Writing More and Less Jewishly in Judezm PDF

Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 9–75 brill.
com/jjl
Writing More and Less ‘Jewishly’ in Judezmo

and Yiddish
David M. Bunis*
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract
Max Weinreich used the term yídishlekh to describe the traditional, ‘Jewishly patterned’ style
of writing in Yiddish. Weinreich illustrated this style by comparing Mendele Moykher Sforim’s
‘Jewishly-styled’ 1884 Yiddish translation of Leo Pinsker’s Autoemanzipation (Berlin 1882)
with the original German-language text. The present article demonstrates that in Judezmo as
well as Yiddish, writers have consciously used ‘Jewish styling,’ and its converse, in the diverse
literary genres they cultivated from the Middle Ages into the early twentieth century. However,
as a result of somewhat divergent social, political, and ideological trends in the Judezmo as
opposed to Yiddish speech communities later in the twentieth century, Yiddish writers today
prefer to incorporate features of ‘Jewish styling’ in their writing, while Judezmo writers tend to
reject them.
Keywords
Judezmo; Judeo-Spanish; Ladino; Yiddish; yidishlekh; language ideology; language attitudes;
Jewish languages
For Mikhl Herzog,

on his 86th birthday.
Introduction
Looking at texts written in what are commonly called ‘Jewish languages,’ from
the Middle Ages through the present, one readily forms the impression that
some of the texts are formally quite ‘Jewish,’ while others are markedly less
so. (It should be understood that I refer to the form of the writing, and not to
*) The present article is an expansion of a plenary address delivered at the international confer-
ence, “Around the Point: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of Jews,” convened at Bar-Ilan
University, December 17–19, 2012. The research upon which this article was based was undertaken
with the aid of grant no. 1105/11 from the Israel Science Foundation, for which I hereby express my
gratitude. My thanks to Sarah Benor and the anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/22134638-12340005
10 D. M. Bunis / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 9–75
its theme, which may or may not be Jewish in nature.) Several scholars have
investigated the Jewishness of Yiddish texts, including Weinreich (1942), Mark
(1954), and Aptroot (2010). They have pointed to the central role of Hebrew-
and Aramaic-origin words in marking some texts as more Jewish than others,
the Hebrew-Aramaisms constituting symbols of alignment with the Jewish-
language speech community, and distinction from speakers of the non-Jewish
correlate, German.1 They have also looked at other features that distinguish
Yiddish from German (see also Beider, this issue). Such questions have
received much less attention in scholarship on Judezmo writing (Schwarzwald
2009 is an exception), and to my knowledge there has been no comparison
of the Jewishness of writing in multiple Jewish languages (see a call for such
research in Benor 2008). The present paper addresses this gap in the literature
by offering comparative analysis of texts from the fifteenth century to the pres-
ent in Yiddish and Judezmo. By investigating a wide span of genres in these
two languages, we gain a better understanding of what it has meant to write
“Jewishly.”
Writing Yídishlekh in Yiddish

Max Weinreich, the great scholar of Yiddish linguistics, and of the broader ‘Jew-
ish language phenomenon,’ as he called it, focused attention on this issue in his
(1942) article entitled “Vos heyst shraybn yídishlekh?”—‘What does it mean to
write Jewishly?’2 In the article, Weinreich delineated some of the concrete lin-
guistic and stylistic features which he viewed as characterizing a Yiddish text
written ‘Jewishly,’ or ‘in traditional Jewish style.’
At the center of Weinreich’s discussion was the original German version of
Leo Pinsker’s Autoemanzipation: Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem
russischen Juden, a 31-page treatise proposing a solution to the ‘Jewish question’,
published in Berlin in 1882, and its Yiddish translation by Sholem Yankev Abra-
movits, or ‘Mendele Moykher Sforim,’ (Abramovits 1884) published in Odessa
1) On relevant notions such as alignment and distinction see LePage & Tabouret-Keller 1985;
Bucholtz & Hall 2005.
2) In the journal’s English table of contents the title is rendered ‘Mendele’s Yiddish Translation
of Pinsker’s Autoemanzipation.’ In his Yiddish-English English-Yiddish dictionary Uriel Weinre-
ich (1968:587) translated yídishlekh as ‘in the Jewish manner; according to Jewish patterns.’ The
transcription of Yiddish in the present article follows the recommendations of the YIVO Institute
for Jewish Research (for a summary see Weinreich 1968:xxi). When the stress in a Yiddish word is
not on the penultimate syllable, its location is indicated by means of an acute accent mark on the
vowel in the stressed syllable (e.g., yídishlekh).
D. M. Bunis / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 9–75 11
in 1884.3 Weinreich observed that, although the basic thematic content of both
works was the same, Mendele’s version was in fact linguistically, stylistically,
and referentially more yídishlekh—more ‘Jewishly written’—than the original
text. Weinreich provided a rich array of examples to demonstrate his character-
ization of Mendele’s adaptation as yídishlekh. Although unstated in his article,
the yídishlekh style Weinreich described with respect to Mendele’s translation
may be said to stand not only in opposition to the German source, but also to
Yiddish written in a less ‘traditionally Jewish’ style, especially that sometimes
known as dáytshmerish—an artificial imitation of German syntax and lexi-
con, with little or no lexemes of non-Germanic origin (e.g., those derived from
Hebrew and Slavic), and devoid of references to concepts or images related
to Jewish tradition.4 Weinreich’s argument would have been more convincing
still had he compared Mendele’s translation with a Yiddish version written less
‘Jewishly’—for example, that published in Lodž in 1917 (Blayshtift 1917:9).
The starting point of Weinreich’s comparative analysis was the first six lines
of Pinsker’s and Mendele’s texts. The first two lines of the versions by Pinsker,
Mendele and Blayshtift will suffice here to illustrate Weinreich’s point:
Pinsker: Das uralte Problem der Judenfrage setzt wie vor Zeiten so auch heute wieder die
Gemüter in Erregung.
Mendele: Fun éybike yorn biz oyf hayntikn tog dult zikh a gantse velt mentshn dem kop
mit a shtark alter rétenish, alts mikoyekh yidn.5
Blayshtift: Punkt vi in di fergángene tsaytn beúnruigt dos éybike problém—di azoy-
gerúfene “yudn-frage”—oykh itst shtark di moykhes.
Pinsker: Ungelöst, wie die Quadratur des Zirkels, bleibt es, ungleich dieser, immer noch
die brennende Frage des Tages.
Mendele: Un hagám dos iz far zéyere tseyn shver áyntsubaysn, vi targem, dokh vert men
adayem nisht mid tsu brekhn zikh deróyf dem moyekh.
Blayshtift: Dos dózike problém blaybt di brénendike frage fun tog grod gor derfár, vayl zi
hot nisht nor a teoretishn interés, nor tog-teglikh nemt zi on a nay geshtált in virklikhn lebn
un fodert akshónes’dik ir lezung.
Weinreich described the distinctive status of Mendele’s translation as a

result of the translator’s use of linguistic features and literary devices which
3) The work was translated into Hebrew several times: for example, by Shĕmu’el Leyb Tsitron
(1883), P. Frenkel (1899), and Aḥad Ha-am (Asher Ginsberg) (1921); for details see the Bibliography
of the Hebrew Book.
4) See for example Weinreich 1938.
5) For ease of identification, words having an element etymologically of Hebrew or Aramaic ori-
gin in the Judezmo and Yiddish passages have been underlined.
transformed a cultivated essay whose style and frame of reference was that
of the intellectual world of Christians in late-nineteenth-century Europe edu-
cated in Modern Humanism into an equally cultivated, well-conceived com-
position reflecting the unique linguistic habits and conceptual framework of
traditionally-educated Eastern European Yiddish speakers of the same time.
In comparing the two texts, Weinreich noted three principal features, the
use of which gave Mendele’s Yiddish version its yídishlekhkayt or ‘traditional
Jewish stylistics’:
(1) an approximation of the natural, idiomatic spoken language of what he

called the yídisher inteligént, or ‘traditionally-educated Jewish intellectual,’ or
the lamden or talmed-khokhem ‘traditional scholar,’ whose usual setting was the
late-nineteenth-century Yiddish speakers’ besmedresh or ‘study-hall.’ The ‘nat-
ural’ variety of language Weinreich had in mind included the syntax employed
in popular Yiddish, and the use of the traditional lexicon favored by cultured
speakers of the language, with its wealth of words, expressions, and structures
originating in or inspired by Hebrew, and the avoidance of those then consid-
ered to be ‘foreign’ to Jewish use. Weinreich further observed that, in his use
of ‘natural Yiddish,’ Mendele addressed the reader directly and incorporated
popular Yiddish interjections and phraseology and emotive expressions, while
employing fewer ‘artistic adjectives’ and abstract nouns than was usual among
writers in the contemporaneous literary languages of European Christians. He
also used traditional Hebraisms to convey pivotal elements in the sentences
cited: moyekh ‘mind,’ mikoyekh ‘concerning,’ hagám ‘although,’ adayem ‘until
today’ (H. moaḥ, mi-koaḥ, hagam, ʿad ha-yom).6
(2) a reliance on metaphors, similes and other referential expressions
reflecting the intellectual orientation and worldview of tradition-bound
Yiddish speakers, as distinct from those of contemporaneous non-Jews, espe-
cially the more progressive, modernized Christians of Western Europe. Such
expressive elements were often rooted in traditional Jewish literary sources
such as the Bible, Talmud, commentaries of Rashi, Jewish moralistic literature,
and legal sources such as Yosef Karo’s Shulḥan ʿArukh. But they also included
metaphors and phrases which Yiddish speakers shared with speakers of East
Slavic languages, and lexemes derived from those languages.
6) The Hebrew forms presented in this article alongside their Judezmo and Yiddish correspon-
dents are those generally used in the ‘standard’ transcription of Hebrew and are not meant to
reflect the corresponding Whole Hebrew forms actually used by speakers of Judezmo or Yiddish.
(3) a tendency to expand the original text, using expressions and concepts
familiar to the traditional Yiddish reader, whenever Mendele deemed this nec-
essary in order to clearly convey Pinsker’s ideas.
Pinsker’s western constructions and images were rephrased using mate-
rial from idiomatic folk Yiddish. For example, the impersonal subject of the
verbal construction used in the first sentence was concretized by him into a
gantse velt mentshn ‘a whole world full of people,’ and the ‘age-old Jewish ques-
tion’ was transformed into a shtark alter rétenish, alts mikoyekh yidn ‘a very
old riddle, concerned completely with Jews.’ The apparent absence of a solu-
tion to the problem, compared by Pinsker to an attempt to square a circle,
was re-phrased as far zéyere tseyn shver áyntsubaysn, vi targem ‘as difficult for
their teeth to bite into as Aramaic’ (as used, for example, in the interpretive
translation—H. targum—of the Bible by Onkelos [c. 35–120 C.E.]), considered
among Yiddish speakers to epitomize a ‘tough nut to crack.’ Blayshtift’s Yiddish
translation contains fewer Hebraisms and images used in folk Yiddish, and,
although it occasionally departs from the German text, it remains closer to its
spirit than the adaptation by Mendele.
Writing a la Djudezma in Judezmo

The German and ‘traditional’ Yiddish versions of Pinsker’s prose essay, together
with its less ‘Jewishly written’ translation, constitute but one of many clusters
of texts, and text types, from which Weinreich could have chosen to illustrate
the linguistic and stylistic opposition between a text written ‘Jewishly’ and
one written less so. Nor need Weinreich have limited his analysis to Yiddish.
Analogues to the two Yiddish stylistic polarities alluded to in his article, and
intermediate stylistic options closer to the one or to the other extremity, have
also been available to writers in other Jewish languages. One such language is
Judezmo (often called ‘Judeo-Spanish’ by researchers), the traditional language
of the Jews of medieval Spain, and of their descendants in the Ottoman and
Austro-Hungarian empires.7 Judezmo has an extensive written literature from
the Middle Ages into the modern era.8
7) A distinctive variant of the language was also traditionally used by the Sephardim who settled
in Spanish Morocco, where it was known as Ḥaketía.
8) Judezmo quotations appearing here in italicized romanization were originally published in
the traditional Hebrew-derived Judezmo alphabet; their transcription here basically follows the
recommendations of the Israel National Authority for Ladino and its Culture (=NALC), as sum-
marized in <Aki Yerushalayim> (see for example http://www.aki-yerushalayim.co.il/ay/092/
index.htm). The I.P.A. values of the following symbols should be noted: ch = I.P.A. [tʃ ], dj = [ʤ],
The closest Judezmo equivalents to the Yiddish term yídishlekh—‘in the

Jewish manner’ or ‘according to the Jews’—are: a la djudezma, e.g., “el día del
mez i anyo a·la djuḏezma” ‘the day of the month and the year according to the
Jewish calculation,’9 and a la djudía, e.g., <“Una grande Seremonia de rekuerdo
fue organizada en la Sinagoga Neve Şalom, Djueves la tadre (a la djudia) Noche
de Vyernes el 27 Enero”> ‘A major ceremony of remembrance was organized in
the Neve Şalom Synagogue [Istanbul], Thursday afternoon [or] (according to
Jewish terminology) the eve of Friday, the 27th of January.’10 Although, as we
shall see, the style used in an anonymous 1931 Judezmo translation of Pinsker’s
composition is free of the stylistic features described by Weinreich for yídish-
lekh writing in Yiddish, an analogous style in Judezmo has existed from before
the Expulsion and into the modern era. But so, too, have styles remote from
the yídishlekh type.
In earlier works (Bunis 1993:55–56, 1999a:48) I distinguished between four
essentially genre-based stylistic varieties of literary Judezmo: (1) ladino, the
archaizing, lexically highly Hispanized variety used in the literal translation
of sacred texts in Hebrew or Aramaic; (2) djudezmo kabá, or ‘folk’ or ‘com-
mon’ Judezmo, a relatively unaffected popular variety, intentionally seeking
h = [χ], i = [i] or, prevocalically, [ j], j = [ʒ], s = [s], sh = [ʃ ], u = [u] or, prevocalically, [w]; z = [z].
It should further be noted that, unlike the Israel NALC system, the phonemes [occlusive] /d/ vs.
[fricative] /ð/, as they exist in Judezmo dialects of the Southeast Ottoman dialect region (e.g.,
Salonika, Istanbul), are distinguished here as d vs. d (when the latter is indicated in a Jewish-letter
Judezmo text as simple dalet <‫ >ד‬or syllable-final taw <‫ )>ת‬or δ (when the latter is indicated in
the Judezmo text as dalet + diacritic <'‫)>ד‬, and [occlusive] /g/ vs. [fricative] /γ/ are distinguished
as g vs. g. The d/δ and g graphemes are adaptations of the graphemes <d’> and <ğ> employed for
[δ] and [γ], respectively, in the Judezmo romanization developed by Elia R. Karmona of Istanbul
in the 1920s; the grapheme <d> is employed for [δ] in Perahya et al. 1997:15–16 (it is replaced by
<d’> in the expanded second edition [2012; see pp. 30–31]). In the present article, d and g may be
realized as [θ] and [x], respectively, before a voiceless consonant or in utterance-final position.
The position of stress in a Judezmo word is indicated by an acute accent when stress is not pen-
ultimate in a word ending in a vowel, ‑n or ‑s/‑š (e.g., kavaná ‘intention’), and when it is not final
in a word ending in any other consonant (e.g., téhef ‘immediately’). Judezmo citations appearing
in the present article within angular < > brackets originally appeared in the romanization repro-
duced here.
9) Alexander [=Gavri’el Bĕxor] Benghiatt, El Meseret 6:18 (Izmir 1902), p. 4. Cf. also “asta kavo
de este mez, a la djudezma, fin de teved” ‘the end of this month, according to the Jewish calendar,
the end of Teveth’ (El Meseret [16.12.1918], p. 3); <“Mi aniversaryo es el 22 Sept., o 3 dias antes de
Roshashana a la djudezma”> ‘My anniversary is 22 September, or three days before Rosh Hashana,
according to the Jewish calculation’ (R[achel Amado ]B[ortnick], Ladinokomunita, 18 September
2011).
10) Klara Perahya, <Şalom> (Istanbul), 2 January 2012, p. 1. Cf. also <lentejas a la djudia>
‘[Sephardic] Jewish-style lentils’ (Benbassa 1984:124).
to reflect the spoken language of the Ottoman Sephardic masses with its com-
ponents of vernacular Ibero-Romance, Hebrew-Aramaic, and Turkish-Balkan
origin; (3) djudezmo de hahamim, or rabbinical Judezmo, traditionally used
through the early twentieth century in texts by rabbinical scholars or writers
influenced by them, and characterized by a blend of ladino and folk features
with an especially rich Hebrew-Aramaic component; (4) djudezmo frankeado or
‘Western Europeanized’ Judezmo, which arose around the middle of the nine-
teenth century in response to the incipient westernization and secularization
of the Judezmo speech communities and the desire of writers in this style to
avoid ‘Eastern’ elements such as those of Hebrew-Aramaic and Turkish-Balkan
origin, replacing them, as well as some popular elements of Ibero-Romance
origin, with borrowings from French, Italian, Castilian, and—in areas under
Austro-Hungarian influence—German. The frankeado style may be illustrated
by the first two lines of Pinsker’s text as rendered in the anonymous Judezmo
translation of Autoemanzipation published in Salonika, 1931 by the Zionist peri-
odical La Renasensya Djudía:11
El antiguo problema de·la kuestyón djudía mete los espritos en el estado de eksitasyón, oy
komo antes tyempos no solusyonado. Komo la kuadradura del serkle, el keda, kontrarya-
mente a este último, syempre aínda la kestyón kemante del día.
Even more so than the Yiddish translation by Blayshtift, the Judezmo transla-
tion remains quite close to its apparent immediate source, a Hebrew transla-
tion, which itself closely reflects the German original. Unlike the norm in the
popular and rabbinical varieties of Judezmo, no words of Hebrew origin are
used here. The lexicon includes numerous borrowings from modern Romance
languages (e.g., problema,12 kuestyón,13 eksitasyón [excitement],14 no solusyo-
nado [unsolved],15 serkle [circle],16 kontraryamente [contrarily],17 este último
11) Oto-emansipasyón 1931:2. Since the French translation by Schulsinger seems not to have
appeared until 1933 it may be surmised that a Hebrew version was the basis of the translation into
Judezmo. I wish to thank Shmuel Rafael for kindly providing me with a copy of this translation.
12) Cf. I., S. problema, F. problème. Note the following abbreviations of language names: A. = Ara-
bic, Aram. = Aramaic, Cl.A. = Classical Arabic, F. = French, G. = German, Gk. = Greek, H. = Hebrew,
I. = Italian, J. = Judezmo, P. = Polish, Per. = Persian, R. = Russian, Rom. = Romanian, S. = Spanish,
SC. = Serbo-Croatian, U. = Ukrainian, Y. = Yiddish.
13) Cf. I. questione, S. cuestión.
14) Cf. F. excitation, S. excitación.
15) Cf. S. solucionar.
16) Cf. F. cercle.
17) Cf. I., S. contrariamente.
[the latter],18 kestyón),19 and unlike Mendele’s translation, makes no attempt

to transform Pinsker’s European-based images and phraseology into analogues
more common in popular Judezmo.
As opposed to the frankeado style used in the Judezmo translation of
Pinsker’s work, the ladino, djudezmo kabá, and djudezmo de hahamim styles
of Judezmo all incorporate features paralleling those in traditional yídishlekh
Yiddish, including calque translations of Hebrew and Aramaic constructions,
elements derived from Hebrew and Aramaic proper, and elements incorpo-
rated from the Ottoman linguistic and cultural milieu in which Judezmo speak-
ers lived from the time of their arrival in the Ottoman Empire through the early
twentieth century.
In the present article, an examination of representative passages from a few
Judezmo and Yiddish works in diverse literary genres published over the centu-
ries will demonstrate that reflections of the two principal stylistic extremes—
the more and the less ‘Jewishly-written’ options—are to be found in Judezmo
and Yiddish writing in all of those genres through most of the written histories
of the languages, as a result of the authors’ conscious decision to use the one or
the other style. The passages themselves are presented as a small chrestomathy
of literary Judezmo and Yiddish over the centuries. At the end of the article the
focus will narrow in on the primary literary style used today among Judezmo
as opposed to Yiddish writers.
Yiddish and Judezmo as Languages of Translation

If we remain in the realm of translation forming the basis of Max Weinreich’s
article, comparisons between opposing stylistic renditions of several text types
can serve to illustrate the difference between the two polar stylistic variants
which have been employed by speakers of Judezmo and Yiddish.
A Biblical Text
One such variant is the archaizing, calque-translation style traditionally used
by Jewish-language speakers to render a sanctified Hebrew or Aramaic text lit-
erally, in an artificial, literal version of their language. This translation style
stands in opposition to that used by innovators in the modern era who, under
the influence of westernization and modernization, abandoned the traditional
18) Cf. F. cette dernière.

