Speakers 'Jewishness' as a Criterion for the Classification of Languages PDF

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HISPANIA JUDAICA BULLETIN Articles, Reviews, Bibliography and Manuscripts on Sefarad Editors: Ram Ben-Shalom and Raquel Ibáñez-Sperber Volume 12 5776/2016 Hispania Judaica The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Hispania Judaica is supported by The Francine and Abda...

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HISPANIA JUDAICA BULLETIN Articles, Reviews, Bibliography and Manuscripts on Sefarad Editors: Ram Ben-Shalom and Raquel Ibáñez-Sperber

Volume 12 5776/2016

Hispania Judaica The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hispania Judaica is supported by The Francine and Abdallah Simon Endowment Fund for Sephardic Research

Sponsors:

Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies

Misgav Yerushalayim: The Center for Research and Study of Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage

Copies may be ordered from: Hispania Judaica The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies Rabin Building, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel [email protected]

Printed in Israel

Contents English and Spanish Section Articles D

B , Speakers’ ‘Jewishness’ as a Criterion for the Classification of Languages: The Case of the Languages of the Sephardim

J éH M de Valencia S J

, Judíos de la Corona de Castilla en el Reino 59

O , On a Pious Man, Adulterous Wife, and the Pleasure of Preaching to Others in Yitshaq Ibn Sahula’s Meshal ha-Qadmoni

103

N N , The Many Lives of Two Portuguese Conversos: Miguel Fernandes and Rui Teixeira in the Tribunal of the Holy Office in Rome 127

J éA R S T , The Balkans as a Place of Passage between the West and the East: An Itinerary of the Portuguese Conversos to and from the Ottoman Empire (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) A

1

Zúñ L español

185

z, Soberanas católicas y judíos en el teatro barroco 207

Bibliography

229

Author’s Guidelines and Transliteration

295

Hebrew Section O S

E , The Study of Science and Philosophy among the Kuzari Circle of Commentators in Provence S , The Law of the Torah and the Laws of the Gentiles in the Thought of R. Moshe Narboni

‫א‬ ‫יט‬

Speakers’ ‘Jewishness’ as a Criterion for the Classification of Languages The Case of the Languages of the Sephardim1 David M. Bunis Marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures, and the 35th anniversary of the establishment of Judezmo Studies, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

During the twentieth century, linguists began to recognize social factors such as gender, occupation, and religious affiliation as valid criteria for the classification of linguistic varieties and groups. One result has been a growing scholarly interest in the language group known as “Jewish languages”. Most research on Jewish languages has sought to identify the structural features shared by the member languages (e.g., Hebrew-Aramaic component, patterns of incorporation of elements from contact languages). The 1

The research undertaken for the present article was supported by Israel Science Foundation grant no. 41105/11a. In collecting the data I made extensive use of the Responsa Project of Bar-Ilan University and the Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) of the Real Academia Española. My thanks to Ivri Bunis for reading an earlier draft and offering valuable comments, and to Mattat Adar-Bunis for her critical reading of a revised version. The Judezmo data here transcribed in italics derive from sources originally appearing in the traditional Hebrew-letter Judezmo alphabet; the romanization is that proposed by Moshe Shaul and accepted by the Israel National Authority for Ladino and Its Culture: ch = [ʧ], dj = [ʤ], h = [χ], i = [i] and [j] (the latter, especially when preceding a vowel), j = [ʒ], k = [k], ny = [ɲ], r = [ɾ], rr = [r] (but note that, since single reš may denote trilled [r] in Hebrew-letter orthography, textual r may in certain instances actually represent spoken [r]), s = [s], sh = [ʃ], u = [u] and [w], y = [j] (in initial, final, and certain medial positions), z = [z] (for a summary, see also Aki Yerushalayim year 35, n. 96 [Jerusalem 2014], p. 2). Additionally, d is used to denote occlusive [d], while d denotes fricative [ð] when represented in the Hebrewletter text as ‫ ;ד‬ð when represented by ֿ; and θ, representing [θ], when denoting unpointed ‫ ת‬taw in syllable-final position before a voiceless sound or breath pause; and g denotes occlusive [g], while ̇ denotes fricative [γ] in Southeast (or TurkishGreek) Judezmo dialects. Judezmo citations enclosed within angular parentheses () are reproduced in their original romanization. The stress in words ending in a vowel or -n or -s is generally penultimate, and that in words ending in other consonants is ordinarily ultimate; exceptional stress is indicated here by an acute accent mark over the stressed vowel.

