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Reading in Avot Yeshurun’s poetry often makes us feel as though we read some kind of translation of a hidden source – an unknown, inaccessible, or perhaps even nonexistent one. Usually, the source seems Yiddish, but in other cases it appears to be in another language, such as Arabic or Polish. The translational character of …

Substrate Language or “Two-Shaded Blood”? Avot Yeshurun Writes Poetry in Yiddish Read More »

  Federico García Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads Erika Mejia The Hebrew translations of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca form a rich and diverse corpus of modern Spanish poetry. They serve as a particularly interesting case study as they enable examination from two perspectives. First, that of the Israeli linguistic and literary fields, which have …

Translation and Retranslation in Modern Hebrew Read More »

The indigenous Jews are not French, but Arabs of the Jewish faith. Their mother tongue is Arabic, which they speak badly and write in Hebrew letters. Charles du Bouzet, 1871 א שפראך איז א דיאלעקט מיט אן ארמיי און פלוט (Language is a dialect with an army and fleet) Max Weinreich, quoting an anonymous individual, …

“Ta‘ish al-Republique!” On Judeo-Arabic political writing Read More »

In my lecture, I presented the appearance of the Jewish name in Georges Perec’s oeuvre. Perec (1936-1982) was a French-Jewish author, a WWII orphan who had lost his mother in Auschwitz to become an enfant caché (hidden child). He would later become one of the most highly valued authors in 20th-century France. In his work, …

The Jewish Name, Between Tradition and History: The Case of Georges Perec Read More »

The Dance of Death according to the Castilian Tradition in the Parma Manuscript (Ms. Parma 2666) is a documentation of a unique medieval version – one of the earliest textual witnesses of this literary genre. Through it, we are indirectly introduced by a Jewish copier to a Christian dramatic-theatrical version of the Dance of Death …

Review of a Sephardic version of the Dance of Death in a Jewish Tradition (Ms. Parma 2666) Read More »

Hebrew’s status as the Holy Language is supposedly obvious in Jewish tradition. Nevertheless, in the early 20th century, the Orthodoxy in both Europe and Palestine was embarrassed by its modern uses by nationalist and Zionist Jews, particularly as part of the modernization of Jewish education. The meeting presented the Jewish Orthodox press’s dilemma in the …

The response of Jewish Orthodox press to the “Language War” in 1913-14 Read More »