19) Cf. F. question.
calque-translation style in order to render the message of the source text in

a variety of language syntactically and lexically much closer to the everyday
tongue of the average Jewish-language speaker or, in the case of some variants
of that variety, one closer to the non-Jewish correlate of the Jewish language—
Spanish in the case of Judezmo and German in the instance of Yiddish.
The contrast between the traditional ‘Jewish’ and stylistically ‘less-Jewish’
sacred-text translation styles may be illustrated for Yiddish by the custom-
ary word-for-word khúmesh-taytsh (or Bible-translation Yiddish) rendition
of a recurrent Biblical phrase, as taught to young children in the kheyder or
traditional elementary school: Vayoymer [H. wa-yomer]—Un er hot gezógt,
Adoyshém [H. ʾAdonay]—Got, el Moyshe [H. ʾel Moše]—tsu Moyshe, leymer
[H. lemor]—azóy tsu zogn [literally, ‘And He said, God, to Moses, so to say],20
as opposed to the slightly different translation in the freer Yiddish analogue
by Solomon Blumgarten, or ‘Yehoyesh’ (1870–1927), which began to appear in
1910: Un Got hot gezógt tsu Moyshn, azóy tsu zogn [And God said to Moses, so to
say] (e.g., Numbers 7:4).21 In the traditional version each Hebrew word is trans-
lated following the original syntax, and the substantives are in the nominative
case. In Yehoyesh’s version the original Hebrew order of the subject and verb is
inverted, and Moyshn is in the dative case (as evidenced by ‑n), as required by
normal Yiddish syntax of a noun following a preposition.
Among Judezmo speakers a construction corresponding to the Yiddish
literal calque-translation may be seen in the ladino translation of the same
phrase as rendered in Yiśra’el Ben Ḥayyim’s Pentateuch with Ladino published
in Vienna in 1813: Vayómer—I disho, Adonáy—el Dyo, el Moshé—a Moshé,
lemor—por dezir. The latter version stands in opposition to the ‘Missionary
Judezmo’ translation (close to Modern Spanish) published in Constantinople
in 1873 by Protesant missionaries, apparently with the collaboration of Otto-
man Judezmo speakers, in which the same verse reads: I avló Adonay a Moshé,
dizyendo.22 In the latter translation the first Hebrew verb is freely translated
as ‘spoke’ (avló), instead of more literal ‘said’ (disho) in the traditional ver-
sion, and the second verb takes the more natural form of a gerund, dizyendo,
functioning as an adverb, rather than the more literal, and in terms of natural
Judezmo, more artificial prepositional phrase, por dezir.
20) For details on this variety of Yiddish see Noble 1943, Roskies 2004a:263.
21) On the work see Orlinsky 1941.
22) El livro de la ley, los profetas i las eskrituras, trasladado en la lingua española, Constantinople:
Boyadjián 1873.
A Liturgical Text
This is not to say that Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Judezmo are com-
pletely identical with respect to their translation traditions. Into the modern
era, for example, Judezmo speakers traditionally applied to the translation of
Mishnaic and liturgical texts the rule of literalism and, to a considerable extent,
the reluctance to incorporate Hebraisms, both of which are characteristic of
the variety of language traditionally used to translate the Bible among both
Judezmo and Yiddish speakers. This is illustrated in “Tĕfillat Rabbi Yĕhuda
Ha-Naśi ” (Prayer of Rabbi Judah the Prince),23 one of the morning prayers,
as it appears in the Hebrew variant used by Judezmo speakers and in one of
its Ladino translations, that appearing in the prayer book Seder tĕfillat kol pe
kĕ-minhag qa[hal]”qa[doš] sĕfaradim yi[šmĕrem]”ṣ[uram], edited by Ya‘aqov
and Yosef Yiṣḥaq Alshekh in Vienna (1891, f. 6a).
The distinctiveness of the Judezmo translation becomes particularly appar-
ent when compared with a Modern Spanish adaptation prepared for women,24
which adheres to Spanish lexical and syntactic norms (e.g., Dios ‘God,’ Sea
Tu voluntad ‘May it be Your will,’ todos los días ‘every day’), and incorporates
literary terms which often diverge from the traditional Judezmo correspon-
dents (e.g., Eterno ‘Eternal,’ liberar ‘to deliver,’ insolente ‘impudent,’ insolencia
‘impudence,’ inclinación ‘inclination,’ nefasto ‘evil,’ maledicencia ‘denunciation
(evil-speaking),’ adverso ‘hostile,’ adversario ‘opponent,’ implacable ‘ruthless,’
Alianza ‘covenant,’ infierno ‘Hell’:
‫יהי רצון מלפניך ה' אלהינו ואלהי אבותינו שתצילנו‬
Ladino: Sea veluntad delantre de Ti A[donáy],25 nuestro Dyo i·Dyo de muestros padres,
ke·mos eskapes
Spanish: Sea Tu voluntad, Eterno, mi Dios, y Dios de mis padres, que me liberes,
English: May it be Your will, our God and God of our fathers, that You deliver us
,‫היום ובכל יום ויום מעזי פנים ומעזות פנים‬
Ladino: oy, i en kada día i día, de dezverguensado[s] de fases, i·de dezverguensanía de fases,
Spanish: hoy, y todos los días, de los insolentes y de la insolencia;
English: today, and every day, from impudent men, and from impudence,
,‫ מחבר רע‬,‫ מיצר הרע‬,‫ מאשה רעה‬,‫מאדם רע‬
Ladino: de ombre malo, de mujer mala, de apetite malo, de·konpanyero malo,
Spanish: de un hombre malo; de la mala inclinación; de un mal compañero;
English: from an evil man, from an evil woman, from an evil inclination, from a bad
companion,
23) Cf. Bĕrakhot 16b (and cf. Shabbat 30b), which offers a slightly different formulation.
24) Antebi 2006:12–13.
25) Or Ashem; this is represented in the text by '‫ה‬.
,‫ ומלשון הרע‬,‫ מעין הרע‬,‫ מפגע רע‬,‫משכן רע‬

Ladino: de·vezino malo, de enkontro malo, de ojo el malo, i de luenga la mala,
Spanish: de un mal vecino; de un tropiezo nefasto; del malo de ojo; de la maledicencia;
English: from a bad neighbor, from an evil occurrence, from the evil eye, and from an
evil tongue,
,‫ מעלילה‬,‫ משנאת הבריות‬,‫ מעדות שקר‬,‫ממלשינות‬
Ladino: de malsinamyento, de testigo de falsedad, de aboresyón de·las kriansas, de alilá,
Spanish: [. . .]
English: from denunciation, from false testimony, from the hatred of people, from libel,
‫ מדין קשה‬,‫ ממקרים רעים‬,‫ מחלים רעים‬,‫ממיתה משונה‬
Ladino: de muerte demudada, de hazinuras malas, de enkuentros malos, de djuzgo fuerte,
Spanish: [. . .] de un juicio adverso
English: from a strange death, from bad illnesses, from evil encounters, from a hard
judgment,
‫ בין שהוא בן ברית ובין שאינו בן‬,‫ומבעל דין קשה‬
Ladino: i de duenyo de djuzgo fuerte, tanto ke·el varón de firmamyento, i·tanto ke·non el
varón de
Spanish: y de un adversario implacable, sea hijo de la Alianza, o no sea hijo
English: and from a hard opponent, whether he be a man of the covenant, or whether he
not be a man of
.‫ ומדינה של גיהנם‬,‫ברית‬
Ladino: firmamyento, i de djuzgo de geinam.
Spanish: de la Alianza, y del juicio del infierno.
English: the covenant, and from condemnation to Hell.
The Ladino version by Ya‘aqov and Yosef Yiṣḥaq Alshekh is a somewhat

modernized variant of earlier literal translations, the roots of which prob-
ably lie in medieval Spain.26 As characteristic of this translation variety, the
26) For example, although there is some lexical divergence, the Hebrew word order is essentially
maintained in the variants of this prayer found in the prayer book with Hebrew-letter Ibero-
Romance translation, evidently for women, which Moshe Lazar (1995a:4–5) suggested was writ-
ten before the Expulsion of 1492 and which Minervini (1998) and Schwarzwald (2011) argued was
written in Italy after the Expulsion, and in the Judaized Spanish translation in the Latin alpha-
bet published by former crypto-Jews in Ferrara, 1552 (Lazar 1995b:39). A Hebrew text identical
with that appearing in the Alshekhs’ version appears in Seder tĕfillot kĕ-minhag qa[hal]”qa[doš]
sĕfaradim, Amsterdam, 1761, and in eighteenth-century prayer books from the Ottoman Empire,
Italy, and elsewhere, used by Judezmo speakers into the modern era. An abbreviated Hebrew
version of Tĕfillat Rabbi, basically corresponding to that in the Talmud and in the Nusakh Ash-
kenaz prayer book, appears in the prayer volume Tĕmunot, tĕḥinnot, tĕfillot Sĕfarad, produced by
Ashkenazi printers in Venice, 1519.
The prayer book Bet tĕfilla en lebrán i en ladino, published in Constantinople in 1739 with a
vocalized Ladino translation edited by Avraham Asa (ff. 5a–5b) shows the following deviations
from the Alshekh text:
translation adheres closely to the original Hebrew word order, and is composed
overwhelmingly of lexemes of medieval Hispanic origin (including Hispano-
Arabic borrowings). The translation incorporates characteristic archaisms
such as plural fases ‘face,’ mirroring the Hebrew plurale tantum form panim,
and calques such as Sea veluntad delantre de Ti ‘May it be Thy will,’ translating
Yĕhi raṣon mi-lĕ-fanexa; ojo el malo; ‘evil eye,’ translating ʿayin ha-raʿ; kada día
i día, translating kol yom wa-yom ‘each and every day’; and duenyo de djuzgo
fuerte, reflecting baʿal din qaše, literally ‘master of hard judgment.’ There are
formal neologisms created by combining morphemes of Hispanic origin in
innovative constructions in order to provide correspondents to Hebrew forms
lacking analogues in ordinary Judezmo (as in Spanish): e.g., dezverguensanía,
reflecting ʿazut (cf. J. [< S.] dezverguensa ‘shame’ + ‑ía). There is also a seman-
tic innovation: firmamyento, corresponding to bĕrit in the sense of ‘(Jewish)
covenant,’ whereas the meaning of Spanish firmamento is ordinarily limited to
‘firmament, sky.’27
In order not to translate a Hebrew word by means of the exact same word—
although that word is in fact used in everyday Judezmo—the translators
express malšinut ‘denunciation’ by malsinamyento, a derivative of the syn-
thetic verb malsinar ‘to denounce’ (already incorporated in Ladino Bible trans-
Asa: delantre Ti de nuestros ke nos desvirguensa – [Hebrew equivalent absent]

Alshekh: delantre de Ti de muestros ke mos dezverguensanía mujer mala
Asa: enkuentro lengua akosamyento atestiguamyento achake
Alshekh: enkontro luenga malsinamyento testigo alilá
Asa: dolores akontesimyentos djuisyo duro
Alshekh: hazinuras enkuentros djuzgo fuerte
It is interesting to note that a translation of the Tĕfillat Rabbi prayer is absent from the pioneering
women’s prayer book, Seder našim, edited by Me’ir ben Šĕmu’el Benveniste and published in Salo-
nika c. 1565 (see Schwarzwald 2012 for the original text, with a romanization and analysis). Yona
ben Ya‘aqov [’Aškĕnazi], the publisher of the prayer book with Ladino translation edited by Asa
in 1739, was obviously unaware of Benveniste’s edition: in his “Melisá de el estanpador” [Printer’s
flowery epilogue] (ff. 155a–155b) he wrote: “anke uvyeron livros en ladino enperó livro de tefilá so yo
el primero en estanpa” ‘although there have been books in Ladino, nevertheless I am the first to
publish a [Ladino] prayer book’ (f. 155a).
27) Firmamyento/-miento is also used in the sense of ‘covenant’ in Jewish-influenced Bible adap-
tations such the Fazienda de ultra mar, Spain c. 1200 (Lazar 1965), the Biblia ladinada (I-i-3) of
Spain, c. 1400 (Lazar 1995c), and the so-called Ferrara Bible in Judaized Spanish in the Latin alpha-
bet (Biblia en lengua española) published by the former crypto-Jews, Yom Ṭov Atias & Avraham
Usque in 1553. Firmamyento also translates bĕrit in Me’ir Benveniste’s sixteenth-century Ladino
prayer book for women (Schwarzwald 2012:187).
lations from the sixteenth century),28 from Hebrew-origin malsín (H. malšin)
‘informer.’ Malsinar exemplifies a verb type common to Jewish languages of
Europe, including Yiddish, as will be illustrated in an extract to be discussed
below.29 The only other words of Hebrew origin appearing in the text are gei-
nam ‘Hell’ (H. gehinnam), which is one of the relatively few Hebraisms widely
accepted in traditional Ladino translations of the Bible,30 and alilá, ‘libel’ (for
example, blood libel) (H. ʿalila), for which the translators seem to have had
no satisfactory Hispanic-origin correspondent.31 The translation of ḥola⁠ʾim ‘ill-
nesses’ is hazinuras, from Judezmo hazino, from Ibero-Arabic ḥazín (< Cl.A.
ḥazīn ‘sad’); Old Spanish had hazino in the sense of ‘poor’ and ‘sad,’ but it is
only in Judezmo that hazino means ‘ill’ and has the derivative hazinura. The
translators distinguish between Hebrew pegaʿ (raʿ) and miqrim (raʿim), both
roughly denoting ‘evil occurrences,’ by means of two phonological variants of
the same word: enkontro (malo) vs. enkuentro (malo), the first perhaps reflect-
ing Portuguese encontro or Italian incontro, the second, resembling Spanish
encuentro, perhaps part of the older Ladino sacred-text translation language.
Since the Hebrew text of the final phrase has no overt copula, nor an element
corresponding to the Judezmo definite article preceding the word bĕrit ‘cov-
enant,’ both the copula and el are characteristically omitted in the translation
(tanto ke·el varón de firmamyento, literally ‘whether he [be a] man of covenant’),
although ordinary Judezmo syntax would require a present-subjunctive form
of ser ‘to be’ (sea/seyga ‘be’) and the article el before firmamyento.
In contrast to the traditional Jewish sacred-text translation features found in
the Ladino version, the Yiddish version of “Tĕfillat Rabbi” offered in the series of
so-called Nusakh Ashkenaz and Nusakh Sfard holiday prayer books with peyresh
28) Cf. Bunis 1999b:176. Malsinar also appears in the pre-Expulsion Biblia ladinada (I-i-3) (Lazar
1995c, f. 449RB).
29) While Spanish has the derivatives malsinería, malsinación, malsindad and malsineiras, from
the verb malsinar ‘to denounce,’ evidently originating in the speech of medieval Spanish Jews
(cf. http://corpus.rae.es/cgi-bin/crpsrvEx.dll?MfcISAPICommand=buscar&tradQuery=1&destin
o=1&texto=malsin*&autor=&titulo=&ano1=&ano2=&medio=1000&pais=1000&tema=1000), and
Portuguese has cognate malsinaçaõ and (rare) malsinamento (< malsinar, used in modern Por-
tuguese in the sense of ‘to misconstrue’), these lexemes do not seem to be documented in non-
Jewish texts until after the 15th century.
30) Cf. Bunis 1999b:171–172.
31) In earlier translations ʿalila is rendered by Hispanisms or Hispano-Arabisms, e.g., achake
(< Hispano-Arabic aččakká < Cl.A. taššaka ‘to complain; to denounce’ (RAE, Diccionario, 2001,
s. achaque]) in Bet tefila, a Hebrew prayer book with Ladino translation edited by Yiśrael Bĕxar
(or Ben) Ḥayyim in Vienna in 1813 (f. 9b). Perhaps out of modesty, in that edition, the phrase ʾišsa
raʿa ‘evil woman’ in the Hebrew text is left untranslated.
ivri-taytsh—that is, with traditional Yiddish renditions or interpretations—

published in Vilna in 1907 under the title Maḥzor kol bo rav pĕninim, presents
a syntactic structure relatively free of the influence of Hebrew and closer to
natural Yiddish. There is also a generous use of Hebraisms, both features typi-
cal of what Weinreich would perhaps have accepted as yídishlekh style in the
context of the translation of a sacred Hebrew text. (It should be noted that, in
both variant Ashkenazi prayer books, the Yiddish text translates the shorter
Hebrew version appearing in the Nusakh Ashkenaz edition):
‫ מאדם רע‬,‫יהי רצון מלפניך ה' אלהי ואלהי אבותי שתצילנו היום ובכל יום מעזי פנים ומעזות פנים‬
‫ בין שהוא בן ברית‬,‫ מדין קשה ומבעל דין קשה‬,‫ומחבר רע ומשכן רע ומפגע רע ומשטן המשחית‬
.‫ובין שאינו בן ברית‬
Es zol zayn der viln fun tsu far Dir, Got, mayn Got un Got fun mayne eltern, Du zolst mikh
haynt un ale tog matsl zayn fun azelkhe mentshn vos zey zenen aze ponem, un dos ikh zol
nit meyez ponem zayn kegn ándere mentshn, un zay mikh matsl fun a shlekhtn mentshn,
un fun a shlekhtn khaver, un fun ayn shlekhtn shokhn, un fun beyze bagégenish, un far dem
sotn amashkhes, fun ayn shvern din, un far a shlekhtn bal din, say er iz ayn yehudi oder nit
keyn yehudi, fun alts zolstu mikh, Got, matsl zayn.
[Translation of the Yiddish text: May it be Your will (literally, It should be the will of before
You), God, my God and God of my fathers, that You deliver me today and every day from
such people who are impudent, and may I not be impudent to other people, and deliver
me from an evil man, and from a bad companion, and from a bad neighbor, and from evil
occurrences, and from the destructive Satan, from a hard judgment, and from a hard oppo-
nent, whether he be a Jew or not a Jew, from all [this] may You, God, deliver me.]
The syntax contains few loan translations (e.g., Es zol zayn der viln fun tsu far
Dir, translating Yĕhi raṣon mi-lĕ-fanexa). The Hebraisms include analytic verbs
constructed of a Hebrew present participle in the masculine singular form (in
one of the two instances, accompanied by its Hebrew-origin object) and the
use of Germanic-origin zayn ‘to be’ as the auxiliary, as commonly used in natu-
ral ‘Jewishly-phrased’ Yiddish: matsl zayn ‘to save’ (H. maṣṣil), meyez ponem
zayn ‘to be insolent’ (H. meʿez panim).32 Other Hebraisms refer to social rela-
tions: one’s khaver ‘friend’ (H. ḥaver), shokhn ‘neighbor’ (H. šaxen), and fellow
yehudi ‘Jew’ (H. yĕhudi); to the sotn amashkhes ‘destructive Satan’ (H. śaṭan
ha-mašḥit); to a harsh din ‘judgment’ (H. din) and to an evil bal din ‘contestant’
(H. baʿal din). At its conclusion the translator expands the text, as compared
with the Hebrew version found in the Nusakh Ashkenaz prayer book, by sum-
32) The latter verb expresses an interpretation of Hebrew me-ʿazut panim ‘from insolence’ differ-
ent from that in the Ladino version: in the latter, the person uttering the prayer seeks protection
from ‘insolence’; in the Yiddish text, the prayer requests that its reciter be able to refrain from
insolence toward others.
marizing the entire prayer with the words: fun alts zolstu mikh, Got, matsl zayn
‘from all this, God, may you save me.’
Since both the Ladino and Ivri-Taytsh versions of Tĕfillat Rabbi reflect dis-
tinctly Jewish translation approaches, albeit approaches governed by two dif-
ferent principles—literalism in the case of the Ladino, proximity to natural
traditional Yiddish in the other case—I would argue that, using a broad defini-
tion of Weinreich’s yídishlekh, both texts would qualify as ‘Jewishly written.’
Rabbinical and Maskilic-Scientific Texts

Weinreich could also have demonstrated the opposition between texts trans-
lated ‘Jewishly’ versus ‘less Jewishly’ by adducing divergent Jewish-language
adaptations of Hebrew rabbinical works of a non-sacred nature, as well as early
maskilic-scientific works. Especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies Judezmo speakers produced traditionally or ‘Jewishly-phrased’ trans-
lations of some such works whose features would, according to Weinreich’s
classification, allow us to categorize them as being in the Judezmo equivalent
of the yídishlekh style. This may be illustrated by passages from two Judezmo
works published in nineteenth-century Salonika translating similar texts in
two Hebrew works relating to the conversion to Islam in 1666 of the false mes-
siah of Izmir, Sabbatai Zevi.
In a few respects, the first of the two, Sefer musar haśkel (Moral Book), edited
by Yosef Bĕxar Me’ir Śaśon and Yiṣḥaq (Bĕxor) Amarachi in 1849 (f. 65b), may
be said to be more ‘Jewishly-written.’ The source text, a Hebrew rabbinical
work entitled (Ḥeleq rišon mi-sefer ha-ʿolamot o) Maʿaśe Ṭoviyya ([Part One of
the Book of the Worlds or] the Story of Tobias), by Ṭoviyya ben Moše Katz
[=Kohen ṣedeq] (Venice 1687, vol. 1, f. 26b),33 reads as follows:
34‫והיה אז עומד לפני המלך הנזכר הרופא מאיאט זאד"י אשר לפנים בישראל היה חכם שמו דידון‬
‫ואת"ם א[ף] ע[ל] פ"י שחטא ישראל היה לענין זה שאמר לשבתי צבי הנזכר דע כי בן מות אתה‬
‫ושונאי ישראל חייבים כליה אך בחסדי הגדולה איעצך זאת עשה והיה אתה ועמך אם יקרה‬
‫ והוא כשמעו דברי אלה פחד ורעדה אחזתו ואמר‬.‫בעיניך להמיר דתך ולהיות ישמעאל כמוני‬
‫ אז השיב רופא המלך הנזכר אדוני המלך צוה שיביאו מצנפת וצניף התוגרמים‬.‫הנני למצותיך‬
‫כי כבר נעשה ישמעאל ותכף הוסר הבוני"טה הוא כובע היאודים שבמדינה זו והושם על ראשו‬
‫מצנפת הישמעאלים והמיר דתו ונעשה ישמעאל וקרואו מיאימי"ט איפ"ינדי וכן עשו רבים ונכבדים‬
33) The work was reprinted in Venice, 1707.

34) It has been suggested that Mayat Zadé (‫ )מאיאט זאד"י‬is a mispelling of Xayat-zadé (-‫חייט‬
‫)זאדי‬, i.e., ‘son of the tailor,’ and that the reference is to Moše ben Rĕfa’el, a member of the Abra-
vanel family. It has also been proposed that Didón (‫ )דידון‬is a mispelling of Djudón (‫)ג'ודון‬, i.e., a
pejorative form of djudyó ‘Jew’ (cf. Rosanes 1934:430).
‫ ומהיום והלאה נתחברו אליו רבים מהיאודים‬: ]‫מהיאודי'[ם] שהמירו דתם בעו[נותינו]"ה[רבים‬
‫והישמעאלים גם המומרים הלכו אחריו והוא נהג את עצמו ברבנות כבראשונה ופעם התפלל ועשה‬
]. . .[ ‫כמנהג היאודים ופעם כמנהג הישמעאלים‬
The Judezmo translation reads:

I estava delantre el rey un médiko ke era djidyó i se izo turko, i le disho a Shabetay Seví en
djudezmo, “Savrás ke estás en sekaná, tu i los djidyós, i syendo ansí, mi konsejo es ke te agas
turko i ke salgan los djidyós de sekaná.” I komo sintyó Shabetay Seví estas palavras le travó
tembla i le disho al médiko “Ya estó a tu dicho.” I le disho el médiko a el rey, “Mi sinyor el
rey, enkomende ke traygan una toka blanka, ke ya se izo turko.” I téhef le metyeron la toka
blanka. I bavonod arabim, se izyeron munchos djidyós turkos, i de akel día i endelantre se
fueron detrás de el munchos djidyós i turkos i aboltados i era uzán eyos aínda el sinyorío
komo el prisipyo, i azían maasim demudados, i a las vezes azía maasim de djidyó, a las
vezes azía maasim de turko.
[And there stood before the king a physician who had been a Jew and became a Muslim,
and he said to Sabbatai Zevi in Judezmo, “Know that you and the Jews are in danger, and
this being so, my advice is that you become a Muslim and thus the Jews will be out of dan-
ger.” And when Sabbatai Zevi heard these words he was seized by a trembling and he said
to the physician, “I’ll do what you say.” And the physician said to the king, “My sir, the King,
order that they bring a white toque, because he has become a Muslim.” And at once they
put the white toque on him. And for our sins, many Jews turned Turk, and from that day
on many Jews and Turks and converted Jews followed his lordship as in the beginning, and
they committed strange acts, and at times he performed the acts of a Jew and at times he
performed the acts of a Muslim.]
The second Hebrew text is from the anonymous, early maskilic historical novel
Sippur ḥalomot qeṣ ha-pĕla⁠ʾot (Story of the Dreams of the End of Marvels, Lem-
berg, 1804, f. 22b). Like certain other works produced by those Hebrew writ-
ers of the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment movement of the late eighteenth
through nineteenth centuries who continued to write in a style close to tradi-
tional rabbinic Hebrew but cultivated genres and themes inspired by western
European secular literature and emerging fields of science, this source is a fic-
tional account based on pre-modern rabbinical works. It includes the follow-
ing passage:
‫"ויהי כשמוע המשיח הדברים האלה חרד חרדה גדולה עד שאחזו השבץ ועד שנפל לפני המלך‬
‫ארצה ויבך ויתחנן לו בעד נפשו ושם באסיפה היה מומר אחד רופא הסולטאן ושמו מאיאטזאדי‬
‫] איעצך‬. . .[ ‫] 'ראה כלתה אליך הרעה מאת הסולטאן‬. . .[ ‫ויגש וידבר בלשון יהודית ויאמר‬
‫עצה טובה אשר משמני ארץ תאכל בשלום והוא שאין לך תקנה אחרת כ[י]"א[ם] או שתהרג‬
‫ ויהי‬: '‫ע[ל]"י[די] ה" אנשי מופת אלה ולא תעבור או שתמור דתך בדת אלקיראן כמוני כמוך‬
‫כשמוע המשיח את כל זה פעם רוחו בקרבו ויחי מרוב שמחה ויעמוד על רגליו ויאמר לסולטאן 'זה‬
‫יום ראשון לתחית רוחי ואורי עמך עמי ואלוקיך אלוקי תורתך תורתי אמונתך אמונתי דתך דתי‬
":'‫ובאשר תקבר אקבר‬
The Judezmo adaptation of this work, published as Livro de los akontesimyentos

de Šabetáy Seví yamaδo Meoraod Seví (Book of the Events Surrounding Sab-
batai Zevi called the Events of Zevi, Salonika 1871, pp. 134–135), incorporates
some typically ‘traditional Jewish’ linguistic features (see below), but it is in
some respects less ‘Jewishly written’ than the preceding extract:
I fue komo oir el mashíah las palavras las estas se estremesyó muncho fina ke le travó dez-
mayo, i fina ke se echó delantre el sultán a·tyera i enpesó a·yorar i demandando rogativas
por su alma.
I en akea djunta se topava un djidyó aboltado, médiko de el sultán, i su nombre Mayat-
zadé, i se ayegó serka de el mashíah i le avló en la lingwa espanyola i le disho, “Mira ke
estás en negro perize ke non la vas a eskapar de el sultán [. . .] Ven te daré un konsejo i será
bueno a·tí todos tus días, i te envisyarás de visyos de este mundo, i es ke non ay a·ti dingún
eskapasyón por eskapar de la muerte si non o ke te arojen 5 krushumes, komo dishe al
[=disho el?] sultán, i si eskapas, eskapas, o ke trokes tu ley, i ke tomes la ley turka komo
mi.” I fue komo oir el mashíash a todo esto se retornó de·su desmayo i se alevantó en pyes
i le disho a el sultán komo estas palavras, “Este día es primero a·la rebividura de mi esprito.
Oy se konta komo nasyera. Tu puevlo mi puevlo, i tu Dyo mi Dyo, tu emuná es mi emuná,
tu ley es mi ley.”
[And when the messiah heard these words he became frightened so much that he swooned
and threw himself down before the sultan and began to cry and beg for his life (soul).
And at that meeting there was a converted Jew, physician to the sultan, and his name was
Mayatzadé, and he approached the messiah and spoke to him in the Spanish language and
said to him, “Look, you are in grave danger and you cannot escape the sultan’s wrath[. . .]
Come and I’ll give you a piece of advice and it will be good for you all the days of your life,
and you will enjoy the pleasures of this world, and it is that you have no means of escaping
death, either they will shoot five bullets at you, as I told the sultan [=the sultan said?], and
if you escape, you escape, or you will change your religion, and accept the Muslim religion,
like me.” And when the messiah heard all this he revived from his swoon and he stood up
and said to the sultan words to this effect: “This day is the first of the rebirth of my spirit.
Today is counted as if I were just born. Your people is my people, and your God my God,
your faith is my faith, your law is my law.”]
One expression of the relative ‘Jewishness’ of the first translation is the man-
ner in which it refers to the language used in the exchange between Sabbatai
Zevi and the formerly Jewish, but by then Muslim physican to the Ottoman
sultan, who advised the false messiah to convert to Islam in order to save
his own life and prevent harm to the Jewish community. In the first (1849)
Judezmo adaptation, in a characteristic expansion of the original Hebrew text,
which—at least in the editions I have seen—contains no overt reference to
the language used in the exchange, that language is referred to as djudezmo,
or ‘Jewish,’ as Judezmo was popularly known into the modern era.35 In the
35) For references see Bunis 2011a.

original Hebrew version of the second passage, it is stated explicitly that the
language used by the physician was yĕhudit, ‘Jewish’; but in the 1871 Judezmo
adaptation the translator instead rendered this as en la lingua espanyola ‘in
the Spanish language.’ Furthermore, the first adaptation omits details con-
tained in the original Hebrew text which the translator apparently considered
superfluous—an example of textual reduction, a process not mentioned by
Weinreich but frequently encountered in ‘Jewishly written’ Jewish-language
adaptations of Hebrew rabbinic texts. The first translation also shows a prefer-
ence for Hebraisms over Judezmo elements of other origins in expressing the
emotive concepts conveyed by the noun sekaná ‘danger’ (H. sakkana) and the
interjection bavonod arabim ‘for our sins’ (H. ba-ʿăwonot ha-rabbim), the ‘acts
of behavior’ denoted by maasim (H. maʿăśim), and even the ‘immediateness
in time’ specified by téhef (H. texef ). (It should be noted that, of these four lex-
emes, only ba-ʿăwonot ha-rabbim and texef actually appear in the first Hebrew
source passage.) Like the analytic verbs in the Yiddish translation of Tĕfillat
Rabbi discussed above—which also have parallels in Judezmo, although none
appears in this short passage—the Hebraisms in the first passage remind us
that the Hebraisms in Jewish languages are not restricted to nouns; and even
with respect to those which are nouns, not all are directly related to the Jewish
religion and its practice.
In the second (1871) translation extract two Hebraisms are used as well
(mashíah ‘messiah,’ emuná ‘faith’), but their Hebrew correspondents (mašiaḥ,
ʾemuna) occur in the Hebrew source text as well. Furthermore, some concepts
expressed in the first adaptation by Hebraisms are expressed in the second by
elements of other origins, e.g., ‘danger’ is denoted by perize (?) (‫)פיריזי‬, perhaps
a typographical error for períkolo, a widespread Judezmo Italianism (I. peri-
colo). Nevertheless, there are elements characteristic of traditional Judezmo
in this extract as well. In both translations a ‘religious convert’ is referred to
as an aboltado, literally one who has ‘turned,’ probably a calque of Turkish
dönme, from dön‑ ‘to turn (religiously or otherwise).’ In common with more
‘Jewishly-written’ translations, the 1871 adaptation contains some calques
of Hebrew constructions, e.g., las palavras las estas ‘these words,’ rendering
ha-dĕvarim ha-ʾelle, and non ay a·ti ‘you do not have,’ mirroring ʾen lĕxa. The
text displays popular Judezmo forms of Hispanic origin such as dingún ‘none’
(cf. S. ningún); and the Turkism krushumes ‘bullets’ (cf. T. kurşum, with charac-
teristic Judezmo metathesis of ‑ur‑ > ‑ru‑). The words with which the passage
concludes, Tu puevlo mi puevlo, i tu Dyo mi Dyo, Tu emuná es mi emuná, Tu ley
es mi ley, echo the words of Ruth the Moabite (Ruth 1:16) to her mother-in-law,
declaring her determination to remain faithful to Naomi’s Jewish people and
their religion. Note also the lack of the copula in the first two phrases, mirror-
ing the Hebrew original.
Later in our discussion we will focus on original Judezmo and Yiddish works
from the early twentieth century on the theme of Sabbatai Zevi which are
based on the same source materials as the extracts discussed above, but which
distance themselves from those materials through modification and amplifica-
tion of details. We shall see that some of these works are written ‘Jewishly,’
while others are only minimally Jewish in style.
Judezmo and Yiddish Stylistics in Original Compositions

Illustrations of the linguistic and stylistic opposition Weinreich’s discussion
suggests, between Jewish-language texts written ‘Jewishly’ and those written
less ‘Jewishly,’ need not of course be confined to translations. In original com-
positions, in both poetry and prose, from the beginnings of writing in Jewish
languages such as Judezmo and Yiddish into our own times, it is not difficult
to discern in some writings an incorporation of stylistic features making them
more ‘traditionally Jewish’ in form than others. I would argue that writing in a
more ‘Jewish style,’ or not, is always the result of a conscious decision on the
part of a Jewish-language author—so long, of course, as that author is capable
of utilizing both options. I shall return to this point at the end of my article.
Although the theme of the writing appears sometimes to play a role in the
choice of style, ‘traditional Jewish’ or not, we shall see examples demonstrat-
ing that style is not dictated entirely by the thematic focus of the particular
text, as has been suggested by researchers who argue that texts devoted specifi-
cally to religious themes are perforce phrased ‘Jewishly,’ while texts concerned
with other themes are necessarily less so or not at all. No less significant factors
include the author’s normative conceptions, his or her attitudes toward the
style most appropriate for the intended audience, the genre being translated or
composed in,36 the period in which the text was written and the linguistic and
literary fashions then in vogue, and especially the conscious desire of a writer
to imbue his or her text with a linguistically and referentially distinct Jewish
quality employing traditionally accepted patterns.
36) For an attempt to determine correlations between literary genres and linguistic features see
Schwarzwald 2009. See also Benor 2008.
Judezmo before the 1492 Expulsion
Old Judezmo Communal Ordinances

The use of ‘Jewish styling’ in a Judezmo text from before the Expulsion, meant
for reading by members of the Jewish community of Castile, is exemplified in
the so-called taqqanot or ‘communal regulations’ of Valladolid, set down by the
rabbis of Castile in 1432. The following short extract is from section five of the
fourth ‘gate,’ regarding taxation:
Ordenamos ke de akí adelante en todos los kehalod [. . .], y[ishmerem] s[uram]”ve[goalam]
[‫]יצ"ו‬, deste malhud sean nohagim de aver rentas de karne i de vino, i kada kahal i kahal se
alyegen a·las ordenar keminhagam i seer kosev sovrelyo lo·ke entendieren ke deven echar.
Donde non tienen tekanod ciertos uksavod yeduod [‫ ]וקצבות ידועות‬en·la dicha razón, [s]i
non se avinieren a·elyo betoh sheloshim yom resufim [‫ ]בתוך שלשים יום רצופים‬del día ke
sovrelyo fueren midkabesim, ke enbíen sus deod al rav de·la korte, yi[shmerehu]”E[l] [‫]י"א‬,
i el ordene, komo uzen el kahal, y[ishmerem] s[uram]”ve[goalam], [‫ ]יצ"ו‬en·las dichas ren-
tas, i segum el lo mandare, así sean mehuyavim de·lo kunplir.37
[We establish that from now on in all the congregations [. . .], may their Rock and Savior
preserve them, of this kingdom they should be in the habit of having taxes on meat and
wine, and each congregation should manage to institute them as is their custom and to
allocate for it what they understand they should contribute. Where they do not have defi-
nite regulations and known allotments in this matter, if they do not reach an agreement
concerning it within thirty consecutive days from the day upon which they assemble [to
deliberate on it], they should send their opinions to the court rabbi, may God preserve him,
and he should establish how the congregation, may their Rock and Savior preserve them,
should act in these taxes, and according to what he commands, thus will they be obligated
to follow.]
Perhaps even more so than in the translations of rabbinical texts in traditional

Jewish style referred to above, this extract illustrates the dense use of Hebra-
isms in texts in this specialized form of traditional Jewish style, the Judezmo
equivalent of the Hebrew-Yiddish chancery style which was analyzed by Uriel
Weinreich (1958). This use includes nouns of Hebrew origin referring to the Cas-
tilian malxud ‘kingdom’ (H. malxut), as well as to its Jewish communal institu-
tions, including the kahal ‘community’ (H. qahal), its rav ‘rabbi’ (H. rav), and its
administrative tools, here taking the form of tekanod ‘communal ordinances’
37) In this extract, and in those from the sixteenth century, italicized h is used to transcribe
Hebrew consonantal he (‫)ה‬, which may have been realized among the Jews of Spain during this
period as [h] or phonological zero. The Valladolid taqqanot have received much scholarly atten-
tion since the late nineteenth century. For reproductions of pages from the original manuscript,
with transcription and English translations, see Koch 1978; for the complete text in Hebrew and
Latin letters, with a linguistic analysis, see Minervini 1992, vol. 1:181–225, vol. 2:54–133.
(H. taqqanot). There are also nouns referring to more abstract concepts, such
as deod ‘ideas’ or ‘opinions’ (H. deʿot). As typical of such texts, especially those
in the Judezmo chancery style, we find several examples of analytic verbs with
the Hispanic-origin auxiliary ser (to be) and Hebrew-origin complements, for
example, seer kosev ‘to allocate’ (H. qoṣev) and sean nohagim (de aver rentas)
‘they should be in the habit (of having taxes)’ (H. nohăgim); adverbial expres-
sions such as keminhagam ‘as is their custom’ (H. kĕ-minhagam); calques of
Hebrew constructions, e.g., kada (kahal) i (kahal) ‘each and every (congrega-
tion)’ (H. qahal), reflecting Hebrew kol qahal wĕ-qahal; and code switching
between Judezmo and Hebrew proper, as effected, in our passage, through the
use of the Hebrew conjunction wĕ- in the phrase non tienen tekanod ciertos
uksavod yeduod (H. u-qṣavot yĕduʿot) ‘they do not have specific ordinances and
known allotments.’ Abbreviations are used to denote exhortations such as (los
kehalod . . .) y[ishmerem] s[uram] ” ve[goalam] ‘(the congregations . . .) may
their Rock and Savior preserve them’ (H. yišmĕrem ṣuram wĕ-goʾălam, denoted
by Hebrew ‫)יצ"ו‬.
Rhymed Verse
On the other hand, another text with Jewish content produced in pre-expulsion
Spain, Rabbi Shem Ṭov Ardutiel of Carrión’s fourteenth-century Proverbios
morales (Moralistic Proverbs), this time dedicated not to Jewish readers but to
the Spanish King Pedro (1357–1360), is strikingly—but of course understand-
ably—devoid of distinctively Jewish linguistic and stylistic features:
326 En mundo tal cabdal Non a como el saber;
Nin eredat nin al, Nin ningun otro aver.
327 El saber es la gloria De Dios e la su graçia:
Non a tan noble joya, Nin tan buena ganancia.38
[326 In the world there is no capital Like knowledge;
Nor a legacy Nor any other wealth.
327 Knowledge is the glory Of God and his grace:
There is no jewel so noble Nor such a good profit.]
In this extract, ‘God’ is referred to as Dios rather than traditional Jewish el

Dyo, and concepts such as ‘world,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘inheritance,’ and ‘grace,’ often
expressed in Judezmo texts in traditional Jewish style by Hebraisms such as
olam, hohmá, yerushá, and hen (H. ʿolam, ḥoxma, yĕruša, ḥen), respectively, are
instead conveyed by the Hispanisms mundo, saber, eredat, and graçia.
38) After González Llubera 1947:105.

Judezmo in the Sixteenth Century

The expulsions from Iberia at the end of the fifteenth century brought Jewish
language traditions, and the continuum of more and less distinctively Jewish
literary style, to new homes, the most important of which, in terms of the num-
bers of speakers of Judezmo as well as their literary output, was the Ottoman
Empire. There, Jewish immigrants from Spain helped establish the printing art
and, especially from the middle of the sixteenth century, initiated a tradition
of Judezmo book publication.
A Popular Anthology of Jewish Law

In works with Jewish thematic content intended for the general Jewish public,
the traditional Jewish style predominated. It is illustrated in f. 2b of the original
introduction added by ‘Me’ir’—that is, Me’ir ben Shĕmuel Benveniste—to his
adaptation of parts of Yosef Karo’s classic legal code, Shulḥan ʿarux (Set Table),
published in Salonika in 1568 under the title Šulḥan ha-panim, o meza de el
alma (Table of the Soul). In the following extract Benveniste assures popular
readers that, by studying his work, they will be beloved of God; and if they have
no other time to do so, they should preoccupy themselves with the work on
the Sabbath and holidays, which were given to Israel solely in order for them to
have time for Torah study:
I deprendyéndolo i uzando lo·ke dize, serán kistos i amados de el Dyo baruh (H)u i les (h)ará
mersed, i si kizyeren kada día kontinuar a leer un pedaso de el, será byen, i sinó, pudyeren
a·lo menos en el día de shabad, ke no ay koza ke les estorve. Pueden estar meldando por el
en·el tyenpo ke solían ir a·pasear—(h)amavdil—ke no se dyeron los shabatod i los moadim
a Yisrael sinó para travajar en e(l)yos en la ley.39
[And by studying it and using what it says they will be cherished and beloved of God,
blessed be He, and He will have mercy on them, and if they should want to keep reading
a part of it every day, it will be well, and if not, they can do so at least on the Sabbath, for
there is nothing to disturb them. They can go on reading it during the time they would
[otherwise] go for a walk—let us mark the distinction between the two!—for Sabbaths and
Jewish festivals were not given to Israel except to study the Law.]
In the extract, we see features of ‘Jewishly-styled’ Judezmo such as: the form
used for ‘God,’ el Dyo, followed by the customary Hebrew-origin honorific
phrase baruh (H)u ‘blessed be He’ (H. barux Hu); alternation between the
39) The phonetic status of the graphemes he (‫ )ה‬and lamed yod (yod) (]‫ )לי[י‬corresponding to
Castilian <ll> during this period is unclear. In later Judezmo the phonological value of he is zero,
and it is here transcribed (h). Castilian <ll> usually corresponds to Judezmo y; in the extracts from
the sixteenth century lamed yod (yod) is here transcribed (l)y.
generic Hispanic-origin term for ‘reading,’ leer, which fell out of use in Judezmo
in the eighteenth century, and the more distinctively Jewish form, meldar
(from Jewish Greek meletáō through Jewish Latin meletare), the latter imply-
ing (during this period) the reading of specifically Jewish texts; examples of
the use of Hebrew-origin inflectional endings such as ‑od with shabad for plu-
ral shabatod ‘Sabbaths’ (H. šabbat, -ot); the use of Hebraisms in the semantic
senses they customarily receive among Judezmo speakers, e.g., moadim in the
sense of ‘Jewish festivals’ (cf. H. moʿădim ‘fixed times’); the interjection (h)ama-
vdil ‘He who distinguishes’ (H. ha-mavdil), used to emphasize the difference
between a mundane activity such as going for a leisurely stroll on Jewish days
of rest and sacred acts such as studying Torah on those days; and a calque of the
Hebrew idiom la-ʿămol ba-tora ‘to study Torah’ (literally, ‘to work in the Law’),
reclothed in Hispanic garb as travajar en la ley. Analogously with the style used
by Mendele in his translation of Autoemanzipation, as noted by Weinreich,
Benveniste’s syntax is relatively simple, and presumably close to that of the
average educated Judezmo speaker of his time, although with influences from
the Hebrew source text.
A Philosophical Treatise
The ‘Jewishly-styled’ variety was not adopted by all Ottoman Sephardic rab-
binical writers of sixteenth-century Salonika. Ottoman Sephardim who were
descendents of crypto-Jews who had been forced to assimilate linguistically to
their Christian neighbors in Iberia so as not to disclose their secret attachment
to Judaism, and perhaps those belonging to families who had viewed the lan-
guage of their cultured Christian Spanish neighbors as the superior form of the
language, tended to employ a literary style minimally Jewish in form, although
often very Jewish in content. This approach is exemplified in the following pas-
sage from Rabbi Moshe Almosnino’s Hanhagat ha-ḥayyim, o rejimyento de la
vida (Regimen of Life, Salonika 1564, part three, chapter 12, ff. 132a–132b):40
Solo es mi intensyón dezirte akí en breve el estilo ke deves (l)yevar en deprender la sensya
por sus prinsipyos, sola mente lo ke te bastará para entender las palavras de nuesos savyos
en nueso talmud i en otros lugares, ke no desharon sensya ni saviduría ke no espekularon,
i komo vengan sus palavras muy seradas, ke no kijeron dezir mas ke las siknifikasyones
de las kozas, porke para los savyos ake(l)yo abasta, por tanto es menester leer en alguna
manera por los livros de·los filósofos ke alargaron en·la sensya para poder byen konprender
la intensyón de nuesos savyos.
40) A somewhat different romanization of the text appears in Zemke 2004:363.

[It is only my intention to tell you here in brief the manner which you should undertake in
studying science by its principles, only what will suffice in order to understand the words
of our sages in our Talmud and in other places, because they left no science or branch
of knowledge on which they did not speculate, and since their words are rather obscure,
because they did not want to state more than the meanings of things, because for scholars
that is enough, for that reason it is necessary to read in a particular way the books of the
philosophers who expatiated upon science in order to be able to comprehend the intention
of our scholars.]
Throughout his extensive philosophical tract, which incorporates references

to Jewish, Greek, and Arab philosophers and their works, Almosnino main-
tains certain fundamental boundaries between the language of Jews and Gen-
tiles: for example, he refers to ‘God’ as el Dyo, and to the ‘Sabbath’ as shabad.
But in sharp contrast with Me’ir’s adaptation of the Shulḥan arux and other
texts of the period written in ‘traditional Jewish style,’ we find minimal use of
Hebraisms: for example, intensyón rather than kavaná (H. kawwana) ‘inten-
tion,’ prinsipyo instead of ikar (H. ʿiqqar) ‘principle,’ savyos instead of hahamim
(H. ḥaxămim) ‘Jewish scholars.’ When Almosnino does use a word of Hebrew
origin, it is not always one which forms a natural part of traditional Judezmo,
but sometimes corresponds to the word used in Spanish texts for the same
concept; for example, talmud, whereas contemporaneous texts in more tradi-
tional Jewish style use la gemará (Aram. gĕmara).41 Almosnino also shows a
preference for generic leer, also used in Spanish, over distinctive meldar. Com-
pared with that of Benveniste, Almosnino’s syntax is relatively complex, and
reminiscent of the ornate style used by Spanish renaissance authors, while his
lexicon includes numerous learned Latin-origin lexemes such as estilo ‘style,’
espekular ‘to speculate,’ siknifikasyones ‘meanings,’ evidently absent from pop-
ular Judezmo of his time and place, as suggested by the glossary added at the
end of Almosnino’s work, in which the learned ‘foreignisms’ were explained by
means of equivalents—in Hebrew, which were apparently more readily under-
stood by the average educated Judezmo speaker of the period than Almosni-
no’s European classicisms.
41) For references to the Hebraisms in Benveniste’s translation and in Ṣaddiq ben Yosef Formón’s
adaptation of Baḥye Ibn Paquda’s Sefer ḥovat ha-lĕvavot (Duty of the Hearts, Salonika 1569), see
Bunis 1993:23–32; Schwarzwald 2008:569–572.
Yiddish in the Sixteenth Century
A Midrashic Collection
To speakers of Old Yiddish, both the more and less ‘Jewish’ stylistic options
were available as well. The use of the Jewish style in prose, for example, is well
illustrated in Anshl Leyvi’s Midraš lĕ-Firqe ʾAvot (Commentary on Ethics of the
Fathers), from 1579, in which the Hebrew source text is freely translated and
interpreted. The following passage is from the author’s discussion of the phrase
“Wĕ-ʾal tarbe siḥa ʿim ha-ʾišša” (Do not talk much with women) (Avot 1:5):42
Un’ nit man zol mern fil tsu reydn mit den vayber, afile mit zaynem éyginen vayb habn
unzer khakhomim gizágt. Mikolshkn un’ toyznt mol véniger mit andern vayber. Un’ azó
habn gizágt khakhomim zi[khroynem] li[vrokhe] ‘Al tsayt das der mensh mert fil tsu reydn
mit vayber, er iz goyrem roe tsu zikh zelbert, un’ far shtert di toyre, un’ zayn sof iz das er
nidert in das gehenem.’ Das eyner nit zol fil reydn mit zaynem vayb, das meynt nit ali vay-
ber, noyert di zölkhn vayber di ire manen umander an raytsn tsu krign un’ tsu hadern, un’
gazlen un’ ganven un’ tsu ánderi böze maysim, az mir finden bay Koyrekh[. . .]
[One should not speak much with women, even with one’s own wife, our sages said.
A fortiori, and a thousand times less so, with other women. And so the sages, of blessed
memory, said: ‘Whenever a man speaks much with women, he brings harm to himself and
spoils the Torah, and his end is that he will descend to Hell.’ That one should not speak
much with his wife does not mean all wives, but those particular wives who encourage their
husbands to fight and argue with others, and to rob and steal and commit other evil acts, as
we find regarding Korach(. . .).]
The Germanic component, although archaic when compared with Modern