[Hispania Judaica 12 5776/2016]

David M. Bunis

present study departs from this approach, devoting itself instead to the social-psychological perception of the member languages as “Jewish”, and to their designation as such by their speakers and by members of other groups in contact with them. In particular, the article focuses on the designation of the languages used by the Jews of Iberia and their descendants in the Ottoman Empire as “Jewish”. Although spoken Ibero-Romance varieties used by the Jews of medieval Iberia diverged from the varieties used by their non-Jewish neighbors in having distinctive words, forms and constructions which some Spanish Christians were aware of (e.g., ‫מילדאר‬ṭmeldar ‘to read, study a Jewish text’ < JudṬ-LatṬ meletāre < JudṬ-GkṬ meletaō, vsṬ Spanish leer ‘to read’, ‫ברכה‬/berahá ‘benediction’ < Heb. ‫ברכה‬ṭbĕraka, vs. Spanish bendición), they were not recognized by Jews or Christians as distinctive enough from Christian Ibero-Romance to cause members of either group to call them “Jewish”. However, if texts in those varieties were written in the distinctive “Jewish” or Hebrew alphabet, Christians – and under their influence, sometimes Jews – called the language of their texts judiego “Jewish”. This situation changed with the late fifteenth-century expulsions: the distinctive variety of IberoRomance which coalesced among the Iberian Jewish exiles who found refuge in the Ottoman Empire differed significantly from any other language spoken there, and was only spoken by Jews, eventually causing the language, both in spoken and written form, to be called “Jewish” (eṬgṬ, TkṬ çıfıt, Yahudice, Musevice), thus creating a parallel between that language and other Jewish languages that flowered on “foreign” soil such as Yiddish “Jewish”.

1. Criteria for the Classification of Languages Among the pioneers in the development of structural linguistics in the nineteenth century, the earliest criteria for the classification of languages into groups or families were essentially of two types: genetic (or genealogical), connecting languages on the basis of a common proto-language and thus, as a result, often having cognate lexemes and similar structural features; and typological, referring to shared structural features, but without a common proto-language and thus often lacking cognate lexemes. The first criterion is exemplified in the classification, by early-nineteenth-century maskilim (or adherents of the Haskalah or “Jewish Enlightenment”) and other historians and philologists interested in Sephardic [2]

Speakers’ ‘Jewishness’ as a Criterion for the Classiication of Languages

Jewry, of Judezmo – the traditional language of the Sephardim of the former Ottoman Empire2 – as a Jewish variety of Spanish, the latter being a member of the western branch of the Romance language family and, of the various languages which contributed historically to the creation of medieval Judezmo, that bearing the closest resemblance to it. These scholars thus called Judezmo a “lĕšon Špánien me‘orav (Hebrew) “a mixed language of Spain”, with reference to its place of origin,3 or “den Levantiren Spanisch”,4 with reference to the locale in which this “Spanish” was spoken after the expulsions of the Jews from Iberia in the latefifteenth century. Among such scholars, texts in the language were designated as being “in gemischter spanisch thrkischer Sprache mit hebräischen Lettern” (in mixed Spanish Turkish language with Hebrew letters),5 alluding to the fact that in addition to its predominant Hispanic constituent the language contains a significant Turkish component, and it was traditionally written in Hebrew letters; or in “Judenspanisch” or “Jhdisch=Spanisch”,6 classifying it as a variety of Spanish specific to Jews; or in “a corrupted Spanish”,7 interpreting its divergences from normative Spanish as signs of linguistic degeneration; or simply in “the Spanish language, in Hebrew characters”.8 The criterion of typology does not seem to have played a role in the classification of Judezmo, since basic structures such as the position of subject, verb and object have not been recognized as distinctive in Judezmo; nevertheless, the unique syntax of the variety used to translate Hebrew and Aramaic sacred texts, using the Semitic word order of the original text rather than that natural to Judezmo and thus bringing this variety closer syntactically to Semitic than to Indo-European, has received much discussion. Some scholars, especially Haïm Vidal Sephiha, insist that this calque-translation variety, and it only, be called Ladino – although the latter name has in fact also been used by native speakers to denote other varieties of Judezmo, including everyday, spoken varieties, using Hispanic rather than Semitic syntactic patterns.9 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

Judezmo is also known today by names such as Dju-/Djidió, Ladino, Judeo-Spanish, Spanyol, and others. For example, the term was used by Vienna publisher Aharon Pollack in his Hebrew preface to Yisra’el Bĕkar ayyim’s Vienna 1813 calque Judezmo translation of the Pentateuch (f. [iii]a). See Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 5:2 (1841), pp. 16-18. This designation appeared in the publisher’s description of Yisra’el Bĕxar ayyim’s translation of okmat Yĕhošua‘ ben Sira, Vienna 1818, f. [i]b. For example, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (5:2 [1841], pp. 16-18) reproduced a communication from the Chief Rabbinate of Constantinople in three versions, ‘Das hebräische Original’, the “Jhdisch=Spanische Übersetzung” in the Hebrew alphabet, and “das Judenspanisch” in romanization. The Voice of Jacob 1:3 (1841), p. 21. The Voice of Jacob 1:21 (1842), p. 166. Traditional Sephardic rabbinical usage opposes (Heb.) lĕšon ha-qodeš / (Jud.) [3]

