languages",
Alan Rosen (Yad Vashem)
“Old Languages in new versions of Holocaust oral histories”, Deborah Schiffrin
(GeorgetownUniversity)
Moderator: Deborah Tannen
10:45Coffee Break
11:30 Panel: Performing Memory (II)
“Voicing My Father: Bringing my Jewish Identity to the Stage”,
Deborah Tannen (GeorgetownUniversity)
“Voicing Anne Frank: Adaptation and Appropriation in a New Telling
of Her Story”, Derek Goldman (GeorgetownUniversity)
Moderator: Miriam Isaacs
1:00Closing Remarks:
Elana Shohamy and Deborah Schiffrin
SPEAKER BIOS AND ABSTRACTS (listed in order of presentation)
LEWIS GLINERT ()
I talk, therefore I am: Jewishness as a linguistic enterprise
Sunday, February 18, 9:45
We seemed so recently to have gotten over that Jewish language thing. No more
Jewish dialects, no more aleph bes. Even in Israel, they would have a language
like any other (just superficially Hebrew, but fully intertranslatable of
course). And HOW we talked, too: We were going to sound...like, Gentile. But
it hasn't quite turned out that way. They still seem to think we talk Jewish
(like Jerry Seinfeld, about nothing). So does Deborah Tannen. Meanwhile, it has
dawned on Israelis that, if nothing else, they have an identity in Hebrew. And
it's now official: language constructs reality. So the Rabbis had it right
after all: "With ten speech acts the World was created."
Speaker Bio:
Lewis Glinert is Professor of Hebraic Studies and Linguistics at Dartmouth
College. A graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, he has held appointments at
the University of Chicago, Haifa, Bar-Ilan and London University, where he
chaired the Centre for Jewish Studies. His books include Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A
Language in Exile (Oxford), The Grammar of Modern Hebrew (Cambridge), The Joys
of Hebrew (Oxford) and Mamme Dear: A Turn-of-the-Century Collection of Model
Yiddish Letters (Rowman & Littlefield), as well as many articles on language and
discourse in Jewish life and thought, spanning such topics as myths of the
Golem, the Israeli love lyric, language policy and aliya, Hebrew and Halacha,
and Hasidic attitudes to Yiddish. Lewis Glinert's 1992 BBC documentary on the
rebirth of Hebrew was nominated by the BBC for a SONY award.
SARAH BUNIN BENOR ()
Jewish American English
Sunday, February 18, 10:30 (panel)
Do American Jews speak a distinctively Jewish language variety like Yiddish, Ladino, or Judeo-Arabic? This paper shows how American Jewish English has most of the components common among Jewish language varieties throughout history: a co-territorial non-Jewish base language (English) and influences from a previous Jewish language (Yiddish) and textual Hebrew and Aramaic. I show how contemporary Jewish language
varieties are likely to have an additional component – influence from Israeli Hebrew – and are likely not to be written in Jewish orthography due to increased rates of literacy worldwide.
Among American Jews, variation in the distinctively Jewish features signals several elements of Jewish identity, including religious observance, textual knowledge, generation from immigration, ethnic heritage, Jewish social networks, and proximity to New York. Jews several generations removed from immigration who have weak connections to organized Jewish life and little religious observance may speak
general American English with only the addition of a few Hebrew or Yiddish words. Strictly Orthodox Jews are more likely to use elements of “Yeshivish” – English filled with words from Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic and Yiddish influences in grammar and pronunciation. Jews with strong affinities for the State of Israel may prefer Israeli Hebrew pronunciation over the Ashkenazic Hebrew common among strictly Orthodox
Jews. The lesson for Jewish linguistic studies is that “Jewish language” serves not only to distinguish Jews from non-Jews but also to distinguish Jews from Jews.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Benor is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at HebrewUnionCollege – Jewish Institute of Religion (Los Angeles campus) and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. from StanfordUniversity in Linguistics in 2004. She teaches about the social science of American Jews, as well as about language and culture, and she has
given lectures to Jewish groups around the country about Jewish languages, Yiddish, American Jews, and Orthodox Jews. She is currently working on a book entitled /Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism/. Dr. Benor edits the Jewish Language Research Website < and moderates the Jewish Languages Mailing List both of which she founded. In her spare time, she enjoys her husband, Mark, and their two young children, Aliza and Dalia.
DAVID ANDREWS ()
Who Am I?: Jewish and Russian Cultural Identities among Third-Wave Soviet Émigrés in the United States
Sunday, February 18, 10:30 (panel)
In the twentieth century there were three successive waves of Russian-speaking emigrants from the Soviet Union to the West, known as the three “waves.” The First Wave was precipitated by the Bolshevik Revolution, the Second by World War II and its aftermath. The Third Wave began in 1972, when the Brezhnev regime eased emigration restrictions for Soviet Jews as a gesture of détente. The Third Wave, therefore, was predominantly Jewish, with a complicated mix of Jewish and Russian cultural identities that would become even more complex after arrival in the United States.
Speaker Bio:
David Andrews is a Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages at GeorgetownUniversity, where he has been teaching for 18 years. He specializes in contemporary Russian socio- and psycholinguistics, with a particular focus on émigré Russian and on standard versus nonstandard speech forms. In those areas of interest he has published numerous articles and a monograph entitled Sociocultural Perspectives on Language Change in Diaspora: Soviet Immigrants in the United States.