Yiddish, freely incorporates popular phraseology, such as toyznt mol véniger
‘a thousand times less so.’ We further find a rich use of Hebraisms, including
some nouns reflecting concepts connected with Judaism such as toyre ‘Torah’
and gehenem ‘Hell,’ as well as others bearing no direct relation to Jewish ritual,
such as sof ‘end’ and maysim ‘acts, behavior’ (H. sof, maʿăśim). There are also
non-substantives, such as the adverb afile ‘even,’ the analytic verbal expres-
sion goyrem roe tsu zikh zayn ‘to cause evil to oneself,’ as well as the synthetic
verbs gazlen ‘to rob’ and ganven ‘to steal,’ constructed of bases derived from the
Hebrew verbal roots g-z-l and g-n-v and the Germanic infinitive ending -en (the
latter verb has a parallel in Judezmo ganavear ‘to steal,’ as well as in varieties
of Jewish Italian).43
42) After Frakes 2004:339. The Hebrew text reads:

‫ כל‬:‫ אמרו חכמים‬,‫ קל וחומר באשת חברו; מכאן‬,‫ואל תרבה שיחה עם האישה—באשתו אמרו‬
.‫ ובטיל מדברי תורה וסופו יירש גיהינם‬,‫המרבה שיחה עם האישה—גורם רעה לעצמו‬
43) See for example Modena Mayer 1978.
As characteristic in a ‘Jewishly-styled’ Yiddish translation of a non-Biblical

source text, a Hebrew element in the source may be replaced in the target text
by another Hebraism, if the translator believes the latter is more natural in
the Jewish-language context. For example, qal wa-ḥomer (Y. kalvekhoymer) in
Avot is replaced by mikolshkn ‘all the more so’ (H. mi-kol še-ken) in Leyvi’s text;
the latter expression is also intensified in the target text by expansion through
the added phrase unʾ toyznt mol véniger ‘and a thousand times less so.’ The
terse Mishnaic text is occasionally expanded further for clarification, as when
‘our sages,’ the implied subject of (bĕ-ʾišto) ʾamĕru ‘they said [this] regarding
his wife,’ is stated explicity in corresponding (mit zaynem éyginen vayb) habn
unzer khakhomim gizágt ‘(with his own wife) our sages said.’ At the second
mention of the sages, the honorific expression zikhroynem livrokhe ‘their mem-
ory for a blessing’ (H. zixronam li-vraxa) is added. As common in midrashic
texts, and generally in Jewish-language writings in traditional style, the extract
ends with a reference to a classic Jewish source—here, to the Biblical Korach,
whose behavior is meant to teach the reader a moral lesson connected with the
text under discussion.
A Chivalric Romance
Paralleling the second Judezmo passage from sixteenth-century Salonika, Old
Yiddish writers also had the choice of writing in a less-Jewish style, and occa-
sionally did so—especially in the portrayal of non-Jewish characters. For exam-
ple, in Elijah (Baḥur) Levita’s chivalric romance, Bovo bukh, from 1507–1508, the
author begins to describe a violent interaction between the characters Bovo
and Pelukan in the following words, all of non-Hebrew origin:
Un do er nun keyn feyl mit hit / do tsukh er zeyn shvert ous der sheydn / do lofn zi mit
anander in di vit / un shlog of anander mit fröudn / ei einer fun dem andern zeyn lebn rit /
der not shveys ran fun im beydn / Pelukan shtreyt mit groysm shturem / un Bovo vant zikh
az eyn lint vurem. /44
[And when he had no more arrows / he drew his sword from its sheath. / They hurled them-
selves at one another in battle / and hit one another with glee / until one of the two saved
his life. / The sweat from the effort ran from both of them. / Pelukan did combat with great
fury / and Bovo fought on like a dragon.]
But at the close of the romance, when the author speaks in his own name,
expressing his hopes for the future of the Jewish people, he switches to a more
traditional Jewish style:
44) Adapted from Baumgarten 1993:226.

Er [=Elye Bokher] hot es ous in nisn un hot er on in ier / Got zol unz gebn for aln boyzn
tir // un zol unz derlozn ous unzer peyn / un zol unz di genodn gebn / dos mir al musen
zoykhe zeyn meshiekhs tsayt tsu der lebn / der zol unz forn gey Yerusholaim hineyn / oder
ergets in eyn dorflen der nebn / un zol unz dos beysamigdesh vidr bouen / vekéyn yehí
rotsn oméyn trouen.45
[He (=Elye Bokher) completed it in Nisan and had it out in Iyyar. / May God protect us from
all the savage beasts / and deliver us from our suffering / and give us the mercy / to merit
living into Messianic times. / May He bring us to Jerusalem / or to some small village nearby /
and may He rebuild the Holy Temple for us, / so may it be His will, truly, amen. /
Here, proper names are Jewish and take their Hebrew-origin forms—the author
is Elye Bokher (H. ʾEliyya Baḥur), ‘Jerusalem’ is Yerusholaim (H. Yĕrušalayim),
the names of the months reflect the Jewish calendar (nisn [H. nisan (March-
April)], ier (H. iyyar [April-May]), the holy temple in Jerusalem is called the
beysamigdesh (H. bet ha-miqdaš), the messiah is meshiekh (H. mašiaḥ)—and
the author’s wish for the Jews is that they all have the merit (musen zoykhe
[H. zoxe] zeyn) of living into Messianic times. The verses end with the Hebrew-
origin exhortation: Vekéyn yehí rotsn oméyn ‘So may it be [Thy] will, amen.’
Late Middle Judezmo
Rhymed Verses by Avraham ben Yiṣḥaq Asa

In both Yiddish and Judezmo, the traditional Jewish style, as well as its less
traditional counterpart, continued to be used in original works of prose and
poetry by tradition-bound authors in subsequent centuries—although the tra-
ditional style predominated into the mid-nineteenth century. The use of that
style in eighteenth-century Judezmo komplas or ‘rhymed verses’ is exemplified
in the following extract by Avraham ben Yiṣḥaq Asa concerning the tišábeáv
(H. tišʿa bĕ-ʾAv) or ‘Ninth of Av’ fast day, as published in his Sefer ṣorxe ṣibbur
(Needs of the Public, Constantinople 1733:142a):
[Tishabeav] salyendo de el kal, uzan a bedahaim ir / I de andar kon kenufyá, razón de fuir /
Salvo ande solo, por non venir a avlar i reir. / En este inyán muncha desventura veo / Ke
ay varones ke tishabeav lo tyenen por paseo. / Kon pipa i aventador por bedahaim azen
rodeo. / I se visten limpyos en·su dezir tefilá, kon burlar endechan / I los kojedores non los
deshan si aspro non echan. / I lo ke les balda la kavaná non sospechan. / Mas ke esto, ke en
lug̲ ar de vestir sako / Vide algunos varones ke visten sayo blanko / I dizen, ‘Vení hazán, dos
tres eshkavod una pará a·lo manko.’ / Komo ya echan eshkavá, abashan a·el kampo a tomar
vyento / I kavayan sovre kavayos mansevos mas de syento. / I ken pone sus pyes en·el río,
ken se echa a nadar presto. / Día komo este amargo pujan isurim i hataim / I su kavaná kojer
45) Adapted from Baumgarten 1993:227.

sazes, ansí verésh sus manos meleim. / Por vedarlos de esto razón ke rodeen memunim
i gabaim.
[Leaving the synagogue (on the Ninth of Av), they have the custom of going to the cemetery /
And to walk in a group, which is a reason to flee / Rather one should go alone, so as not to
end up talking and laughing. / In this matter I see a lot of trouble / Because there are some
men who consider the Ninth of Av the time for an outing. / With their pipes and their fans
they stroll around the cemetery. / And they dress themselves cleanly while saying their
prayers, and they recite dirges while jesting / And the charity-collectors don’t leave them
be if they don’t throw them a penny. / And they have no idea that their prayerful thoughts
are disrupted. / More than this, instead of wearing sack-cloth / I saw some men who wear
white robes / And say, ‘Come here cantor, say two or three memorial prayers at the least for
one coin.’ / After they’ve said the memorial prayer they go down to the countryside to get
some air / And over a hundred young men ride horses. / And some put their feet in the river,
and some do some fast swimming. / On such a bitter day they do forbidden things and sin
more than ever / And they have their minds on collecting reeds, you’ll see their hands full
of them / To prevent them from doing this, appointed officials and community treasurers
should make the rounds.]
The author’s sarcasm is expressed through popular phrasing (e.g., tishabeav lo

tyenen por paseo ‘they consider the Ninth of Av the time for an outing,’ por
bedahaim azen rodeo ‘they stroll around the cemetery’), an instance of direct
speech reminiscent of market-place haggling (“Vení hazán, dos tres eshkavod
una pará a·lo manko” ‘Come here cantor, say two or three memorial prayers at
least for a coin’), and a rhymed proverb-like construction (e.g., non los deshan si
aspro non echan ‘They don’t leave them be if they don’t throw them a penny’).
Comic imagery is meant to have a didactic effect, teaching readers to refrain
from behaving as the characters in the couplets. For example, Asa criticizes the
congregants’ use of pipes and hand-fans for enjoyment while making a circuit to
the cemetery on a day marking a Jewish national tragedy; their reciting memo-
rial dirges while at the same time making fun of them; the hundred and more
young men who spend the day horseback riding, swimming, gathering rushes
in the fields, and otherwise indulging in acts prohibited on the fast day (pujan
isurim i hataim). The rabbi-poet argues that, to prevent such behavior, Jewish
communal officials should make the rounds and call the sinners to order.
The couplets incorporate everyday Judezmo lexemes of Hebrew origin (e.g.,
inyán ‘matter’ [H. ʿinyan]) and references to Jewish institutions (e.g., kal ‘syna-
gogue’ [H. qahal], bedahaim ‘literally, house of the living, i.e., cemetery’ [H. bet
ha-ḥayyim]), office-holders (memunim ‘appointed officials’ [H. mĕmunnim],
gabaim ‘treasurers’ [H. gabba⁠ʾim]), practices (e.g., tefilá ‘prayer’ [H. tĕfilla], esh-
kavá ‘memorial service’ [H. haškava]), and concepts (e.g., isurim ‘prohibitions’
[H. ʾissurim], hataim ‘sins’ [H. ḥaṭa⁠ʾim]), thus making these couplets lexically
and referentially distinct from the pre-Expulsion couplets of Rabbi Shem Tov of
Carrión. In addition, Asa’s couplets illustrate some of the parodic techniques,
having a long tradition in Jewish rabbinical writing, which are sometimes used
by Judezmo authors writing poetry and prose in traditional style, especially
from the eighteenth century on. These techniques include the ironic incorpo-
ration of certain Hebraisms probably not used in everyday speech, as when
the group of men leaving the synagogue on the Ninth of Av in the direction of
the cemetery is called a kenufyá, ‘gang’ (H. kĕnufya), and young men’s hands
are described as (manos) meleim ‘(hands) full (with rushes from the fields)’ (cf.
H. m.pl. mĕleʾim, disagreeing in gender with both Hispanic-origin f. manos and
Hebrew f. yadayim) in order to make the adjective rhyme with hataim ‘sins.’
Asa’s couplets also contain Turkisms reflecting the Ottoman milieu: sazes
denoting ‘rushes’, and pará, referring to an Ottoman coin.
Rhymed Verses by Ḥayyim Yom Ṭov Magula

Unlike Asa’s verses, in a series of couplets bemoaning the vanities of life, com-
posed by Ḥayyim Yom Ṭov Magula, also of the eighteenth-century Ottoman
Empire, the less Jewish literary style is opted for. In his 22 stanzas Magula used
only a single word of Hebrew origin, although Hebrew-origin near synonyms
for many of the concepts he expressed through Hispanisms were used by con-
temporaneous writers preferring a more ‘Jewishly-styled’ idiom. The initial
verses are of a universal nature:
De verme kon fuersa poka / i kargado de fatiga / tomí chuflete en boka / i ordeno esta
kantiga. // Ombre, en ke te kontyenes / ke tanta sobrevya tyenes? / Para myentes dande
vyenes / i tu fin: polvo i tyera[. . .] /46
[Seeing myself with little strength / and overwhelmed by fatigue / I took a flute in my
mouth / and composed this song. // Man, why do you hold yourself so great / so that you
have such arrogance? / Look well at where you’ve come from / and your end: dust and
earth(. . .) ]
The Jewish specificity of the verses becomes evident only toward the end:
El ke pensará en esto / i las penas todo el resto / el no pekará tan presto / terná su korasón
tyera. // Deshemos de estos lodos / rogemos al Dyo todos / aga maneras i modos / mos yeve
a muestra tyera. // I aí Lo serviremos / korbanod ayegaremos / kantar nuevo sentiremos / de
arinkón de la tyera. // De vermos kon gran konsuelos / se enkantarán los puevlos / alegrarse
an los syelos / i agozarse a la tyera. /
46) Adapted from Romero 1988:141–146.

[He who thinks on this / and the misery and all the rest / will not sin so readily / and will
have earth for a heart. // Let us leave off this muck and mire / and all of us pray to God / that
he perform acts and deeds / and bring us to our land. // And there we shall serve Him / and
offer sacrifices / a new song shall we sing / from the corner of the earth. // Seeing us with
such solace / the peoples of the world will marvel / the heavens will rejoice / and the earth
will take pleasure.]
In these concluding verses the author uses the traditional form for ‘God,’ el Dyo,
and the Hebraism korbanod ‘Jewish ritual sacrifices.’ The other images are also
uniquely Jewish—hopes for a return to ‘our land,’ Israel, and for a renewal of
the temple sacrifices; the consolation of the Jewish people, to the amazement
of the Gentile nations and to the joy of Heaven and earth. But these images
are expressed entirely using Hispanisms, albeit in forms natural to popu-
lar Judezmo (e.g., muestra (tyera) ‘our [land]’ [vs. S. nuestra], lodos, literally,
‘mud,’ used to denote ‘vanities’) or to its Ladino sacred-text translation variant
(e.g., alegrarse an ‘they will rejoice’ [cf. OSp. alegrarse [h]an, vs. pop. J., S. se
alegrarán).
Eighteenth-Century Yiddish
Analogous verses from the eighteenth century illustrating the more and less
‘Jewishly- styled’ linguistic patterns of Yiddish can easily be adduced.
A Woman’s Supplication
Around 1700 Toybe, wife of Yakov Pan, composed a Jewishly-written tkhine or
supplication headed “Ayn sheyn lid nay gimakht beloshn tkhine” (‘A beautiful
song newly made in the language of supplication’ [cf. H. bi-lšon tĕḥinna]). In
it she beseeches God to end a plague which had been claiming the lives of
members of her community in Prague. Incorporating Hebraisms which denote
concepts carrying an emotional charge, in stanzas 12–13 she calls upon God,
who is known in Jewish tradition as ‘God who withholds His anger’ (Eyl erekh
apaim [H. ʾEl ʾerex ʾappayim]) and sits on a ‘throne of mercy’ (kise rakhmim
[H. kisse raḥămim]), to put an end to the Jews’ misfortune (tsore [H. ṣara]) as
double reward (kefl kiflaim [H. kefel kiflayim]) for the prayer (tfile [H. tĕfilla])
of young and old:
Liber Got, du bist Eyl erekh apaim / Tu mit unz genod kefl kiflaim / Oyf dayn kise rakhmim
zolstu dikh zetsn / Un zolst únzere tsore bald der getsn / Foter, Kenig //
Tfile tunen mir, yung un’ alt / Di tsore zolstu fun unz ob ton bald / Un’ vayter zol ayn oyf
herung zayn / Un’ di tsore ob ton fun gros un’ fun klayn / Foter Kenig. //47
47) After Frakes 2004:836.

[Dear God, You are a God who witholds His anger / Double Your mercy upon us / You
should sit upon Your throne of mercy / And soon end our misfortune / Father, King. //
We all pray, young and old / That You soon put an end to our trouble / And further that it
should cease / And that there be an end to the misfortune of those big and small / Father,
King.]
A Book of Fables
On the other hand, as illustrated in the following stanza from his 1697 recasting
of a Yiddish book of fables originally published in Verona in 1595, Moyshe ben
Menashe Eliezer Wallich barely incorporated words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin
(in the present extract there are none) or Jewish imagery:
Doz bay shpil ikh aykh nun vil tun visn / Oyf tsvéyerléy zakh geflisn / Un’ fangt fun ershtn
on / Vi di froy zol haltn erlikh iren man. //48
[The example I want to inform you of now / Concerns two kinds of things / And begins with
the first / How a wife should keep her husband honest.]
Modern Judezmo of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Rabbinic Discourse
As Weinreich’s comments suggest, a nineteenth-century Yiddish text written
‘Jewishly’ caused the reader familiar with the traditional Jewish culture of East-
ern Europe to connect its contents with the physical, conceptual and phra-
seological world unique to the bearers of that culture. For that reason, early
nineteenth-century Yiddish creative writing composed by devout Jews for a
religiously observant readership, such as the Stories of Nachman of Bratslav
or the Tales of the Baal Shem Tov, is rich in the linguistic and stylistic features
described by Weinreich as yídishlekh and is meant to prompt the tradition-
bound reader to identify with the characters, contents, and message of the
works.
As we saw in the rhymed komplas by Avraham Asa, parodic techniques
characteristic of the traditional Jewish literary style were sometimes employed
by Judezmo rabbinical authors with a penchant for humor to turn potentially
dry legal discourse into verses bordering on the comic, creating scenes meant
to convince the reader to observe religious law while bringing a smile to his
face. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, parodic devices were
also skillfully interwoven into the Judezmo rabbinical prose literature which
flourished during this time. For example, Rabbi Eli‘ezer ben Shem Ṭov Papo
48) After Frakes 2004:771.

of nineteenth-century Sarajevo incorporated such devices when explaining

to readers of his Sefer Dammeśeq ʾEliʿezer: ʾOraḥ ḥayyim (Eliezer of Damascus:
Way of Life, Belgrade 1862:161a), a legal compendium based on the Shulḥan
ʿarukh, section ʾOraḥ ḥayyim, the importance of inviting needy neighbors to
one’s Passover seder or festive evening meal inaugurating the holiday:49
Syendu ya istamus in “Ma nishtaná,” diremus dérih remiz bikitsur, diaynu, ki ay algunus
si[nyoris]’ givirim ki son muy mirikiozus, i la nochi, kuandu vyeni in kaza, vyeni yenu di
mal rakí”a <‫>רקי"ע‬. I luegu toma su chibuk, nargilé i simijanti, i sigún si asintó, ya batin a·la
puerta. Luegu manda al mosu ki avra, syendu intyendi ki es algún sinyurón pur algún echu
ki li vyeni pur achitar las kanbyalas i simijanti. Kuandu virésh es il si[nyor]’ di il aní, ki li
den un poku di pan, luegu si inpesa a aravyar, dizyendu, “Ni un puntu non dešan rat.” Od
ze midaber vizé ba, ki·li den un poku di chimur, ki·non tyeni para buyir la mandra (mama-
liga). Od ze midaber vizé ba—ashriem Yisrael, provis munchus ya ay; kada unu dimanda
una koza, i il balabáy si va aravyandu. Agora lus ijus ya kunosin la midá dil si[nyor]’ padri,
ki kada nochi si aravya kun lus provis, syendu ki lu atagantan. I in vinyendu nochi di pésah
vein lus ijus al si[nyor]’ padri ki inpesa buenus gritus, dizyendu “Todu el ki tyeni anbri
venga i koma, todu el ki tyeni diminister ki venga i ki si isté il pésah interu.” Kuandu oyin
lus ijus estu, dizin, “Pur vidrá paresi ki·il sinyor padri salyó di su dáad esta nochi, ki istá
yamandu a·lus provis in kaza. Syendu ansí, li dimandaremus a·ver ma nishtaná alayla azé
mikol alilot? Ki·in·kada nochi ti aravyas kun eyus, agora lus yamas.” Rispondi el si[nyor]’
padri, “Vos diré la razón: syendu esta nochi es la ora di yamar a·lus provis ki tomin di il apyu
i ki intinyan in il vinagri i ki koman maror vixu[lé] . . .”
[Since we are now dealing with the passage [in the Passover haggadah beginning] ‘How
is [this night] different [from all other nights?],’ we shall speak by way of a brief allusion,
namely, that there are some wealthy gentlemen who are very moody, and at night, when
they come home, they come full of bad spirits. And such a gentleman immediately takes
his pipe, waterpipe and so on, and as soon as he sits down, they start knocking at his door.
He at once sends the servant to open it, since he supposes that it is some little gentleman
or other about some business matter and he has come asking him to accept some bills of
exchange and so on. When he sees [“we see”] that it is some poor gentleman, asking that
they give him some bread, he at once gets angry, saying, “Not even one minute do they let
one relax in comfort.” While this one [i.e., the pauper] is still speaking, another comes, ask-
ing for a little coal, because he doesn’t have any to boil his porridge. While this one is still
speaking, another comes—because Happy art thou, oh Israel, there are many poor people
today; each one asks for something, and the householder gets angrier and angrier. Now the
children [of the house] know their honored father’s qualities, how every night he gets angry
at the poor, because they annoy him. And when he comes home the night of Passover the
children see their honored father begin to shout, saying “Let everyone who is hungry come
and eat, let everyone who is in need come and be here for the whole Passover.” When the
children hear this, they say “It really looks like our honored father has gone out of his mind
tonight, because he’s calling the paupers to the house. That being so, we’ll ask him and see
what makes this night different from all the other nights? Because on every [other] night
49) For a close look at parodies of Jewish sacred and classic literature see Zellentin 2011; on
Judezmo parodies of the Passover Haggadah see Papo 2012.
you get angry at them, and now you’re calling them in.” The honored father answers, “I’ll
tell you the reason: because this night is the time to call the poor, that they take some of the
celery [used as part of the Passover ceremony] and dip it in the vinegar and eat the bitter
herb etc . . .”]
The passage is introduced with words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin often used

in the language of rabbinical study: diremus dérih remiz bikitsur, diaynu, ‘we
shall speak by means of a brief allusion, namely’ (H. derex remez, bĕ-qiṣṣur,
Aram. dĕhaynu). Hebraisms are also used for the members of society appearing
in the exchange described: the wealthy gentlemen (givirim [H. gĕvirim]), the
householder (balabay [H. baʿal ha-bayit]), the pauper (aní [H. ʿani]). Expres-
sions incorporated from the Ottoman milieu also play a prominent role: Papo
criticizes the wealthy householder who regularly comes home in the evening
merekiozo, ‘in bad humor’—constructed from the Turkish Arabism merak ‘bad
humor’ and the Hispanic-origin adjectivizer -ozo (S. -oso)—an adjective com-
monly used in popular Judezmo. The householder is further described as full
of rakí”a; Papo spells the word reš qof yod ʿayin, as if he meant Hebrew raqiʿa or
‘firmament,’ but the reader can quickly grasp that he really means ‘arrack,’ or
strong brandy, which is rakí in ordinary Judezmo (from Turkish rakı), rakija in
the language of the Jews’ Bosnian neighbors. The householder soon gets cozy
with his short or long pipe, again designated by terms reflecting the Ottoman
cultural sphere, chibuk and nargilé (T. çubuk, nargile < Per. nārgīle).
Hearing a knock on the door, the householder sends his servant to see who
has arrived, anticipating some important business papers. Learning that it is
merely a pauper (expressed using the idiomatic Judezmo construction il sinyor
di il aní ), asking for a bit of bread, the householder complains that they do not
let him relax in comfort (non deshan rat, cf. T. rahat < A. rāḥat) even for one
moment. Ironically incorporating a Hebrew phrase from Job (1:16), in which
one messenger of bad news is depicted as following another, Papo adds Od ze
midaber vizé ba, ki·li den un poku di chimur ‘While this [pauper] is still speak-
ing, another comes, asking for a little coal’ (cf. SC. ćimur, T. kömür) to cook his
simple mandra or mamaliga—local names for porridge (cf. Gk., SC. mandra,
T. mand[ı]ra; Rom. mămăligă). The phrase from Job is then repeated when
another luckless visitor arrives. Another expression adapted from the Bible
and/or Midrashic sources, Ashriem Yisrael, ‘Happy are they, Israel,’50 then
ironically introduces the statement: provis munchus ya ay; kada unu dimanda
una koza i il balabáy si va aravyandu ‘[Among the Jews] there are many poor;
each one asks for something and the householder grows increasingly angry.’
50) Cf. ʾAšrexa Yiśra⁠ʾel (Deut. 33:29), ʾAšrehem Yiśra⁠ʾel in numerous midrashim.