David M. Bunis

In the early twentieth century, linguists recognized some additional criteria for classifying languages as members of larger groups. For example, geographic proximity was a criterion for grouping together languages spoken in a particular region. Such languages sometimes shared lexical and structural features as a result of adaptation and borrowing through the direct interaction of their speakers, although the languages did not necessarily have a common proto-language. Perhaps the best known members of such a group are the languages belonging to the “Balkan Sprachbund”, a language group reflecting a theory developed in the 1920s and 1930s on the basis of nineteenth-century observations on the relationships between languages in areal proximity.10 Since the second half of the twentieth century, some scholars have discussed Judezmo within the context of Balkan languages, some even referring to it as “Balkanspanisch”.11 lashónakódesh “Language of Holiness, Hebrew” and any other language used by Jews. When referring to the traditional language of the Sephardim (here called Judezmo) in this context, Judezmo speakers used la‘az (denoting Ancient Egyptian in Psalms 114:1) when writing in Hebrew, and ladino when using Judezmo. Here are several examples of the use of ladino in the sense of everyday, spoken Judezmo: R. Avraham Palachi, a chief rabbi of Izmir in the 19th century, wrote in his moralistic work Sefer We-hokia Avraham (Salonika 1853, f. 7a) that “el ladino ke avlamos por nuestra parte no es aunado kon otros lugares en kuantos biervos, ke son demudados” “the Ladino that we speak in our parts is not identical with other places in a few words, which are different”. In 1861, R. Eli‘ezer ben ṣem Ṭov Papo of Sarajevo warned that mentioning the name of God was prohibited not only in Hebrew, but also in other, spoken languages such as ladino “Judezmo”, lashón de·los goyim “the language of the [local Slavic] Muslims, Bosnian”, and trukesko “Turkish” (“Enmentar el nombre de el Shem Yidbarah no es asur davká en lashón akódesh salvo en todo modo de lashón es asur, tanto en ladino, komo lo·ke uzan adezir ‘A·la ira del Dio’, i ansí en lashón de·los goyim, ‘Bógame’, ... i ansí si dize en trukesko, ‘Vala bila’” “Mentioning the name of the Holy One Blessed be He is not forbidden only in the Language of Holiness but in any type of language it is forbidden, both in Ladino, as when they say “To God’s Anger”, and the same in the language of the [Slavic] Muslims, “By God”, and also thus if one says in Turkish, “By God”’ (Sefer Dammeseq Eli‘ezer: Ora ayyim, Belgrade 1862, ff. 8a-b). In the twentieth-century popular newspaper El Meseret of Izmir (vol. 23, September 9 1919, p. 40), Isaac Arditi sarcastically described a grumpy rabbinical scholar in his community who “shabad entero ... no aze ke meldar en lashón i en ladino pelear” “the whole Sabbath day … does nothing but study in Hebrew and fight around in Ladino”. 10 E.g., K. Sandfeld, Linguistique balkanique, Paris 1930 (first published in Danish in 1926 as Balkanfilologien en oversigt over dens resultater og problemer, Copenhagen); H.W. Schaller, Die Balkansprachen: Eine Einfuhrung in die Balkanphilologie, Heidelberg 1975. 11 E.g., M. Studemund, ‘Balkanspanisch und Balkanlinguistik: Die balkanspanischen Verba auf -ea’, Forschung und Lehre (Festschrift Johannes Schrcpfer), Hamburg 1975, pp. 400-409. See also M.A. Gabinskij, ‘Die sephardische Sprache aus balkanologischer Sicht’, Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 112 (1996), pp. [4]

Speakers’ ‘Jewishness’ as a Criterion for the Classiication of Languages

The twentieth century saw a growing acceptance by linguists of social factors as criteria which may be used to establish language groups, types or classes. Among such factors are social class, age group, gender group, education type and level, profession or vocation, and ethnic and religious affiliation.12 For example, early on in the twentieth century, linguists began to focus on Judaism or Jewishness as a criterion by which the distinctive languages (and, for some scholars, also dialects of various languages) spoken by Jews could be demarcated as a unique language group. In 1911 Heinrich Loewe (1869-1951) referred to these languages as “Die Sprachen der Juden” (the languages of the Jews).13 Matisyohu/ Matthias Mieses (1885-1945) designated them as “jhdische Dialekte”.14 From the 1940s it became increasingly accepted among scholars of these languages to denote them as “Jewish languages”;15 from the 1980s, some have preferred “languages of the Jews”.16 Since the 1990s, some scholars have referred to Jewish languages as “religiolects”.17 But the usual meaning of lect is “a social or regional variety of speech having a sociolinguistic or functional identity within a speech community”.18 Since languages such as Yiddish and Judezmo are autonomous

