Jewish Languages and Book Culture

A fascinating collection examining the spread of books in Jewish vernacular languages and Hebrew characters.

From Cairo Genizah to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, the spread of books in Jewish vernacular languages and Hebrew characters offers an extraordinary insight into the linguistic richness of Jewish life. For over two millennia, Jewish communities have used languages other than Hebrew for daily oral communication, including Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-French, Judeo-Italian, Yiddish, and Ladino. However, they used the Hebrew alphabet to write these languages down and developed sophisticated systems to transmit texts in them. Many of these vernacular languages also became languages of book culture.

The Bodleian Libraries’ collections host an unparalleled collection of texts in Judeo-languages, giving a picture of how these works were produced and communicated. As some of these languages are now extinct or moribund, these writings are also important testimonies to lost cultures. Generously illustrated and ranging in time from the Middle Ages to the Emancipation, this collection of essays showcases important hallmarks in the intellectual and social history of Jewish culture.

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger is president of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford.

César Merchán-Hamann is the Victor Blank Hebraica and Judaica curator in the Bodleian Library and director of the Leopold Muller Memorial Library at the University of Oxford.