Provis munchus ‘many poor’ is a calque of Hebrew ʿaniyim rabbim, illustrat-

ing the frequent use of Hebraized syntactic structures in Judezmo rabbinical
writings in traditional ‘Jewish style’; the normal word order would be munchus
provis (cf. S. muchos pobres).
The householder’s children are well familiar with their father’s nightly tem-
per tantrums. For that reason they are surprised when, on the eve of Passover,
he suddenly uses an adaptation of the traditional Ladino translation of an Ara-
maic passage found at the beginning of the haggadah and shouts “Todu el ki
tyeni anbri venga i koma, todu el ki tyeni diminister ki venga i ki si isté il pésah
interu” (Let everyone who is hungry come and eat, let everyone who is in need
come and be here for the whole Passover).51 The statement causes the children
to think their father has lost his mind (il sinyor padri salyó di su dáad [H. daʿat]),
so they say to one another: Li dimandaremus a·ver ma nishtaná alayla azé mikol
alilot? ‘We’ll ask him why this night is different from all other nights?—the
classic question from the beginning of the Hebrew haggadah which prompts
the reading of the rest of its text as the reply. This highly ‘Jewishly-styled’ pas-
sage is characteristic of the language used by many Judezmo rabbinical writers
into the early twentieth century.52
It should not be taken for granted, however, that all rabbinical writers pre-
ferred the more ‘Jewish’ style. Rabbi Moshe Yiṣḥaq (Konorti) Almuli preferred
to formulate his work Qiryat Ḥanna (Village of Hannah, Belgrade, 1853), a com-
mentary on Ecclesiastes which its author described in Hebrew on the title page
as bi-lšon Sĕfarad ‘in the language of Sefarad (or Spain),’ using fewer stylistically
traditional Hebrew-origin lexemes. For example, in his discussion of Ecclesias-
tes 10:15 (on f. 77b), we find the following imaginary exchange between a dis-
gruntled wealthy Jew and a rabbinical scholar whose words are said to have
had no emotional impact on his rich co-religionist:
Le disho el gevir [al haham], “Si·tus avlas son salidas de el korasón, kalía ke entrara alguna
koza en mi korasón, i veyo ke·no se konsyente mi korasón afilú poko de poko.” Le respon-
dyó el haham, “Te enshenplaré mashal a·lo·ke la koza asemeja: a una sivdad ke en eya salía
el metal de el fyero i mandavan fyero a·otros lugares i otros reynados, emperó eyos non
se·les topava en su lugar un atuendo de fyero afilú el mas chiko, i tenían de menester de
merkar de otro reynado, i karo. Disheron entre eyos, ‘Porké tyene de·ser ansí de menester
de·otro lugar?’ I·se akonsejaron i mandaron un mansevo savyo porke enbeze el ofisyo de
51) Cf. Aramaic kol dixfin yete wĕ-yexol, kol diṣrix yete wĕ-yifsaḥ ‘Let everyone who is hungry come
and eat, let everyone who is in need come and celebrate the Passover.’
52) The literary features of another work by Eli‘ezer ben Shem Ṭov Papo, Sefer mešeq beti (Sara-
jevo 1872), are analyzed in Šmid 2012.
el fyero todo loke es el de·menester de·la tyera i ansí fue ke el mansevo enbezó el ofisyo
kumplido i trusho todo modo de alat kon el i aresentó el foyo i metyó el karvón en la ornaya
i un pedaso de fyero dyentro el karvón i metyó djente ke asoplen kon el foyo el fyero—todo
yelado. Komo lo metyó, metyó myentes ke·no metyeron una sentea de lunbre dyentro el
karvón para ke el foyo ensyenda la lunbre. En loke metyó una sentea de lunbre i·el foyo
enpesó asoplar se ensendyó el karvón i·se izo una lunbre grande.” Ansí le disho el haham
al gevir, “Yo so el foyo ke estó asoplando, ma syendo en ti non kedó una sentea de kedushá,
por onde te se·va a·eskayentar tu korasón a·lo bueno, ke kale a·lo manko una sentea de
lunbre para ke el foyo aga su echo.”
[The wealthy man said to him [=to the scholar], “If your words come from the heart, some-
thing should have entered my heart, and I see that my heart does not even feel it the least
bit.” The scholar answered him, “I will tell you a parable to which the thing may be likened:
to a city in which iron metal was produced and they sent the iron to other places and to
other kingdoms, but there was not to be found in their place one iron vessel, even the small-
est, and they had to buy them from another kingdom, and at a high price . . . They said to
one another, “Why should it be necessary to have need of another place?” And they took
counsel and sent a wise young man to learn the trade of iron work, everything that is neces-
sary from the earth, and thus it was that the young man learned the trade completely and
brought every manner of tool with him and he arranged the bellows and placed the coals in
the oven and a piece of iron among the coals and put people to blow air with the bellows—
with everything cold. When he put everything in place he noticed that they hadn’t put a
burning ember among the coals so that the bellows would light the fire. When he put a
burning ember in and the bellows began to blow, the coal caught fire and became a great
blaze.” Then the scholar said to the wealthy man, “I am the bellows which is blowing, but
since in you there has not remained even a spark of holiness, from where can your heart
become heated to do good, because there has to be at least a spark of fire for the bellows
to do its work.]
Although Almuli’s passage contains a few Hebraisms—substantives denoting

two ranks of Jewish society, gevir ‘wealthy man’ (H. gĕvir) and haham ‘scholar’
(H. ḥaxam), the name of the literary genre, mashal ‘exemplum’ (H. mašal), and
the concept kedushá ‘holiness’ (H. qĕduša), as well as the conjunction afilú
‘even’ (H. ʾăfillu), the rest of the text is expressed using Hispanisms, and a single
popular Ottomanism (alat ‘tool’ < T.). As illustrated in earlier extracts in less
‘Judaized’ style, many of the concepts which Almuli expressed through His-
panisms (e.g., avlas ‘words,’ sivdad ‘city,’ reynados ‘kingdoms,’ atuendo ‘vessel,’
savyo ‘wise,’ ofisyo ‘vocation,’ karvón ‘coal,’ a lo manko ‘at least’) have Judezmo
near synonyms of Hebrew or Ottoman origin which he rejected.
Non-Rabbinic Genres
The use of more and less ‘Jewish’ style is also apparent in literary genres and
formats which, under European influence, began to be cultivated by serious
non-rabbinic Judezmo writers from the nineteenth century, and were also
used by Yiddish writers. These genres include journalistic writing, the novel,
and the drama.53
Journalism
In the earliest surviving Judezmo newspaper—Rĕfa’el ‘Uzi’el’s Šaʿăre Mizraḥ
(Izmir 1845–1846)—it is the less Jewish, more Western Europeanized style
which is preferred. In fact, this style makes its first major appearance in this
publication; its features may be seen in the following passage focusing on the
Jews in America, which appeared in the 29 July 1846 issue (p. 92):
Meldimos en los Arshiv Yisreelid de Fransya:
Kontan en los Estaδos Uniδos de Amérika 35 mil yisreelim, i 40 mil en los otros lugares del
Nuevo Mundo.
La emigrasyón (gerúsh) de los djuδyós europeos en Amérika es de muncho tyempo. Eyos
fueron muy byen resiviδos en las posesyones olandezas en anyo 1639 a sus kuentos, ke es
5399 a la kreasyón. El si[nyor]’ David Nasí, djuδyó portugéz, fondó soto los estabilimyentos
i ospedales de la kompanyía de las Indyas Olandezas, una kolonía yisreelid en Kayén, ke
estonses apartenía a la Olanda. En 1664 la sivdaδ de Kayén pasó soto el komando de la
Fransya. El gran rey izo mandar a los djuδyós de la sivdaδ i eyos se retiraron en Surinam,
onde eyos formaron tambyén aí una grande komunitaδ.
[We read in the Archives Israélites54 of France:
They calculate at 35,000 the number of Israelites in the United States, and 40,000 more in
other places in the New World.
The emigration (exile) of the European Jews in America dates from a long time ago. They
were very well received in the Dutch possessions in the year 1639 according to their count
[i.e., C.E.], which is 5399 from the Creation. Mr. David Nassi, a Portuguese Jew, founded
under the establishments and hospitals of the Dutch [West] India Company an Israelite
colony in Cayenne, which then belonged to Holland. In 1664 the city of Cayenne passed
under the command of France. The grand king had the Jews ordered from the city and they
retired to Surinam, where they also formed a large community.]
The only words of Hebrew origin are yisreelim ‘Israelites, Jews’ and yisreelid,
adaptations of Israélite(s) appearing in the French article in the Archives Israé-
lites upon which the Judezmo report is based, and gerúsh ‘expulsion,’ inserted
parenthetically to explain the meaning of the European borrowing emigra-
syón ‘emigration’ (cf. F. émigration, I. emigrazione, S. emigración), which the
author obviously preferred over the Hebraism. The first citation in the article
of a Gregorian date is also explained by its Jewish-calendar correspondent
(1639=5399), perhaps for readers unfamiliar with the Gregorian calendar; but
53) For a discussion of two Judezmo plays on the theme of Joseph sold by his brothers, one in
more ‘Jewish’ style, the other in much more ‘modernized,’ ‘Europeanized’ style, see Bunis 1995.
54) This periodical was founded in Paris in 1840.
the second Gregorian date is left unexplained. The elements of Hispanic ori-
gin appear in their popular Judezmo forms (e.g., sivdaδ ‘city,’ djuδyós ‘Jews,’
muncho ‘much,’ estonses ‘then’ [cf. S. ciudad, judíos, mucho, entonces]), except
for nuevo ‘new’ (vs. popular Judezmo muevo)—nuevo employed perhaps under
the influence of synonymous French nouveau and Italian nuovo as well as the
predominance of nuevo in traditional Ladino Bible translations—and europeos
(vs. popular Judezmo evropeos), probably under the influence of forms such as
French européen, and Italian and Spanish europeo. While the only distinctively
Modern Spanish borrowing appears to be Estaδos Uniδos de Amérika ‘United
States of America,’ there are several obvious borrowings from Italian (soto
‘under’; estabilimyentos ‘establishments’ [cf. I. stabilimento, with influence
from J. es- -myento]; ospedales ‘hospitals’; komunitaδ ‘community’ [cf. I. comu-
nità, with influence from J. -dad]) or Italian or French (apartener ‘to belong,’
cf. I. appartenere, F. appartenir; la Fransya ‘France’ [cf. F. la France, I. la Francia,
vs. S. Francia]).
Twenty years later, however, we find more traditional Jewish features used
in a memorandum from Ya‘aqov Avigĕdor of Constantinople—who between
the years 1860–1863 served as the chief rabbi of the Ottoman Empire—to the
secretary of the community, Yĕḥezqel Gabbai, who edited the Judezmo period-
ical Djornal Yisreelid of Constantinople. Avigĕdor instructed Gabbai to publish
the memorandum in his periodical in the rabbi’s name. The notice appeared
on the front page of the 16 March 1861 issue of the paper:
Hidushim de Kosta
Kon un tezkyeré, ma[alad] at[éred] ro[shenu], arav Avigedor, ni[tré] ra[hamá] u[firké],
mos izo meter en muestro djornal el pregón dito, según amostró su idea dito si[nyor]’ en el
darúsh ke darsó yom 2 séder Vayikrá en el esped del sinyor rav Haná, zi[hronó] li[vrahá],
i fueron maskimim toδos los sinyores rabanim i los sinyores gevirim, A[shem] a[leem]
yi[shmor]:
Syendo ya es saviδo el karar de el apreto de la umá yisreelid, ubifrat bayamim aem uba-
zemán azé, ki lo naasá kapésah azé, umá gam por el karar de el apreto ke se están topando
los aniyim asta alkansar pésah en un felek tan dezventuraδo asher lo ayá leolamim, ki
ken se determinaron los sinyores rabanim, A[shem] yi[shmerem], beeskamá de los siny-
ores gevirim, A[shem] yi[shmerem], veiskimu konés yáhad bemaamad ehad, a ke se aga
una geviyá en kaδa maalé, deaynu, kófer néfesh mahasid ashékel, vente parás por alma,
zeharim unkevod, tanto prove komo riko, eashir lo yarbé veadal lo yamit mimahasid
ashákel, i se tyenen ke apartar ditas parás para espartirlas al yadam leaniyim merudim
veta[lmidé]”ha[hamim] de su maalé a ke melden shení vehamishí los teilim kon shivá
koreté berid bidmaod shalísh kon selihod vetahanunim i travar los syelos kon las manos
asta ke el She[m]”yid[barah] si apiaδe de sus ijos. I esta mizvá está mutal sovre los sinyores
mashgihim, A[shem]”yi[shmerem], de kaδa maalé a meter gabaim i akojer estas parás i
darlas leaniyé iram veta[lmidé]”ha[hamim] milevad de lo ke arían algunos lugares de dar
mahasid ashékel en ayuδa de hitim veta[lmidé]”ha[hamim] por ke sepan ke dito inyán es
pidyón nefashod de kolelud de la umá yisreelid i kon este zahud bee[zrad]”A[shem] sere
mos respondiδos en ora ke lo yamamos. Uvá lesiyón goel, ke[n] ye[í] ra[són] a[mén].
[News from Constantinople
By order of an official memorandum, the lofty crown of our head, Rabbi Avigĕdor, may God
protect and redeem him, had us place in our periodical this announcement, corresponding
to the idea this gentleman expressed in the sermon he delivered on the second day of [the
week during which] the Bible portion Wa-yiqra [=Leviticus 1–5 is read in the synagogues],
in the funeral oration for Rabbi Hanna, of blessed memory, and all the rabbis and wealthy
leaders of the community, may God protect them, agreed:
Since the great amount of anguish of the Jewish people is well known, and especially in
those days and at this time, ‘for surely no such Passover was held,’ and also because of the
great amount of anguish being suffered by the poor in order to prepare for Passover in such
an unfortunate time, the like of which there never was in the past, therefore the honored
rabbis, may God protect them, have resolved, in agreement with the wealthy gentlemen,
may God protect them, and they have agreed to band together in a single body, so that
a collection [of funds] be made in each quarter [of Constantinople], namely, a ‘ransom
for the soul’ of half a sheqel, twenty Ottoman paras per person, from men and women,
both poor as well as rich, ‘The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less,
than the half shekel,’ and they have to put aside these monies for distributing with their
own hands to destitute persons and to rabbinical scholars of their quarter so that they read
Psalms on Mondays and Thursdays together with Shiva korĕte bĕrit [the Seven Makers of
the Convenant, i.e., Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Aaron, Pinehas, Joseph and David, as recalled
in Massekhet Derekh Ereṣ Zuṭa] with copious tears, and with penitential prayers and sup-
plications said with great fervor, until the Holy One Blessed Be He takes pity on his chil-
dren. And this commandment is laid upon the supervisors, may God protect them, of each
quarter, to appoint treasurers and collect these monies and give them to the poor of their
community and to rabbinical scholars, in addition to what they would do [ordinarily] in
some places, to give a half sheqel as aid for [purchasing] wheat [flour for matzoth] and for
rabbinical scholars, because they should know that this matter constitutes a redemption
of the souls of the congregate of the Jewish people, and through this meritorious act, with
God’s help, we will be answered in the hour in which we call Him. And a redeemer will
come to Zion, thus may it be His will, amen . . .]
Stylistically, this announcement is much more ‘Jewishly written’ than most

of the contributions appearing in this or other Judezmo papers of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, which increasingly exhibited influence from
European languages and fewer and fewer Jewish stylistics. Yet this announce-
ment, and others like it, usually written by traditional scholars but published
in periodicals meant for the general public, kept the strongly Jewish-oriented
style alive on the pages of the Judezmo press of the nineteenth century. In the
announcement we find lexemes and morphemes of Hebrew and Aramaic ori-
gin characteristic of that style, including: substantives such as semantically
neutral hidushim ‘news’ (H. ḥiddušim) and Jewishly-shaded umá yisreelid ‘the
Jewish people’ (H. ʾumma yiśrĕʾelit), séder ‘weekly Torah portion’ (H. seder),
esped ‘eulogy’ (H. hesped), geviyá ‘collection of funds (epecially for charitable
purposes)’ (H. gĕviyya), darúsh ‘sermon’ (H. da-/dĕruš); the synthetic verb dar-
sar (< H. d-r-š) ‘to deliver a sermon’ and the analytic verb ser maskim ‘to agree’
(H. maskim), appearing in the older rabbinic form, agreeing with the plural
subject (maskimim) rather than in the innovative later form, which is invari-
antly singular (maskim) (see Bunis 2009); adverbs and adverbial phrases such
as deaynu ‘namely’ (Aram. dĕhaynu), beeskamá ‘in agreement’ (H. bĕ-haskama),
umá gam ‘also’ (H. u-ma gam), ki ken ‘therefore’ (H. ki ken); and the preposi-
tional construction milevad [de] ‘besides’ (H. mi-lĕvad). It should be noted that,
as in popular Judezmo, generic, formally masculine singular adjectives such as
mutal ‘laid upon’ (H. muṭṭal) qualify a feminine singular noun such as mizvá
‘commandment’ (H. miṣwa).
As especially characteristic of Judezmo rabbinical texts, the extract also
illustrates Judezmo/Hebrew code-switching between original phrases com-
posed by the author; for example, that between Judezmo and Hebrew effected
by the use of the conjunction + finite verb form veiskimu (H. wĕ-hiskimu) ‘and
they agreed,’ and that between Hebrew and Judezmo introduced through the
subordinate clause a ke se aga ‘so that there be made’: se determinaron los siny-
ores rabanim55 [. . .] veiskimu konés yáhad bemaamad ehad, a ke se aga una
geviyá en kaδa maalé (‘the honored rabbis expressed their determination [. . .],
and decided to band together in a single body, so that a collection [of funds] be
made in each quarter’).
There are several citations and adaptations of sacred sources. For example,
the anguish of the Jewish people in mid-nineteenth century Constantinople
is made actual through the expression bayamim aem ubazemán azé ‘in those
days and at the present time’ (H. ba-yamim ha-hem u-va-zĕman ha-ze), a phrase
used as part of the benediction recited over the lighting of candles commemo-
rating the Jewish victory over Greek tyranny celebrated during Hanukkah.
The extreme economic hardships experienced by the Jews of Constantinople
in 1861, which made it difficult for many to adequately prepare for Passover,
is summarized by the expression from II Kings 23:22: ki lo naasá kapésah azé
‘surely no such Passover was held’ (H. ki lo naʿăśa ka-pesaḥ ha-ze). The 20 Otto-
man paras which each community member was asked to contribute to the
poor is compared to the half sheqel contribution required as a kófer néfesh
‘ransom for one’s soul’ (H. kofer nefeš), as mentioned in Exodus 30:12, the stipu-
lation being made that eashir lo yarbé veadal lo yamit mimahasid ashákel ‘The
rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel’
55) Cf. H. rabbanim, wĕ-hiskimu kones yaḥad bĕ-maʿămad ʾeḥad.