12

13 14 15

16

17

18

438-57; V.A. Friedman and B.D. Joseph, ‘Lessons from Judezmo about the Balkan Sprachbund and Contact Linguistics’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 226 (2014), pp. 3-23. Pioneering classics laying the foundations for what has become known as “sociolinguistics” or “the sociology of language” are J. Fishman’s Yiddish in America: Socio-linguistic Description and Analysis, Bloomington and The Hague 1965, Readings in the Sociology of Language, The Hague and Paris 1968, and Sociolinguistics: A Brief Introduction, Rowley, Mass. 1970. H. Loewe, Die Sprachen der Juden, Cologne 1911. M. Mieses, Die Entstehungsursache der jüdischen Dialekte, Vienna 1915. S. Birnbaum, ‘Jewish Languages’, in Essays in Honour of the Very Rev. Dr. J.H. Hertz, I. Epstein et al. ed., London 1942, pp. 51-67; I. Efroykin, ‫אױֿקום און אומקום‬ ‫שּראַ כן און דיאַ לעקטן‬-‫[ ֿון ייִ דישע גלות‬Oyfkum un umkum fun yidishe goles-shprakhen un dialektn] [Rise and fall of Jewish Diaspora languages and dialects], Paris 1951; N. Berggruen, “The Jewish Spoken Languages of the Diaspora as a Source for the Study of Hebrew”, Lešonenu 34 (1970), 165-171 (in Hebrew); H. Rabin, J. Blau, H. Blanc, Sh. Shaked, M. Zand et al., ‘Jewish Languages: The Shared, the Unique and the Problematic’, Pĕ‘amim 1 (1980), pp. 40-57 (in Hebrew). E.g., M. Bar-Asher, ‘Aspects in the Study of the Languages of the Jews and Their Literatures’, Pĕ‘amim 93 (2003), 77-89 (in Hebrew); English translation in Languages and Literatures of Sephardic and Oriental Jews, ed., D.M. Bunis, Jerusalem 2009, pp. *25-41. See for example B. Hary, Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic, Leiden 1992, p. xiii, n. 1; B. Hary and M.J. Wein, “Religiolinguistics: On Jewish-, Christian, and Muslim-Defined Languages”, International Journal for the Sociology of Language 220 (2013), pp. 85-108. lect. (n.d.) American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition (2011) (retrieved July 5 2015 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lect). [5]

David M. Bunis

languages, having unique linguistic structures reflecting independent development over centuries, free during many of those centuries from influence from their nonJewish correlates, German and Spanish, used by discrete speech communities essentially unaffiliated with the speakers of the non-Jewish correlates, and maintaining a primarily Jewish rather than German or Spanish group identity, “religiolect” would not seem to be suitable for classifying Jewish languages such as Judezmo and Yiddish. In 1985 the first – and to my knowledge, still the only – center for research devoted entirely to the scientific analysis of Jewish languages was founded at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Professor Moshe Bar-Asher and colleagues: The Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures / ‫המרכז ללשונות‬ ‫היהודים וספרויותיהם‬. It is currently directed by Professor Ofra Tirosh-Becker. The existence of the center rests upon the recognition by its scholars and associates that the separate religious-ethnic-national affiliation traditionally shared by the speakers of all the unique languages which arose among Jewish ethnic subgroups led to the influence on all of those languages of a common body of Hebrew and Aramaic sacred texts and other national-religious literature, of parallel varieties of vernacular language traditionally used in the study of the traditional literature, and of shared religious, national and cultural concepts, and common historical antecedents, with which the speakers of all those languages traditionally identified. Such influences are among the primary factors which led to the structural distinctiveness of the languages vis à vis their non-Jewish correlates, and to a significant measure of structural and conceptual similarity shared by those languages, enabling linguists to demarcate them as members of a structurally and especially socially-defined “Jewish language group”, just as analogous criteria permit linguists to recognize other religiously-defined language groups such as the “Christian languages”, “Muslim languages”, “Buddhist languages”, “Hindu languages”, and so on. More specifically, the rationale for the existence of The Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures is the belief that there is such a thing as a “Jewish language” – or a “language of Jews”, as some prefer – the existence of which can be established through comparison with other Jewish languages and in contrast with the non-Jewish correlates of those languages, using linguistic criteria such as shared structural characteristics; similar historical development, partially resulting from parallel language-contact experiences and multilingualism types; the cultivation of parallel social...