JONATHAN PARADISE ()
Learning and Using Hebrew in America
Sunday, February 18, 10:30 (panel)
My remarks will focus primarily on how Hebrew is studied and used in Jewish community schools (both “Day Schools” and supplementary schools) with less attention given to the study of Biblical Hebrew in theological seminaries and Biblical and Modern Hebrew in universities. A content analysis of curricular materials of the leading publishers will indicate the thrust and scope of typical school programs and lead to a discussion of the raisons d’être for Hebrew given by the various “streams” in the Jewish community (along with the justifications offered for not teaching Hebrew as a language for communication). I will discuss the extent of spoken Hebrew for communicative purposes in both formal classroom settings and informal contexts. Particular attention will be paid to the growing extent that Hebrew phrases and terms are used in public communal settings and in printed media. I will explore the extent that choice of (public) pronunciation style creates a link with the spoken language, and the opportunities that exist for enhancing and encouraging greater roles for Hebrew in the Jewish community. If time allows I will address how children in parochial schools view learning Hebrew, their expectations, their acceptance of learning materials that are sometimes incomprehensible and not age-appropriate.
Speaker Bio:
Jonathan Paradise (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania) is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew at the University of Minnesota where he taught courses in Hebrew Language and Literature, Hebrew Bible, and occasional courses in Akkadian from 1965 to 2003. His publications deal with Family Law at ancient Nuzi, Bibilical matters, and Hebrew language pedagogy.
Since his retirement, he has been working intensively developing multimedia materials for teaching Hebrew and computerized tools for Hebrew teachers.
GLORIA ASCHER ()
Ladino: Performance, Survival, and Resurgence
Sunday, February 18, 1:00 (panel)
Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) is a “seriously endangered” language, according to the most recent UNESCO listing. Yet the Judeo-Spanish language has not only survived, but is enjoying a resurgence worldwide. Both its survival and its current resurgence are intimately connected to “performance”: the oral transmission of traditional and contemporary songs, for example, within families and now within ever-broadening communities. In 2003 the first Festiladino, the annual international competition, based in Israel, to encourage the composition and performance of new songs in Ladino, was held, and every year more lyricists, composers, and musicians of various ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds participate. The heart of this event is performance: it is, above all, the singers and musicians who are showcased. Judeo-Spanish songs are being performed by many singers and groups, including some in the U.S., who are enriching the tradition with new compositions and musical styles. Less obviously and dramatically, the performance aspect of Ladino is exemplified by the tradition of telling stories, which continues not only in informal family and community settings, but in organized presentations and competitions as well, notably in Israel. There are also theatrical performances of new plays and musical comedies, and new poems, including some by my students, are recited in the special programs produced and presented on Kol Israel by Matilda Koén-Sarano. It is significant that the activities of Matilda Koén-Sarano, the foremost activist, writer, and scholar in the field of Judeo-Spanish, include, as an essential element, various modes of performance.
Speaker Bio:
Born in the Bronx, New York of parents from Izmir, Turkey, Gloria Ascher is descended from Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and grew up with the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) language and tradition. Co-director of Judaic Studies at TuftsUniversity (Associate Professor), she teaches, besides other Judaic, German, and Scandinavian literature courses, Ladino Language and Culture – the only such courses offered regularly at a U.S. college or university. In addition to her scholarly activity, she writes poetry (published also in Turkish, German, and English translation) and composes and performs songs in Ladino. The song “A kaza” (“Home”), her poem set to music by Hayim Tsur, made the finals of Festiladino 2004. Her translation of Matilda Koén-Sarano’s two-volume text is the only Ladino grammar in English.
JEFFREY SHANDLER ()
Postvernacular Yiddish: Language as a Performance Art
Sunday, February 18, 1:00 (panel)
I will discuss a variety of recent Yiddish cultural festivals and related public events in North America as a point of entry into analyzing how performances exemplify what I have termed the postvernacular mode of Yiddish. Though varied in their venue, format, and agenda, the performances under consideration all transform the use of Yiddish
as a vernacular through events that are marked as special by boundaries of time and place. At these events Yiddish is often juxtaposed with one or moreother languages, and there is, as a result, a performative self-consciousness about the use of Yiddish. These events also frequently transform Yiddish vernacularity by replacing it with some other activitysuch as singing, lecturing, dancing, reciting poetry, playing musical instruments), and they often entail a professionalization of speakingYiddish as a performative skill. Taken together, these events evince a signal shift in the relationship of vernacularity and performance in secular Yiddish culture over the course of the twentieth century. Moreover, the analysis of these events speaks to a larger shift in notions of Jewish vernacular behavior in the post-World War II era.
Speaker Bio:
Jeffrey Shandler, a scholar of modern Jewish culture, is an associate professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at RutgersUniversity. Hismost recent book is Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture, a study of contemporary Yiddish culture (University of California Press, 2005). Among his other publications, Shandler is the author of While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 1999) and translator of Emil and Karl, a novel for young readers by Yankev Glatshteyn (Roaring Brook, 2006). He is also co-convener of the Working Group on Jews, Media, and Religion at the Center forReligion and Media, New York University (
ERIC ZAKIM ()
Language and Immediacy in the Hebrew Cinematic Lens
Sunday, February 18, 1:00 (panel)
The aim of this talk is to explore the relationship between language and visuality, that is: how did the development of Hebrew enable a specific way of seeing—in particular, a way of seeing Palestine and the landscape of a rebuilt Eretz Israel as a quintessential part of the rejuvenated individual? In this, the enactment on screen of a sense of immediacy in the relationship of individual to nation seems derived from the sonic experience of language itself and thus focuses the centrality of Hebrew as the essential experience of the nation, as an analysis of Keren Hayesod’s Land of Promise (1935) brings to the fore.