(Exodus 30:15 he-ʿašir lo yarbe wĕ-ha-dal lo yamʿiṭ mi-maḥăṣit ha-šeqel). The

exhortative use of Uvá lesiyón goel ‘And a redeemer will come to Zion’ with
which the notice concludes derives from Isaiah 59:20 (H. u-va lĕ-ṣiyyon goʾel).
Besides having an extensive Hebrew-Aramaic component, the passage shares
features with popular Judezmo in its use of popular Hispanic-origin forms (e.g.,
muestro rather than nuestro ‘our’), and Turkisms such as karar ‘amount,’ tez
kyeré ‘memorandum,’ maalé ‘quarter.’56
In the Yiddish press the more Jewish style is preferred in the pioneering
Yiddishist periodical Kol Mevaser which began to be published by Aleksander
Zederbaum in Odessa, 1862, as in subsequent writings by ideological Yiddish-
ists. This preference is exemplified in the following passage from the front page
of the first issue of Kol Mevaser:
Amérike: Tsu vos makhloykes ken fihren zol ítlikher zekh a raye nemen fun Amérike. Dos iz
gevezin a gliklekh land, fun der gantser velt hobin zekh menshin ahín avék gelózt un hobin
zeyer glik gefinen az zey hobin nor gevólt arbaytn, vorin dort hot men keynem nit gefrégt
ver er iz, a yid oder a krist, nor vos er iz, a soykher, a bal-melokhe, oder ayn árbaytmensh.
Di bale-batim alleyn hobin regírt in der medine, ohn a meylekh, dos heyst, es iz gevezin a
republík. Ítlekhe shtodt hot zekh gekliben a yoyets er zol a deye zogin in di gesheftin fun
der medine, un alle fir yohr hot men gekliben fun zey a prezidént. In dem gantsin land iz
gevezin sholem veshalve. Der handil hot geblíht. Fun dort zenin aróys a·sakh royhe skhoy-
res in der gantser velt. Lemoshl[. . .]
[America: What controversy can lead to everyone can find evidence of in America. This
was a fortunate land, from all over the world people set out for it and found their luck there
if only they wanted to work, because there no one asked who he is, a Jew or a Christian,
but what he is, a merchant, a craftsman, or a laborer. The householders themselves gov-
erned the country, without a king, that is, it was a republic. Each state elected an advisor
to express his opinion in state affairs, and every four years they elected from among them
[=the advisors] a president. In the whole country there was peace and tranquility. Trade
prospered. From there a large number of raw materials were exported to the whole world.
For example[. . .] ]
Although mildly influenced by German in phonology (e.g., arbaytn ‘to work’

[G. arbeiten], rather than Yiddish arbetn), and orthography (e.g., the use of
double letters, as in alle ‘all’ [cf. G. alle], and h after vowels having length in
their German correspondents, as in yohr ‘year’ [G. Jahr]), there is a preference
for some distinctive forms of German-origin material diverging from Standard
German through the use of spelling conventions traditionally observed in
Yiddish religious works (e.g., ‫ האָבּין‬hobin ‘(3pl.) have,’ with b denoted by bet
56) Cf. T. kadar < A. qadar, T. tezkere < A. tazkira, T. mahalle < A. maḥalla.
with dageš, and yod introduced between bet and final n, as opposed to later
Standard Yiddish ‫ האָבן‬hobn [vs. G. haben]), and of forms reflecting distinc-
tive popular phonology (e.g., zekh ‘oneself,’ instead of zikh [cf. G. sich]). Freely
incorporated in the short paragraph are samples of Hebraisms characteristic of
‘Jewishly-written’ Yiddish, including examples of terms often used in halakhic
legal argumentation such as makhloykes ‘controversy’ (H. maḥăloqet), raye ‘evi-
dence’ (H. rĕʾaya), and lemoshl ‘for example’ (H. lĕ-mašal); terms for the ‘state,’
medine (H. mĕdina), and for members of its society—bale-batim ‘household-
ers’ (H. baʿăle battim), soykher ‘merchant’ (H. soḥer), bal-melokhe ‘craftsman’
(H. baʿal mĕlaxa), yoyets ‘advisor’ (H. yoʿeṣ)—and of other societies, meylekh
‘king’ (H. melex); the trade term skhoyres ‘commodities’ (H. sĕḥorot) and the
denotation of quantity, (a) sakh ‘many’ (H. sax); and the depiction of a state
of ‘peace and tranquility’ through the expression sholem veshalve (cf. Psalms
122:7 Yĕhi-šalom bĕ-ḥelex šalwa bĕ-ʾarmĕnotayix ‘Peace be within thy walls, and
prosperity within thy palaces’).
Some writing in the Yiddish press, however, steered clear of the traditional
‘Jewish style,’ with its roots in Orthodox Judaism. In the following notice which
appeared in the 31 August 1897 issue of the periodical Forverts of New York
and Philadelphia (p. 2), the leadership of the Hebrew-American Typographi-
cal Union (number 83) announced a forthcoming meeting to discuss strike
breaking:
Konferénts fun ale yunyons
Ale árbayter-organizatsyonen, ohn úntershid tsu velkher kérpershaft zey geheren, veren
erzúkht tsu shiken tsu 3 delegaten tsu a konferénts, velkhe vet shtátfinden neksten montog
dem 6. september, punkt 8 uhr abends, in 56 Ortshard St[rit]. Tsvek: zikh tsu beroten vi
azóy tsu stapen dos organiziren fun skebs in a tsayt ven árbayter gefinen zikh in strayk, un
vos far a shtelung tsu nemen gegen skeb leybels velkhe veren gegeben tsu boses in di hend
als a vafe tsu bekempfen di organizirte árbayter.
[Conference of All Unions
All workers’ organizations, without differentiation between the administrative bodies to
which they belong, are requested to send three delegates to a conference, which will take
place next Monday, the 6th of September, at exactly 8:00 in the evening, at 56 Orchard
Street. Aim: to confer about how to stop the organizing of scabs at a time when workers are
on strike, and what attitude to take regarding scab labels which are given to bosses in their
hands as a weapon for fighting against the organized workers.]
Containing not a single word of Hebrew origin or a traditional Jewish refer-

ence, the piece illustrates the dáytshmerish or Germanized normative model
which enjoyed popularity among some journalists and writers in the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. This model is exemplified through lexical
variants such as úntershid [G. Unterschied] instead of more traditional Yiddish

úntersheyd ‘difference,’ montog [G. Montag] instead of montik ‘Monday,’ and
gegen [G. gegen] instead of kegn ‘instead’; and especially the incorporation of
Germanisms such as erzúkht ‘requested’ [G. ersucht], shtátfinden ‘to take place’
[G. stattfinden], nekst ‘next’ [G. nächst], 8 uhr abends ‘eight o-clock in the eve-
ning’ [G. acht Uhr abends], zikh beroten ‘to consult’ [G. beraten], als ‘as’ [G. als],
vafe ‘weapon’ [G. Waffe]. Also characteristic of immigrant Yiddish papers in
the United States of a socialist, secular orientation, seeking to promote the lin-
guistic and ideological Americanization of its readers, is the incorporation of
borrowings from English, especially those connected with new labor condi-
tions, as illustrated in the present text by the substantives yunyons (unions),
skebs (scabs), strayk (labor strike), leybels (labels), boses (bosses), and the verb
stapen (to stop).57
The Novel
Especially toward the middle of the nineteenth century, Yiddish and Judezmo
writers began to cultivate the novel. Some were translations of European com-
positions, others were adaptations of maskilic Hebrew novels, and still oth-
ers were original novels actually composed in Yiddish or Judezmo. In Vilna,
in 1864, the Yiddish writer Ayzik-Meyer Dik (1807–1893) published the origi-
nal historical novel, Shabse Tsvi: Dos iz di shréklekhe geshikhte fun dem Shabse
Tsvi, (Sabbatai Zevi: This is the Terrible Story of Sabbatai Zevi), based on the
Hebrew sources which provided the foundations for the Judezmo translations
of the writings on Sabbatai Zevi discussed above.58 The following passage is a
portrayal of the exchange between the false Messiah and the formerly Jewish
physician, Judezmo translations of which were discussed toward the beginning
of this article:
Shabse Tsvi šama‘ wĕ-nivhal Shabse Tsvi hot der hert di diburim iz er givórn zeyer tsu
shrokin. Er iz givórn vays vi kalk un hot zikh givorfin dem sultán tsu di fis un hot on gihoy-
bin tsu betin im oyf zayn lebin, un hot zeyer shtark gevéynt. Dan iz tsu gigangen tsu im dem
sultáns dokter, Mayatzade, un hot im gizógt oyf idesh, “Her Shabse, du bizt ayn moyred
bemalkhes, du far dinst dizem psak in hekhstin grad. Ikh veys fun dir fil mer als ale dize
groyse layt un der sultán veys. Hob rakhmones oyf zikh un oyf dayn áremes folk, un nem
57) On the incorporation of Anglicisms in the Forverts and other American Yiddish periodicals
in order to disseminate knowledge of English among Yiddish-speaking immigrants in the United
States see Stone 2010:22.
58) The passage by Dik presented here is from page 81 of the second edition, published in Vilna
in 1884.
on dem tírkishen gloybin un vest der bay kayn kharote hobin, den vos felt mir.” Koym hot
dizer renegát, dos iz ayn yude vos nemt on tírkishen gloybin, oys gishprokhin dize verter,
iz der Shabse Tsvi gor lébedig givorin, iz oyf gishtanen un hot aróp gikhápt bay eynem fun
di serisim dem turbán (hitel) fun kop un hot es on gitón oyf zikh un hot oys gishrien “Fun
haynt on bin ikh shoyn mer kayn yude nur ayn makhamudaner, dos heyst ayn yishmoel.”
[Sabbatai Zevi heard and was startled. When Sabbatai Zevi heard these words he became
very frightened. He turned white as chalk and threw himself at the sultan’s feet and begged
him for his life, and cried badly. Then the sultan’s physician, Mayatzade, went over to him
and said to him in Yiddish, “Listen, Sabbatai, you are a rebel against the reign, so you very
rightly deserve this sentence. I know much more about you than these lofty people and the
sultan do. Have pity on yourself and on your poor people and accept the Muslim faith and
you will have no more regrets over it than I feel.” As soon as this renegade, which is a Jew
who accepts the Muslim faith, pronounced these words, Sabbatai Zevi became very lively,
and stood up and grabbed a turban from the head of one of the eunuchs and put it on his
own head and cried “From today on I am no longer a Jew but a Mohammedan, that is, an
Ishmaelite.”]
Introduced by a Whole Hebrew phrase establishing the scene, the highly dra-
matic passage incorporates numerous Hebraisms used in popular Yiddish
(e.g., diburim ‘talk’ [H. dibburim], serisim ‘eunuch’ [H. sarisim], psak ‘verdict’
[H. pĕsaq], rakhmones ‘pity’ [H. raḥămanut], kharote ‘remorse’ [H. ḥǎraṭa],
yishmoel ‘Muslim’ [H. Yišmaʿʾel), as well as the concept moyred bemalkhes zayn
‘to rebel against the monarchy’ (H. mored ba-malxut), discussed in the Talmud
(Sanhedrin 49). Paralleling the more ‘Jewishly-written’ Judezmo adaptation
of the Hebrew sources discussed above, Dik presents the exchange between
the two historical figures as having been conducted oyf idesh ‘in Yiddish,’ that
is, in the Jewish language of his readers. On the other hand, as characteristic
of the writings of some authors who saw literary German as a kind of model
for Yiddish, Dik’s passage includes numerous dáytshmerizmen, e.g., dan ‘then,’
dizer ‘this,’ yude ‘Jew’ (G. dan, dieser, Jude). Thus the passage illustrates the
linguistic tension in some writings of this period between the ‘Jewishness’
expressed through the Hebrew-Aramaic component and the ‘foreignness’ to
popular Jewish literary tradition epitomized by borrowings from Modern Ger-
man, in the case of Yiddish, and French, Italian, Castilian, and German in the
instance of Judezmo.
The triumph of the converse of the traditional Jewish style, characterized by
an extreme accommodation to German and avoidance of Hebraisms, is illus-
trated in the following passage, recreating the same scene depicted by Dik. It is
from Der térkisher moshiekh: Historish romántishe shílderung iber dem leben und
virken fun Shabse Tsvi (The Turkish Messiah: A Historical-Romantic Descrip-
tion of the Life and Influence of Sabbatai Zevi), by Dovid Moyshe Harmlin
(1865–1921), published in New York in 1900 (pp. 58–59):
Der sultán hot únterdesen a vunk gethón tsu zaynem eyn ofitsier und gezógt:
“Nehm di dray fergíftete faylen und shis ob in zayn kerper. Ven er vet blayben leben, dan iz
er deryéniger vemen Got hot óysgevehlt óystselezen zayn folk.”
Shabse Tsvi’s gezíkht iz blas gevoren. Zayn gantser mékhtiger kerper hot getsitert. Zayne
lipen hoben zikh geefent tsum reden. Ober er hot keyn vort geként aróys brengen.
“Shabse!” hot dem sultán’s layb-artst tsu ihm gezógt in oyer, “Makh ayn ende fun dayn
tróyeriger komedie. Hob mitleyd oyf dayne brider vos shtehen in gefáhr. Nehm on dem
mohamedánishen gloybn und rete dayn folk mit dir tsuzamen.”
Shabse hot ihm betrákht mit a ferákhteten blik.
“Ven du tsegérst, mayn zuhn,” hot der sultán gezógt mítleydig, “dan erklér zikh, az Got iz
eyner und Mohamed iz zayn nove, und dayn leben iz geretet.”
Shabse Tsvi hot geshviegen. Oyf a tsveyter vunk fun dem sultán, hot der ofitsír geshpánt
dem boygen gegeniber Shabse Tsvi’s brust. Der lettser hot zikh shnell óbgevendert und
arunter gekhápt a fez fun a vekhter’s kop und zikh óngethon.
[Meanwhile the sultan winked at one of his officers and said:
“Take these three poisoned arrows and shoot them into his body. If he remains alive then
he is the one who God chose to deliver his people.”
Sabbatai Zevi’s face turned pale. His whole powerful body shuddered. His lips parted to
speak. But he was unable to emit a single word.
“Sabbatai!” the sultan’s personal physician whispered in his ear, “Put an end to your tragic
comedy. Have compassion on your brethren who are in danger. Accept the Mohammedan
religion and save your people as well as yourself.”
Sabbatai considered him with a contemptuous look.
“If you waver, my son,” said the sultan compassionately, then declare that God is one and
Mohammad is His prophet, and your life will be saved.”
Sabbatai Zevi remained silent. After another wink from the sultan, the officer drew his
bow toward Sabbatai Zevi’s chest. The latter quickly turned aside and grabbed a fez from a
guard’s head and put it on his own.]
The only words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin in the passage are the false mes-
siah’s name and the word nove ‘prophet,’ used (perhaps ironically) to denote
Mohammed. The numerous Yiddishized Germanisms sprinkled throughout
the extract represent diverse parts of speech: the noun (e.g., layb-artst ‘king’s
physician,’ ende ‘end,’ gefár ‘danger’ [G. Leibarzt, Ende, Gefahr]), the indefi-
nite article (ayn ‘a’ [G. ein]), the adjective (e.g., fergiftet ‘poisoned,’ ferakhtet
‘contemptuous’ [G. verachtet, vergiftet]), the verb (e.g., óysvehlen ‘to choose’
[G. auswählen]), and the adverb (únterdesen ‘meanwhile’ [G. unterdessen]).
The orthographic conventions also evidence German influence, including
the use of the Hebrew letters he and ʿayin (corresponding to German h and
e) following vowels corresponding to German long vowels (e.g., nehm ‘take,’
ofitsier ‘officer’ [G. nehm, Offizier vs. Y. nem, ofitsír]), and the doubling of con-
sonants (e.g., shnell ‘quickly’ [G. schnell]). Where Yiddish has near-synonyms
of Hebrew and Germanic origin, Harmlin opts for those from German: e.g.,
mitleyd [G. Mitleid], not rakhmones, for ‘compassion’; gezíkht [G. Gesicht], not
ponem, for ‘countenance,’ kerper [G. Körper], not guf, for ‘body.’
By the early twentieth century, the ‘Jewishly-written’ style which we saw in
the nineteenth-century Judezmo adaptations of the Hebrew sources dealing
with Sabbatai Zevi were hardly to be found in Judezmo novels by authors with
a European-style education. Rather, the frankeado or Europeanized register
had become the predominant style used in the novel. It is illustrated in the fol-
lowing depiction of the same exchange between Sabbatai Zevi and the sultan’s
physician alluded to in previous extracts, here as presented by Jean Florián in
La estorya de los donmés (The Story of the Sabbataians), published in Salonika
in 1926, probably by the Judezmo periodical El Tyempo (pp. 26–27):
El muftí Vaní Efendi, ke amava mucho ganar adeptas al islamizmo, propozó de azerlo kon-
vertir [a Shabetay Seví] a·la relijyón del islam. Esta propozisyón fue adoptada.
Un syerto Didón, djidyó konvertido i médiko del rey, fue kargado de azer la propozisyón
al falso mashíah i de persuadirlo a abrasar la relidjyón del islam . . .
[. . .] El dyez i syete elul, Shabetay Seví fue entroduizido al palasyo emperyal. Muchos
syenes de djidyós se fueron detrás de el i lo bendisheron. Ma en arivando delantre la puerta
de el palasyo, eyos fueron rempushados kon menospresyo. El médiko Didón se aserkó de
el, i le disho ke el soverano era muy furyozo kontra el; ke el iva ser batido sin piadad i
arastado por las kayes; ke el solo remedyo por obtener la grasya del rey era de konvertirse
al islamizmo, según lo izo el mezmo. Shabetay Seví tembló de temor i deklaró ser pronto a
azer la mezma koza.
Al momento ke lo entroduizyeron delantre el sultán, el se kitó el bonete ke el yevava i ke
era partikolar a·los djidyós, endikando kon esto ke el kería devenir muzulmano.
Un ombre del palasyo metyó en su kavesa una toka blanka i lo vistyó de un manto vedre
en lugar de preto. Ansí Shabetay Seví devino muzulmano; en lugar de mashíah salvador, el
devino un konvertido.
[The mufti Vani Efendi, who greatly loved to gain followers for Islam, proposed to have
him [i.e., Sabbatai Zevi] convert to the Islamic religion. This proposal was adopted [by the
sultan’s attendants].
A certain Didón, [who was] an apostate from Judaism and the king’s physician, was
encharged with making the proposal to the false messiah and persuading him to embrace
the Islamic religion . . .
[. . . On] the 17th of Elul, Sabbatai Zevi was led into the imperial palace. Many hundreds
of Jews followed behind him and blessed him. But upon arriving at the door of the pal-
ace they were pushed away with contempt. The physician Didón approached him, and
told him that the sovereign was furious with him; that he would be beaten mercilessly and
dragged through the streets; that the only way to gain the king’s favor was to convert to
Islam, as he himself had done. Sabbatai Zevi trembled with fear and declared that he was
willing to do so.
The moment he was led before the sultan he took off the hat he was wearing, which was
distinctive of Jews, indicating by this that he wanted to become a Muslim.
A man from the palace put a white hat on his head and dressed him in a green mantle
instead of his black one. Thus Sabbatai Zevi became a Muslim; instead of a redeeming mes-
siah he became a convert.]
Paralleling the dáytshmerish Yiddish treatment by Harmlin, this extract text

too contains few words of Hebrew origin: the name of the false messiah,
mashíah ‘messiah’ (H. mašiaḥ), and the reference to the Jewish month in
which the exchange occurred, elul (August–September) (H. ʾĕlul). The rest of
the lexicon exemplifies the often many-syllabled and learned borrowings from
French, Italian, and to a much more limited extent Spanish, characteristic of
the frankeado variety of Judezmo used essentially by non-rabbinical writers,
and even some rabbis, from the early twentieth century on: e.g., the substan-
tives adeptas ‘followers’ (cf. F. adepte, I. ‑o, S. ‑o), the verbs propozar ‘to propose’
(F. proposer + J. [< S.] ‑ar),59 persuadir ‘to persuade’ (S.), endikar ‘to indicate’
(Fr. indiquer, I. -care, S. ‑car),60 the adjectives adoptada ‘adopted’ (cf. F. adopter,
S. ‑ar), entroduizido ‘introduced’ (F. introduire [and -uis- in various verb forms,
e.g., present participle introduisant]), emperyal ‘imperial’ (F. impérial, S. impe-
rial, I. ‑e), un syerto ‘a certain’ (cf. F. un certain, I. un certo [vs. S. cierto, with the
indefinite article], the adverbial construction en arivando ‘upon arriving’ (and
the verb itself, cf. F. en arrivant). Both the Gallicism relijyón and Italianism reli-
djyón are used for ‘religion’ (F. réligion, I. religione). The semantic references
of some of the lexemes also point to their origins: deklarar in the sense of ‘to
declare’ (cf. F. déclarer) rather than ‘to explain, comment upon,’ as in tradi-
tional Judezmo, and pronto in the sense of ‘ready’ (cf. I., as opposed to S. pronto
‘soon, early, etc.’). Unlike the traditional expression azerse turko ‘convert to
Islam’ used in the nineteenth-century adaptations cited earlier, in the present
extract the modern Europeanized expression konvertirse al islamizmo ‘to con-
vert to Islam’ (cf. F. se convertir, I. convertirsi, S. ‑se) is preferred.
Yet another Europeanized account of the exchange between Sabbatai Zevi
and the sultan’s formerly Jewish physician appears in the booklet Shabetay
Seví i los maminim (Sabbatai Zevi and the Sabbataians), composed by Joseph
59) Judezmo verbs borrowed from French display Hispanic-origin -ar corresponding to French
-er, thus causing a certain superficial resemblance to Spanish; yet, given its base, a verb such as
propozar can only have been borrowed from French proposer, since the corresponding verbs in
Italian and Spanish are adottare and proponer. Although Aragonese also has proposar, Ottoman
Judezmo propozar is not documented until the nineteenth century, thus elminating Aragonese
as a possible donor.
60) In instances of new borrowings with Judezmo en‑ corresponding to Spanish and Italian in‑,
the initial e‑ is an indicator of the French source of the borrowing, cf. F. indiquer [ɛ̃diˈke].
Nehama and published in Salonika in 1932 (p. 20). This variant adds a legend
connected with the exchange:
Una lejenda muy espandida konta ke el sultán lo avría echo atar a un pilar i le avría
prometido de konvertisherse el mezmo a su doktrina mesyánika, si savía salvar, por un
mirákolo, de·las flechas de sus esklavos. Esta propozisyón avría espantado nuestro ribí, ke
avía empesado a duvdar de·la toda potensya de sus fórmulas májikas i de·la otantitá de
su misyón. El avía echado kon menospresyo el bonet djidyó por demandar el kauk de·los
maometanos.
[A widespread legend relates that the sultan had had him [i.e., Sabbatai Zevi] tied to a pil-
lar and had himself promised to convert to his messianic doctrine, if he could save himself,
miraculously, from the arrows [shot by] his slaves. This proposition frightened our rabbi,
who began to doubt the omnipotence of his magic formulas and of the authenticity of his
mission. He contemptuously threw down his Jewish hat and asked for a kavuk hat as worn
by Mohammedans.]
This passage incorporates yet another modern Europeanism for ‘to convert,’
konvertisherse (cf. I. convertiscersi), as well as other Europeanisms, such as the
Italianism mirákolo ‘miracle’ (I. miracolo) and other learned words of Romance
origin which could be derived from either French, Italian or Spanish, such as
mesyániko, fórmula, májiko, misyón (which require no English translation). As
typical in writings in the frankeado style, the sole Hebraism, ribí ‘rabbinical
scholar’ (H. ribbi), is used to add irony to the denotation of the false messiah.
While often well known to Europeanized writers such as Jean Florián and
Joseph Nehama, the veteran Hebrew-Aramaisms and Turkish-Balkanisms in
Judezmo which could have been employed instead of the frankeado neolo-
gisms were generally rejected by them as being tainted by ‘Orientalism’ (Said
1979; Lewis 1993).
Satire
Judezmo and Yiddish rabbinical writers using the ‘Judaized’ literary style antic-
ipated that readers familiar with traditional Judaism would naturally associate
the contents and characters of a ‘Jewishly-written’ work with traditional Jews,
their institutions and lifestyle. Expecting this ‘automatic reflex’ on the part of
the reader, and also aware of the effective role played by satire and parody
in rabbinical writing, from the late eighteenth century writing ‘Jewishly’ also
began to be exploited by Yiddish and Judezmo writers of a non-traditional
orientation, with a less reverent message in mind. Most of these writers were
maskilim, or westernized, ‘enlightened’ Jews. Many of them were only mildly
or not at all religiously observant, and all of them were highly critical of some
or all traditional Jewish character types, and their lifestyle, institutions, and
linguistic and stylistic idiosyncracies. Adopting literary genres that had been
used by traditional Jewish writers, especially Hebrew writers, for centuries,
such as rhymed verse and the parable, as well as new genres such as the epis-
tolary novel,61 the monologue,62 and the dialogue,63 the iconoclastic writers
created parodies in which they ridiculed the real-life persons they reviled by
placing in the mouths of their fictional representatives the traditional Yiddish
and Judezmo linguistic and stylistic features which these writers considered
ludicrous.64
Rhymed Verse
A genre particularly favored by both Yiddish and Judezmo satirists of the
Haskalah period was rhymed verse. Classic Yiddish examples were published
by Avrohom-Ber Gottlober; for example, his anti-Hasidic poem, “Dos lid funim
Kugel” (The Song of the Pudding, Odessa 1863; Vilna 1927),65 a spoof of Schiller’s
Das Lied von der Glocke (1799). Gottlober prefaced his poem with the following
words, which hint at the Jewish styling of the poem itself:
Vemen me hot gezungen unterm vigl: / “Rozinkes mit mandlen” / Der zol nor koyfn ot den
kigl. / Vet er alding handlen. //
Un tomir iz far aykh, liber Reb Korev, / Kugl keyn masematn—/ Bin ikh far dem kugl orev, /
Er vet aykh nit shadtn. /—A. B. G. /
[He whom in his cradle was sung / “Raisins and almonds” / He should only buy this
pudding. / He will trade in everything. //
And in case, for you, dear Mister Relative [or Fellow Jew], / Pudding is not a great
commodity—/ I can vouch that the pudding / Will not harm you. /—A. B. G. /
The preface contains an allusion to a Yiddish lullaby, known by names such

as “Rozinkes mit mandlen” (Raisins and Almonds) and “Untern kinds vígele”
(Under the Baby’s Cradle), which Gottlober’s anticipated readers would have
heard,66 and to a traditional Ashkenazi food, kugel, which they would have
savored. It also includes Hebraisms meant to bring to the mind of the reader
61) See Bunis (manuscript).

62) For an example of a satirical monologue imitating the traditional style used by an Ottoman
Sephardic rabbi, see Bunis 2012a:106–107.
63) For examples, see Romero 1979, Bunis 1999c, Papo 2007, Sánchez 2010.
64) On the use of parody among Yiddish writers see Roskies 2004b.
65) Avrohom-Ber Gottlober, A. B. Gotlobers yídishe verk: Aróysgegebn fun A. Fridkin un Z. Reyzn,
Odessa 1863 (the extract follows the second edition, Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1927, p. 137).
66) The Yiddish lullaby referred to by Gotlober is known in at least 65 versions and provided the
inspiration for numerous Yiddish songs; see Krasny 1998.
the yídishlekh style of the tradition-bound Yiddish speakers he is poking fun at:
tomer ‘in case’ (H. tomar), masematn ‘deal’ (H. maśśa u-mattan), orev zayn ‘to
vouch for’ (H. ʿarev). Gottlober dedicated the poem to a relative, or to Jews at
large, whom he ironically addresses using a traditional honorific as Reb Korev
(Mister Relative; cf. H. rabbi, qarov).
Still more illustrative of yídishlekh features exploited for satire by Gottlober
is his poem “Di asife” (The Meeting), in which poor and rich members of an
imaginary Jewish community are forced to agree that both of these socioeco-
nomic sectors exist in a symbiotic relationship with one another, with neither
sector able to drive the other out of the town—although both would love to.
The conclusion of the poem reads (1927:27):
Azóy iz bemuskem kulem geblíbn, / Me hot di takone in pinkes farshríbn: / “Heyóys, azóy
fun yomim veshonim / Zenen do bay yidn negidim un kabtsonim, / Muz men dokh visn
tsu vos ítlekher nitst, / Farshraybn mir es in pinkes itst: / Tsum raysn, tsum baysn, klapn,
shlogn / Un álerléy tsores íbertsutrogn / Darfn oremeláyt oyfshteln di pleytses, / Un di
negidim—nitsn oyf asifes un eytses, / Mir muzn zey nokhzogn dem shvakh on khnife: / Zey
makhn óysgetseykhnt eyn asife!” // Es iz afile nit neytik zikh tsu khásmenen derbáy, / Nor
loz zayn: eyns, tsvey, dray. /
[So it remained agreed upon by all, / The ordinance was written down in the community
register: / “Whereas, since days and years long past / There are among the Jews rich men
and beggars, / One must know what each group is needed for, / Therefore we set it down
in this register now: / For quarreling, biting, hitting, slugging / And suffering all kinds of
troubles / Poor folk must apply their shoulders to the job, / And rich folk—to serve for
meetings and advice-giving, / We must add praise for them without hypocrisy: / They make
a meeting quite good!” // It is even unnecessary to sign to that effect, / Just let it be: one,
two, three.]
Gottlober’s concluding remarks feature Hebrew-origin phraseology typical of

Yiddish legal formulations in ‘Jewishly-written’ style, including the phrases
bemuskem kulem blaybn ‘to be agreed upon by all’ (H. bĕ-muskam kullam) and
heyóys ‘being that’ (H. heyot); the asife or ‘meeting’ (H. ʾasefa) at which the
deliberations took place, the takone or ‘statute’ (H. taqqana) which emerged
from them, the pinkes ‘official register’ (H. pinqas) in which the statute was
committed to writing, and the khásmenen or ‘signing’ of the document (H. ḥ-t-
m), which in the end was deemed unnecessary.
In several Jewish languages, ironic verses in traditional Jewish style were
devoted to the Purim holiday, a key symbol of joy throughout the Jewish world.
The rhymed verses constituting the title page of a collection of Yiddish Purim
verses by Yeshue Budzon entitled Homen mit Mordkhen ([The Evil] Haman and
[the Purim Hero] Mordechai), published in Vilna in 1893, illustrates the yidísh-
lekh style characterizing the contents within:
Homen mit Mordkhen // Fayne lider, / Zingt brider, / In dem tog purim, / Fergést ale
yisurim, / Freylekh lébedig, / A·knak gébendig, / Shrayt afen kol, / Alle mit a·mohl, / Orer
Homen—Borekh Mordkhe. /
[Haman and Mordechai // Fine songs, / Sing brothers, / On Purim day, / Forget all your
troubles, / [Be] happy, lively, / While giving a snap, / Shout out loud, / All at the same time, /
Cursed be Haman—Blessed be Mordechai.]
Here Hebraisms are embedded in snappy conversational language phrased in

commands telling readers to forget their yisurim ‘cares’ (H. yissurim) and—
using a phrase traditionally associated among Ashkenazim with Purim, found
in a Hebrew hymn dedicated to Purim which appears in the Maḥzor (or holiday
prayer book) of Vitry, compiled by Simḥah b. Samuel of Vitry (d. before 1105)—
to shout in a loud kol ‘voice’ (H. qol): Orer Homen, Borekh Mordkhe ‘cursed be
Haman, blessed by Mordecai’ (H. ʾarur Haman, barux Mordĕxay).
And yet, in another set of satirical verses dedicated to Purim,67 published
in New York some seven years later, author Yankev Ter only uses Hebraisms
to denote the purim holiday itself and two of the personalities central to its
story, Homen (Haman) and Akhashveyresh (Ahasuerus). The remaining text is
phrased in somewhat dáytshmerish lexemes of Germanic origin:
Git purim, gut purim, brave layt, / Veyst ihr vos purim batáyt? / Ihr mikh nur nit shteren, /
Ikh aykh ertsehlen, ihr heren, / Gevén a kenig Akhashveyresh, a nar, / Gemákht mikh Homen
far a harr.
[Good Purim, good Purim, brave people, / Do you know what Purim means? / You just don’t
disturb me / I will tell you, you will listen, / There was a king Ahasuerus, a fool, / He made
Haman an overlord.]
Satirical Purim collections are especially plentiful among Judezmo speakers.

Just as the Púrimshpil or ‘Purim drama’ is the most broadly developed Yiddish
genre focusing on that holiday, so the traditional Komplas de purim, or rhym-
ing ‘Purim couplets’ recounting the Jews’ salvation from the hands of the ‘Evil
Haman,’ constitute the most popular Purim genre cultivated by Judezmo writ-
ers. One of the most well-known of the Purim komplas is a series of verses by
Sa‘adi Ha-Levi Aškĕnazi (1819–1903) of Salonika beginning:
Alavar kyero al Dyo / kon tanyer i kante / syendo El no pyedryó / amistad avante; / de
ombre berbante / El mos eskapó / i a Amán lo enkapó / en una paída / non topó fuída. /
67) Yankev Ter, Homens mapole, oder der ferbítener mishloyekh mones, New York: Hebrew Pub-
lishing Co., c1900:17.
[I want to praise God / with instrument-playing and song / Because He did not forget / His
early friendship / From a rogue He saved us / And entrapped Haman / From a snare / He
found no escape. / ]
The final stanza reads:

I Amán se emborachó / i salyó afuera. / A los ijos demandó / ke perashá era. / Le disheron:
Vayerá, / Vayerá el Avraam. / Tenemos padre rahmán / ke a Amán lo mata / i a los djidyós
eskapa. /68
[And Haman got drunk / and went out. / He asked the children / what Biblical portion was
[read that week]. / They told him: Wa-yera,69 / Wa-yera [ʾAdonay] ʾel ʾAvram. / We have a
merciful father / who kills Haman / and delivers the Jews. / ]
Most of the overriding Hispanic component is typical of popular Judezmo. There

are relatively few words of Hebrew origin: perashá ‘Bible portion’ (H. paraša),
rahmán ‘merciful’ (H. raḥǎman), Amán (H. Haman), and the reference to the
Torah portion. Other stanzas incorporate elements derived from Ottoman cul-
ture. The remaining verses are not highly Europeanized, but neither are they
especially ‘Jewishly-styled.’
There are Judezmo Purim collections of other sorts as well. One of them—
Josef Jaakov Kalwo’s 60-page humor chapbook, Roskas de Purim (Purim Rusks),
not a single copy of which appears to have survived—seems to have illustrated
particularly well the role of ‘Jewishly-written’ riddles, poems, and anecdotes
connected with the holiday, but having a modern slant. A copy of the book was
seen by the Jewish-language anthologist Max Grünbaum, whose 1896 Jüdisch-
Spanische Chrestomathie (pp. 142–143) includes transcriptions of the title
page and five stanzas from Kalwo’s parody on “Thier und Menschen schliefen
feste,” by Magnus Gottfried Lichtwer (1719–1783).70 According to Grünbaum
(p. 142), Kalwo’s chapbook was published in Vienna in 1866. Its title page read
as follows:
Roskas de purim / para nashim i anashim, / amasadas de Djohá—enfornadas de Mohá—
inchidas de Djohaíko—kon alhashuv de lo mas fino—porke puedan bever vino. //
Keréah. // Vyena, r[osh]”ho[desh] adar 5626.
[Purim rusks / For men and women, / kneaded by Djohá—baked by Mohá—filled by
Djohaíko—with nut spread of the finest kind—so that people drink wine [with it]. //
Baldy. // Vienna, Head of the month of Adar 5626 [=1866].]
68) For a variant with a different romanization see Weich-Shahak 2006:105–108.

69) The reference is to the portion Lekh lĕkha (=Genesis 16:1), “The Lord appeared to Avram.”
70) The earliest version appeared in Lichtwer 1745:40–41.
Adapting the Hebrew expression našim wĕ-ʾănašim ‘women and men’ found
in the Talmud and other classic sources,71 Kalwo indicated that his work was
intended para nashim i anashim ‘for women and men.’ He likened the contents
of his booklet to typical holiday foods enjoyed by Judezmo speakers during
Purim: roskas ‘rusks’ filled with alhashuv ‘nut spread,’ both of them of medi-
eval origin and mentioned by Spanish-born Yosef Karo in his classic sixteenth-
century halakhic code, Bet Yosef (ʾOraḥ ḥayyim, 168). In the title page Kalwo
referred to the silly-smart hero of Judezmo folklore, Djohá, incorporated from
the Ottoman milieu.72 Exploiting a word-play technique used in Turkish and
the languages of the Balkans—by which a word is reduplicated but the first
phoneme is replaced by m-, the resulting pair of words denoting ‘and so on’
(e.g., T. kitab [< A. kitāb] mitab ‘books and so on’)—Kalwo stated that the dough
for his Purim rusks had been kneaded by Djohá and baked by his wife, Mohá.
Using the Judezmo default diminutive suffix ‑iko,73 Kalwo noted that the rusks
had been filled by Djohaíko, ‘little Djojá,’ who was presumably the offspring
of Djohá and Mohá. Kalwo alluded to his own surname by signing his phrases
Keréah (cf. H. qereaḥ), synonymous with Hispanic-origin kalvo (S. calvo)—that
is, ‘bald.’
The linguistic features of Kalwo’s ‘Jewishly-written’ title page stand in sharp
contrast to those on the title page of a later collection of Purim verses pub-
lished by ‘Šemeš’ (i.e., Šabĕtay M. Šalem) in Alexandria, 1929:
Broshura de las koplas de purim [. . .] a prófito de la nuevo unyón “Aadamá,” unyón de
žudyós de el Ežipto por la kolonizasyón agríkola en Palestina.
[Chapbook of Purim couplets [. . .] for the financial benefit of the new union “Ha-’Adama,”
a union of Jews of Egypt supporting agricultural colonization in Palestine.]
In this collection its booklet format is referred to using a recent borrowing

from French, broshura (F. brochure). The rhymed verses are here called koplas,
under the influence of modern Romance languages such as French (couplet) or
perhaps Spanish (copla), although in texts in more traditional Judezmo pub-
lished during this time they are still called komplas.74 Various other terms also
71) Cf. Talmud Bavli, Massekhet ḥăgiga, chapter 2, ʾEn dorĕšin; cf. also ʾǎnašim wĕ-našim ‘men and
women’ in Jeremiah 40:7 and Ezra 10:1.
72) Djohá may be compared with the Turkish folk hero Nasrettin Hoca and his analogues in the
folk literatures of the Balkans.
73) It should be noted that the use in Spanish of ‑ico is more restricted in time and space than
Judezmo ‑iko; see Bunis 2003.
74) E.g., Konplas vyejas de purim, Jerusalem: Tsúkerman, 1924; Aleksandro Pereṣ, Muevas komplas
de purim, Salonika: El Tyempo, 1929; H. A. Papo (ed.), <Komplas de Purim>, Sarajevo: Menahem
Papo, 1932.
take frankeado or Europeanized forms: nuevo instead of muevo ‘new,’ judyós

instead of djudyós ‘Jews’ (cf. French juif and perhaps influence from Spanish
judíos under French phonological influence), Ejipto ‘Egypt’ (F. Égypte) rather
than the traditional Ladino calque-translation form, Aífto, originating in Jew-
ish Greek. Although the Zionist agricultural organization which sponsored
the booklet is called by its Hebrew-origin name, Aadamá (H. ha-ʾǎdama ‘the
land’), the Land of Israel is referred to as Palestina (cf. I., S. Palestina, F. Pal-
estine) rather than Hebrew-origin Eres Yisrael (H. ʾEreṣ Yiśra⁠ʾel), as had been
used in Jewishly-written texts by Josef Jaakov Kalwo and others.75 Neologisms
imported from French, Italian or Spanish are used to denote Jewish agricul-
tural efforts in the Land of Israel and other concepts: a prófito de ‘for the benefit
of ’ (F. au profit de), unyón ‘union’ (F. union, S. unión, I. unione), kolonizasyón
agríkola ‘agricultural colony’ (I. colonizzazione agricola, F. colonisation agri-
cole, S. colonización agrícola).76
It is true that Šalem’s Purim collection work was published 63 years after
that by Kalwo, by which time the frankeado variety of Judezmo had become
highly popular among sectors of the Judezmo speech community which
overtly rejected the ‘Jewishly-written’ literary style. However, as some of Kal-
wo’s own journalistic writings demonstrate, a Europeanized style of Judezmo
was already in use among some of the language’s journalists during the second
half of the nineteenth century—even by Kalwo, in his own newspaper reports.
Yet Kalwo preferred the traditional style in his Purim collection—perhaps, in
keeping with his maskilic leanings, in order to poke fun at that style and its
users within the Jewish-focused context of Purim.
This leads us back to a point raised at the beginning of the present article:
the consciousness of an author’s use of the more ‘traditional Jewish’ style, in
whichever genre he or she was writing in, rather than its converse, which was
also constantly available. Josef Jaakov Kalwo had some familiarity with Castil-
ian, and at one point in his journalistic career he even proposed that Judezmo
speakers as a group should replace their communal language with Castilian.77
Kalwo was also familiar enough with German to produce a Judezmo adapta-
tion of a poem by Schiller. And yet the title page to his Purim collection and
at least one of the poems it contained, as well as certain other of his satirical
writings, were written ‘Jewishly’ rather than in Castilianized or Germanized
Judezmo. Avrohom-Ber Gottlober, too, was familiar with German, and yet he
75) E.g., Kalwo in El Trezoro de la Kaza 1:5 (Vienna 1871), p. 3; see Bunis 2013.
76) A copy of the booklet is housed in the Ladino Literary Archives of the Yehoshua and Naime
Salti Center for Ladino Studies, Bar-Ilan University (see Bibliography of the Hebrew Book).
77) See Bunis 2011b:64–72.
also wrote his maskilic parodies of traditional Jewish life in yídishlekh style. Tra-
dition-bound writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used the
traditional Jewish style in identification with traditional Jewish values, culture
and lifestyle. In doing so, they distinguished themselves linguistically from the
contemporaneous descendants of the non-Jewish ethnic groups among whom
their Jewish languages first arose—Spaniards in the case of Judezmo, Germans
in the instance of Yiddish—while at the same time linguistically highlighting
their Jewishness, and thus emphasizing the cultural and religious distinction
between themselves and their immediate non-Jewish neighbors—the peoples
of the Ottoman Empire, and of Slavic Eastern Europe, respectively. On the
other hand, maskilim and others critical of traditional Jewish values and life-
style often used traditional linguistic features to mock them. Let us close by
examining the fate of the ‘traditional Jewish’ style and its converse after the
early twentieth century.
Contemporary Yiddish and Judezmo Stylistics

The two polar stylistic varieties used in Judezmo and Yiddish writing which
have been the focus of our discussion—the more ‘Jewishly-styled’ variant and
its converse—continued to co-exist in both speech communities roughly until
the processes of westernization, modernization, and secularization reached
their peak among the majority of Judezmo and Yiddish speakers in the early
twentieth century. At that time, political, ideological and social developments
in the two communities led essentially to a reduction of the two models to a sin-
gle model in each community—albeit, a different model in each community.
Yiddish Writers
Among the Ashkenazim of Europe, and in their immigrant communities in the
Americas and elsewhere, ideological and practical Yiddishism had blossomed
in the second half of the nineteenth century, alongside the competing Zionist
and assimilationist movements, which had their own linguistic agendas. In the
twentieth century and beyond, writers in Yiddish—as opposed to those using
Hebrew or, say, Russian or English—continued to be familiar with the dis-
tinctive ‘traditional Jewish’ writing style employed by their literary ancestors,
the tradition-bound as well as the maskilic and other, more secular-oriented
Yiddish writers.
Especially after World War I, Yiddish writers were in essence Yiddishists,
who consciously sought to maintain one of the fundamental linguistic and
literary principles of Yiddishism: Ausbau, or the cultivation of a literary form of

Yiddish “vos vayter fun daytsh” or “avek fun daytsh”—that is, as far from German
as possible. They did so by exploiting to the maximum the distinctive internal
resources of Yiddish which had evolved over the centuries among its speakers,
especially under the influence of traditional Jewish literary sources in Hebrew
and Aramaic.78 In the 7 May 2010 issue of the New York Yiddish periodical
Forverts, Genadi Estraykh included the following comment in his summary of
the proposals for Yiddish orthographic reform advanced by Yiddish journalist
A. Litvin (Shmuel Hurvits, 1862–1943):
S’volt gevén a farbrekhn un an umzin aróystsuraysn di loshn-kóydesh-verter fun undzer
máme-loshn. Di yídishe shprakh volt dan, on a shum sofek, farlóyrn zeyer fil fun ir geshmakeyt,
fun ir zalts.
(It would be criminal and nonsensical to tear the Hebrew-Aramaic-origin words from
our Yiddish. Then the Yiddish language would undoubtedly lose a great deal of its flavor,
its salt).
The Yiddishist writers continued to write and publish their work in the Hebrew-
derived Yiddish alphabet which had been used for transcribing Yiddish since
the language arose in the Middle Ages. While some of the writers with a more
secular orientation lacked the deep, first-hand knowledge of the traditional
Hebrew and Aramaic literature which had supplied a good measure of the ref-
erences and imagery of the earlier writers, even their writing was enriched by
such sources indirectly, through references appearing in earlier Yiddish litera-
ture in the Yiddish alphabet, to which they had free access and with which they
were familiar, as well as in the spoken language used by some intellectuals of
the community, such as rabbinical and Yiddishist lecturers. As children, these
writers had often received at least a minimal traditional Jewish education,
which also contributed some knowledge of Jewish literary traditions. Thus, in
Yiddish creative writing today, characteristic features of yídishlekh writing, such
as natural Yiddish syntax, a preference for distinctive traditional lexemes—
especially those of Hebrew and Aramaic, and to some extent Slavic, origin—
and the use of similes, metaphors, and other imaginative references rooted in
Jewish tradition, still play a key role.
This approach to Yiddish writing may be seen in the following passage
from a piece of journalistic reportage by Professor Mikhail Krutikov of the
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan,
78) On linguistic Ausbau see Kloss 1967; with reference to Yiddish, see Schaechter 1977. On the
ideology of maximal de-Germanization of Yiddish, see Fishman & García 2011: esp. 354–359.
which appeared in the December 7th, 2012 issue of the periodical Forverts of
New York:
Fantastik vi der yesód fun vírklekhkeyt
Di brider Arkadi (1925–1991) un Boris (1933–2012) Strugatski zaynen belí-sofek di same
bakante rúsishe shrayber inem zhaner fun “vísnshaftlekher” fantastik. In zéyere verk treft
men vánderungen ibern kosmishn roym, kólerley kíshefdike makhshirim, mentshn mit
umnatírlekhe féikeytn, un ándere bóylete simonim funem fantastishn zhaner. Ober nit dos
iz der iker in zeyer raykher literárisher yerushe.
Di brider Strugatskis verk zaynen nit vegn a vayter oder nóenter tsukunft, nor vegn dem
hayntikn itst. In ale verk zéyere dertséyln zey vegn zikh un zeyer dor, vos iz gebóyrn gevórn
far der tsveyter vélt-milkhome un iz aráyn in lebn tsum same sof fun Stalins shlite. Di
lange un frúkhtbare tkufe fun shéferishkeyt bekhavruse hot zikh geendikt in 1991 mitn toyt
funem eltern bruder Arkadi. Eyne fun di letste verk zéyere, di pyese “Zhidn fun der shtot
Piter,” iz gevén shoyn nit keyn “vísnshaftlekher,” nor a biz gor aktuele sotsyál-polítishe
fantazye[. . .]
Boris Strugatski iz gevén a materialíst un an ateíst, ver hot gegléybt in der evolutsye
funem yokhed. Er hot gegléybt in a béserer tsukunft, ober nit gehát keyn iluzyes vegn dem
haynt. Zayn filosofye iz gevén noent tsu “Pirke Oves,” khotsh keyn spetsyeln interés tsu
yídishkeyt hot er a ponim nit gehát.
[The Fanstastic as the Foundation of Reality
The brothers Arkady (1925–1991) and Boris (1933–2012) Strugatski are undoubtedly the most
well-known Russian writers in the science fiction genre. In their work one finds journeys
through cosmic space, assorted magical instruments, people with supernatural faculties,
and other clear signs of the science fiction genre. But this is not the principal feature of
their rich literary legacy.
The Strugatski brothers’ works do not deal with a distant or near future, but with the
immediate present. In all of their works they talk about themselves and their generation,
who were born before the second world war and entered life at the very end of Stalin’s reign.
The long and fruitful period of joint creativity came to an end in 1991 with the death of the
older brother, Arkady. One of their last works, the play “The Yids of the City of Peter,” was
no longer science fiction, but an exceedingly contemporary socio-political fantasy[. . .]
Boris Strugatski was a materialist and an atheist, who believed in the evolution of the
individual. He believed in a better future, but had no illusions about the present. His phi-
losophy was close to the “Ethics of the Fathers,” although apparently he had no special
interest in Judaism.]
Krutikov’s article was published in the same periodical as the daytshmerish

announcement of the printers’ union meeting cited above—only a century
later, after maximal de-Germanizing Yiddishist ideology had become widely
accepted by Yiddish writers. In his piece, numerous abstract and concrete
concepts are expressed by means of Hebrew-Aramaisms: yesód ‘founda-
tion’ (H. yĕsod), simonim ‘signs’ (H. simanim), shlite ‘rule’ (H. šĕliṭa), tkufe
‘period’ (H. tĕqufa), makhshirim ‘instruments’ (H. maxširim), yokhed ‘individual’
(H. yaḥid), bekhavruse ‘in partnership’ (H./A. bĕ-ḥavruta), and etymological
fusion forms such as kólerley ‘all kinds of ’ (cf. H. kol + G. ‑erlei), kíshefdik ‘magi-
cal’ (cf. H. kiššuf + G. -dig), vélt-milkhome ‘world war’ (G. Welt + H. milḥama).
The syntax, too, shows some Hebrew influence; for example, in the traditional
construction exemplified by (in ale) verk zéyere ‘(in all) their work’ (cf. H.
[bĕ-kol] ḥibburehem/ha-ḥibburim še-lahem). Nevertheless, Yiddish near-syn-
onyms of Germanic or other Indo-European origins exist for many of these
lexemes and constructions in Yiddish, some of them constituting an integral
part of natural Yiddish. Also, as common in texts in ‘Jewish’ style, the piece also
contains the Slavisms same (sof ) ‘very (end)’ and khotsh ‘although’ (cf. U., P.,
R. sam ‘mere, very’; U. xoča, P. chociaż, R. xotja ‘although’). But it also includes
lexical innovations derived from French, English, German and other ‘interna-
tional’ languages, which have become a part of the natural Yiddish of educated
speakers in recent generations, such as kosmish ‘cosmic,’ zhaner ‘genre,’ fan-
tazye ‘fantasy,’ ateíst ‘atheist,’ iluzye ‘illusion.’
Toward the end of the piece the author connects the writings of Boris Stru-
gatski with a traditional Jewish source, noting that his philosophy was close
to that expressed in the Mishnah tract Ethics of the Fathers (“Zayn filosofye
iz gevén noent tsu ʿPirke Oves’ ”), despite Strugatski’s apparent lack of interest
in Judaism. There can be little doubt that Krutikov, who is fully familiar with
Yiddish in its regional and lexical variation, as well as with Hebrew, Russian,
German, and other European languages, consciously chose to use the specific
lexemes and syntactic structures, and of course the traditional Hebrew liter-
ary reference, appearing in his review, while consciously rejecting alternatives.
It would seem clear that his choice was determined by a desire to cultivate
a literary variety of Yiddish as distinctive—indeed, as distinctively ‘Jewish’—
as possible, by emphasizing the use of linguistic and stylistic features unique
to traditional Yiddish in its twenty-first-century form, while distinguishing his
language, nevertheless, from the lomdish or ‘religiously highly learned’ Yiddish
used today in ultra-Orthodox publications such as the periodical Der Yid.
Judezmo Writers
The social, political, and ideological reality in which Judezmo developed in
the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is somewhat parallel to the situa-
tion among Yiddish speakers, but there are also some crucial differences. From
the mid-nineteenth century, under the particular influence of the network of
schools established by the Paris-based Alliance Israélite Universelle (fd. 1860),
and as a result of the general trend toward modernization, westernization, and
secularization which began to take effect among the Ottomans and the diverse
ethnic groups of their empire from the late eighteenth century, the Judezmo
speakers of the Ottoman Empire, as well as their brethren in the already more
westernized Austro-Hungarian Empire, increasingly looked askance at their
group language. Just as Yiddish had been typecast as a hybrid jargon by the
maskilim and the assimilationist Jews of Europe, European-educated individu-
als in the Ottoman regions, such as the teachers in the Alliance schools and
Judezmo journalists who had come under the sway of European propagan-
dists, began to preach that Judezmo was a stale, corrupt Old Spanish flawed
by intolerable borrowings from non-Romance languages such as Hebrew and
Turkish. In the preface to a book of model letters for young people composed
by Joseph Nehama early in the twentieth century children were told:
Avlad klaro i eskrivid bueno. Non metásh palavras ke non entendésh bueno [. . .] ni palavras
frankeadas ni palavras en lashón.
[Speak clearly and write well. Don’t use words you do not understand well [. . .] nor Euro-
pean borrowings nor words in Hebrew [cf. H. lašon ‘language’]’ [emphasis mine].79
In 1923, Hizkia Franco of Izmir, a staunch supporter of ‘Judeo-Espanyol,’ as he

called Judezmo, published a letter on language use in the influential Istanbul
Judezmo newspaper El Tyempo. Addressed to the paper’s editor, David Fresco,
most of the letter concerned Franco’s dissatisfaction with Fresco’s use of Cas-
tilianisms in his paper. Franco stated that he was willing to accept borrowings
from French and Italian, and even from Castilian when absolutely necessary,
but not from other languages; he himself used few Hebraisms:80
Podrían tolerar asta un syerto grado la influensa de las linguas kondjenérikas komo el fran-
sés i el italiano, ke son de·la mesma esensya ke nuestro dialekto; peró no ay ken sea favor-
able al empleo de barbarismos ajenos komo karishtirear, kandirear, embatakar, ke solo la
klasa ordinaria i inkulta uza. No vemos ningún inkonveniente a ke tengan rekurso a·la lin-
gua de orijen, al kastilyano, todas las vezes ke el menester se ará sentir [. . .], tal ke Usted lo
a echo asta ahora[. . .]
[Up to a certain point we can tolerate the influence of cognate languages such as French
and Italian, which are of the same essence as our dialect; but there is no one who would
be amenable to the use of foreign barbarisms such as karishtirear [‘to mix,’ cf. T. karıştır- +
J. (< S.) -ear)], kandirear [‘to persuade,’ T. kandır-], embatakar [‘to soil,’ J. (< S.) em- -ar +
T. batak ‘quagmire’], which only the common and uncultured class uses. We have no objec-
tion to drawing upon the language of origin, Castilian, whenever the need is felt [. . .], as you
have done thus far[. . .]]
79) [Nehama] c. 1910:3.
80) The entire text of Franco’s letter is reproduced in romanization in Bunis 2012b.
With the dismemberment of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires,

and the rise of new nation states which increasingly demanded the linguistic
homogeneity of all of their citizens, children from Judezmo-speaking homes
began to be educated in the language of the country, in state schools. Atten-
dance in traditional Jewish schools which focused primarily on the study of
traditional Jewish sources declined, and younger Judezmo speakers’ familiar-
ity with those sources decreased. The ‘European purist’ and ‘local national-
ist’ attacks on Judezmo as an undesirable language seem to have had a more
profound impact on the relatively smaller Judezmo speech community as a
group—some half a million individuals at the turn of the twentieth century—
than the analogous assaults on Yiddish among the Ashkenazim. The teachers
in the European-style schools in the region, and those in the state schools,
indoctrinated their Judezmo-speaking pupils against their family language and
urged them to adopt more prestigious and, to their view, commercially more
advantageous languages such as French, Italian, German, and, later, South
Slavic languages, Turkish, and Greek. Their efforts were rather successful, at
least ideologically. Not all of the Judezmo-speaking children adopted a foreign
language outright, and some even maintained an emotional loyalty to Judezmo
as the language of the Jewish community. But many pupils who internalized
the antipathy toward Judezmo which was widespread among influential adults
actively purged their Judezmo of its non-Romance elements. The result was
that precisely those features of literary Judezmo which had been most char-
acteristic of the ‘traditional Jewish’ writing style were now anathema among
the generations educated in the western-style and state schools, and they were
replaced by borrowings from the prestige languages of Western Europe—the
trademarks of the highly Europeanized, frankeado variety of Judezmo which
came to predominate in the press and all but linguistically-conservative rabbin-
ical writing—and, increasingly, by borrowings from the local state language.
An additional factor which helped sound the death knell of the ‘traditional
Jewish’ style among the relatively few Judezmo speakers who continued to cre-
ate literature in the language after World War I was the fact that Jewish pupils
in European-style and state schools acquired little or no knowledge of the
Hebrew alphabet, let alone the Rashí typeface traditionally used in Judezmo
publications. They became more accustomed to writing foreign languages, in
the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets, than Jewish languages; those who continued
to write Judezmo acquired the habit of using the non-Jewish alphabets for
Judezmo as well. Like Turkish children who, from 1929, were educated in the
Latin rather than Ottoman Arabic alphabet, and were thus unable to read ear-
lier Turkish literature in its original alphabet without special training, Judezmo
speakers unfamiliar with the Hebrew-based Judezmo alphabet were com-

pletely disconnected from Judezmo literature written in the traditional Jewish
literary style, as well as all other Judezmo literature printed in the Hebrew-
based Judezmo alphabet. Thus, their knowledge of Judezmo was limited to
the spoken language used in intimate, non-literary environments such as the
home and marketplace, and the few texts in Latin or Cyrillic letters, generally
‘cleansed’ of traditional Jewish features, published from the 1930s on.
During the past thirty years or so, a kind of ‘Judezmo revival,’ occurring
mostly among individuals who see themselves as the last generation of Judezmo
speakers in their families, has brought with it some changes in the attitude of
Judezmo writers toward their language and its character. Judezmo is increas-
ingly recognized by many as a distinct, Jewish language, and they sometimes
refer to it by Judezmo terms designating it as ‘Jewish’ (e.g., djudezmo, djudyó).
Popular variants of Hispanic origin once rejected by frankeado writers have
become the norm (e.g., mozotros replacing nozotros for ‘we’). Some lexemes
of Hebrew-Aramaic origin, known to writers either through oral transmission
or under Israeli Hebrew influence, are more visible in the literary language. So
too are a rising number of elements of Turkish-Balkan origin, once completely
rejected—at least ideologically, if not in actual practice—by writers such as
Hizkia Franco. Nevertheless, with the exception of a handful of individuals
who have taught themselves to read the traditional Judezmo alphabet, famil-
iarized themselves with earlier Judezmo literature, and today see themselves as
links in the centuries-old chain of Judezmo writers, for Judezmo writers today,
the traditional Jewish literary style used before World War II and its distinc-
tive linguistic features are completely unknown, and so can have no effect on
their own writing style. This is exemplified in the brief comments on Judezmo
and its literature appearing in the web site Lengua y cultura ladino (that is,
Judezmo language and culture),81 reproduced here in its original Roman-letter
spelling:
<Lengua y cultura ladino
Los djudios de Turkia reusheron a konservar sus lingua durante 500 anyos, ma en el siglo 20
empeso un trokamiento fondamental. La identidad de los djudios de Turkia komo salidos
de la diaspora espanyola no viene mas konservada kon rigor. Los djovenes de la komunita
keren atar sus suerte kon la suerte del paiz i ser turkos en todo i por todo. Ansi ke es klaro
ke eyos evitan de avlar ladino en publiko.
81) http://www.myladino.com/186467/El-Ladino. See also similar findings in an analysis of a

Ladino discussion group in Brink-Danan 2011.
El ladino era no solo la lingua de kada dia de los djudios en Turkia i en el resto de la
diaspora espanyola, ma era tambien la lingua ke servia en la tefilla i los estudios de la Biblia.
Munchos livros fueron tradusidos al ladino, empesando de la Biblia, asta el Shulhan Aruh.
El livro ke sovresalio sovre todos i es konsiderado komo la ovra monumental del ladino,
es el “Meam Loez”, livro ke inkluye midrashim, komentos, leyes, instruksiones morales i
dispozisiones, ke fue empesado por Rabi Yaakov Hulli (1689–1732) en el siglo 18. El livro
fue eskrito al derredor de las perashas de la semana, komo de uzo en otros livros de Alaha
i moral en el mundo sefaradi.
El poeta Rab Don Santob de Carrion ke bivio en Espanya en la primera meta del siglo
14 i ke es konosido en la literatura djudia kon el nombre de Shem Tov Ardotiel dediko su
livro “Proverbios morales” (1325–1350), ande fue integrado tambien pensamiento djudio,
a Don Pedro, ijo del rey Alfonso XI. En el siglo 15 fue echa la ladinizason de esta ovra. Fue
trezladada a letras ebreas i arivo a mozotros en un manuskripto ke se topa en la Geniza del
Cairo, ke inkluyo i la ovra orijinal en ladino “Poema de Yosef ”. Esta ovra en su version en
ladino se salvo de la ekspulsion i azia parte del bagaje kultural, ke se yevaron kon eyos los
ekspulsados al Imperio Otomano.>
[Ladino Language and Culture
The Jews of Turkey succeeded in preserving their language for 500 years, but in the twenti-
eth century a fundamental change began. The identity of the Jews of Turkey as stemming
from the Spanish Diaspora is no longer rigorously preserved. The young people of the com-
munity want to tie their fate with the fate of country and be Turks in every way. Thus it is
obvious that they refrain from speaking Ladino in public.
Ladino was not only the everyday language of the Jews of Turkey and the rest of the
Spanish Diaspora, but was also the language that served in prayer and in the study of
the Bible. Many [Hebrew] books were translated into Ladino, beginning with the Bible,
through the Shulḥan ʿArukh. The book which stood out from all others and is considered
as the monumental work in Ladino is the Me-ʿam Loʾez, a book which includes exegetic
interpretations, commentaries, laws, moral instruction and dispositions, which was initi-
ated by Rabbi Ya‘aqov Hulli (1689–1732) in the eighteenth century. It was written around
the weekly Torah portions, as customary in other works of Jewish law and morality in the
Sephardic world.
The poet, Rab Don Santov de Carrion, who lived in Spain during the first half of the four-
teenth century and who is known in Jewish literature under the name Šem Ṭov Ardutiel,
dedicated his book, Proverbios morales (1325–1350), which incorporates Jewish thought, to
Don Pedro, son of King Alfonso XI. In the fifteenth century this work was translated into
Ladino. It was transcribed in Hebrew letters and has reached us in a manuscript found in
the Cairo Genizah, which also includes the original work in Ladino, Poema de Yosef. This
work, in its Ladino version, was saved during the expulsion and became part of the cultural
baggage which the exiles carried with them to the Ottoman Empire.]
As is increasingly common in Judezmo writing today, many traditional ele-

ments of Hispanic origin appear in this piece in the popular forms widespread
in natural Judezmo rather than in forms influenced by Modern Castilian: e.g.,
<muncho> ‘many,’ <al derredor> ‘around,’ <meta> ‘half,’ <ande> ‘in which,’
<mozotros> ‘we’ (vs. S. mucho, alrededor, mitad, donde, nosotros). But many
features in the passage diverge from traditional Judezmo. For example, the
language is called <ladino> rather than traditional djudezmo or djudyó (Jew-

ish), and the concept ‘to transform from Spanish into Judezmo in the Jewish
alphabet’ is conveyed by the neologism <ladinizas[i]on>. At the beginning of
the piece the speech group is characterized as <espanyol> ‘Spanish,’ although
a later reference uses more traditional <sefaradi> ‘Sephardic’ (H. sĕfaradi).
There are numerous Italianisms (e.g., <komunita> ‘community,’ I. comunità;
<reushir> ‘to succeed,’ I. riuschire; <ma> ‘but’), Gallicisms (e.g., <en todo i por
todo> ‘in everything,’ F. en tout et pour tout), Castilianisms (e.g., <tradusir> ‘to
translate,’ which co-occurs with traditional <trezladar>, and perhaps <iden-
tidad> ‘identity’); and lexemes and expressions of an international character,
most of which could have been borrowed from French, Italian, Castilian, or
even English (e.g., the nouns <diaspora>,82 <rigor>, <poeta>, <manuskripto>,
<ovra> ‘work,’ and the concept expressed by <bagaje kultural>; the adjec-
tives <fondamental>, <orijinal>, <monumental>, <konsiderado> ‘considered,’
<integrado> ‘integrated’; the verbs <konservar> ‘to preserve,’ <evitar> ‘to
avoid,’ <dedikar> ‘to dedicate,’ <arivar> ‘to reach’; the preposition <durante>
‘during’; and the possessive construction <sus lingua>, featuring a plural pos-
sessive adjective agreeing with the third-personal plural possessor rather than
the singular object possessed).
Although highly Jewish in theme, the text of the site shows very limited use
of words typifying the traditional Jewish style, such as terms of Hebrew origin.
Unlike the semantically wider-ranging Hebrew-Aramaisms of the traditional
style, those which appear here all refer to basic concepts connected with the
Jewish religion: <tefilla> ‘prayer’ (H. tĕfilla), <rabi> ‘rabbi’ (H. rabbi), <Alaha>
‘Jewish religious law’ (H. halaxa). One word actually displays a Hebrew-origin
inflectional ending: <midrashim> ‘interpretations or commentaries on a Bibli-
cal text,’ with the plural marker ‑im;83 but <perashas> ‘weekly Torah portions’
instead shows the Hispanic-origin plural marker ‑s. There are historical refer-
ences to Jewish literary sources written in Hebrew and Judezmo, but no meta-
phorical use of Jewish concepts. Even many of the concepts cited which have
a direct connection to Jewish religious traditions and the Jewish experience
are denoted by recent borrowings from European languages: <la Biblia> rather
than traditional arbáves(t)rím (H. ʾarbaʿa we-ʿeśrim) for the ‘Bible,’ <komen-
tos> instead of perushim (H. perušim) for ‘rabbinical commentaries,’ <leyes>
rather than alahod or hukim (H. halaxot, ḥuqqim) for ‘religious laws,’ <moral>
82) Only words which diverge significantly from their English analogues are translated here.
83) The Hebrew-origin plural midrashim is in fact also widely used in texts in English and, in
forms such as midrachim and midrasc(h)im, in other European languages as well.
and <instruksiones morales> rather than musar (H.) for ‘(lessons in) morality,’
<ekspulsion> and <ekspulsados> instead of gerush and megorashim (H. geruš,
mĕgorašim) for the Expulsion from Spain and the exiled Jews, <letras ebreas>
instead of letras djudías/djudezmas for the Hebrew-origin letters traditionally
used to transcribe Judezmo. Time references are to the Gregorian rather than
the Jewish calendar. Thus, although the Judezmo rabbinical anthology Me-ʿam
loʿez is extolled in the piece, the language used to describe the work is very
remote from the highly ‘Jewishly-styled’ language used in that Judezmo classic
itself.
Conclusion
Max Weinreich was not only a scholar of Yiddish and Jewish languages. He was
also a Yiddishist ideologue. His article on writing in yídishlekh style ended with
proposals for contemporaneous and future Yiddish writers. Unlike the tradi-
tionalist writers of the late nineteenth century, who rejected words and struc-
tures then ‘foreign’ to traditional Yiddish, twentieth-century writers lived in an
age in which neologisms and internationalisms of various sorts had become ‘at
home’ in natural Yiddish. Thus, wrote Weinreich, writers should no longer hes-
itate to use them, thereby extending the lexicon of their language and enabling
writers to fully express contemporary ideas. Nevertheless, argued Weinreich,
Yiddish writers should exploit the existing internal resources of Yiddish to
the maximum before turning to external sources. A Yiddish text, wrote Wein-
reich, should always be yidish, that is, ‘Jewish/Yiddish’; a Yiddish text should
specifically be written yídishlekh, ‘in traditional Jewish style,’ only when that
style suits the context. Present-day Yiddish writers may be said to consciously
adhere to the general guidelines of Yiddishist ideology as it developed over the
past century, generously incorporating into their writings features characteris-
tic of what Weinreich called yídishlekh style, while at the same time linguisti-
cally connecting their writing with the contemporary scene.
Contemporary Judezmo writing, too, may be said to consciously reflect the
ideological trends which have predominated among Judezmo speakers dur-
ing the past century. Unlike the case among the most successful Yiddish writ-
ers, however, the trends influencing most Judezmo writers since World War II
included the repression of features typifying more traditional, ‘Jewishly-styled’
writing with Judaism as the focus, in favor of a linguistic, stylistic, and con-
ceptual re-orientation toward cosmopolitan Western Europe. The result is that
features of the yídishlekh style are still very much alive among Yiddish writers,
while among Judezmo writers they are essentially a thing of the past.
While this analysis has focused on Yiddish and Judezmo, it can serve as a
model for comparative Jewish linguistic studies, also known as Jewish Intra-
linguistics (Gold 1981). If we analyze texts in other Jewish languages, we might
find that they show similar diversity within a given era. For example, Benor’s
research on contemporary Jewish American English has shown that different
groups of Jews use different words of Hebrew and Yiddish origin (Benor 2011)
and that Modern Orthodox Jews use fewer Yiddish words and grammatical
influences than Haredi Jews (Benor 2012, see also Weiser 1995 on Yeshivish).
Perhaps future research will show similar correlations in texts in other Jewish
languages.
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Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 9–75 brill.

Writing More and Less ‘Jewishly’ in Judezmo

For Mikhl Herzog,

Writing Yídishlekh in Yiddish

Weinreich described the distinctive status of Mendele’s translation as a

(1) an approximation of the natural, idiomatic spoken language of what he

Writing a la Djudezma in Judezmo

The closest Judezmo equivalents to the Yiddish term yídishlekh—‘in the

[the latter],18 kestyón),19 and unlike Mendele’s translation, makes no attempt

Yiddish and Judezmo as Languages of Translation

18) Cf. F. cette dernière.

calque-translation style in order to render the message of the source text in

,‫ ומלשון הרע‬,‫ מעין הרע‬,‫ מפגע רע‬,‫משכן רע‬

The Ladino version by Ya‘aqov and Yosef Yiṣḥaq Alshekh is a somewhat

Asa: delantre Ti de nuestros ke nos desvirguensa – [Hebrew equivalent absent]

ivri-taytsh—that is, with traditional Yiddish renditions or interpretations—

Rabbinical and Maskilic-Scientific Texts

33) The work was reprinted in Venice, 1707.

The Judezmo translation reads:

The Judezmo adaptation of this work, published as Livro de los akontesimyentos

35) For references see Bunis 2011a.

Judezmo and Yiddish Stylistics in Original Compositions

Judezmo before the 1492 Expulsion

Old Judezmo Communal Ordinances

Perhaps even more so than in the translations of rabbinical texts in traditional

In this extract, ‘God’ is referred to as Dios rather than traditional Jewish el

38) After González Llubera 1947:105.

Judezmo in the Sixteenth Century

A Popular Anthology of Jewish Law

40) A somewhat different romanization of the text appears in Zemke 2004:363.

Throughout his extensive philosophical tract, which incorporates references

Yiddish in the Sixteenth Century

The Germanic component, although archaic when compared with Modern

42) After Frakes 2004:339. The Hebrew text reads:

As characteristic in a ‘Jewishly-styled’ Yiddish translation of a non-Biblical

44) Adapted from Baumgarten 1993:226.

Late Middle Judezmo

Rhymed Verses by Avraham ben Yiṣḥaq Asa

45) Adapted from Baumgarten 1993:227.

The author’s sarcasm is expressed through popular phrasing (e.g., tishabeav lo

Rhymed Verses by Ḥayyim Yom Ṭov Magula

46) Adapted from Romero 1988:141–146.

47) After Frakes 2004:836.

Modern Judezmo of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

48) After Frakes 2004:771.

of nineteenth-century Sarajevo incorporated such devices when explaining

The passage is introduced with words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin often used

50) Cf. ʾAšrexa Yiśra⁠ʾel (Deut. 33:29), ʾAšrehem Yiśra⁠ʾel in numerous midrashim.

Provis munchus ‘many poor’ is a calque of Hebrew ʿaniyim rabbim, illustrat-

Although Almuli’s passage contains a few Hebraisms—substantives denoting

Stylistically, this announcement is much more ‘Jewishly written’ than most

55) Cf. H. rabbanim, wĕ-hiskimu kones yaḥad bĕ-maʿămad ʾeḥad.

(Exodus 30:15 he-ʿašir lo yarbe wĕ-ha-dal lo yamʿiṭ mi-maḥăṣit ha-šeqel). The

Although mildly influenced by German in phonology (e.g., arbaytn ‘to work’

Containing not a single word of Hebrew origin or a traditional Jewish refer-

variants such as úntershid [G. Unterschied] instead of more traditional Yiddish

Paralleling the dáytshmerish Yiddish treatment by Harmlin, this extract text

The preface contains an allusion to a Yiddish lullaby, known by names such

61) See Bunis (manuscript).

Gottlober’s concluding remarks feature Hebrew-origin phraseology typical of

Here Hebraisms are embedded in snappy conversational language phrased in

Satirical Purim collections are especially plentiful among Judezmo speakers.

The final stanza reads: