Contact and Ideology in a Multilingual Community: Yiddish and Hebrew Among the Ultra-Orthodox 9781501505300, 9781501514401

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Dalit Assouline Contact and Ideology in a Multilingual Community

Language Contact and Bilingualism

Editor Yaron Matras

Volume 16

Dalit Assouline

Contact and Ideology in a Multilingual Community Yiddish and Hebrew Among the Ultra-Orthodox

ISBN 978-1-5015-1440-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0530-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0528-7 ISSN 2190-698X Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Cover image: Anette Linnea Rasmus/Fotolia Typesetting: Konvertus, Haarlem Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Acknowledgments 

 VII

 IX

Abbreviations 

 XI

Notes on terminology and pronunciation  Introduction 

 1

1 Language and ideology in the speech community   27

2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking  3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane  4 Speaking in the voice of the other  5 The impact of gender 

 63

 93

6 Processes of lexical borrowing 

 125

Contact and ideology: Conclusion 

 155

References  Index 

 171

 159

 45

 5

Acknowledgments Many people have helped me during the writing of this book. I am grateful to ­Benjamin Brown, Isabelle Buchstaller, Kimmy Caplan, Jonathan Garb, Bracha ­Fischler, Uri Mor and Na’ama Pat-El for sharing their knowledge with me. I am especially grateful to Moshe Taube, Chava Turniansky, Ruth Berman, Sarah Benor and Mordechay Mishor for reading the entire manuscript and making invaluable comments. I also thank the series editor, Yaron Matras, for his important comments. My deepest gratitude goes to my teachers, Chava Turniansky and Moshe Taube, for their generosity and support. It was they who introduced me to the world of Yiddish, and they embody the virtues to be found in Yiddish – a profound wisdom, a sense of humor and mentshlekhkayt. My heartfelt gratitude to Ruth Berman, for her wise advice and constant support through the years. I thank my friends at the Department of the Hebrew Language at the University of Haifa, particularly Yael Maschler, Irit Meir, Tamar Zewi and Yehudit Henshke, for their warm assistance. My years of research were supported by a Mandel Scholion post-doctoral fellowship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a Kreitman post-doctoral fellowship at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Finally, I thank my family for their love and support: My parents, Ruti and David Berman, my brothers, Assaf and Yonatan, and their families, and my in-laws, Hadassah and Michael Assouline. This book is dedicated with love to my husband, Yehiel, and our daughters Roni, Avigail, and Yael.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-202

Abbreviations 1

first person

2

second person

3

third person

ACC

accusative

CNST

construct

COP

copula

DAT

dative

DIM

diminutive

F

feminine

FUT

future

IMP

imperative

IMPERS impersonal INF infinitive M

masculine

NEG

negation

PASS

passive

PL plural POSS

possessive

PTCP

participle

Q

question particle

REFL

reflexive

REL

relative

SG

singular

DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-203

Notes on terminology and pronunciation Yiddish, a Jewish language of Germanic origin, is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. Today Yiddish is maintained as a spoken language almost exclusively in certain ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States, Israel and Europe. These communities are multilingual: Yiddish speakers also speak the majority language (e. g. American English in the US), and use a Hebrew-Aramaic variety called Loshn-kóydesh (‘the holy tongue’) in ritual and study. In Israel, the majority language is Israeli Hebrew, whose pronunciation differs from that of Loshn-kóydesh. The kinship between the varieties of Hebrew used in the Israeli speech community requires preliminary definitions of the terminology employed in this study, provided in sections 0.1 and 0.2. Section 0.3 describes the transcription and glossing conventions used in the book.

0.1 The three languages of the speech community 0.1.1 Israeli Haredi Yiddish The contemporary Yiddish spoken in ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel will be defined as “Israeli Haredi Yiddish” (hereafter IHY). Haredi (Hebrew, literally ‘reverently fearful’, pl. Haredim) is the preferred term denoting the ultra-Orthodox in contemporary research, also used by the ultra-Orthodox themselves (Heilman 1992: 11–14). Throughout the book I distinguish between IHY and what I term “Documented Yiddish”, referring to the commonly-researched Yiddish spoken in Eastern Europe prior to World War II. This distinction is significant since IHY has undergone various changes under the impact of the majority language, Israeli Hebrew. The results of intensive contact with Israeli Hebrew are evident in the phonological system of IHY, which among most speakers in the analyzed corpus is practically identical with that of Israeli Hebrew, as well as in its lexicon, which contains numerous Hebrew borrowings. In addition to the influence of Hebrew, IHY is characterized by vast variation in phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax. It also manifests a great deal of linguistic simplification, such as the loss of case markers and the rise of periphrastic constructions (Assouline 2014a). IHY includes two main dialects, “Hasidic Yiddish” and “Jerusalemite Yiddish”, each deriving from geographically distinct European forerunners (Assouline 2010b). Originally, documented Yiddish dialects were divided into three major regional Eastern ­ European varieties: Northeastern Yiddish (so-called ‘Lithuanian’), Central Yiddish (so-called ‘Polish’ or ‘Hungarian’) and Southeastern Yiddish (sometimes called ‘Ukrainian’). Today, these dialects have acquired a DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-204

XII 

 Notes on terminology and pronunciation

new function, since they are no longer geographical markers but rather serve as communal dialects, marking sect affiliation as well as ethnic background (Isaacs 1999b: 114–117; Blanc 1964; Britain & Trudgill 1999: 245; Assouline 2015a). Jerusalemite Yiddish (also called Litvish, i. e. ‘Lithuanian’ Yiddish) is derived from Northeastern Yiddish. Its speakers are referred to as “Jerusalemites”, forming a distinctive group within the Haredi community, known for its religious and ideological radicalism (1.1). Hasidic Yiddish developed mainly from Central Yiddish dialects, and is currently spoken in most Hasidic sects (such as Belz, Tzanz and Satmar). A third dialect, derived from Southeastern Yiddish, is also found in the speech community, but is hardly represented in the corpus analyzed in this study.1 The main phonological distinctions between Jerusalemite Yiddish and Hasidic Yiddish concern the pronunciation of vowels. Additional salient dialectal differences in the corpus are manifested in the lexicon, such as the presence of Arabic and Judeo-Spanish elements in Jerusalemite Yiddish (cf. Kosover 1966).

0.1.2 Israeli Hebrew In this book, the term “Israeli Hebrew” refers primarily to spoken Hebrew used for daily communication. Hebrew spoken by Haredim may be characterized by certain unique lexical and stylistic features, but its pronunciation is usually similar to the common Israeli or “General Israeli” pronunciation (Blanc 1968: 244; Bolozky 2013b). Most significantly, even if the Haredi pronunciation of Israeli Hebrew differs slightly from that of non-Haredi Israelis, it is always clearly distinct from the pronunciation of Loshn-kóydesh, as can be seen in the following section. The term “Modern Hebrew” is also used in the book, mostly when referring to Hebrew lexical elements (or their meanings) that are not documented prior to 1750 (according to the periodization of the Academy of the Hebrew Language; see Cohen 2009). These lexical elements are considered “Modern” since they date back to the first attempts to use Hebrew – written and spoken – in modern contexts, and their usage is not documented in earlier historical layers of the language. The distinction between “Modern Hebrew” and “Israeli Hebrew” avoids the anachronistic use of “Israeli Hebrew” when referring to attempts to 1 The contemporary Haredi dialect, derived from southeastern Yiddish, has few speakers in comparison to the other two dialects, and many of its speakers who belong to one or another Hasidic sect are gradually changing to the prevalent Hasidic dialect, derived from Central Yiddish. Other speakers associated with the Jerusalemite groups have adopted many features of Jerusalemite usage into their dialect. See also Assouline 2015a on the partial maintenance of southeastern features in an American Hasidic sect.



0.1 The three languages of the speech community 

 XIII

renew spoken Hebrew before the establishment of the State of Israel. Significantly, unlike the term “Israeli Hebrew”, which refers primarily to Israeli pronunciation, the term “Modern Hebrew” designates only the historical dating of the lexical elements.

0.1.3 Loshn-kóydesh In this study the term Loshn-kóydesh refers to Hebrew (or Aramaic) articulated in the Ashkenazi pronunciation, which is the traditional pronunciation of the Jewish communities of Eastern and Central Europe (Morag 2007; Glinert 2013). The basic differences between the Ashkenazi pronunciation and that of Israeli Hebrew are depicted in Table 1. Throughout the book, the distinct pronunciation will be the main factor defining a spoken Hebrew word, segment or text as Israeli Hebrew (IH) or as Loshn-kóydesh (LK). Note that the Ashkenazi pronunciation includes three varieties, conforming to the three major Eastern Yiddish dialects: Northeastern, Southeastern and Central (NEY, SEY, and CY in Table 1). Table 1: Major distinctions between the Israeli Hebrew and the Ashkenazi pronunciations Israeli pronunciation (IH)

Ashkenazi pronunciation (LK) NEY

Stress mainly ultimate Realization of vowels (the Tiberian vocalization system): Qamatz [a] Holam [o] Tzere usually [e], sometimes [ey]2 Shuruq-Qubbutz [u] Realization of the historically [t] fricative taw

CY

SEY

mainly penultimate

[o] [ey] [ey] [u]

[u] [oy] [ay] [i] [s]

[u] [oy] [ey] [i]

Consider, for example, the IH and LK realizations of the first two words of the Hebrew Bible (the LK representing the northeastern Ashkenazi pronunciation):

2 In Israeli pronunciation with Ashkenazi substrate (i. e., not Mizrahi Hebrew varieties), the Tzere may be pronounced as [ey] in some cases, e. g. téyša (‘nine’). See also Neuman 2012.

XIV 

‫בראשית‬ berešít beréyšis In the beginning

IH LK

1. 2. 3. 4.

 Notes on terminology and pronunciation

‫ברא‬ bará bóro created.3sg.m

Four pronunciation distinctions are evident here: Ultimate stress in IH versus penultimate stress in LK. Tzere realized as [e] in IH (berešít), and as [ey] in LK (beréyšis). Qamatz realized as [a] in IH (bará), and as [o] in LK (bóro). Historically fricative taw pronounced [t] in IH (berešít) and [s] in LK (beréyšis).

In the IHY speech community, the most common realizations of LK are the northeastern pronunciation used by the Jerusalemites, and the central pronunciation used by members of most Hasidic sects. The southeastern pronunciation is also used in some Hasidic sects.

0.2 The Hebrew component of Yiddish In addition to the two Hebrew varieties used in the IHY speech community, a third Hebrew pronunciation system is found in the Hebrew component of Yiddish. This component, termed “Merged Hebrew” by Max Weinreich, consists of Hebrew words and short phrases that form an integral part of Yiddish (Weinreich 1980: 351–353). The pronunciation of such Hebrew loanwords in Yiddish is very similar to that of LK (or “Whole Hebrew”, according to Weinreich). The main difference between these two pronunciation systems concerns the maintenance of unstressed vowels. These are maintained in LK, but neutralized in Merged Hebrew. Consider the following example, where three distinct pronunciations of the word ‘Sabbath’ demonstrate the difference between the three pronunciation systems of Hebrew elements in the speech community. Pronunciation of ‘Sabbath’: IH

LK

Hebrew loanword (Merged Hebrew)

šabát

šábos

šábes

The word ‘Sabbath’ is pronounced šabát in IH. When this word appears in a Hebrew segment pronounced as LK, such as a biblical verse recited out loud, it is pronounced šábos. When this word appears in a Yiddish conversation, it is



0.3 Transcription and glossing conventions 

 XV

pronounced šábes, with a neutralization of the unstressed final vowel (see also Katz 1993; Bunis 2013).

0.3 Transcription and glossing conventions The transcription of Yiddish and Hebrew elements in this book is a broad transcription. The Yiddish transcription is based on the YIVO transliteration rules, with three modifications: [c] is used instead of [ts], [š] instead of [sh] and [x] instead of [kh] (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: xxi). The same system is used to transcribe all Hebrew varieties. In the Yiddish examples, Hebrew words and segments pronounced in the Israeli pronunciation are marked in bold (excluding the rare cases when IH pronunciation coincides with LK or Merged Hebrew pronunciation, 6.2.1). Their glosses are enclosed with (superscript) IH. Loshn-kóydesh segments in the Yiddish examples are italicized, and their glosses are enclosed with (superscript) LK. Individual speakers are noted with Has. (‘Hasidic’) or Jer. (‘Jerusalemite’), and M (‘man’) or W (‘woman’). For example: Jer. W = Jerusalemite woman.

Introduction This book explores the impact of ideology on language contact in the context of a linguistic minority that opposes the majority language. The minority language in question is the Yiddish spoken by several ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities residing in Israel. These small and segregated communities maintain Yiddish as a spoken language in daily use, in spite of the ever-growing pressure of the majority language – Israeli Hebrew. Opposition to Israeli Hebrew is especially strong in extremist groups among ultra-Orthodox Yiddish speakers, who often define themselves as “zealots” (kanóim) and, considering Israeli Hebrew to be a profanity, struggle to maintain Yiddish as a viable, ideally exclusive means of everyday interaction. However, like other Israeli ultra-Orthodox Yiddish speakers, even these zealots are in fact bilinguals who use Israeli Hebrew on a daily basis. Linguistically, extensive contact with the majority language has had a marked effect on their Yiddish, so that even the Yiddish spoken by a so-called zealot is heavily impacted by Israeli Hebrew.

1 The book’s objective The main objective of this book is to examine how speakers from “zealous” groups cope with the conflict between a declared linguistic ideology and the reality of language contact. How does their resistance to Israeli Hebrew withstand the fact that their Yiddish is replete with Israeli Hebrew loanwords? And how does linguistic ideology affect their patterns of code-switching? Negative attitudes towards a dominant language in a bilingual setting are not unique to the situation analyzed in the present context (e. g. Edwards 2010: 109). However, two factors mark the zealous case as special, the first of which is the existence of a structured ideological doctrine opposing Israeli Hebrew. Opposition to Israeli Hebrew, together with denunciation of the Jewish state, comprise the two defining pillars of zealous ideology, distinguishing members of this group from other ultra-Orthodox Yiddish speakers. This doctrine renders the use of Israeli Hebrew in certain contexts a severe aberration from sociolinguistic norms, to the extent that (in certain “sacred” settings) it is regarded as an act of blasphemy. The second factor complicating the sociolinguistic situation of the community in question derives from the similarity between Israeli Hebrew and the sacred Hebrew variety, Loshn-kóydesh (LK), to which its members have access. In order to provide direct evidence for the impact of language ideology under these circumstances, the study documented below focuses on a corpus of public DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-001

2 

 Introduction

speech delivered in Yiddish by members of zealous communities. In the formal context of public speaking, speakers endeavor to avoid overt interference from Israeli Hebrew, thus providing a corpus that is particularly well suited to the study of contact and ideology. Specifically, in these contexts, public speakers avoid free code-switching between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew of the kind common in informal communicative contexts, and modify their pronunciation of some Israeli Hebrew loanwords in order to adhere to zealous sociolinguistic norms. In other words, these bilingual speakers try to deactivate one of their languages when speaking in public, even though their audience is also bilingual (Grosjean 2013). Yet this attempted deactivation is undermined by the fact that the public speakers continue to use LK, which, aside from its distinct pronunciation, may be indistinguishable from Israeli Hebrew. The various contrasts and clashes between the functional dominance, negative image and lexico-grammatical similarity of Israeli Hebrew in relation to the sacred variety of the “same” language underlie the complex patterns of contact revealed by the documented corpus. A further sociolinguistic facet of the contact situation considered here is the perception of ‘the holy tongue’ as a masculine language. In this highly traditional society, the identification of a given linguistic variety as “masculine” has far-reaching implications for whether, how, and to what extent it is used by both men and women. In the triglossic setting examined in this study, each of the three varieties is ideologically charged: Yiddish is the beloved minority language, constructing and perpetuating a distinct religious and ethnic identity; ‘the holy tongue’ is a prestigious sacred variety, used mainly in domains of ritual and study; and Israeli Hebrew is the abhorred majority language, whose negative image conflicts with its social and functional dominance. In such a complex web of intense sociolinguistic interrelations, speakers’ linguistic choices are often calculated and deliberate, aimed at controlling or modifying certain salient contact phenomena. Analysis of these attempts to monitor language use forms the key motif of the present volume.

2 Outline of contents The interplay of ideology and language contact is addressed from several different perspectives over the course of the book. The first three chapters introduce the overall sociolinguistic setting, the speech community analyzed, and the sociocultural attributes of the languages involved. Chapter 1 presents the sociolinguistic background of this unique situation of language contact in Israel, focusing on the language ideology underlying it. Chapter 2 describes the characteristics of the corpus analyzed, which provides a relatively unusual type of documentation



2 Outline of contents 

 3

in the field of contact linguistics in general and in code-switching research in particular since it consists of formal genres of public speaking rather than everyday conversational interactions. Chapter 3 discusses the ultra-Orthodox distinction between Israeli Hebrew and ‘the holy tongue’, taking into account the difficulties involved in putting into effect such an ideologically motivated distinction in real life. The choice of public addresses and speeches affords an invaluable opportunity to study what John J. Gumperz termed “metaphorical” switching, where language alternation alludes to social and cultural attributes associated with these languages (Gumperz 1982: 60–61; Blom and Gumperz 1972). In the public speaker’s uninterrupted stream of speech, many motivations for code-switching found in daily conversations, such as changes in the discourse setting, are simply irrelevant. As a result, the symbolic attributes of the Hebrew varieties constitute the main factor shaping code-switching patterns in this corpus. These patterns are analyzed in Chapters 4 and 5, as follows. Chapter 4 discusses the influence of the speakers’ linguistic ideology on their code-switching between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew. This analysis is based primarily on Shana Poplack’s distinction between “flagged” and “smooth” code-switching, referring to the connection between the saliency and the rhetorical functions of a given switch (Poplack 1987: 2004). The cautious use of Israeli Hebrew in public contexts leads to a flagged code-switching pattern, where Israeli Hebrew segments serve clear rhetorical functions, deriving from the negative symbolic attributes of this language in the zealous community. Chapter 5 describes the effect of strict gender boundaries on language use, primarily with respect to the gender-based methods of code-switching involving ‘the holy tongue’. The identification of ‘the holy tongue’ as masculine leads to a smooth code-switching pattern among men, in sharp contrast to the flagged pattern found among women using the same sacred Hebrew variety. Chapter 6 deals with the impact of ideology on lexical borrowing from Israeli Hebrew, with particular attention given to speakers’ attempts to mask the Israeli origin of certain loanwords. Similarly to code-switching, lexical borrowing is also influenced by linguistic ideologies, mainly due to users’ intensified meta-linguistic awareness in the context of public speaking. Thus, commonplace loanwords from IH may be avoided or altered in public contexts. Finally, the conclusion discusses the impact of ideology on language contact in the ultra-Orthodox zealous context. In this extremely ideologically charged setting, speakers’ deliberate code-switching and borrowing patterns produce an explicit demonstration of the extent to which language attitudes and ideologies can affect the way people in fact speak.

1 Language and ideology in the speech community What happens when a linguistic minority zealously opposes the majority language? Can radical ideology affect the outcomes of language contact? And if so – to what extent can linguistic awareness influence performance? These questions have intrigued me since I first began my fieldwork among Yiddish-speaking ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel. These communities maintain a unique way of life, which they perceive as the only true Jewish way of life. They keep to secluded neighborhoods, sustain their own separate education system and public institutions, and strive to remain impervious to the impact of the modern world. The conservative nature of these communities is clearly apparent to the outside observer, manifested by their modest, old-fashioned Eastern European style of dress, as well as their maintenance of their traditional Jewish Eastern European Germanic language – Yiddish (Isaacs 1998, 1999ab). Among these Yiddish-speaking communities, some stand out not only in their adherence to Yiddish but also in their rejection of the majority language, Israeli Hebrew. These are extremist groups and sects that belong to a small, separatist anti-Zionist faction of ultra-Orthodox society. As stated in the introduction, in these groups, Yiddish serves as a powerful symbol of a sacred Jewish traditional life-style, whereas Israeli Hebrew is seen as a corrupt medium, perceived as embodying the dangers and temptations of the modern secular world, as well as the heretical Zionist ideology of the Jewish state. Yet, as we have noted, similarly to other ultra-Orthodox Israeli Yiddish speakers, members of such extremist groups are, in fact, bilinguals who use, even if reluctantly, the socially dominant language – Israeli Hebrew. Moreover, the Yiddish they speak is clearly influenced by Israeli Hebrew, so that their declared linguistic ideology is at odds with the reality of language contact in Israel. This tension finds its clearest expression in various genres of public speech. In everyday situations, speakers are generally tolerant towards using Israeli Hebrew or mixing it in their Yiddish, at least when considered necessary. In public contexts, however, Israeli Hebrew is perceived as non-legitimate, and speakers are at pains to downplay its effect on their language, as they are to reduce other overt signs of general Israeli society on how they conduct their lives. As a result, more monitored and formal situations of language use, in which speakers’ awareness of their community’s declared language ideology is heightened, provide an ideal context for studying the impact of ideology on synchronic contact phenomena.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-002

6 

 1 Language and ideology in the speech community

1.1 The Yiddish-speaking hardcore in Israeli Haredi society The extremist groups where Yiddish is best maintained constitute a small minority within Israeli ultra-Orthodox or Haredi society. While many ultra-Orthodox might be ambivalent towards the Jewish state, they nevertheless vote in Israeli elections and accept government funding for their schools. Only a faction, called the Edah Haredit (or éyde xaréydis, ‘the Haredi community’, henceforth the Edah), overtly opposes the Jewish state, and its members do not vote or accept government funding. The Edah is a communal organization, numbering around 15,000 members, demographically only a small fraction of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox, who together make up approximately 8 %–11 % of the Jewish population of Israel of around six million (Malach, Choshen & Cahaner 2016; Caplan 2011: 187; Gurovich & Cohen-Kastro 2004; Friedman et al. 2011. See also Brown 2000: 318; Friedman 1975). Members of the Edah are concentrated primarily in Haredi enclaves in Jerusalem and the neighboring city of Bet Shemesh. These are crowded urban neighborhoods, considered a Haredi “holy space” segregated from the rest of the city, where residents live within walking distance from the main communal institutions such as synagogues, schools, ritual baths, specialized shops etc. (Glinert & Shilhav 1991: 62–63; Shilhav 1998: 3). Like most other Haredim, their economic situation is uncertain due to low levels of participation in the labor market and an exceptionally high birthrate (Stadler 2012: 38). Some of the families I interviewed in the course of my fieldwork (between the years 2000 and 2012) lived in conditions of what is usually considered poverty, though communal norms prevent them from identifying themselves as such (cf. Ben-Rafael 1994: 101). Despite their being a small minority, the extremist groups of the Edah occupy a uniquely significant position in ultra-Orthodox society due to their religious and ideological fundamentalism. Their total rejection of secular and modern values, as well as their extremely narrow manner of interpreting and observing Jewish law, endow them with respect and esteem on the part of many other Haredi groups. Moreover, the isolationist nature of these groups has contributed to the maintenance of Yiddish inside the Edah, which currently comprises the hardcore of Israeli Haredi Yiddish speakers. Consider, first, the place of these speakers within the broader Israeli Jewish sociolinguistic context. In Israel, the dominant language is Israeli Hebrew, among both secular and religious (not ultra-Orthodox but observant) Jews, who constitute about 90 % of the Jewish population. Significantly, Israeli Hebrew is also the dominant language among the other 8 %–11 %, who are defined as ultra-Orthodox (see below). In other words, Yiddish is not only a minority language within the general Israeli context, but also within Israeli ultra-Orthodox society. At first glance, the Haredim may seem like a monolithic and strictly religious group, all



1.1 The Yiddish-speaking hardcore in Israeli Haredi society 

 7

dressed in black, typically covered from head to foot. However, Israeli Haredim constitute a varied and highly fragmented society, divided into dozens of streams and sects (Stadler 2012: 36–37; Bogoch 1999: 131–132). The basic division of Israeli Haredi society conforms to the two major Jewish ethno-cultural sub-groups of Ashkenazim and Sephardim. The Sephardic Haredim, originating from the Middle East and North Africa, form about a third of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox population, and speak Israeli Hebrew. The Ashkenazi Haredim, originating from Eastern Europe, are further divided into two fairly equal-sized groups of Hasidic and Litvish (‘Lithuanian’) Jews, most of whom also speak Israeli Hebrew ­(Geocartography 2000: 68).1 The Litvish streams emphasize the study of the Torah, and the backbone of their society is the traditional educational institution known as the yeshiva (Isaacs 1999a: 12). The Hasidic sects, by contrast, are closely-knit groups united around a spiritual leader (the rebbe) that maintain close affinity with their idealized Eastern European past, far more than do their Litvish counterparts. This affinity is manifested in the names of the various Hasidic sects, typically deriving from the Eastern European town or village from which they originated (such as the Belz and Vizhnitz Hasidic sects, named after Belz and Vyzhnytsia in present day Ukraine), as well as in the deliberate efforts of Hasidim to replicate the ancestral way of life, maintaining as many of its traditions and customs as possible (Isaacs 1999a). Thus, while the Litvishe wear modern suits and speak Israeli Hebrew, some Hasidim preserve not only their ancestors’ oldfashioned attire but also their language – Yiddish. However, this linguistic conservation is not equally manifested in all Hasidic sects. In some Hasidic sects the dominant language is Israeli Hebrew, while in others Yiddish is more thoroughly maintained, albeit alongside common use of Israeli Hebrew (Isaacs 1999b: 108). Yiddish is currently best preserved in segregated Hasidic or semi-Hasidic groups that belong to or are ideologically affiliated with the Edah. As noted above, due to their anti-Zionist ideological orientation, these groups try to avoid use of Israeli Hebrew as much as possible and speak primarily Yiddish. Figure 1.1 graphically depicts the status of Yiddish as a minority language in Israel. The focus of the present study is on the inner circle of hardcore Yiddish speakers (no. 1 in Figure 1.1). That is, the bulk of the speakers from whom the analyzed corpus was derived belongs to this minority within a minority, namely the extremist groups of the Edah, where Yiddish is the dominant language.

1 The rough estimate of three groups relatively equal in size is accepted among most Israeli researchers of Haredi society, though it is not based on firm statistical data (Kimmy Caplan 2012, personal communication. See additional statistical data in Gottlieb 2007: 11–13).

8 

 1 Language and ideology in the speech community

1 2 3 4

1 = Yiddish-speaking hardcore 2 = Ultra-Orthodox, speaking Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew 3 = Ultra-Orthodox, speaking Israeli Hebrew 4 = General Israeli Jewish population, speaking mostly Israeli Hebrew (Ben-Rafael 1994: 111-120) Figure 1.1: Ultra-Orthodox Yiddish in the Israeli Jewish sociolinguistic context

This hardcore of Yiddish speakers includes two major sub-groups, labeled “the Jerusalemites” and “the Hungarians” respectively (Friedman 1991: 7). The “Jerusalemites” (yeršláymers, tšálmers) are descendants of the Perushim, an ascetic group that left Lithuania at the beginning of the nineteenth century to settle in the holy cities of Safed and Jerusalem. The “Hungarians” continue the extremist tradition of pre-war Hungarian Jewish Orthodoxy and Hasidic sects, representing an absolute rejection of modernity and Zionism (Katz 1998). Significantly, members of both the Jerusalemite and Hungarian groups are often referred to as ‘zealots’ (kanóim), a term used by insiders and outsiders alike, and one which indicates extreme religious and ideological fundamentalism, and, even more specifically, a clear anti-Zionist stance (cf. Almond, Appleby and Sivan 2003: 35). Some of the contemporary Jerusalemite and Hungarian groups where Yiddish is best maintained are the communities of the Prúshim, Brisk, Masmídim (Kal Adas Yerusholaim), Anshey Yerusholaim, Tiferes Yerusholaim, Tóyre VeYíre and Ohel Sore (the last two are offshoots of Neturei Karta); and the Hasidic groups of Toldos Aharon, Toldos Avrom-Yitzchok, Satmar, Kal Khasidey Yerusholaim, Mishkenoys HaRoim, Jerusalemite Breslev and Dushinski. These groups are distinct from general Haredi society not only in their anti-Zionist stance, but also in their customs and appearance. For example, some of the men wear light-colored



1.2 Haredi ideology and zealous ideology 

 9

traditional Jerusalemite attire, which developed in nineteenth-century Palestine under Ottoman rule. The women in these groups dress extremely modestly. Most ‘Hungarian’ married women regularly shave their heads, while all married women cover their hair with a dark kerchief rather than with a wig as is common in many other Haredi groups. More importantly, members of the Edah and its related groups are also distinct in their extreme segregation from the outside world. The substantial barriers surrounding these groups distinguish them not only from general Israeli society, but also from other Haredim, with their stubborn maintenance of Yiddish serving as one of these barriers.

1.2 Haredi ideology and zealous ideology The maintenance of Yiddish within extremist groups reflects several conservative aspects of Haredi ideology in general, supporting Yiddish use, as well as a specific aspect of the zealous ideology, namely opposition to Israeli Hebrew. Taking a neutral definition of “ideology” as “a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class” (Eagleton 1991: 1), it turns out that describing this “body of ideas” in the Haredi context is no easy task. One such difficulty arises from the denial on the part of the Haredim themselves that such an ideology even exists, under the protest that they are no more than modest followers of past generations of Jews, preserving their traditions and, as such, essentially no different in their beliefs and traditional worldview than their forbearers. Most scholars of Haredi society, however, reject this claim, and endeavor to extract a Haredi “body of ideas” indirectly, from sociological and anthropological research, since most Haredi writings offer no explicit formulation of or motivations for any such ideology.2 The Haredi claim of continuity is not entirely unfounded: the customs and religious practice of Ashkenazi Haredim are indeed similar to those of their Eastern European ancestors of 300 years ago. However, sociological and historical studies of Haredi society consider its formation a modern phenomenon, describing Haredism as a reaction to late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century Jewish enlightenment, the Reform movement, acculturation and assimilation (Katz 1986; Samet 1988; Heilman 1982). Against the threat of these new forces, a reactionary ultra-conservative Haredi ideology was shaped, uncompromisingly rejecting modernity and the changes it carries in light of a guiding principle: “All innovation is prohibited by the Torah!” (Silber 1992). The conservativeness of contemporary Haredi society is perhaps its most significant ideological principle, affecting 2 Some references to principles of Haredi ideology (or Hashkófe, ‘view’) appear in the letters and speeches of the “Lithuanian” leader Rabbi Elazar Shach (1899–2001). See Brown 2007.

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many aspects of daily life including the maintenance of Yiddish. This principle is based on the belief in the “decline of the generations” (Heb. yeridat ha-dorot), according to which every generation is inferior to its predecessors. Benjamin Brown stresses the central role of this belief in contemporary Haredi ideology, pointing to its clear contrast with the modern concept of progress (Brown 2007: 58, Brown 2000: 331; see also Isaacs 1999a: 18). From a sociolinguistic perspective, it is clear that the belief in the superiority of past generations is also applied to the domain of language, so that Yiddish acquires prestige and even some sanctity due to its being the language of past, hence superior, generations (Fishman 2002: 131; and see 1.4.1 below). A second major facet of Haredi traditionalism is its rejection of modernity, which, however, in contemporary Haredi society is not absolute (as it is, for example, among the Amish) but rather differential, rejecting modern culture and values, but accepting instrumental components of modernity (Shilhav 1991: 33, Shilhav 1993: 157. See also Friedman 1986: 239). This dialectical attitude is manifested, for example, with regard to modern science: Haredim make use of modern technology, medicine and other “practical” outcomes of scientific research, but reject scientific theory since it threatens the ultra-Orthodox world view. However, the distinction between the instrumental aspects of modernity (which are allowed) and its cultural values (which are forbidden), while perhaps clear in theory, is not completely feasible in terms of practical implementation (Shilhav 1991: 40). This same difficulty also arises on a sociolinguistic level with regard to Israeli Hebrew. Is Israeli Hebrew a modern phenomenon? And if so, how can one draw the line between its legitimate instrumental usage and the threat it poses to cultural values? As we shall see, this duality underlies some of the contact phenomena discussed in the following chapters. Haredi traditionalism, manifested by adherence to past practices as well as by rejection of modernity and change, is possibly the nucleus of Haredi ideology. In the more traditionalistic (mainly Hasidic) sects, this ideology tends to influence communal linguistic attitudes and even patterns of language usage, resulting in a favoring of the maintenance of Yiddish. On the other hand, another ideological factor appears to play an even more crucial role in shaping Haredi language attitudes: the anti-Zionist stance. In its extremist form, as noted earlier, anti-Zionist ideology is shared only by members of zealous sects such as those belonging to the Edah. In the analyzed corpus, the anti-Zionist stance is clearly expressed by the public speakers, who often refer to modern secular Israeli society by the term ciyóynim (‘Zionists’), a derogatory term in this community (cf. p. 127), as are parallel terms such as kófrim, apikórsim (both meaning ‘heretics’), rešóim (‘villains’), and xófšim or fráye (both meaning ‘free’ i. e. secular). Sometimes these terms are followed by curses, such as yemax-šmóm (‘may their names be erased’), as in the highly expressive phrase (from a political speech delivered by a Jerusalemite man in 1992) apikór-



1.3 Haredi triglossia: The three languages of the speech community 

 11

sim kófrim gmúrim vešém rešóim yírkov yemáx šimóm vezíxrom (‘heretics, complete heretics, may the name of the villains rot and their names and memory be erased’). As opposed to general Haredi ideology, which, as we have seen, has no formal doctrine, the fundamentals of zealous ideology are set out in several written sources. The main formulator of the zealous doctrine was Yoel Teitelbaum (1887–1979), the founder of the Satmar Hasidic sect, who expressed his ideas in his book Vayoel Moshe (1961), where he claims that Zionism is a heretical movement, since the end of Jewish exile can come about only through divine intervention. According to Teitelbaum and others, human efforts to construct a Jewish state are sheer blasphemy, since such a state can be realized only in the messianic era, as part of the redemption of the Jewish people (Ravitzky 1996: 40–78). This view is demonstrated in the public corpus, for example, by expressions such as medínas isróel bimeéyro tibóteyl (‘the State of Israel, may it soon be abolished’). Teitelbaum’s book includes a section titled “Treatise on the Holy Tongue”, in which he denounces Modern Hebrew as a demonic language, forbidding its usage (see 3.1 below). In the sects influenced by the zealous doctrine, this stance is a significant factor supporting the use of Yiddish rather than Israeli Hebrew. However, even inside the Edah, the ideological rejection of Israeli Hebrew is constantly challenged by its social dominance. A zealous ideology may restrict the use of Israeli Hebrew, but it cannot prevent it completely (cf. Edwards 2010: 126). In sum, conservative ideology and zealous ideology represent two factors motivating the maintenance of Yiddish and the rejection of Israeli Hebrew in certain Haredi groups. First, speaking Yiddish corresponds to preservation of the traditional way of life, whereas Modern Hebrew is perceived as a new, and hence inferior, entity. Second, the zealous ideology views the establishment of the Jewish state as a rebellion against God, and its modern language a profanity. Thus far, mention has been made only of Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew, as the two languages spoken in the community. A third language, however, is also used in the community, although in restricted contexts only, yielding a triglossic situation as described in the next section (1.3). The language attitudes and ideologies of this triglossic community are discussed in the final section of this chapter (1.4).

1.3 Haredi triglossia: The three languages of the speech community The Haredi communities in Israel that maintain Yiddish are multilingual: Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew serve them as everyday spoken languages, while they also use Loshn-kóydesh (LK) for purposes of ritual and study. This sociolinguistic situation is not new to Yiddish, a language that has always existed in a ­multilingual

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setting that combined both external bilingualism (Yiddish and non-Jewish coterritorial languages) and internal Jewish diglossia (Yiddish and Hebrew-Aramaic). Specifically, most Yiddish speakers typically had some familiarity with the language of their land of residence, such as Polish or Ukrainian, while many of them, particularly the men, also had some familiarity with LK, the language of Hebrew and Aramaic sacred texts (Weinreich 1980: 247–248). The situation that existed in traditional Ashkenazi communities in the Diaspora continues to exist in many Yiddish-speaking Haredi communities outside Israel, which have maintained the traditional Jewish internal diglossia (Yiddish and LK) in addition to the use of the external ­language, usually English in North-America and England, or Flemish in Belgium. In Israel, however, the sociolinguistic situation is more complex, since the co-territorial language is Israeli Hebrew. As a result, the “external” language is not basically extraneous, like Polish in the past or English today, since it is related in grammatical structure, lexicon and orthography to the varieties of Hebrew identified by the Haredim as ‘the holy tongue’. In fact, the main linguistic difference between Israeli Hebrew and ‘the holy tongue’ in the contemporary Ashkenazi-Haredi context is a matter of accent. LK maintains its traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation, which is clearly distinct from that of Israeli Hebrew (see Notes on terminology, 0.1.3). All speakers implement this distinction in their active usage. Besides, speakers also identify certain lexical and stylistic qualities as typical for IH (especially slang, see 1.4.3) or as typical for LK (such as Aramaic elements). However, such salient elements identified as IH or LK are not always present, so that the same Hebrew sentence may be performed as IH or LK, depending on the context (1.3.1, 3.1). In the zealous circles of the Yiddish-speaking hardcore, the complexity of the sociolinguistic setting derives not only from the kinship between the external state language and the language of sacred texts, but even more from the fact that they themselves perceive these two languages as clearly separate, diametrically opposed entities. LK is a sacred tongue, the language of God in which the world was created, whereas Israeli Hebrew is a profane, sacrilegious and even demonic entity (see Chapter 3). The ideological rejection of Israeli Hebrew in zealous sects is absolute. However, as noted earlier and as will be shown in more detail below, the implementation of this ideology in daily life is partial at best (Glinert & Shilhav 1991: 62).

1.3.1 Functional distribution of the three varieties Multilingual settings involving minority languages may be stable and lasting only if they are supported by diglossia (Fishman 1967: 29). If the minority language



1.3 Haredi triglossia: The three languages of the speech community 

 13

serves in the same domains and contexts as the majority language, speakers will eventually shift to the dominant language. In other words, the only way to preserve a minority language such as Yiddish is to retain specific contexts and domains where Yiddish is the primary choice. In the Yiddish-speaking hardcore such a diglossic pattern can be identified, since Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew tend to serve largely distinct functions. In other Yiddish-speaking groups outside the segregated Edah, Yiddish and IH are often used in the same domains, so lessening the likelihood of Yiddish maintenance. By contrast, LK as the third variety is not a spoken medium of communication, and its ritual and scholarly uses are very similar across the entire speech community. Consider, next, the major functions of each of these three varieties in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore: Israeli Hebrew (IH) serves as a spoken language in daily use with non-Yiddish speakers, both inside and outside the Haredi world. Its main and – according to zealous ideology – only function is as an unavoidable instrumental medium for communicating with the outside world: on the bus, at the bank and in hospitals and clinics. IH is deliberately avoided as much as possible in the home, especially when communicating with children, whereas outside the Yiddish-speaking hardcore there are many families where IH functions as a legitimate home language, alongside Yiddish (Isaacs 1999b: 107–109; see 2.2). Loshn-kóydesh (LK) is used in ritual and study. Essentially, LK is the language of written sacred texts, recited or read aloud in specific contexts: daily prayers and blessings, recitation from the Torah, the oral study of the Talmud (which is conducted in a mixture of Yiddish and LK, see 5.4), etc. (Weinreich 1980: 247–314). LK is only rarely used for speaking, as an individual act of self-sanctification performed solely by men on specific occasions (cf. Weinreich 1980: 257). In the contemporary Israeli-Haredi context, “speaking in LK” is expressed by means of using an Ashkenazi form of pronunciation and deliberate avoidance of non -traditional lexical items identified with IH. In addition to these two distinct Hebrew varieties, I also use the term Hebrew to refer to the main medium for written language in the community. The term “Hebrew” serves here as a cover-term referring to Hebrew texts from different periods in the history of the language (Biblical, Mishnaic, Medieval, etc.), with the Hebrew written by the Haredi community combining grammatical and stylistic features from these different historical layers. The Haredi distinction between Israeli Hebrew and LK is ideological or attitudinal rather than strictly linguistic: Haredi modern texts are perceived as being in LK, and they are articulated in the Ashkenazi pronunciation – as distinct from that of native Israeli Hebrew – even though they may share the structure and lexicon of Israeli Hebrew (3.1). Almost all Haredi publications in Israel are in Hebrew: books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, broadsides (a common Haredi means of communication, Heilman

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1992: 300–312) and so forth. Reading and writing in Yiddish are restricted mainly to young girls attending the extremist schools of the Edah, whereas almost all available Yiddish journals and books are meant for children. Yiddish-speaking men hardly ever read in Yiddish, so that the traditional Ashkenazi functional distribution between Yiddish as a spoken language and Hebrew as a written language is preserved (Weinreich 1980: 256). Yiddish is the native tongue of Haredi hardcore speakers, used as the main language spoken with family and friends. As a minority language, Yiddish is a classical we code employed in intimate and familiar domains, whereas IH is the they code associated with out-group relations (Gumperz 1982: 66). Yiddish is also used as a written medium, but only in a very limited manner, as noted above. Reading in Yiddish is common among young children from the Edah, especially girls. Boys switch to reading in Hebrew fairly early (some of them read only in Hebrew from the start). The girls may continue to read in Yiddish, but as they grow older available reading material in Yiddish becomes scarce: if they succeed in finding a Yiddish book or journal for adults, it will invariably be “American” (printed in the US, reflecting American Haredi Yiddish) and therefore difficult for them to understand (6.1). As a result, many Yiddish-speaking women in the community read in Hebrew, similarly to men. The triglossic pattern of the Yiddish-speaking hardcore embodies a continuous tension between the role of Yiddish, as the community’s favored spoken language, confronted with the functional dominance of Hebrew (cf. Nadkarni 1975: 680). Hebrew, in its various incarnations, is used for reading and writing, in ritual and study (LK), and as a daily spoken language with outsiders (IH). Yiddish, on the other hand, is gradually forced into a few restricted domains. The fact that all adult Yiddish speakers not only speak IH and pray in LK, but also read and write in Hebrew, reinforces the functional dominance of Hebrew and consequently its linguistic influence on the Yiddish spoken by the community.

1.4 Language attitudes and ideologies The maintenance of Yiddish in the extremist circles of the Edah is inseparable from their language attitudes and ideologies. In multilingual communities in general, speakers’ shared perceptions and attitudes towards the languages involved are a key factor shaping language contact phenomena. A simplified basic distinction can be made between “positive” and “negative” values attributed to the languages. If we consider the case of a linguistic minority, then positive attitudes towards the majority language often encourage processes of lexical borrowing and language mixing, and may ultimately result in a language shift in



1.4 Language attitudes and ideologies 

 15

favor of the prestigious majority language. On the other hand, negative attitudes towards the majority language may obstruct phenomena of mixing and borrowing, while increasing the chances of maintaining the minority language (Appel & Muysken 1987: 33–42; Fought 2010: 289). Such negative attitudes are found in the community discussed here. Naturally, the sociolinguistic attributes assigned to languages by a given speech community are inseparable from the overall social, political and cultural context and the lives and experiences of its members. These attributes are part of what has been broadly termed “language ideology”, referring to speakers’ beliefs and ideas concerning language and language use (“sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use”, Silverstein 1979: 193. See also Schieffelin, Woolard & Kroskrity 1998; Woolard and Schieffelin 1994.). In the zealous community, linguistic ideologies, especially those concerning Israeli Hebrew, are particularly extreme and pronounced, with Yiddish having high prestige and attitudes to IH pronouncedly negative. This sharp dichotomy reflects the nature of this community as a typical “enclave culture” (Almond, Appleby & Sivan 2003), maintaining firm social boundaries that are supported by a strong sense of “us” versus “them”. Therefore, if speakers’ ideologies “locate linguistic phenomena as part of, and evidence for, what they believe to be systematic behavioral, aesthetic, affective and moral contrasts among the social groups indexed” (Irvine & Gal 2000: 37), then the perception of Yiddish versus Israeli Hebrew embodies the tension between the idealized Haredi self-image versus this community’s pejorative perception of the general Israeli society. In other, ­non-zealous, Haredi Yiddish-speaking groups Yiddish enjoys high prestige as well, but use of IH is not considered problematic, so that the functional dominance of Hebrew may cause a gradual shift from Yiddish to IH (1.4.4). The following analysis of language attitudes and ideologies is based in part on fieldwork conducted in the Edah’s enclaves in Jerusalem and Bet Shemesh between the years 2000 and 2012. The focus in what follows is primarily on attitudes towards IH in general and language mixing in particular, as factors which impact the contact phenomena discussed throughout the book, including language choice, lexical borrowing and code-switching patterns, all of which reflect the problematic status of IH for members of these communities.

1.4.1 The prestige of Yiddish In contemporary Israel, the answer to the question “who is a Haredi?” is not a simple one, and the exact number of Israeli Haredim is hard to define. Two statistical estimates in 2006, for example, yielded two different figures of 444,000 and

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700,000 people defined as ultra-Orthodox (Friedman et al. 2011: 19; see also Levin & Hacohen 2010; Malach, Choshen & Cahaner 2016: 17). The gap between these estimates is not coincidental, but rather reflects an essential problem of defining who is and who is not a Haredi in a highly fractionated society whose boundaries are blurred (Glinert & Shilhav 1991: 60; Caplan 2003b: 226–228). However, there is no doubt about the identification of the Yiddish-speaking groups as Haredi. These are regarded, by outsiders and insiders alike, as the prototypical embodiment of the Haredi as a member of a segregated minority. Speaking Yiddish symbolizes the traditionalism that underlies Haredi ideology, forming an unmediated connection with an idealized Eastern European past (Isaacs 1999a: 18–20). The maintenance of Yiddish is supported by a key concept in Haredi traditionalism, the concept of heymish/haymish (lit. ‘homelike’). Miriam Isaacs analyzes the role of this concept in Haredi discourse, where haymish “means keeping with old values, ‘old-worldly’, and therefore good. For a people uprooted as many times as Haredim have been, it is little wonder that the word for home would resonate as an identifier of what is essentially ethnicity” (Isaacs 1999a: 19). In a conservative, traditionalist community, the association of Yiddish with the old world and the old ways renders its use highly prestigious. The prestige of Yiddish also derives from its sanctification in certain Haredi circles (Glinert & Shilhav 1991: 78–81; Fishman 2002: 131–136; Granot 2007: 377– 384). Ultra-Orthodox claims for the holiness of Yiddish, sanctified by generations of righteous Jews who spoke it, began in the 1930s, but increased after the Holocaust due to the identification of Yiddish as the language of the victims (Bogoch 1999: 125; Vaynshtok 2008: 92). In Haredi publications Yiddish is described as a sacred tongue, second only to LK, and is often referred to as sfat hakodeš (Heb. ‘the holy language’) or di heylige idiše šprax (Yid. ‘the holy Yiddish/Jewish language’) (Assouline 2012: 105). Writers stress the advantages of speaking Yiddish with children, claiming that the mere use of this language contributes to children’s proper Haredi upbringing in an atmosphere of purity and sanctity. These views are reflected in Haredi sayings such as az me ret idiš, firt zix ales erlex un idiš ‘When one speaks Yiddish, everything is righteous and Jewish’. An illustration of the sanctification of Yiddish appears in Bryna Bogoch’s discussion of the schooling of Haredi girls, which confronts a basic dilemma. On the one hand, the community fears that “too much education” for girls might lead them in unwanted intellectual directions, distancing them from their designated traditional roles as wives and mothers. On the other hand, Haredi women must be educated since they are supposed to work and support their families while their husbands ideally devote themselves to the study of the Torah (Friedman 1988; El-Or 1994). According to Bogoch, use of Yiddish as the language of instruction in girls’ schools solves this problem, since the inherent sanctity attributed to Yiddish



1.4 Language attitudes and ideologies 

 17

neutralizes the possible dangers of secular subjects. Thus, every subject becomes legitimate once taught in Yiddish (Bogoch 1999: 133). The inherent sanctity of Yiddish is also implied in a recurring remark printed in Haredi announcements against using the computer to watch DVDs: the announcements state clearly that movies are strictly prohibited, “even if they are in Yiddish”. The prestige of Yiddish in general and its sacred status in particular appear to rise as its functional significance decreases. It is often described as the absolute antithesis of its threatening rival, Israeli Hebrew: Yiddish embodies sanctity, purity and modesty while IH is heretical, vulgar and immoral. As the dominance of IH grows, the praises of Yiddish become more exaggerated. During fieldwork in Haredi neighborhoods I heard, for example, that Yiddish is a pure language that does not contain even a single coarse word; that it is even holier than LK; and that it was already spoken during the period of the Second Temple (cf. Fader 2009: 123). Such exalted praise reflects an unstable sociolinguistic setting, where the future of Yiddish is unclear, so that the growing threat to Yiddish invokes the constant need to protect it and to emphasize its significance. Another aspect of the prestige of Yiddish concerns its role as an internal social barrier, between Yiddish-speaking Haredim and others (Haredim as well as non-Haredim). Yiddish marks its speaker as ‘one of us’ (Yid. fun unzere), and can be used as a filtering mechanism excluding outsiders. For example, popular Haredi kabbalists who teach in Hebrew may switch to Yiddish if they feel that too many outsiders attend their lessons (Jonathan Garb 2012, personal communication). Again, new nursery schools often flaunt the words “Yiddish speaking” in their advertisements. The use of Yiddish in educational institutions testifies to their quality, primarily because the Yiddish-speaking staff is guaranteed to be composed of ‘our people’ only. The elitist status of Yiddish can lead Hebrewspeakers to study Yiddish, and more importantly, it often encourages Hebrewspeaking parents who wish to improve their children’s chances of marrying into a “good” family to send them to Yiddish-speaking schools (R.N. 2007; Bogoch 1999: 140–141; Isaacs 1999b: 110, 112). Thus, command of Yiddish can function as an effective vehicle of social mobility. The prestige of Yiddish, however, has not prevented a gradual process of language shift in some Haredi communities. Haredi leaders are aware of this shift, and devote increasing efforts to prevent and even, hopefully, reverse it. Their efforts include the translation of toddlers’ and children’s books into Yiddish, the establishment of new Yiddish schools, and the addition of Yiddish lessons in Hebrew-speaking schools (Biglayzn 2007; R.N. 2007). The latter are often schools for girls, since the declared objective of Haredi language maintenance efforts is to reinforce Yiddish use among girls, as the educators and shapers of future generations. It also constitutes an attempt to overcome a major obstacle to the

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maintenance of Yiddish – the linguistic gap between boys and girls (Bogoch 1999: 131; see also Fader 2009: 119), evident mainly in small Hasidic sects outside the Yiddish hardcore, where boys attend Yiddish-speaking yeshivas while girls study in the Hebrew-speaking Bet Yaakov schools, resulting in a shortage of suitable Yiddish-speaking brides. One manifestation of efforts at language maintenance among the girls are the Yiddish “campaigns” conducted from time to time in girls’ schools. During such a campaign (IH mivcá) girls learn about the significance of Yiddish, put on a Yiddish play, and receive small prizes whenever they speak Yiddish in class. Girls who speak Yiddish during recess are awarded bigger prizes. The efforts to maintain Yiddish and the wide acknowledgment of its significance for the preservation of what is perceived as the ideal Haredi way of life are not accompanied by a parallel ambition to speak “good” Yiddish. The important thing is that the girls keep speaking Yiddish, but the exact nature of this Yiddish is less important (cf. Fader 2009: 93). Speakers do not attribute any socio-cultural value to “correct” language and believe that Yiddish “has no grammar” (Glinert & Shilhav 1991: 64). There is no standard variety, and Haredi Yiddish publications in Israel demonstrate broad orthographic, dialectal, lexical and structural variation. The absence of a Yiddish standard is closely related to the maintenance of distinct dialects indicating specific sect affiliation (see Notes on terminology, 0.1.1). For example, in one of the Haredi Yiddish textbooks for girls, both the “Jerusalemite dialect” and the “Hasidic dialect” are learned side by side. The declared goal of the book is to preserve the different dialects of the pupils, as part of their unique ethnic heritage, and not to teach them one uniform standard Yiddish (Zleznik 1999–2001). The current state of Yiddish outside the small Yiddish-speaking hardcore is not clear. Positive attitudes towards Yiddish may support its maintenance, but they cannot guarantee it, so that constant effort is required in order to maintain the language within the borders of the speech community, where IH continues to accumulate power and exert dominance.

1.4.2 Attitudes towards the functional dominance of IH Zealous ideology denounces IH as demonic, and Israeli Haredi publications often describe it as a coarse, impure and blasphemous entity, which poses a threat to young innocent souls. However, this ideology does not prevent the language from being used on a daily basis. Similarly to their attitude to other manifestations of modernity, most Haredim accept the instrumental value of IH as a majority language as inevitable (1.2), and their attitudes towards IH are typically quite lowkeyed and matter-of-fact. Even members of the Edah use IH whenever they have



1.4 Language attitudes and ideologies 

 19

to, though some zealots do try to minimize their use of the language. The zealous ideology is expressed mainly with regard to children, since most members of the Edah try to postpone their children’s exposure to IH as long as possible in order to keep their education pure of unwanted influences. Only one informant, a 37-year-old woman from the Satmar Hasidic sect (but not “hardcore Satmar” (Heb. Satmar xazák), as she stressed), told me that she encourages her children to learn IH: “The children speak Hebrew (Ivrít) since everyone here speaks Hebrew. If we lived in Saudi Arabia, wouldn’t we speak Arabic?” (recorded in 2012). The speaker’s choice of Saudi Arabia is indicative of her sense of alienation from the Jewish state. Life in Israel is life in exile, according to common Haredi perceptions, and the majority language is as useful as in any other exile (Ravitzky 1996: 145; Isaacs 1999b: 113). As noted, this woman’s permissive approach regarding her children was not shared by other informants from the Edah, yet exposure to IH is nonetheless accepted as inevitable, so that even informants from segregated and zealous families who spoke only Yiddish until their mid-teens eventually acquired the majority language. In other words, it would seem that not a single adult Haredi in Israel speaks only Yiddish. The functional dominance of IH provides it with prestige, which in the Israeli-Haredi context can be described as “denied prestige”, deriving from the essential role of IH in the Israeli context. Yiddish enjoys overt prestige – marking the specific ethnic and religious identity of the community, perpetuating a connection with its Eastern European origins and cultural heritage, and being attributed positive values such as sanctity, piety and modesty – yet the publicly defamed IH is indispensable, a language that one cannot do without.

1.4.3 Attitudes towards lexical borrowing from IH Community attitudes towards overt phenomena of linguistic interference can influence the outcomes of language contact (Matras 2009: 59, 165). Speakers are usually less aware of contact-induced structural changes, but purist tendencies may hinder lexical intrusion and reduce code-switching. Such conservative attitudes are often associated with languages that are used for reading and writing and have a standard variety whose grammar is learned in schools; that is, languages that are relatively more resistant to conspicuous external influences than those that have no standard variety and are not supported by literacy. In this respect, the potential ability of Haredi Yiddish speakers to resist, or even identify, the lexical influence of IH is limited. The first factor limiting speakers’ awareness of IH interference is lack of Yiddish literacy. Almost all Israeli Haredi Yiddish speakers, as noted, read and

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write exclusively in Hebrew, and the constant exposure to Hebrew texts in this highly literate community affects spoken Yiddish. Besides, lack of Yiddish literacy makes Israeli Haredi Yiddish (henceforth IHY) more vulnerable to the influence of IH, due to the detachment of the contemporary vernacular from previous layers in the history of Yiddish. Exposure to older Yiddish texts could have functioned as a factor moderating change by presenting the speakers with Eastern European linguistic models, yet even the few Yiddish texts currently available reflect contemporary Haredi varieties, most having been produced by Haredi writers, with some older texts having been adapted to bring them closer to the current Haredi variety (Berman-Assouline 2007: 25; Bogoch 1999: 136–138). As a result, speakers are less aware of the various changes their language is undergoing (e. g. Assouline 2014a: 57). With no written models or a standard language, there is no cultural value to attempting to resist certain overt manifestations of language change. In addition to the sociolinguistic factors facilitating IH interference, the lexical make-up of Yiddish constitutes another important factor limiting speakers’ awareness of lexical borrowing from IH. Yiddish was defined by Max Weinreich as a “fusion language”, containing lexical items of Germanic, Romance, Semitic and Slavic origin, all integrated into a single linguistic system (Weinreich 1980: 29–38). The pre-existing Hebrew component of Yiddish complicates the identification of IH loanwords, due to the possible similarity of newly introduced IH loanwords to long-established Hebrew-source Yiddish words (Notes on terminology, 0.2). The historical Hebrew component of Yiddish is an integral part of the Yiddish lexicon, and new loanwords from IH are not always distinguished from established elements, particularly if their pronunciation is modified. Consequently, even lexical borrowing, which is generally a very obvious contact phenomenon, can go unnoticed. For example, the IH beayá (‘problem’) is commonly used in IHY. When this word is phonologically integrated into Yiddish, it is pronounced báye, and is thus indistinguishable from established Hebrew-source Yiddish elements such as ráye ‘evidence’ (see Chapter 6, example (55)). The result is that speakers are unaware of the full extent of IH loanwords in their Yiddish. Naturally, this factor is also connected to the lack of Yiddish literacy, since Yiddish literacy could have helped speakers to discern between long-established Hebrew elements from newly-borrowed IH words. Speakers are more aware of IH loanwords whose pronunciation differs from that of established Hebrew-source Yiddish words, and they are also, quite ­naturally, very much aware of Yiddish-IH code-switching (see Chapter 4). The current discussion considers general and widespread attitudes towards these clear manifestations of IH interference, particularly lexical borrowing, while the integration patterns of IH loanwords in the analyzed corpus are examined in Chapter 6.



1.4 Language attitudes and ideologies 

 21

When considering communal attitudes towards the impact of IH, it is important to note that there is a considerable gap between the community’s overt ideology, resisting the influence of IH, and the attitudes of ordinary speakers, who are far more pragmatic in regard to the impact of IH on their Yiddish. Mixing IH elements in Yiddish is often described as problematic by Haredi educators and in Haredi publications. Here, stress is laid on the IH words described as “street” language (Yiddish adj. gasike, Haredi IH rexoví, both common pejoratives in Haredi discourse), particularly slang expressions that are perceived as immodest and unbecoming of a Haredi, especially if this Haredi is a woman (Oryan 1997; Fader 2009: 162–164). ‘Street’ is a key concept in the Haredi perception of the menacing Israeli reality as abandoned and wanton, and IH as a coarse and vulgar street language (gasike) is often contrasted with Yiddish as the refined (Yid. eydl) and gentle home language, in the literal sense of the word heymish discussed in 1.4.1. (Berman-Assouline 2007: 14–15). This attitude was expressed several times by public speakers in the corpus, as in the following statement by a Hasidic woman condemning the use of IH words (translated from Yiddish): “The Lord made us holy, and sanctified our language. Today people try to insert in their language other tongues, but the Lord loves our language. He does not love the words that one picks up in the street. He loves our language, He loves our words”. Interestingly, the speaker does not specify which language is “our language”, and her words can apply both to Yiddish and to LK. The use of IH words is especially threatening to children, as conveyed by another woman discussing IH names of candies, such as the common Arabic loanword kef (‘fun’): “All these words are full of lust […] we don’t get it, but it’s a different world. A world of lust, everything is ‘for me’3 […] How can we not be ashamed even to pronounce it? […] It’s not ours, it’s so not us, it’s so Gentile [Yiddish: goyish] […] But we don’t feel it, and it affects the children. All the slang and all the words, it affects them. Even that was taken away from us: the refined language.” This objection to the incorporation of IH words repeats some of the negative qualities attributed to IH,

3 The speaker refers here to a popular comparison between the positive values of Yiddish and the old world versus the negative values of IH and the modern world it represents, based on the different names of foods (mainly snacks and candies) in both languages: Yiddish foods such as beygalax (‘pretzels’) and rogalax (an Ashkenazi pastry, plural form) ending with –lax (a Germanic diminutive plural form), with the suffix –lax identical to the IH ‘to you/for you’ (you.2sg.f. dat), versus Israeli foods with the ending –li (IH ‘to me/for me’), such as Bissli (a wheat snack, lit. bite (Yiddish loanword ‘bis’)-for me) or Prili (a fruit yogurt, lit. fruit-for me). From a Haredi point of view, the ending of the Yiddish foods (‘for you’) naturally symbolizes generosity and giving, whereas the Hebrew ending of the Israeli foods (‘for me’) is perceived as reflecting the egoism, greed and gluttony of modern Israeli culture.

22 

 1 Language and ideology in the speech community

mainly its vulgar and heretical nature. IH words are also considered ‘Gentile’, in contrast to the two internal and undisputedly Jewish languages of the speech community, Yiddish and LK. However, as is common in purist criticisms of language mixing, such views testify, most of all, to the speech patterns widespread in the community. Indeed, borrowing from IH as well as Yiddish-IH code-switching are common practices in the IHY speech community, and are present also in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore. Informants often criticized their own mixed language, saying that their Yiddish includes too many Hebrew words (see 6.1), but the speech community in general is quite tolerant towards language mixing in daily contexts (Isaacs 1999a: 26). Informants’ complaints about language mixing were often uttered quite casually, in a very different manner from the severe tone of reproval of the public speakers. The men often attributed the excessive mixing to women: “You should hear how our girls talk”, one Jerusalemite informant told me, demonstrating the girls’ distorted speech by the two mixed sentences ‘it’s very [awfully] pretty’ and ‘the cockroach is crawling on the wall’. These two examples are in fact Hebrew sentences (rather than Yiddish sentences) incorporating Yiddish lexical elements: 1

2

ze this

IH

nora very[awfully]IH

ha-dzhuk the-cockroachIH

IH

osé does.sg.mIH

IH

šeyn YID prettyYID krixn crawl.infYID

YID

al on

IH

ha-vant theIH-YIDwallYID

These two sentences are in fact often quoted in discussions of the mixed nature of IHY, and also appear in Haredi publications (Berman-Assouline 2007: 342).4 Interestingly, I have never heard any such sentences during my fieldwork, and in all probability these so-called quotations are an example of a linguistic stereotype that speakers are in the habit of reiterating, even though it does not reflect actual speech patterns (Burridge 1998: 71–72; see also Labov 1972: 314–317).

4 See for example a reference to one of these sentences, from an article about Haredi Yiddish, published in the Hasidic newspaper Hamodiya (translated from Hebrew): “(...) Yet a certain change in attitude to Yiddish can be detected in recent times within the confines of schools for girls. Where, formerly, only one girl in a town, or two from a family, knew Yiddish, and that too was invariably mixed with Hebrew (as in ‘The cockroach crawls on the wall’), nowadays there is a definite trend towards Yiddish and the opening of new Yiddish classes.” See Nathan Kotler, supplement to Hamodiya, 17.11.1995, p. 24.



1.4 Language attitudes and ideologies 

 23

The attribution of faulty Yiddish usage to women is connected to the fact that the community sees them as those destined to raise the next generation, and consequently responsible for maintaining Yiddish. This same stereotype may also reflect the gender-based disparity in command of Yiddish found in some Hasidic sects (see 1.4.1 above). Fieldwork in Haredi neighborhoods gave me numerous opportunities to observe speakers’ attitudes to overt IH lexical influence on their Yiddish. First, it seems that all speakers (including hardcore speakers) regularly and freely use IH cultural loans, denoting objects and concepts reflecting Israeli realia, such as institutional terminology (Myers-Scotton 1993b: 169), with these loans being the default usages in IHY. For example, a Haredi father standing on the sidewalk with his two-year-old daughter, watching a police car go by, asked her: “di ost gezen a mištará?” (‘Did you see a police (car)?’). The IH word mištará ‘police’ is a classic example of a cultural loan, pronounced as in IH with no phonological integration (6.2.2). Even parents who claim to be speaking “only Yiddish” at home constantly use these kinds of loanwords when talking to their children. Due to the dominance of IH and lack of Yiddish literacy, the range of lexical borrowing from IH extends far beyond classical cultural loans such as mištará. For example, two Yiddish-speaking toddlers I observed, who had no direct exposure to IH, came out with the following IH words during playtime: galgalím (‘wheels’), migdál (‘tower’), manóf (‘crane’), kadúr (‘ball’), gamál (‘camel’), pil (‘elephant’), kof (‘monkey’) and yomulédet (‘birthday’). The amount of IH loanwords varied between members of different groups, and declined in accordance with their level of “zealousness”, yet even members of the strictest sects regularly used IH loanwords in everyday situations. Use of IH loanwords becomes problematic only when circumstances change. For example, in pedagogical contexts speakers may search for the “real” Yiddish word instead of the commonly used IH loanword (Isaacs 1999b: 112; see Chapter 3 below, example (12)). In such contexts, even a non-Yiddish word can be considered better than an IH word, as I observed during an incident in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo in 2012. The speaker was a twelve-year-old girl from a Jerusalemite family, serving as a guide to four younger siblings. Outside the leopard’s cage, the girl explained “dos iz a namér” (‘This is a leopard’), using the IH namér rather than the Yiddish lempert, but she was not happy with this, mumbling to herself “vi eyst dos… vi zogt men a namér…” (‘What’s it called… How does one say ‘leopard’?’). After a little while she went up to the sign on the other side of the cage, and deciphering the English term ‘l-e-o-p-a-r-d’ with some effort, she returned to her siblings with the announcement: “dos is a leopert, a lopert” (‘This is a leopard’) (Haredi children from the Edah do not study English, but many learn the English alphabet on their own). The girl no doubt felt responsible for

24 

 1 Language and ideology in the speech community

the proper education of her siblings, and so was unhappy to use an IH word when explaining something to them. The word namér was the first word denoting ‘leopard’ that came to her mind, as in the case of other animal names as noted above. But the pedagogical context rendered the IH word non-legitimate, motivating the older sister to look for another, better word, leading her to the English word leopard. Whether the girl recognized the word on the sign as English or international, she still felt it was better than its IH equivalent.5 Besides, she “Yiddishized” its pronunciation (lopert), thus creating an even more legitimate word in the given situation. A Sabbath meal at the home of a Hasidic family from the strict Toldos Aharon sect presented another case of context-related rejection of an IH word. After the meal, the father examined his six-year-old daughter’s familiarity with the weekly Torah portion (a custom known in Yiddish as farhern). When the girl described the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–5), she used the IH word kocím (‘thorns’). Her parents were surprised and amused to hear this word, and asked the girl whether her teacher had used this word in class, or whether she used it on her own accord. The girl and her siblings used many IH loanwords during the meal, but only the use of the IH word in a sacred context associated with LK attracted the parents’ attention. In other words, the communal norms regarding lexical borrowing from IH are context-dependent. In everyday settings, IH items can be used neutrally and casually, even by members of zealous sects. In more formal situations, however, use of recognizable IH loanwords decreases, while in sacred contexts it becomes extremely rare indeed.

1.4.4 Language attitudes and the maintenance of Yiddish The common language attitudes in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore – the resistance to IH as an everyday means of communication inside the community combined with the relative tolerance to IH interference – both support the maintenance of Yiddish. Importantly, maintaining Yiddish as the preferred home language prevents a possible language shift, such as is already taking place outside the Yiddish-speaking hardcore. In sects and groups where IH is a legitimate home-­language alongside of Yiddish, the chances of Yiddish being maintained are far smaller. The dominance of IH, as noted earlier, is overwhelming: speakers read in Hebrew and speak IH on 5 Direct reference to the preference for English over Hebrew loanwords appears in Biglayzn 2007, where a member of the Edah is quoted as saying: “Every Hebrew word is entirely improper for us. And if there is no Yiddish equivalent, we use an English word. makólet (IH ‘grocery’) is for us groseri. This is the separation from the Zionists, the detachment from the street, and the respectful attitude to the holy tongue” (Biglayzn 2007: 30).



1.4 Language attitudes and ideologies 

 25

a daily basis with non-Yiddish speakers, both outside and inside the Haredi world. Even Yiddish-speaking children encounter IH on the street and their exposure to the language increases as they grow up. If the diglossia is undermined and IH is also employed at home, the balance will shift in its favor, and IH will become the children’s primary language (Gumperz & Wilson 1971: 153). By contrast, the ideological rejection of IH inside the Edah keeps it well outside the boundaries of home and family. As long as this basic diglossic pattern is maintained and parents insist on speaking Yiddish with their children, Yiddish is safe. Even if this Yiddish is replete with IH loanwords, the linguistic framework is maintained and the children will speak Yiddish like their parents. The relative tolerance towards IH interference is an additional factor improving the chances of Yiddish maintenance. Speakers face growing lexical attrition of Yiddish (partially due to lack of Yiddish literacy), and lexical borrowing from IH can compensate for the lexical gaps, thus enabling daily communication. The lack of formal study of Yiddish in Haredi schools, as well as the fact that little if any societal or cultural value is attributed to using the language “correctly”, also assist in this process. It is speakers’ lack of linguistic awareness that helps them keep using Yiddish as a daily language. Even sentences where almost all lexical items are IH may be considered as legitimate Yiddish sentences, as long as their grammatical matrix remains Yiddish. Consider the following sentence, uttered by a Jerusalemite member of a Hasidic sect after narrating (in casual conversation) the history of that Hasidic dynasty (IH loanwords are in bold): 3

dos iz, paxót o yotér, this is IHless or moreIH

de gance ištalšelút the whole IHprogressionIH

fun de xasidút. of the IHHasidic sectIH

‘This is, more or less, the entire progression of the Hasidic sect.’ [Jer. M] This speaker is not a member of the Yiddish-speaking hardcore, but such sentences can be found even among the most zealous speakers, provided that pronunciation of IH loanwords is modified (6.2, Chapter 2, example (7)). Thus, while the absence of normative pressures makes Yiddish highly susceptible to IH interference, it also simultaneously supports its survival (cf. Huffines 1991; Dorian 1987: 59; Woolard 1989: 361). Speakers can use any Hebrew element they need, as long as they maintain a Yiddish grammatical frame. Significantly, borrowing from IH into Yiddish is further facilitated by long-established borrowing mechanisms for the incorporation of Hebrew elements (6.3). The only significant difference between the borrowing patterns of zealous compared with more practically motivated speakers concerns the pronunciation of Hebrew elements. As long as the Hebrew items are pronounced in a “Yiddishized” way, they are considered

26 

 1 Language and ideology in the speech community

legitimate even by the most extremist zealots. In this way, speakers succeed in maintaining their minority language. They continue to speak Yiddish, thus perpetuating their distinctness, even if this Yiddish gradually becomes more similar to IH. Thanks to flexible sociolinguistic norms, a lack of linguistic-diachronic perspective and general indifference to language norms, Israeli Haredi Yiddish adjusts itself to the changing circumstances, and continues to function as a viable means of everyday communication.

2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking The impact of language ideology on language contact becomes particularly salient in public contexts. When addressing a crowd, zealous speakers are highly aware of their declared ideological objections to the use of IH. Consequently, public speech provides an ideal framework for studying the extent to which linguistic awareness may influence performance, primarily in cases where speakers are aiming to avoid instances of overt IH interference. The corpus of the present study consists of both formal and semi-formal genres of public speech in IHY, in contexts that force speakers to confront the impact of IH. For example, a public lecture about child-rearing may call for the use of everyday IH loanwords, denoting daily objects such as mocéc (‘pacifier’) or metapélet (‘nanny’). By contrast, in sacred as well as certain scholarly contexts speakers often employ only Yiddish and LK without requiring recourse to recognizable IH elements. The latter types of public speech, which include, for example, synagogue sermons or certain men’s Talmud lessons, were deliberately excluded from the corpus that is analyzed in what follows. This chapter delineates the major sociolinguistic features of the analyzed corpus. Sections 2.1 and 2.2 discuss the genres of public speech represented in the corpus, and the status of the public speakers as “super-speakers” in the IHY speech community respectively. Section 2.3 describes major features of the public speakers’ language, focusing on the main distinctions between IHY public speech and everyday usage, along with certain linguistic phenomena attributed to the impact of IH.

2.1 The corpus: Genres and registers The corpus consists of 250 recorded hours of Yiddish lectures, speeches and lessons delivered by 38 women and 45 men from different Haredi groups and sects during the years 1991–2005. All are native speakers of Yiddish. All women and almost all men are members of the Edah, and almost all were born in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. The two main dialects of IHY are fairly equally represented in the public corpus: about half of the speakers use Hasidic Yiddish (mainly “Hungarian” Yiddish), while the other half uses Jerusalemite (“Lithuanian”) Yiddish (see Notes on terminology, 0.1.1). The women’s corpus was recorded partly by the author, in the course of fieldwork in Jerusalem in the years 2000–2004, while the men’s corpus was recorded by male informants or purchased in Haredi shops. When I began my fieldwork, obtaining these recordings required some effort, but nowadays similar recordings of public speech in Haredi Yiddish are easily accessible through websites such as www.kolhalashon.com, which offer online audio and video Torah lessons, sermons, lectures and so forth. DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-003

28 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

2.1.1 The women’s corpus The women’s corpus is fairly homogeneous, consisting primarily of lessons (Heb. šiurím) delivered by women to all-female audiences. Such public lessons are a common phenomenon in contemporary Haredi culture, where many groups of women gather on a weekly basis in order to listen to other women teaching and preaching about child-rearing, domestic harmony, modesty etc. (Caplan 2003a; El-Or 1994: 110–128). My fieldwork began when I joined one of those groups and started attending a weekly Yiddish lesson for women. This specific lesson is a long-established institution among the women of the Edah, conducted regularly since the mid-1980s in the Blumenthal orphanage in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Geula. About half the weekly lessons were dedicated to the subject of monitoring one’s speech and avoiding gossip and slander, known as šmires alóšn (literally ‘guarding the tongue’, Glinert, Loewenthal & Goldblatt 2003), while the rest was devoted mainly to issues of child-rearing and to aspects of Halakha (Jewish religious law) pertaining to women and the domestic sphere. Titles of these lectures include: “The power of prayer”, “The significance of a Jewish mother”, “The beauty of humility”, “The virtues of silence” and “Practical advice for modesty”. The proclaimed goal of these meetings is not so much teaching but rather “strengthening” women’s faith (Yid. xízek. See El-Or 1994: 111, 198. See also chizuk, Weiser 1995: 15). Women in the audience are supposed to draw spiritual energies from the lesson, thereby returning reinforced to their daily womanly duties. The youngest women attending these lessons were girls in their mid-teens, while the oldest were in their eighties or nineties. Most belonged to strict groups in the Edah, such as Toldos Aharon, Toldos Avrum-Yitzkhok, Satmar and Dushinski. The speakers (Yid. rednerins) were all prominent figures in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore, many of them senior teachers in the Edah’s Yiddish girls’ schools of Bnos Yerusholayim, Khínukh Yerusholayim and Beys Yankev Hayoshn (Bogoch 1999: 130; Shneller 1978; Zalcberg 2005: 131–135). All are fluent bilinguals, and a few even lecture in IH for different audiences. It should be noted that Yiddish lessons for women, aimed at hardcore speakers, constitute only a tiny portion of available lessons for Haredi women, since most lessons are conducted in IH. An illustration of the minority status of Yiddish can be found in the program of an annual women’s conference dedicated to “guarding the tongue”, which took place in Jerusalem in July 2001. This conference offered only 9 lessons in Yiddish, compared to 193 lessons in IH and 36 in English. Thus, the numerical status of the traditional Jewish language was not so different from that of external Gentile languages such as French (5 lessons) or Spanish (3 lessons). Though termed “lessons”, the main genre represented in the Blumenthal ­ rinciples corpus might be better defined as sermons, for the lessons follow certain p



2.1 The corpus: Genres and registers 

 29

of the classical Jewish sermon (IH drašá, Yid. dróše. See Ilan, Horowitz & Caplan 2012). Speakers always open with the weekly Torah portion, connecting it to the main topic of the specific lesson, and continue with spiritual preaching combined with Talmudic legends, hagiographic tales, allegories and, occasionally, also personal narratives. Yet the speakers themselves never use the term dróše (‘sermon’), since the latter is identified with addresses given by high-status male speakers from the Haredi spiritual elite in sacred and festive contexts. The women also abstain from using the Hebrew-source Yiddish term šíer or šir (‘lesson’), since it is identified with male scholarly contexts, using instead the IH pronunciation (šiúr, pl. šiurím) in order to distinguish between men’s and women’s lessons. In addition to the lessons or sermons of the Blumenthal corpus, another genre – termed here “instruction” – is also represented in the women’s recordings. The orientation of instruction lectures (IH hadraxá) is more practical, focusing mainly on preparation for married life (for young betrothed women), domestic harmony and child-rearing. The rhetoric is more down-to-earth and speakers refer less to Jewish sacred texts. For example, a sermon about child-rearing in the Blumenthal corpus praises the essential role of mothers by referring to stories of Jewish righteous women such as the biblical Miriam taking care of her brother Moses, or the midwives Shifrah and Puah who resisted Pharaoh’s decree and saved Jewish babies. An instruction lecture on child-rearing, on the other hand, may focus on a specific subject such as sibling-rivalry, offering practical advice and sharing personal stories and insights. Naturally, the age-group of the audience for the instruction lectures is more homogeneous (brides, young mothers and the like).

2.1.2 The men’s corpus The genres represented in the men’s corpus are more varied than those of the women. The men’s corpus includes instruction lectures (such as “groom-instruction”, aimed at preparing young betrothed men for married life), lectures on current affairs, political speeches in public assemblies, addresses delivered at public gatherings (such as educational conferences, fundraising gatherings or internal gatherings following crises such as splits in Hasidic sects), etc. I also made some restricted use of a few completely different public genres performed by men, such as plays and radio interviews (3.2.3, Chapter 4, example (26)). Almost all male speakers are members of the Edah or groups related to it, and only a few belong to Hasidic groups outside the Edah such as Belz or Vizhnitz. The different genres vary with respect to their level of formality. Public speeches at assemblies are very formal and speakers often employ high register language,

30 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

which in the Haredi context invariably means vast use of Loshn-kóydesh (5.3, 5.4). By contrast, certain instruction lectures aimed at professional audiences (for example, on learning disabilities for an audience of educators) can be defined as semi-formal. These were conducted in an open, fairly egalitarian atmosphere, which enabled interruptions and even spontaneous conversations between the speakers and members of the audience. The different contexts represented in the men’s corpus are also crucial for the usage or avoidance of IH. Anti-Zionist zealous political assemblies constitute a salient case of extremely elevated linguistic awareness, while the atmosphere in instruction lectures is more relaxed with respect to IH. Besides the context, an individual’s sect affiliation is probably the most significant factor affecting his attitude to IH, so that speakers from zealous sects tend to avoid IH much more than the few Hasidic speakers outside the Edah included in the corpus.

2.2 The public speakers as super-speakers, and their audience Defining the IHY speech community is no easy task. Outside the insular Edah, speakers exhibit a vast range of proficiencies in Yiddish and different contexts of use, while some are gradually abandoning Yiddish in favor of IH. In a community consisting of so many different levels of command of Yiddish, including partial-speakers and semi-speakers, the public speakers in the present corpus can be characterized as “super-speakers”. All are experienced orators and probably among the most skilled and fluent Yiddish speakers in the community. In order to illustrate the status of the public speakers as super-speakers, consider the following examples of individual speakers and families – encountered during my fieldwork – as shedding light on the diverse patterns of language use in the speech community. Focus here is on Yiddish use in the immediate family: (a) Malki, a 20-year old woman, a member of the secluded Toldos Aharon sect in the Edah. Speaks mostly Yiddish. Uses IH only in her limited contact with the outside world. (b) Moyshe, a 30-year old Jerusalemite Breslev Hasid. Teaches in a Litvish yeshiva in Hebrew. Speaks mostly IH during the day, but uses Yiddish at home with his family. (c) Giti, a 30-year old Hasidic woman. Speaks both Yiddish and IH on a daily basis: uses both with her husband, but tries to speak only Yiddish with her children. (d) The Vays family, of the Belz Hasidic sect. Both Yiddish and IH are spoken at home. The boys, who study in Yiddish-medium institutions, speak Yiddish and IH, but the girls, who were sent to Hebrew-medium schools, speak only IH.



2.2 The public speakers as super-speakers, and their audience 

 31

(e) The Hershkovitz family, of the Erloy Hasidic sect. The family speaks mainly IH, but the boys study in Yiddish and their father makes efforts to address them in Yiddish. The children answer him in both languages, but speak only IH among themselves. (f) The Shternbukh family, from a small Jerusalemite sect who shifted from Yiddish to IH. However, most family members understand Yiddish, and Yiddish is still used deliberately during the ritual Sabbath meal. (g) Sure, a 20-year old Hasidic woman, speaks IH. She has been attending weekly evening classes in Yiddish since her marriage to a Yiddish-speaking man, and hopes to better understand the language and speak it with her husband and their future children. This handful of examples illustrates the variety in the speech community while also testifying to two significant sociolinguistic processes: language shift to the dominant IH, and ongoing efforts to fight this shift and to preserve Yiddish – efforts which are focused primarily on the children (1.4.1). Both processes often result in speakers with partial competence in Yiddish. Hasidic groups shifting to IH may include partial speakers or semi-speakers (Dorian 1982), who perhaps have used some Yiddish in their childhood but almost never use it currently in daily life. In the same Hasidic groups there are some efforts of language maintenance, so that children from Hebrew-speaking families are sent to Yiddish schools or special Yiddish classes, possibly acquiring some Yiddish as a second language. As a result, even members of a single family often demonstrate very different levels of Yiddish command and use. Besides, the community of speakers itself, even if including some who are only partial- or semi-speakers, is surrounded by a large circle of people with receptive familiarity with Yiddish (or near-passive bilinguals, see Dorian 1982). These are people who cannot conduct a basic conversation in Yiddish, but nevertheless attend Yiddish yeshiva lessons and other public events in Yiddish. As long as they attend Yiddish events and can join in Yiddish conversations (which they do in IH), they can be taken to constitute some part, even if a marginal one, of the speech community. While taking into account Silverstein’s notion of a community as a degree term (see Silverstein 1996: 128, on the gradience of community membership), I consider these non-Yiddish speakers as members of the speech community following Romaine’s distinction between a speech community and a language community, so that “a speech community is a group of people who do not necessarily share the same language, but share a set of norms and rules for the use of language.” (Romaine 1994: 22). This wide range of command of Yiddish also found expression in the recorded corpus. While most of the women attending the Blumenthal lessons, for example,

32 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

belonged to the Yiddish-speaking hardcore, occasionally passive or near-passive bilingual women were present as well, as shown by example (4). In this case the public speaker recounted an alleged miracle that happened to an airplane flying from Chicago to New York, which was about to crash. The plane ultimately landed without its landing wheels and was badly damaged, but the passengers all survived unharmed thanks to the prayers of Hasidim who were on the plane. According to the speaker, even the pilot acknowledged this miracle. Her story aroused questions from the audience (specified in curly brackets) uttered in IH, which she answered in Yiddish: 4

un   ale zenen and all are az   der that this

aroys out

goy gentile

ot has

ganc. intact

un zey and they

gezogt, say.ptcp

az that

obn have ven when

gezogt say.ptcp er  ot he has

nox yet

mer, more

geert hear.ptcp

di   idn davenen, iz dos minastám geven nor culib zeyer got. the Jews pray.inf is this probably be.ptcp only due_to their God zeen see

unzwe

{a-matós the-plane

IH

itpocéc exploded.3sg.m

legámre?} completelyIH

– in gancn.   fully {ve-a-anaším and-the-people – ale  all

nišarú remained.3pl

xayím?} alive.pl

ganc. intact

 ‘[...] and everyone came out unharmed. And they said even more, that this Gentile [the pilot] said, that when he heard the Jews praying, that it was probably due to their God. So we can see- {IHThe plane exploded completely? IH} – Completely. {IHAnd the people survived? IH} – All unharmed.’ [Jer. W]



2.2 The public speakers as super-speakers, and their audience 

 33

While the speech community is broadly defined, and includes a hardcore of Yiddish speakers, a larger group of speakers with varied Yiddish competence, and a marginal group of non-speakers who understand Yiddish, the public corpus analyzed here is limited, representing only the highest level of Yiddish competence in the community. The public speakers, both men and women, all belong to the Yiddish-speaking hardcore, mostly within the boundaries of the Edah. Consequently, the corpus is not representative of the bulk of members of the IHY speech community, who are located on lower levels along the continuum of Yiddish command and use (see also Blommaert & Backus 2011). With the female public speakers we encounter a different aspect of the speakers’ superior command of Yiddish. These women manifest the highest level of Yiddish literacy in the community. In their lectures, they sometimes refer to Yiddish texts, and read aloud Yiddish poems they have composed or Yiddish texts they have prepared for their pupils. Such phenomena never occur in the men’s corpus, due to the distinct gender literacy patterns in the community (1.4.1). In this highly conservative society, men and women are assigned traditional gender roles, and receive very different types of education accordingly. Boys enter the Haredi schooling system at the age of three, and are ideally supposed to devote their life to the study of the sacred Jewish texts, while girls are sent to girls’ schools that prepare them for their future roles as wives and mothers. This strict gender separation has several linguistic outcomes, one of which relates to Yiddish literacy. Girls read and write in Yiddish much more than the boys, due to their distinct curriculum. The Haredi educational system in general distinguishes between the study of sacred texts or limudey kodeš (Heb. lit. ‘sacred studies’) and general studies or limudey xol (Heb. lit. ‘secular studies’). Boys from the Yiddishspeaking hardcore study primarily ‘sacred studies’ of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, which are traditionally conducted orally. Their ‘general studies’ consist mainly of basic arithmetic and basic Hebrew lessons, where they write in Hebrew (5.2.2). Girls, on the other hand, study many more subjects in ‘general studies’, such as geography, ‘nature’ (i. e. basic science), and arts and crafts. Unlike the boys, they read and write in Yiddish. As a result, significant literacy gaps are found within the same family: both brothers and sisters speak Yiddish, but the girls also read and write in Yiddish while their brothers read and write almost exclusively in Hebrew. Most female public speakers are senior teachers in these conservative schools of the Edah, thus embodying the highest level of Yiddish literacy in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore. The distinct schooling and life styles of men and women are responsible for another salient gender difference with linguistic consequences in relation to command and use of LK – a difference manifested by different strategies of use of LK by men and women respectively (as detailed further in Chapter 5).

34 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

Note, again, that the choice of these super-speakers as the focus of my research means that the language illustrated in the public corpus does not represent the full extent of linguistic phenomena found in the IHY speech community. For example, outside the Yiddish-speaking hardcore there are speakers of Yiddish as a second language whose language is characterized, for example, by the omission of auxiliaries, as in (the grammatically deviant) ix gezen ‘I saw’ (lit. ʻI seenʼ) instead of ix ob gezen (lit. ʻI have seenʼ). Such phenomena are entirely absent from the analyzed corpus, for the reasons noted above. Nonetheless, while the corpus is limited both by its formal register and by choice of speakers, the language represented in it is not a marginal variety. The speakers are all influential figures, whose addresses are listened to by vast audiences, especially in their recorded versions which enjoy wide distribution (Caplan 1997, 2003a, 2007). This is not an esoteric elitist variety, but rather an influential high-register Yiddish, designated for a broad Yiddish-speaking audience.

2.3 The language of the analyzed corpus This section discusses the public speakers’ deliberate usage of Hebrew varieties (2.3.1), the covert impact of IH on their language (2.3.2, 2.3.3, 2.3.4), and the symbolic roles of the linguistic varieties in the corpus analyzed (2.3.5).

2.3.1 The usage of Hebrew varieties The main quality of public Yiddish that marks it as a high-register variety concerns the use of Hebrew varieties: the deliberate avoidance of IH on the one hand, and the extensive usage of LK on the other, are the main characteristics distinguishing the language of the public corpus from daily spoken varieties (Chapters 4 and 5). In everyday contexts, IHY speakers commonly switch to IH. Since all speakers are bilingual, conversations are often conducted in what Grosjean termed the bilingual language mode (Grosjean 2001), freely mixing IHY and IH (see Chapter 4, examples (13)-(14)). Only a limited zealous minority deliberately tries to avoid switching to IH in daily contexts. On the other hand, in the formal context of public speech, free mixing of Yiddish and IH never occurs. The public speakers adhere to Yiddish and switching to IH is restricted to rare and deliberate occurrences, serving clear rhetorical purposes (Chapter 4). As noted, avoidance of IH in the corpus is ideological, reflecting negative attitudes towards IH that make its free use inappropriate in public contexts. Significantly, this avoidance of IH does



2.3 The language of the analyzed corpus 

 35

not derive from a more general objection to language mixing, but solely from the negative status of IH in the speech community: the same public speakers who avoid IH willingly mix the prestigious LK in their Yiddish. Further evidence for the ideological background of the avoidance of IH arises from comparison of Israeli Haredi Yiddish public speech with its American counterpart. American Yiddish-speaking Haredim are also bilingual, but communal attitudes towards English are almost certainly not as ideologically charged as in the Israeli context. Moreover, the community uses a Jewish variety of English, known as “Hasidic English”, serving as an internal communal code (Fader 2009, Chapters 4–5; Assouline forthcoming). As a result, switching to English is legitimate even in public contexts, as can be seen in example (5) – an excerpt from the opening words of an American woman speaking at a Satmar women’s public gathering in 2008: 5

indz we

hobmir have.1pl

koydem first

vil want

frowen women

vus rel

in and

far before

ix I

bagrisn greet.inf

hobn have

laygn lay.inf

burxašem thank_God

a beautiful, inspiring and uplifting program […]

zax refl

šlufn, sleep.inf

in in

a a

de the

badanken thank.inf

geyugt speed.ptcp in and idiše Jewish

ix do anything more, I

introducing

in and

vil want

ale all

mit supper with

xúševe important gebn, give.inf

everything else that goes on

štib home ix I

at eight o’clock […]

unfangen begin.inf

mit with

eršte speaker. first

‘we have a beautiful, inspiring and uplifting program […] first of all I want to greet and thank all the distinguished women who hurried with making supper, tucking into bed and everything else that goes on thank God in a Jewish home at eight o’clock […] before I do anything more, I want to begin with introducing the first speaker.’

36 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

Similar free switching never happened in the Israeli corpus, since the negative status of IH prohibits its free employment in public Yiddish settings. Besides the avoidance of IH, the language of the public corpus also differs from daily IHY with respect to the extent of LK use. Public speakers often quote from the language of ritual and scholarly sacred texts, employing the texts’ absolute authority and the communal familiarity with their contents for various rhetorical purposes. Consider the use of LK in example (6), where a Hasidic speaker (not a member of the Edah) delivering a political lecture voices a pragmatic ­non-zealous Haredi political stance (Brown 2015), which relates to the State of Israel as a necessary evil inasmuch as it enables Haredim to maintain the segregated autonomy they enjoyed for generations in exile: 6

der šiltn, ver the government who a a

ayce advice

bedóyron, in-gift

LK

gebn give.inf betfíle, in-prayer

siz it is mit with

der šiltn, the government

darf has_to

em him

mit with

azoy vi as

men impers a a

zex refl

púrec: lord

bemilxúme. in-warLK

‘The government, whichever [political party] is in charge, one has to cope with them as one copes with a [non-Jewish] lord: LK “with gift, prayer, and war” LK.’ [Has. M] In this short excerpt the speaker explicitly stresses Haredi alienation from the Israeli authorities by employing the word púrec – a term used by Jews in Eastern Europe to refer to the Polish landowner or lord, to whom they were subjected – thus invoking an associative connection between Jewish life in exile in Eastern Europe and current Haredi exile in present-day Israel. Furthermore, the LK quotation “with gift, prayer and war” adds yet another associative dimension to the distance between the Haredim and the Israeli state. This quotation is taken from the Jewish biblical exegesis (Midrash) regarding the preparations made by Jacob prior to his dramatic reunion with his brother Esau in Genesis 32. Apprehensive of the meeting with his estranged and wronged brother, Jacob prepares to appease Esau with gifts, prays for the Lord’s assistance, while at the same time preparing to fight his brother if all else fails. In Jewish tradition Jacob is the embodiment of the Jewish people while Esau symbolizes the Gentile. The basic us/them



2.3 The language of the analyzed corpus 

 37

­ istinction of the Haredim in regard to the State of Israel thus resonates with the d basic Jewish-Gentile distinction alluded to in the quote. The rhetorical power of LK quotes, particularly in men’s public speech, originates from the fact that the Haredi way of life, including uniform education, daily ritual and extensive study of LK texts, creates a reservoir of texts familiar to all adult male members of the community (and to a lesser extent also to some women, 5.3). In this specific case, the quotation “with gift, prayer and war” appears in Rashi’s commentary, which, besides being learnt in childhood, is read by all Haredi men on a weekly basis, year after year.

2.3.2 The covert role of IH The profound impact of IH on IHY is undoubtedly the most marked and salient trait of this Yiddish variety. While deliberate avoidance of IH in the public corpus concerns mainly clearly identifiable instances of interference, such as code-switching and use of unintegrated IH loanwords, the database also reflects other phenomena caused by the impact of IH, of which speakers are probably unaware. IHY is affected by IH “interference” primarily in the domains of phonology and lexicon, since the phonological system of IHY is practically identical to that of IH, while the IHY lexicon contains extensive borrowings and loan translations as well as semantic changes in long-established Hebrew-source elements under the impact of IH. These phenomena are also evident in the language of the public super-speakers, whose dominant language is Yiddish. In contrast to this upper stratum, the Yiddish of other speakers who have less command of Yiddish and who make less use of the language is more widely affected by IH, so that the language of the public speakers is the variety that is relatively less influenced by IH, compared to the speech community as a whole. The following discussion centers on widespread influences of IH on the language of the public corpus, of which the speakers are probably not aware. In order to analyze the effects of ideology on language contact it is necessary first to describe the contact phenomena of which the speakers remain oblivious. Deliberate attempts to avoid IH are directed at other, more conspicuous, contact phenomena, whereas the hidden phonological and lexical impact of IH is part of the baseline of the public speakers’ language. Since, as noted, the super-speakers’ Yiddish is the variety least influenced by IH, any contact-induced phenomenon documented among public speakers can be assumed to be shared by the entire speech community. On the other hand, since the super-speakers’ language is not representative of the full extent of IH impact on IHY, many contact phenomena

38 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

found among less proficient Yiddish speakers are absent from it (see above, 2.2. See also Chapter 6, example (65)).

2.3.3 The covert role of IH: Phonology The phonology of IHY is very similar to that of IH, and phonological features not found in IH have generally not been maintained. A salient example is the loss of distinction between short and long vowels, which existed in certain varieties of Yiddish but does not apply in IH. Central Yiddish dialects distinguished between a and ā, for example, as in hant (‘hand’) versus hānt (‘today’) (Weinreich 1980: 580– 581). Speakers of Hasidic Yiddish (see Notes on terminology, 0.1.1) in the analyzed corpus usually do not maintain this distinction, so that both ‘hand’ and ‘today’ are pronounced [h]ant (see also Campbell and Muntzel 1989: 186–187). The only clear distinction between the phonological systems of IHY and IH in the corpus concerns the Yiddish syllabic consonants [m], [n], and to a lesser extent also [l]. These consonants are not syllabic in IH, and yet most public speakers maintain their syllabic quality in IHY, thus producing consonant clusters that are not found in IH, such as dortn (‘there’) and obm (‘to have’). However, even this distinction is not found among all public speakers, some of whom consistently avoid such clusters by epenthesis (e. g. dorten instead of dortn). Moreover, almost all speakers avoid clusters with [l] by omission (e. g. vel or el instead of veln, ‘will.pl’). In sum, the phonological system of IHY as manifested in the public corpus is considerably reduced under the impact of IH (Andersen 1982: 94–95). Significantly for the present discussion, the phonological impact of IH is also evident in the pronunciation of Hebrew-source Yiddish elements. This point is crucial for the study of contact and ideology in IHY, since the most common strategy of legitimizing lexical borrowing from IH is by phonological adaptation. Speakers’ deliberate efforts to phonologically integrate IH elements in their Yiddish are detailed further in Chapter 6. Here it is noted that in attempting to adapt IH loanwords by relying on several simple phonological modification strategies, speakers fail to take into account the fact that the phonological baseline of Hebrew-source Yiddish elements in IHY has changed somewhat over time. Yiddish contains many Hebrew-source elements that have become an integral part of its lexicon (Notes on terminology, 0.2). In the public corpus, the pronunciation of these elements generally resembles their pronunciation in documented Yiddish (Notes on terminology, 0.1.1), with one conspicuous exception in the case of vowels in unstressed positions. Table 2.1 presents the main phonological patterns of IH pronunciation, contrasted with the pronunciation of Hebrew loanwords in documented Yiddish and its modifications in the IHY public corpus.



2.3 The language of the analyzed corpus 

 39

Table 2.1: Pronunciation of Hebrew elements

Stress Vowel realization: Unstressed vowels Hebrew vowels: Qamatz Tzere Holam Shuruq Pronunciation of the historical fricative taw (Bolozky 2013a)

Israeli Hebrew

Hebrew-source ­loanwords in ­documented Yiddish (“Merged component”)

Hebrew-source loanwords in the IHY public corpus

mainly ultimate xavér ‘friend’

mainly penultimate xáver

mainly penultimate xáver

(stressed in IH) talmíd ‘pupil’

neutralized tálmed Northeastern Yiddish [o] šólem [ey] séyfer [ey] téyre [u] šum [s] šábes

generally maintained tálmid Jerusalemite Hasidic Yiddish Yiddish usually [o] usually [u] usually [ey] usually [ay] usually [ey] usually [oy] [u] usually [i] usually [s] sometimes also [t], e. g. atxúle ‘beginning’ (Yid. hasxóle, hasxúle)

[a] šalóm ‘peace’ [e] séfer ‘book’ [o] torá ‘Torah’ [u] šum ‘any’ [t] šabát ‘Sabbath’

Central Yiddish [u] šúlem [ay] sáyfer [oy] tóyre [i] šim

As shown in Table 2.1, the most stable distinction between IH pronunciation and that of the integrated or Merged Hebrew component in the IHY corpus is in stress pattern. The distinct stress pattern is transparent to IHY speakers, who can easily implement it and change the stress of a given IH word as the main mechanism of its phonological integration. The vowel realization is less distinctive. The documented widespread neutralization of vowels in unstressed position in Merged Hebrew is not always observed in IHY. As a result, Merged Hebrew elements such as yíeš (IH yeúš, ‘despair’) and mámšex (IH mamšíx, ‘continue’) are usually pronounced in the corpus yíuš and mámšix respectively. This pronunciation resembles that of LK or what is termed “Whole Hebrew” – the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew texts, or of quotes, segments and phrases from those texts (Notes on terminology, 0.1.3; Weinreich 1980: 351– 354). In the Ashkenazi pronunciation, vowels in unstressed positions are retained, as in šábos ‘Sabbath’, versus Merged Hebrew pronunciation šábes. However, maintenance of vowels in unstressed positions in the public corpus cannot be attributed to an attempt to imitate Whole Hebrew pronunciation. In the first place, unstressed vowels in IHY Hebrew elements are also maintained in daily contexts and non-formal registers, implying that the vowel maintenance is due to IH influence rather than

40 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

an expression of a ­deliberate ­prestigious LK pronunciation. Moreover, the impact of IH is evident when the vowel maintained reflects the Israeli pronunciation rather than the Ashkenazi. For example, the common Hebrew-source Yiddish element mácev (‘state, situation’) is often pronounced in the corpus mácav, reflecting the IH vowels but not the IH stress pattern (IH macáv). The pronunciation mácav is distinct not only from that of the documented element mácev, but also from this element’s Ashkenazi pronunciation mácov (see 6.2). In other words, it is the impact of IH, and not the formal and ceremonial context of the public corpus, which is responsible for the maintenance of vowels in unstressed positions. Besides the maintenance of unstressed vowels, IH pronunciation sometimes affects the pronunciation of stressed Hebrew vowels as well (6.2.1). An additional effect of IH pronunciation occurs in the pronunciation of several consonants. The historical fricative taw in the corpus is sometimes pronounced [t] as in IH rather than [s] as in the Ashkenazi ­pronunciation, mainly in non-final position (see Table 2.1. See also 6.2.1). In addition, the IH pronunciation is probably responsible for several other consistent changes in the pronunciation of other plosive/fricative bgdkpt consonants in the corpus (Bolozky 2013a). For example, the documented Hebrew-source elements bekavóne ‘intend to’ and lepóxes ‘at least’ are pronounced in the corpus bexavóne ‘on purpose’ (a semantic change under the impact of IH, see 6.4.1) and lefóxes (IH bexavaná, lefaxót). Note, again, that speakers are probably not aware of any of these phonological changes, so that this slightly modified pronunciation of Hebrew elements is taken as a b ­ aseline to which new IH loanwords should be adapted. Thus, phonological adaptation of an IH ­loanword takes the form mainly of a change in stress, along with a possible ­preservation of some of its original IH vowels or consonants (6.2.1).

2.3.4 The covert role of IH: Lexicon The public speakers, as super-speakers, are probably familiar with more original or “real” Yiddish words than any other members of the speech community. This is especially evident among the women, due to their greater Yiddish literacy. And yet, though the public speakers employ IH loanwords less than other speakers, their Yiddish lexicon is still greatly influenced by IH. The documented Merged Hebrew component facilitates lexical borrowing from IH, and many new loanwords have been phonologically integrated and are thus indistinguishable from long-established Hebrew-source elements. Again, the speakers themselves remain ignorant of this type of lexical interference (1.4.3). To illustrate the hidden lexical effect of IH, consider the excerpt in example (7), taken from a lecture delivered by a Jerusalemite educator. Hebrew-source elements, both documented in Yiddish as well as newly introduced, are italicized:



2.3 The language of the analyzed corpus 

7   zayn    his

avóydas ašém worship_of the-Lord

 41

bedérex klal iz a sax mer šítxi, generally is much more superficial

zayn avóydas ašém i (=iz) ništ pními, i (=iz) ništ bágrusdik. his worship_of the-Lord is not internal is not mature ‘His religious observance generally is much more superficial, his religious observance is not internal, is not mature.’ [Jer. M] In example (7) the speaker uses three long-established Merged Hebrew elements: avoydas ašém (in documented Yiddish with a neutralization of an unstressed vowel, avoydes ašém) (‘Jewish religious practice’), a sax (‘much’), containing the Hebrew sax (‘sum’), and bedérex klal (‘generally’). In addition, the speaker employs three Hebrew-source adjectives, which are not documented in Yiddish: šítxi (‘superficial’) (IH šitxí), pními (‘internal’) (IH pnimí), and bágrusdik (‘mature’) from the IH bagrút (‘maturity’), morphologically integrated into Yiddish by the Germanic suffix –dik. There is no structural or lexical trait identifying the newly introduced adjectives as new. Similarly, many newly introduced Hebrew loanwords in the corpus are completely assimilated into Yiddish, commonly used, and are not identified by speakers as foreign. Such words are regularly used by the most zealous speakers, and can also be employed in sacred contexts (see also 6.1). In addition to lexical borrowing of new elements, the extensive use of IH also affects long-established Merged Hebrew elements in IHY. These can change (morphologically and semantically) under the impact of IH (6.3, 6.4). Again, these are changes of which speakers are probably not aware. Another striking lexical impact of IH, also unrecognized by the speakers, is the consistent replacement of Germanic and Slavic words by Hebrew equivalents (both documented and new, see 6.1). All these processes lead to a gradual convergence of the IHY lexicon with that of IH, a trend that may eventually result in a mixed language combining Yiddish grammatical structure and Hebrew vocabulary. Examples such as (7) are not far from this possibility, especially considering that this sentence was uttered by a super-speaker, and that the lexical impact of IH is even more evident among common speakers.

2.3.5 Conclusion: Yiddish, IH and LK in public settings The Yiddish of the public speakers, even if heavily influenced by IH, is regarded as a preferred insider code suitable for public settings as long as the impact of IH

42 

 2 The setting: Yiddish public speaking

remains below the threshold of awareness. The public gatherings documented in the corpus, particularly those that are more sermon-like, reflect a desired “pure” Haredi identity, free of unwanted Israeli influence. These are closed and intimate events, where use of Yiddish unifies the participants around their shared ethnic and cultural heritage, revalidating their distinct group-identity as well as the assumed supremacy of their ultra-traditional way of life. After all, they are the only Haredim who still use Yiddish, and therefore the last to maintain a direct connection to their idealized Eastern European past. In such segregated insider events, the free switching to IH common in everyday contexts is not legitimate. Unmonitored use of recognizable IH segments can undermine the “pure” Haredi setting constructed through the use of Yiddish, implying an inappropriate permeation of Israeli reality into what functions as an idealized Haredi time capsule. This deliberate avoidance of IH in public contexts can be described as an “Israeli-free” style or as a negative “act of identity”: the speakers modify their speech in order to distinguish themselves and their audience from the IH-speaking Israeli reality (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller 1985: 181). The use of IH would contradict the declared goal of most sermons and public speeches, which is “strengthening” (Yid. xízek): the intention being to reinforce participants in such events, spiritually and ideologically, thus reassuring them of the superiority of their way of life. In such a context, a mixed identity, as potentially implied by the use of a “mixed” language, would constitute a grave deviation from communal sociolinguistic norms (cf. Myers-Scotton’s discussion of the switching pattern common when “the two varieties are both indexical of positively valued identities”, Myers-Scotton 1988: 162). The “pure” linguistic identity presented by the speakers helps construct the pure Haredi identity deemed fitting for public contexts. Recourse to IH quite naturally gains somewhat in legitimacy as formality and sanctity decrease, as in certain practically-oriented “instruction” lectures. However, even in such contexts, free, uncontrolled use of IH is extremely rare. As a result of these constraints, virtually all public speakers in the corpus were found to maintain the Yiddish linguistic framework throughout their delivery, never switching freely to IH (switches to IH were always marked or “flagged”; see Chapter 4). While the rejection of IH reflects declared negative language attitudes, the extensive usage of LK signifies the opposite. Switching to LK is considered prestigious, and public speakers willingly mix LK segments and phrases in their Yiddish. However, while the avoidance of IH is shared by all speakers, the norms of LK use are gender-oriented. Free mixing of Yiddish and LK is identified with prestigious all-male scholarly and ceremonial public settings such as Talmud lessons in a yeshiva, or the rebbe’s tóyre (the Hasidic rabbi’s sermon on the Sabbath and religious holidays). Female preachers, consequently, make limited



2.3 The language of the analyzed corpus 

 43

and controlled use of LK, distinct from the mixed style common among men and perceived as masculine (Chapter 5). In sum, in the formal setting of public speech, speakers make controlled use of the community’s three linguistic varieties. The patterns of using Yiddish, IH and LK manifest the declared language ideologies of the Yiddish-speaking hardcore: Yiddish as the frame language, drawing social boundaries and reflecting the linguistically-anchored distinct ethnic identity of this secluded group; the gender-differentiated usage of LK, indicating its perception as a masculine code; and most of all, the deliberate avoidance of IH. The ideological rejection of IH, which has almost no effect on the everyday Yiddish speech of most IHY speakers, is thus explicitly demonstrated by the public speakers.

3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane Zealous ultra-Orthodox doctrine makes an unequivocal distinction between Loshn-kóydesh and Israeli Hebrew (Ivrít, IH ‘Hebrew’) (Be’er 2005; Glinert & Shilhav 1991; Poll 1980). The two languages are perceived as totally unrelated, diametrically opposed entities: Loshn-kóydesh is literally sacred, the language of God in which the world was created, while Ivrít is a profane, sacrilegious and even demonic entity. In the IHY speech community this distinction is overtly manifested in the spoken language, since LK is always articulated in the Ashkenazi pronunciation, distinct from the IH pronunciation of Ivrít. While the ideological distinction between LK and Ivrít is absolute, the situation on the ground is complicated by the basic structural and lexical similarities between the two Hebrews. There is no Haredi consensus regarding what linguistic details in principle constitute the differences between the two Hebrews, and there is much confusion whenever Israeli Haredi speakers need to account for the exact nature of this distinction (Assouline 2013). Regardless of the theoretical differentiation, however, IHY speakers do in fact distinguish consistently between the two types of Hebrew in their spoken usage. The main factors deciding the performance of a specific piece of spoken Hebrew (including the reading aloud of written Hebrew texts) are sociolinguistic rather than linguistic. In other words, there may be nothing identifiable as “Israeli” or as “LK” in a specific segment of Hebrew speech per se; rather, it is the context that determines the performance of each particular stretch of discourse. The following sections consider the nature of this distinction and how it is manifested in the IHY speech community. The historical evolution of this distinction and its implications are described in Section 3.1, followed by discussion of certain aspects of the discrepancies between the clear ideological distinction and the intricate sociolinguistic setting in Israel (Section 3.2) and analysis of the symbolic roles of the two Hebrews in the public corpus (Section 3.3). Throughout this chapter, reference is made mainly to the terms employed by the Haredim themselves, Loshnkóydesh and Ivrít, alongside the more neutral terms used in the linguistic literature “Modern Hebrew” and “Israeli Hebrew” (see Notes on terminology 0.1.2).

3.1 The holy tongue versus the language of the devil The zealous rejection of IH is the current incarnation of an enduring ultra-Orthodox battle with Modern Hebrew. The beginning of this battle can be traced to late nineteenth-century Jerusalem, where some of the very first attempts to use Hebrew as a daily spoken language were made. The man most identified with this DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-004

46 

 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

endeavor is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (Lithuania 1858 – Jerusalem 1922), who settled in Jerusalem in 1881. Ben-Yehuda’s efforts to establish Hebrew as a spoken language, in addition to his nationalistic ideology and anti-religious stance, outraged the leaders of the Ashkenazi Orthodox community in Jerusalem (Friedman 1978: 1–23, esp. 18; Lang 1993). They opposed the idea of turning the holy tongue into an everyday means of communication, striving to maintain the traditional Ashkenazi diglossia, with Yiddish as the spoken language and LK as the language of ritual and study as well as the main written medium (1.3.1). Orthodox animosity led to Ben-Yehuda’s excommunication, persecution, and even imprisonment by the Ottoman authorities following the false allegation by Orthodox circles that he had called for a rebellion by the Jewish community against the Ottoman authorities (Lang 2008, vol. 1: 259–300). The zealous leaders opposing Ben-Yehuda described everyday use of Hebrew as an innovation, one which, like all other innovations, is forbidden by the Torah (1.2). They also stressed the connections between Modern Hebrew and the secular national Jewish culture developing in Palestine, and warned that Ben-Yehuda’s enterprise of teaching Hebrew to women might lead them astray (Be’er 2005). These two arguments against Modern Hebrew can still be heard today, as expressions of both the traditionalist stance opposing any novelty or change and the exclusionary ideology fearing exposure to the outside world. Yet the most widespread contemporary zealous argument against Modern Hebrew relates to the very essence of this language: Modern Hebrew (including IH) is perceived as a malicious distortion of the holy tongue, a new and blasphemous language, created by a heretic mortal (i. e. ­Ben-Yehuda) in opposition to the divine origin of the sacred tongue (Be’er 2005). The zealous demonization of Modern Hebrew was a gradual process, which began in Ben-Yehuda’s lifetime and evolved mainly in the mid-twentieth century. The primary ideological opponent to Modern Hebrew was Yoel Teitelbaum, the founder of the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidic sect and the main formulator of the zealous doctrine. In 1961 Teitelbaum compiled a “Treatise on the Holy Tongue” (ma’amar leshon hakodesh), which serves to this day as the ideological platform for the zealous rejection of Modern Hebrew (1.2). In his treatise, Teitelbaum identified the holy tongue with the divine language of the Hebrew Bible, while declaring that Modern Hebrew is a demonic language. According to Teitelbaum, the Zionists who created Modern Hebrew deliberately distorted the meaning of biblical words, changing them from sacred to mundane. According to Teitelbaum’s kabbalistic argumentation, this mixture of holiness and profanity reinforces demonic entities and evil forces, so that the damage of Modern Hebrew is not limited to our world but also extends to the supernal worlds. The idea of the malevolent profanation of sacred words is a key concept in zealous linguistic ideology. To this day, most zealous linguistic efforts are dedicated to the compila-



3.1 The holy tongue versus the language of the devil 

 47

tion of lists of “forbidden words”, whose meaning has been secularized. A typical example of such a word is the Modern Hebrew term for electricity, xašmál. This biblical word (Ezekiel 1:4, 27) was translated by the Greek ἤλεκτρον in the Septuagint, and by the Latin electrum in the Vulgate (‘amber’; see Rabin 1985: 276). The Modern Hebrew usage of this word was first introduced by the Hebrew poet Judah Leib Gordon (1830–1892), a prominent figure of the Jewish Enlightenment. Seeking a Hebrew equivalent for the term ‘electricity’ in one of his poems, Gordon decided to use the biblical xašmál. In a note to his poem, he explained that his choice of word was based on the Greek origin of the contemporary term, as in the German Elektrizität (Gordon 1950: 157). Ben-Yehuda later adopted this usage, including it in his seventeen-volume Hebrew dictionary (Ben Yehuda 1948, vol. IV: 1805–1806). The spiritual damage allegedly caused by Modern Hebrew xašmál is explained in an influential zealous compilation, titled “Judaism of the Torah and the state” (1959): This word originally appears in the Book of Ezekiel (1:4) in the chapter describing the Divine vision of the prophet. This chapter, which is usually referred to as Maase Merkovo (“Vision of the Heavenly Chariot”), is one of the most hallowed and most mysterious of Biblical passages. In that vision, the prophet saw a great fire, “and out of the midst thereof as the color of xašmal.” What xašmal really means is, to say the least, a subject for scholarly research … It is, of course, not our purpose here to go into exegetic deliberations or etymological research. Practically, however, the fact remains that, throughout Jewish history, the very mention of xašmal aroused a feeling of awe in the mind of every Torah-true Jew, child or adult, seeing that xašmal is automatically associated with the most Divine, the most sublime. However, in our time, the modern Hebrew-speaking child or adult knows only that xašmal means electricity, something which he uses and encounters a hundred times a day, something devoid of any sanctity and associated only with his living-room, radio or bathroom. Thus when this boy meets up again with the word in Ezekiel, his subconscious transforms the revelation to something ridiculous, even grotesque. The “Vision of the Heavenly Chariot” seems to him like an electrical game of illumination; at best, a secular or profane approach. This is exactly the intention of those who claimed to “revive the language.” (Gitlin [Zimmer] 1959, p. 22. English translation of the original Hebrew from Be’er 2005)

The current zealous definition of Modern Hebrew is based almost entirely on the identification of “forbidden words” such as xašmál. Most of the work in this field is conducted by American Satmar Hasidim, as part of their enduring battle with the Modern Hebrew language (Assouline 2013: 150–152; Rothschild 2008; Kahn).1

1 Kahn is a Satmar Hasid who discusses “forbidden words”. See his compilation, leshon hakodesh: lehavdil ben tame letahor [The Holy Tongue: differentiating between profane and pure], on the website “True Torah Jews: Against Zionism”, http://www.truetorahjews.org/images/lashon.pdf (accessed 1 May 2017).

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

Importantly, these American Hasidim do not speak Hebrew on an everyday basis, so that their zealous linguistic enterprises remain largely in the realm of theory. In the Israeli context, however, where almost all adult Yiddish speakers also speak IH, it is in all likelihood impossible to identify the hundreds of “forbidden words” in everyday spoken usage. My conversations with IHY-speaking informants from the Edah left me with the impression that, in theory, almost every Modern Hebrew word can be regarded as a LK word, as long as its Hebrew root is identified. One conversation I had with a young man of the Toldos Aharon Hasidic sect can illustrate the distance between the theoretical concept of forbidden words and how the notion is in fact put into everyday practice. After asking him whether there were any Hebrew words he could not use in his Yiddish, his immediate response was positive: new Hebrew words are forbidden. When asked to give me an example, he couldn’t come up with one right away, and rejected any Modern Hebrew alternative that I proposed with the argument: “How do you know that this word did not exist before Ben-Yehuda? And even if Ben-Yehuda invented words, as long as they have a Loshn-kóydesh root it’s okay”. After thinking long and hard to find a forbidden word, he recalled a story about Rabbi Aharon Roth, the founder of the Toldos Aharon Hasidic sect, who prohibited the use of the Hebrew word rahitím (‘furniture’) in a betrothal contract (Shtar Tena’im) and insisted on the Yiddish equivalent, mebl (‘furniture’), instead. Finally, the informant added xašmál: “we don’t say xašmál, we say lekter [Haredi Yid. ‘electricity’]. It depends when. In the rebbe’s dróše [‘the Hasidic leader’s sermon’] there are no words in Ivrít. And in general, the rebbe would never say a word like glída [colloquial IH ‘ice-cream’, one of Ben-Yehuda’s innovations], for example. If he wants to say ‘ice-cream’ he would say ayz krem.” The word xašmál was mentioned by other informants as well. Abstention from using this word (replacing it with Yid. lekter) evidently serves as a symbolic lexical act, through which speakers identify themselves as zealots. In addition, the informant’s answer demonstrates the vital importance of context for the usage of IH: when the setting is sacred (a sermon) or when the speaker is a holy man (a rebbe), the use of Modern Hebrew words would be highly inappropriate. The example of the Modern Hebrew word rahitím (‘furniture’) illuminates another facet of the forbidden words phenomenon: using such words is considered extremely unsuitable in written language, let alone when writing a sacred deed. The word rahitím is a typical example of the zealous sensitivity towards Modern Hebrew, since it is a biblical word (Song of Songs 1:17), which has undergone a semantic change in Modern Hebrew (from ‘rafters’ to ‘furniture’).2

2 See the online historical dictionary of the Hebrew language, maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il.



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 49

While the zealous definition of IH is mainly lexical, based on the identification of “forbidden words”, their definition of LK is primarily textual. Hardcore Yiddish-speakers identify certain Hebrew texts as sacred, or simply as Haredi, and consequently their language is defined as LK, without any principled consensus as to the scope of these texts. The most minimalistic definition of LK identifies it with the language of the Hebrew Bible, while broader definitions integrate into LK the language of all sacred Hebrew and Aramaic texts from different periods in their history (Biblical, Mishnaic, Talmudic, Medieval etc., see Assouline 2013). Although theoretical definitions of the two Hebrews might be complex, and zealous writers argue as to the extent of sacred LK texts as well as whether certain words are indeed “forbidden”, the spoken distinction between the two Hebrews in the IHY speech community is usually very straightforward: it is the context that determines the identity of the language, and not its lexical or structural attributes. First of all, there is almost no overlap between the functions of the two Hebrews in spoken usage: LK serves primarily for ritual or study, while IH is the language of daily communication with non-Yiddish speakers. The sharp functional and phonological differences between the two Hebrews facilitate an automatic selection of the appropriate variety, exempting speakers from the need to deal with the substance of this distinction. An IHY speaker prays in LK and talks to the bus driver in IH. Use of the Ashkenazi pronunciation in an Israeli context or vice versa is highly unlikely. What would happen, however, without a specific context, such as prayer or a conversation with an outsider? For example, what would happen if we gave a Haredi a neutral Hebrew text to read aloud? (that is, a text with no recognizable “forbidden words” or quotes from sacred texts)? How could the speaker decide whether the text is written in Ivrít or LK? The answer is that speakers simply cannot make this distinction out of context. Examining speakers’ choice of forms of pronunciation across the corpus, what emerges is that this distinction is never linguistic. The question as to whether the language of a certain text should be regarded as LK or as Ivrít is invariably context-dependent and ideologically-oriented. Speakers consistently pronounce every Hebrew text they identify with the Haredi world in the Ashkenazi pronunciation, even if it manifests clear Israeli linguistic features. One recurring example is the reading aloud of Hebrew notes in public gatherings. In various Haredi gatherings for men (usually of the “instruction” genre, 2.1.2), people in the audience submit their queries and comments to the speakers. These notes are written in Hebrew, the common written language of men. When the public speakers read them aloud before attempting to answer them, they always articulate the Hebrew text with Ashkenazi pronunciation. Consider example (8), recorded in a political lecture delivered in the Hasidic Belz Yeshiva in Jerusalem, in 1995.

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

The speaker read aloud a question sent to him by a member of the audience, concerning the recent defection of Saddam Hussein’s sons-in-law to Jordan (in August 1995): 8

“aím q

yeš there_is

sakúne danger

aríkas šnay defection_of two ve-mácev and-situation

mamúšis substantial

xasúnav sons_in_law.poss.3sg.m

i is/will be

šel of

zríkas throwing

le-yisrúel to-Israel šel of

áykev following

šálit ruler_of

tílim missiles

irák Iraq

al érec yisrúel” on land Israel

‘Is there a real danger to Israel due to the defection of Iraq’s ruler’s two sonsin-law, and the situation will be [will escalate to] missile attack on Israel?’ [Has. M] The short Hebrew text in example (8) includes several Modern Hebrew words (‘substantial’, ‘defection’, ‘missiles’) and does not manifest any structural or stylistic qualities that differentiate it from IH. Why, then, does the speaker articulate it with an Ashkenazi pronunciation? First of all, for any IHY speaker, the Ashkenazi pronunciation is the basic and natural way of articulating a Hebrew text. This is the primary method of reading taught in the xéyder (religious school for boys), and speakers use it for the articulation of most Hebrew texts, except for those identified as external or non-Haredi. The context of the note in (8) is entirely Haredi, since it was written during a lecture in a yeshiva by a Haredi man. The Haredi context leads to its being pronounced in the Ashkenazi manner, regardless of its content, vocabulary or linguistic structure. However, not every Hebrew text is pronounced this way. In the same lecture, the speaker read aloud a quote attributed to Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth prime minister, attempting to articulate it with IH pronunciation. Here is the first sentence he quoted: 9

begin  ot demults gezugt: “a-šále, a-šeelá miú yeudí Begin has then  say.ptcpYID LKthe-questionLK IHthe-question who_is Jew

YID

nikbeá ve-tikabá al yedáy a-alúxe” was_determined.3sg.f and-will_be_determined.3sg.f IH LKby the-HalakhahLK



3.2 When the ideological distinction clashes with Israeli reality 

 51

‘Begin said then, “the question, IHthe question ‘who is a Jew’, was and will be determinedIH according to the Halakhah [Jewish religious law]”’ [Has. M] (Quoted from an address delivered by Begin in the Israeli parliament on ­February 9, 1970) Menachem Begin was not Haredi or even religious. His speech was delivered in IH, and the speaker cites what he said with IH pronunciation. The same thing happens whenever speakers read a Hebrew text articulated or written by a non-Haredi. Although the content of the quote conforms fully to Haredi doctrine, Begin remains an outsider, and his language is identified as IH. Throughout the quote (of which only the first sentence appears in (9)), the speaker pronounces several words differently from IH, probably due to his habitual method of reading, as is evident in the word opening the quote, ‘the question’, which the speaker articulated first in a casual Ashkenazi pronunciation (ašále; see Katz 1993: 56), immediately correcting it to the IH pronunciation (ašeelá). In addition, the speaker pronounced the word ‘Halakhah’ as in Yiddish (alúxe), probably due to habit as well as to the semantically loaded connotation of the term. The preceding preposition ‘by’ was also affected by his speech habits, with the diphthong conforming to Hasidic Ashkenazi pronunciation rather than IH (al yedáy and not al yedéy). Aside from such occasional slips, the speaker continued reading the entire quote in a marked IH pronunciation, maintaining as much as possible the IH of the original speaker. Where written Hebrew texts are concerned (as in examples (8) and (9)), their pronunciation is determined by their ideological affiliation. A text written by a Haredi and read aloud in a Haredi setting will be pronounced as LK, while a lexically and structurally similar text identified as “Israeli” will be articulated as IH. Out of context, the Hebrew text has no clear identity. The undetermined status of the Hebrew text prior to its reading is somewhat similar to the situation of Schrödinger’s cat while in the closed box. In this famous Gedankenexperiment, the cat in the box may be either dead or alive as long as the box is closed; similarly, the Hebrew text in its written form may be perceived as either IH or LK. The cat’s situation is revealed only when the box is opened, just as the status of the Hebrew text is not discovered until a Haredi reads it aloud. Only the deliberate choice of a Haredi determines the text’s identity, governing how it is performed.

3.2 When the ideological distinction clashes with Israeli reality For a Satmar Hasid living in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NY), the distinction between LK and Ivrít seems plain as day. However, in the Israeli setting the boundaries

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

between the two Hebrews may be fuzzier. Theoretical distinction between the two Hebrews is as common in the IHY speech community as it is in the USA, but Israeli reality brings together the zealous distinction with other ultra-Orthodox linguistic models, where such a distinction does not exist. One such model is Sephardic ultra-Orthodoxy. The term “Sephardic” (Heb. lit. ‘Spanish’) in Israeli Haredi society is used as a blanket term, referring to descendents of various Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa. Sephardic ultra-Orthodox communities use Hebrew both as a daily spoken language and as a language of ritual and study, generally with no significant phonological distinctions in the different domains of use.3 What happens to the zealot’s ideological distinction between the two Hebrews in public domains, when it is faced with Israeli reality and the existence of other Haredi linguistic models? The three following sections illustrate some of the possible complications arising from such clashes between ideology and reality. The first two sections analyze instances of language choice in public events, and the third demonstrates the different linguistic sensitivities of American and Israeli Haredim.

3.2.1 “Hebrew which is not Hebrew” An interesting case of language choice was recorded at a rally against government supervision of Haredi educational institutions, in Jerusalem on December 9, 2008. The rally was organized by the Edah, and included public addresses delivered by the Edah’s prominent figures, including its chief rabbi. Here is a brief outline of the main public addresses in this event, excluding the moderator’s introductory remarks (in Yiddish), and various public prayers and collective cries integrated throughout the rally: 1. The rally opens with the sound of the Shofar (a horn used in Jewish ritual), followed by a melodic call to join the demonstration (Yiddish); 2. Chief rabbi of the Edah Haredit, Yitskhok Tuvia Weiss (Yiddish); 3. Head of rabbinical court, Moyshe Shternbuch (Yiddish); 4. A leader of the Prúshim community, Yehoshua David Turchin (Yiddish); 5. Abraham Freulich, businessman and politician (IH mixed with LK); 3 Sephardic Haredim usually use the same Hebrew pronunciation for daily speech as for ritual use, with the exception of Haredim of Yemenite descent, who preserve their distinct pronunciation of ritual Hebrew (Morag 2007). Additionally, some minor phonological distinctions are sometimes attested among other Sephardic Haredim, such as a more meticulous pronunciation of the vocalic/mobile shewa or of geminated consonants. See Yaakov 2011, esp. p. 77.



3.2 When the ideological distinction clashes with Israeli reality 

 53

6. Public addresses by two other senior rabbis, from the Dushinski and Vizhnitz Hasidic sects (Yiddish); 7. Reading aloud of a letter of support from Satmar rabbis in Williamsburg (LK); 8. Reading aloud the rally’s resolutions (LK). Consider first the typical language choices manifested here (1–4, 6–8), before proceeding to the unusual language choice in 5, which evoked a direct reference to the distinction between the two Hebrews. The list shows that all the senior rabbis spoke in Yiddish (2–4, 6), while all the Hebrew texts were read aloud using the Ashkenazi pronunciation (7–8), along lines typical of such public settings: Yiddish is the natural language of public addresses by rabbinical leaders, and the Ashkenazi pronunciation is the only acceptable form of articulating Hebrew Haredi texts. There is no doubt that the words of the Williamsburg rabbinical court (7) or the rally’s resolutions (8) are identified as Haredi, so the category of LK applies in both cases, while these two texts again highlight the role of Hebrew as the main medium of written communication in the speech community. The only exception to common IHY sociolinguistic norms is Abraham Freulich’s address in IH (5). This is an unusual event, possibly deriving from the Edah’s desire to reach outsiders: both the general Israeli public as well as non-Yiddishspeaking Haredim. In this case, the zealous rabbis used Freulich as a vehicle for conveying their message to the outside world (and not surprisingly, Freulich was the only speaker quoted later in the Israeli media covering this rally). Freulich is not a distinguished rabbi but a businessman and a politician, who represents the Edah in its many battles with the Israeli authorities. He can thus allow himself to speak IH at a public rally without losing face. However, since using IH in such a context is indeed exceptional, Freulich began his speech with the following apologetic statement (translated from IH): I was asked to speak, it is written in the announcements, it is called “loshn-akóydesh”. And since this assembly is an assembly of truth, I think that I allow myself to say that the Hebrew I speak is not loshn-akóydesh. Loshn-akóydesh is a holy great language, in which heaven and earth and the holy Torah were created. And we don’t know loshn-akóydesh at all. And even the Hebrew we speak is not Hebrew. It is some jumble of languages, dozens of languages. (Freulich 2008)

This short text demonstrates the speaker’s discomfort with his public use of IH. He opens with the apologetic “I was asked to speak”, implying that this choice of language was not his own. Then he refers to the written announcements, plastered on walls in Haredi neighborhoods, calling the public to attend the assembly. The announcements apparently specified that Freulich would speak in “the

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

holy tongue”, since such a problematic term as Ivrít cannot be used in a written text calling for a zealous demonstration. However, the term “loshn-hakóydesh” in the announcements might be taken as a codeword, implying that the rally is not an exclusive Yiddish-only affair, so that Hebrew-speaking Haredim may join in as well. Freulich proceeds to express some widespread zealous notions concerning LK and IH. According to zealous doctrine, LK was in fact never used as a spoken language, and its true nature cannot be gleaned from what is recorded in the biblical text (Teitelbaum 1961). Consequently, Freulich argues, no one can claim to speak in the holy tongue. The reference to IH as a “jumble of languages” (IH blil šel safót) is also a common zealous claim, further increasing the distance between this distorted hybrid and the pure and perfect entity that is LK. But what language does Freulich speak? It is not LK, and he refuses to call it “Ivrít”. The speaker’s apologetic introduction thus evades the provision of a precise definition of the language in use, leaving us with the ambiguous “Hebrew which is not Hebrew”. Freulich’s apologetic introduction constitutes his first attempt at legitimizing his use of IH in a zealous, anti-Israeli rally. An additional legitimizing mechanism is his sporadic use of the Ashkenazi pronunciation. In example (10), taken from this address, Freulich pronounces the initial three words and the final word in the Ashkenazi pronunciation: 10

bi-yrušoláim in-Jerusalem

LK

ir a-kóydeš city_of the-holyLK

še-caríx leišaér that-one_has_to remain.inf a-memšaltiyót, the-governmental im withIH

savrú thought.3pl

IH

mixúc outside

še-ló that-neg

le-kól of-all

iyé will be.3sg

ve-axzú and-believed.3pl

a-misgarót the-frameworks šum no

kéšer contact

a-šiltóynoys. LK the-authoritiesLK

‘LKIn the holy city of JerusalemLK IHone always thought and believed that one has to stay outside all the government’s [educational] institutions, that there will be no contact withIH LKthe authoritiesLK.’ (Freulich 2008) The scattered use of the Ashkenazi pronunciation helps Freulich to obscure at least some of the “Israeliness” of his language, thus perhaps turning it after all into a “Hebrew which is not Hebrew”.



3.2 When the ideological distinction clashes with Israeli reality 

 55

3.2.2 Avoiding the conflict At a rally of the anti-Zionist Edah opposing the Israeli government such as that just described, using IH is indeed a cause for discomfort. Besides, given that most members of the Edah are Yiddish speakers, Freulich’s words were clearly aimed at the outsiders attending the rally. However, what happens when a Yiddish-speaking rebbe (Hasidic leader), or some other distinguished Yiddish public speaker, addresses a Hebrew-speaking audience, as happens from time to time? In such cases the speakers generally use either IH or Hebrew with Ashkenazi pronunciation, the choice depending on their ideological stance as well as on the specific context. One illustrative example of circumstances that facilitated a Hasidic rebbe’s rare delivery of a public address in IH was the Belzer rebbe’s speech at the Degel HaTorah assembly in 1990. Degel HaTorah (‘Banner of the Torah’) is a Haredi political party representing the Litvish or Lithuanian-yeshivish streams, who ­generally speak IH (1.1). This party split in 1988 from the Hasidic-dominated Agudat Yisrael (‘Union of Israel’), and was joined by a single Hasidic sect: Belz (Heilman & Friedman 1991: 249–250). The Belzer rebbe, Yissachar Dov Rokakh, usually speaks Yiddish, but when speaking at this “Lithuanian” assembly he tried his best to speak IH. Throughout his address, Rokakh made constant efforts to avoid his customary Ashkenazi pronunciation, leading to several instances of hypercorrections (e. g. the pronunciation of the IH lemála ‘upward’ as lemalá). The choice to speak IH was supported by the rebbe’s relatively tolerant ideological stance, as well as by the overall “Lithuanian” context of the assembly, in which IH was the dominant language. Moreover, the leader of the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Iraqi born Rabbi Ovadya Yosef (1920–2013), also participated in this assembly, a fact that may also have encouraged the Belzer rebbe to speak IH. Another language choice when addressing an IH-speaking audience is use of the Ashkenazi pronunciation. When the speaker cannot or will not speak IH, Ashkenazi Hebrew may provide an acceptable alternative as, for example, when American rabbis address non-Yiddish-speaking Israelis. Sometimes the speakers do have good command of IH, and yet prefer the Ashkenazi pronunciation due to various factors, including their ideological stance and the specific context.4 Consider next an unusual case of language choice in similar circumstances, documented when the chief rabbi of the Edah, Yitskhok Tuvia Weiss, addressed a Sephardic audience in Jerusalem on May 15, 2012. Weiss attended an event at

4 Listen, for example, to the Lubavitcher rebbe addressing disabled Israeli soldiers and athletes in 1976, http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/livingtorah/player_cdo/aid/1076652/jewish/ Not-Handicapped-But-Special.htm (accessed 1 May 2017).

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

a Sephardic yeshiva, where the audience consisted of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Jews, who speak IH and know no Yiddish, so that Weiss could not use Yiddish as he normally would (cf. the 2008 rally discussed in Section 3.2.1). Of the two Hebrews, it is obvious that for the leader of the zealous Edah, a choice of IH is inconceivable; yet nonetheless, Weiss did not use the Ashkenazi pronunciation either. Instead, he began by speaking in Yiddish, apologizing that he was not used to talking in “Loshn-kóydesh”, and then switched to English. The term “Loshn-kóydesh” in this context is tricky. Weiss probably did not mean that he could not deliver a speech in LK, since mastery of LK is a prerequisite for assuming any authoritative position in the Haredi elite. More likely, Weiss used the term as a euphemism for the spoken language in common use among Sephardic Haredim, which is Israeli Hebrew. He could not use the term Ivrít in this context, since his ideological stance prevents his attributing it to his God-fearing audience. Instead, he obscured the identity of the language spoken by his Sephardic hosts by referring to it as “the holy tongue”. Nevertheless, since this Sephardic “LK” is in fact no different from IH, he could not use it. Ultimately, he circumvented the problem by choosing to speak in English, emphasizing his zealous abstention from speaking IH. The switch to English is quite bizarre in the Israeli context, especially since most Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews, Ashkenazi and Sephardic alike, have a minimal to non-existent knowledge of English. In Haredi internet forums reporting this event, many interpreted Weiss’s use of English as reflecting his elitist Ashkenazi stance, and condemned him for not making any effort to accommodate his Sephardic Hebrew-speaking audience (Assouline 2015b). Weiss’s choice of language was an extreme, possibly tactless act, performed by a man representing an extreme sect. But it should be borne in mind that most members of the IHY speech community are not as zealous as this. While speakers invariably distinguish between the two Hebrews in their spoken usage, they probably do not give much thought to the nature of this distinction. The following section reveals what happens when a young Haredi man is challenged about his use of the problematic term Ivrít.

3.2.3 “An understandable language” A beautiful illustration of the clash between zealous linguistic ideology and every­ merican Haredi day Israeli reality was recorded in an interview broadcast on the A hotline Kol Meváser in January 2010. Kol Mevaser (‘a voice bringing good tidings’) is a Yiddish radio station broadcast by telephone, operated by a group of New York Satmar Hasidim (Assouline & Dori-Hacohen 2017). This specific interview hosted a young Israeli man, who had witnessed a failed attempt at exorcising a dibbuk



3.2 When the ideological distinction clashes with Israeli reality 

 57

(an evil possessing spirit in Jewish folklore) in Jerusalem. In the Yiddish-medium ­interview, the American Satmar Hasid interviewer asked the young man to describe the exorcism ritual, which was conducted by the renowned Sephardic kabbalist Rabbi David Batzri on January 6, 2010. Batzri attempted to expel the dibbuk, which was said to have possessed the body of a young Brazilian man, following a failed attempt to expel it online via Skype a few weeks earlier. The ritual of exorcism includes a dialogue between the exorcist and the dibbuk. Since Batzri, as well as most of the other rabbis who participated in the ritual, is Sephardic, he spoke to the dibbuk in IH; but what language did the dibbuk use to reply? This was the issue that bothered the American interviewer. As reported by the witness, the dibbuk appears to also have spoken IH. The interview began with the Israeli witness describing the dibbuk’s confession, one of the initial stages of the exorcism ritual in which the evil spirit confesses the sins it committed while alive, sins that resulted in its eternal wandering and suffering, ultimately leading it to seek refuge in the body of a living person – in this case, the dibbuk had been a murderer who lived about 3,000 years ago. The witness quoted the dibbuk in IH, immediately transforming the quotations to LK or translating them to Yiddish for the benefit of the interviewer and his American audience. For example, when quoting the dibbuk’s specification of the period in which he lived, he used the colloquial IH šlóštalafim (‘3,000’ years in this case), immediately translating to the Yiddish dray toyznt (‘3,000’). The debate over the nature of the dibbuk’s language began when the American interviewer expressed his displeasure with the Israeli witness’s usage of the term Ivrít: Interviewer: Interviewee: Interviewer: Interviewee: Interviewer: Interviewee:

Interviewer: Interviewee: Interviewer:

Was the [dibbuk’s] voice different than that of the young man? Yes, the young man doesn’t speak Ivrít at all. The young man doesn’t speak Ivrít at all. He can only speak what is spoken in Brazil. Aha, that is Portuguese, I think. Yes, he speaks Portuguese. And the díbbuk can speak several languages. In the middle [of the ritual] he started to speak another language, Rabbi Batzri shouted at him: “Speak Ivrít!” [red ivrít] Aha. That is, Loshn-kóydesh, actually. Yes… It’s not really Loshn-kóydesh. It was not very clear, his words. [...] That is, he speaks a different, a different dialect, a different pronunciation [oysšprax]. Loshn-kóydesh words, but the vowels [nekídes] are a bit different.

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

Interviewee:

Interviewer: Interviewee: Interviewer: Interviewee: Interviewer: Interviewee: Interviewer: Interviewee: Interviewer: Interviewee:

Yes, it’s a strange language, there is no way to know exactly what language he is speaking. But you can understand him. You understand what he is saying. Someone who knows Loshn-kóydesh can understand what he says. Mmm, yes. What other languages did he speak? He spoke – I didn’t know these languages. But he knew the languagesWhich languages? I don’t know, he spoke several – There’s no way to even know what language it was. No. I don’t know. Aramaic, perhaps? No, it didn’t sound like it. […] He [Batzri] told him: “Speak in a language one can understand!”, so he [the dibbuk] resumed in a language one can understand.

This excerpt demonstrates the American interviewer’s adherence to the strict zealous distinction between the two Hebrews. The interviewer finds it inconceivable that a 3,000-year-old spirit would speak Ivrít, since he identifies this language with Modern or Israeli Hebrew. He consistently tries to stabilize the notion that the dibbuk spoke LK rather than Ivrít, which is more plausible from a historical perspective. The suggestion that an ancient spiritual entity (even if demonic) speaks “Ivrít” undermines the distinction between the two Hebrews, a very disturbing notion for the American interviewer. By contrast, the Israeli interviewee is less aware of the zealous distinction, and refers mainly to issues of comprehension, distinguishing between languages that he can understand and those he cannot. Finally, he comes to terms with the interviewer’s objection to defining the dibbuk’s language as Ivrít, calling it “a language one can understand”, and paraphrasing Batzri’s original order “Speak Ivrít” to “Speak in a language one can understand” (a šprax mi zol faršteyn). While both “Ivrít” and LK fall under the Israeli interviewee’s category of “understandable languages”, the American interviewer does not accept the notion of mutual intelligibility between the two Hebrews. He insists that the dibbuk spoke LK, taking as evidence the dibbuk’s alleged unclear pronunciation, claiming that the dibbuk might have spoken a different dialect of LK or used a slightly different pronunciation of LK, and that someone who knows LK would understand him. In short, he looks for every option to define the dibbuk’s language as LK rather than Ivrít. From his zealous



3.3 The status of the two Hebrews in the public corpus 

 59

point of view, Ivrít is an entirely different entity from LK. By contrast, the Israeli’s implicit message is that such a distinction is not so simple, since both Hebrews are understandable (compared to Portuguese and the “other languages” mentioned in the interview). The interviewee seems to be unaware of the importance of this distinction for the American Satmar interviewer. Besides, the strict zealous distinction does not fit the Sephardic linguistic context in which the exorcism ritual took place. In the end, the language the dibbuk spoke remains undefined. This strange but “understandable” language joins Freulich’s “Hebrew which is not Hebrew” and Weiss’s euphemistic “Loshn kóydesh”, manifesting the difficulties that some Israeli Yiddish-speaking Haredim face when confronted with the exact nature of their spoken Hebrew. They may speak it freely in everyday “Israeli” contexts, but when this language is a used in certain internal Haredi settings, they avoid defining it precisely, since doing so might reveal that they do in fact speak Ivrít after all.

3.3 The status of the two Hebrews in the public corpus As argued in the preceding section, the clear ideological distinction between the two Hebrews may be undermined when confronted with the complex Israeli linguistic reality. On the other hand, in the well-defined context of the corpus used for present purposes the distinction remains stable, and the two Hebrews play opposing symbolic roles. Speakers identify the two Hebrews by their distinct pronunciations, which they employ in order to achieve various rhetorical effects. The IH pronunciation is identified with the secular world, Israeli society and other non-Haredi values, and speakers can switch to IH deliberately in order to stress the negative value of a certain notion. By contrast, the Ashkenazi pronunciation is identified with the sacred tongue, and carries positive spiritual and scholarly attributes. Public speakers navigate between the two ideologically opposing Hebrews, integrating them in the Yiddish framework according to context. In other words, the Haredi distinction between the two Hebrews is the key to the code-switching patterns in the public corpus detailed further in Chapters 4 and 5. Most significantly, the formal setting of the corpus encourages speakers to use LK and limits their reliance on IH. Consequently, extensive use of Hebrew segments in the Ashkenazi pronunciation is the most typical stylistic feature of the corpus, while switching to IH is quite rare in this context. Besides, the different values attributed to the two varieties affect not only the extent to which they are used, but also the patterns of how they are integrated. In short, switching between Yiddish and LK, the two insider languages of the community, tends to be

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

quite smooth, while the outsider status of IH prevents similar smooth transitions (Chapter 4). A very different aspect of the use of the two Hebrews in the corpus relates to their respective level of comprehensibility. Israeli Hebrew is a spoken language serving all speakers documented in the corpus, so that its status as a comprehensible language is very clear. IH words and segments are almost never translated in the corpus, as against LK items, which may be quite freely translated, especially among women (5.3), while speakers often use IH elements in order to translate and clarify Yiddish or LK. Importantly, as long as use of IH is instrumental and limited to short segments (usually single words), the language can be used neutrally, ignoring its negative symbolic value. Consider the following example from the women’s corpus, demonstrating such instrumental use of IH: 11

far before

páysex, Passover

maxn make.inf de the

ets you.pl

de   naygecayg  piške, the sewing box

kufsát box_of

IH

ven when

kley tools_of

gayts go.2pl vi azoy how

tfirá, sewingIH

paysexdik of Passover (fit for Passover) ayst is_called

es, it

yo? yes

‘Before Passover, when you clean the sewing box for Passover, how is it called, the IHsewing boxIH, yes?’ [Has. W] The woman speaker in (11), delivering an instruction lecture on domestic harmony (Heb. šlom bayit), used the Yiddish term for ‘sewing box’, and then translated it to IH. The IH term is probably used to guarantee that her listeners understand her. This is because of the heterogeneous nature of the audience, whose command of Yiddish tends to differ according to the women’s age, sect affiliation and so on, so that the speaker cannot know whether a specific Yiddish term is familiar to all of them. This is especially common with terms referring to everyday objects, which manifest considerable variation in the IHY speech community. As a result, everyday terms in Yiddish and their IH equivalents serve side by side – for example the Yiddish šmótšik and the IH mocéc (‘pacifier’) – making it likely that some speakers are familiar only with the IH term for ‘sewing box’. In an everyday interchange, the speaker in (11) would probably simply use the common IH term, but in public contexts speakers try to speak as much Yiddish as possible, often



3.3 The status of the two Hebrews in the public corpus 

 61

replacing common IH terms used in everyday IHY with their less familiar Yiddish equivalents. Consider example (12), where another woman speaker seeks the Yiddish equivalent for the term ‘earth’, first making use of its IH equivalent, as the term commonly used in the speech community: 12

ix I

ob have

vegn about fin of

es it

dem the.acc de velt, the world

of idiš in Yiddish

ob have

aroysgenimen take_out.ptcp nóyse subject fin de of  the ix I

fin of

fin from dem the.dat

oylem-áze world-this

gezen see.ptcp

bixer books

az that

vi as

vus rel

redn speak

kadúr aárec IH earthIH inz rifn we call

de rixtige vort the right word

es, it

ober but

iz erdkigl. is earth

‘I took it out of books that talk about the subject of the IHearthIH, of the world, of this-world as we call it, but in Yiddish I saw that the right word is ‘earth’ (erdkigl).’ [Has. W] A technical Yiddish term such as erdkigl (‘earth’) is not part of the daily IHY lexicon, with such extraneous concepts and objects typically expressed in IH (6.2.3). The excerpt in (12) again illustrates the role of IH as an “understandable language”. The speaker first uses the familiar but external IH term, and then goes on to mention two “internal” concepts, the Yiddish velt (‘world’) and oylem-áze (‘this world’, as opposed to the afterlife), neither of which offer an exact equivalent to the IH term, while finally she introduces the “correct” Yiddish equivalent erdkigl, a word that is not as accessible or familiar as the IH term (nor is it “correct” in Standard Yiddish: see Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 505. Cf. Fader 2009: 98; Isaacs 1999b: 112). Use of IH loanwords is more restricted in the controlled setting of the public corpus than in daily speech. Most public speakers try to limit their reliance on IH loanwords, especially in sacred contexts, yet hundreds of IH loanwords can still be found in the public corpus. Use of IH in this context is evidently acceptable as long as it is restricted to single words or short phrases (Chapter 6). By con­ trast, longer extracts in IH are very rare in the corpus. A switch to IH, beyond the purely instrumental use of an isolated loanword, marks an unwanted shift into the Israeli realm. In consequence, the mixing patterns of Yiddish and IH in the corpus differ greatly from those common in daily contexts. Switching to IH is

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 3 Two Hebrews, the holy and the profane

considered legitimate only if it serves the rhetorical functions associated with the negative values attributed to this language (Chapter 4). It must again be stressed that the practical active distinction between the two Hebrews is based solely on pronunciation, not on other facets of linguistic structure of which the Haredi speakers remain unaware. That is, the same Hebrew sentence may be pronounced in two different ways, according to context, with no agreed lexical or structural principles governing the distinction between the two Hebrews, except for a small set of “forbidden words”. This means that implementation of this distinction is practically impossible in writing: an Israeli Haredi who wishes to write in “pure LK”, free of Israeli interference, faces an unattainable challenge (Assouline 2013). On the other hand, the vague basis underlying the distinction in principle and the difficulty of determining the identity of a Hebrew text are of little importance once the difference is materialized in speech. The act of speech gives voice to the differentiation directly and transparently: everything pronounced in the IH pronunciation is regarded as Ivrít, and everything pronounced in the Ashkenazi pronunciation is regarded as LK. There may be no way to distinguish between the two Hebrews in theory, but at the level of parole, the distinction is straightforward and clear-cut. Given this circumstance, the first feature of Hebrew use in the public corpus analyzed below concerns the level of pronunciation. The chapters that follow, accordingly, follow the speakers themselves in drawing a line between the two Hebrews in terms of how they are pronounced. Finally, note in this connection that the ideological distinction between the two Hebrews, on the one hand, and the linguistic similarity between them on the other, affect Hebrew usage in the corpus in two different ways: a. The opposing ideological attributes identified with IH and LK pronunciation affect the deliberate usage of the two Hebrews. Specifically, the ideological status of the Hebrew variety shapes its code-switching patterns. b. The similarities between the two Hebrews affect their usage in a manner not obvious to the speakers. Specifically, speakers’ command of IH changes the ways they use Hebrew in general, including the documented Merged Hebrew component in their Yiddish. The main goal of the following chapters is to analyze the public speakers’ usage of Hebrew in their Yiddish. This analysis of speakers’ patterns of code-switching and lexical borrowing considers both their deliberate linguistic preferences, deriving from the ideological distinction between IH and LK, as well as their unconscious choices, the less overt consequences of the similarity between the two Hebrews.

4 Speaking in the voice of the other The triglossic character of the IHY speech community is clearly evident in the different genres of public speaking in Yiddish, where speakers integrate both LK and IH in their linguistic usage. This public alternating between Yiddish and the two Hebrews illustrates what Gumperz describes as the “metaphorical” use of code-switching (henceforth CS), where choice of language derives from the social and cultural connotations of each, so that the switch itself carries symbolic meaning (Gumperz 1982: 61). The present corpus is especially suitable for this type of analysis, allowing us to focus on macro-sociolinguistic factors shaping CS, rather than on the immediate conversational context (cf. Auer 1998 on the conversation analysis approach to CS), since: a. the corpus consists of public speech and not daily conversations; b. the sharp us/them distinction in the speech community (see 4.3.2), which generates a setting of “rigid diglossia” (Wei 1998: 173), as well as the fixed and elevated sacred status of LK, make the role of language attitudes and ideologies in shaping CS patterns more crucial than in other, less ideologically-charged bilingual settings. Public speakers switch to LK when they evoke spiritual authority, and to IH when referring to the non-Haredi world. Most typically, the two Hebrews are used in quotations, either when citing a biblical verse in LK or directly quoting the words of a secular Israeli in IH. However, as will be shown below, the symbolic functions of the two Hebrews in Yiddish public contexts extend beyond straightforward quoting. As noted earlier, due to speakers’ elevated linguistic awareness in the former settings, the diametrically opposed image of the two Hebrews is more evident in public than in everyday contexts. Extent of use depends on the values attributed to each variety, so that use of LK rises in proportion to the sanctity of the setting, while use of IH decreases accordingly. Switching to LK is always welcomed, and in specific male-scholarly contexts the number of LK switches is so high that the language can almost be viewed as a mixed variety (see Section 5.4). By contrast, the negative perception of IH limits its use, and public speakers switch to IH only when referring to someone or something outside the Haredi world. The paucity of IH use versus the abundance of LK switches goes hand-in-hand with their different manner of use, since the public CS patterns of the two Hebrews are completely different. Among men, switching between Yiddish and LK is often spontaneous, so that speakers can freely alternate between the community’s two insider languages (Chapter 5). By contrast, switching to IH in public contexts is invariably deliberate. Use of the inferior and profane language is so charged that speakers use it only in limited circumstances. This intentional use of IH corresponds to what Poplack terms “Flagged CS”: a marked switch used for specific DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-005

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 4 Speaking in the voice of the other

rhetorical purposes (Poplack 1987, 2004: 593). In the public corpus analyzed here, the functional goal of this pattern is to emphasize the gap between the speakers and the phenomena they describe. Thus, speakers switch to IH whenever they wish to mark a concept, an attitude or a saying as non-Haredi, so that the negative value attributed to the language reinforces and asserts their objection to the content of the switch. Thus, public speakers’ continuous sensitivity to sociolinguistic norms enables us to study the results of intention and control on CS patterns (Treffers-Daller 2009: 60). Since switching to IH in Yiddish public contexts is so negatively value-laden, only a controlled “flagged” use of IH is considered legitimate. From this point of view, the public use of IH is a good test case for examining the influence of negative language attitudes on CS patterns. These negative attitudes, however, have almost no effect on language usage in non-public contexts, and most speakers switch freely between Yiddish and IH in daily conversation. An overview of the general CS patterns that characterize the hardcore of Yiddish-speakers is thus a necessary prerequisite as background to discussion of public CS patterns.

4.1 CS patterns in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore In undertaking to survey CS patterns in the community, several variables need to be taken into account. First and foremost, consideration here is of insider bilingual domains, where speakers are free to make use of their linguistic repertoire to the full (Matras 2009), with the dominant language in such domains being Yiddish, the common code for insider spoken intercourse. The term “insider” here should not be confused with “intimate” or “non-formal”, since the highly conservative and hierarchic community at issue affords numerous ceremonial and ritual events, as well as certain scholarly contexts, where formality has a great effect on language use. Formality in general and sanctity in particular encourage switches to LK and diminish switches to IH. A second significant factor in this respect is the speakers’ group affiliation, which impacts their command of both Yiddish and IH as well as their language ideologies. Some strict zealous speakers from Yiddish-dominant groups will try to avoid switching to IH even in everyday contexts, while others, who are less stringent in their condemnation of IH, will engage freely in Yiddish-IH CS in their everyday speech. Gender is a third important factor for analysis of CS, since it affects the use of LK (Chapter 5). In any case, regardless of the context or the speakers, whenever Yiddish is the language selected, Yiddish-Hebrew CS is likely to be found. Unlike the two Hebrews, which can also exist independently (for example, IH when speaking to an outsider or LK when reading from the



4.1 CS patterns in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore 

 65

Torah), there is almost no genre, domain or register of usage in the IHY speech community where Yiddish exists on its own. In theory, conversations could be conducted purely in Yiddish, such as in the case of women from extremist sects talking about their families, since IHY has a rich and extensive vocabulary for family members (lexical gaps are probably the main trigger of CS in the case of extremist speakers who try to avoid using IH as much as possible). In practice, however, as soon as the conversation shifts to another topic, such as cooking or sewing, both borrowing from IH and CS to IH are inevitable. Switching to LK is also common in various contexts and domains. Even conversations between mothers and toddlers contain marked LK switches, since mothers teach their children the LK daily blessings and basic prayers as soon as they begin to communicate. Apart from this gradual exposure to stretches of LK, young children remain the only quasi-monolingual group in the speech community, since acquaintance with IH usually begins in late childhood or, for strictly isolated groups, in adolescence. On the other hand, however, even young children encounter IH loanwords and switches in their parents’ Yiddish, often triggered by vocabulary gaps (1.4.3). With age, children’s exposure to Hebrew increases; whether spoken IH or recited (and later written) LK, sooner or later children will resort to Hebrew when discussing certain topics, so that they will always practice some sort of language mixing (1.4.3). The ubiquitous Yiddish-Hebrew CS in the speech community is shaped in light of the Haredi distinction between the two Hebrews, so that the motivations and patterns of IH versus LK switches are profoundly different. Table 4.1 provides a schematic representation of the community’s CS patterns, focusing on usages and functions that reflect ideological stances. Parameters of analysis include the sociolinguistic context and the type of Hebrew (IH or LK), while the CS patterns are analyzed by their frequency, rhetorical effect and marking at the discourse level (as expressing speakers’ awareness of the switch from one variety to another). The classification of CS patterns is based on Poplack’s distinction between “flagged” and “smooth” CS: smooth CS is defined by “copious occurrences, smooth transitions between languages, and lack of rhetorical effect”, while flagged CS serves a specific rhetorical purpose and is “marked at the discourse level by repetition, meta-linguistic commentary and other means of drawing attention to the switch” (Poplack 2004: 593). Most CS patterns in the present corpus match Poplack’s definitions, since there is usually an obvious correspondence between the motivation for making the switch and its discourse-level marking. Certain features of the IHY sociolinguistic setting, however, call for a terminological separation between rhetorical effect and discourse-level marking. On the one hand, the professed positive or negative status of the two Hebrews reduces the amount of rhetorically neutral CS in public contexts, while, on the other, the intricate relations between

66 

 4 Speaking in the voice of the other

Yiddish and Hebrew, a result of the centuries-long Ashkenazi diglossia, create a favorable environment for free and smooth language mixing (5.4). As a result, the established patterns of Yiddish-Hebrew CS may facilitate switches whose rhetorical effect is not compatible with their discourse-level marking in the case of switches to Hebrew that are smoothly integrated and yet serve distinct rhetorical functions (see Chapter 5, example (30)). This phenomenon necessitates a terminological separation between the speaker’s motivation for switching, inferred from the observable rhetorical effect on the one hand, and the easily discernible discourse-level marking on the other. In Table 4.1 a switch is defined as “marked” if it is marked at the performance level (by a preceding pause, a meta-linguistic comment etc.) and as “unmarked” if there is no such evidence indicating the speaker’s awareness of the language change. While this marking is easily identified, the presumed rhetorical effect of a switch is often harder to define, even though in the ideologically-charged public context many Hebrew switches are made that patently serve clear rhetorical functions. In the present analysis, it is assumed that such switches necessarily involve a high level of control by the speaker, and so can be defined as “deliberate”. In other cases, where a switch appears not to serve any distinct rhetorical function, it will be referred to as “unintentional” (cf. de Bot’s “motivated” vs. “performance” switches, de Bot 2002: 291). In other words, while CS in general is “driven by various levels of control over language processing” (Matras 2009: 105), in the present corpus, switches that serve clear functional goals are perceived as necessarily more controlled than others. The parameters used in Table 4.1 are as follows: The language: in this analysis the type of Hebrew is determined solely by its pronunciation: Hebrew elements are defined as LK if pronounced with Ashkenazi pronunciation and as IH if performed with IH pronunciation. That is, only the speaker’s conscious language choice is relevant for definition of units of Hebrew usage, not their grammatical or lexical features (see above, Section 3.1, and Chapter 5, example (32)). The context: the social context is roughly divided according to “formality”, where formality refers primarily to the location and structuring of the setting, as well as to the number of participants (that is, whether and how the event is public). The first category, “intimate, non-formal”, refers to conversations that take place at home, on the street etc., in a non-structured manner, and which are nonpublic by definition. The category “semi-formal and formal-but-not-sacred” refers to speeches and conversations that take place in classrooms and similar settings, with a larger number of participants and easily identified dominant speakers. These are public



4.1 CS patterns in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore 

 67

events with varying levels of formality, with the highest level of formality pertaining to public speeches where one man addresses a crowd without interruptions, and a relatively low level of formality characterizing other events included in this category, such as “instructions for professionals” (see 2.1.2). The “formal and sacred” category is most easily defined, since it takes place in a sacred time and in a holy location, usually when a spiritual leader addresses an entire community in a synagogue or a yeshiva. Table 4.1: Breakdown of CS patterns in the Yiddish-speaking hardcore (among adult speakers whose dominant language is Yiddish) Context

Type of Hebrew Switching to LK

Switching to IH

Intimate, non-formal domains Quite rare, especially among (e. g. family, friends) women. Usually deliberate.

Semi-formal, f­ ormal-but-not-sacred domains (e. g. an ­“instruction” lecture)

Formal and sacred domains (e. g. a sermon in a ­synagogue) performed only by men

Common (very common among non-zealous groups). Increases in accordance with the ­speakers’ command and use of IH. Usually unintentional and unmarked. Corresponds to Poplack’s “smooth” pattern. Common. Rises in ­accordance with Not common. Usually speakers’ level of ­erudition. ­deliberate and marked. Among men: very common. Unin- ­Corresponds to Poplack’s tentional and ­deliberate, unmarked “flagged” pattern. and marked. Among women: less common. ­Deliberate and marked. Extremely common. ­Unintentional None and deliberate, unmarked and marked.

As seen in Table 4.1, the switching patterns of LK and IH remain distinct regardless of sociolinguistic setting, and are invariably influenced by the opposing ideological values attributed to the respective languages (see Myers-Scotton 1993a: 3: “Code-switching exploits the socio-psychological attributes which languages assume in a specific community, based on its patterns of language use”). The speakers’ control is most prominent in their use of IH: they avoid it completely in sacred contexts, and use it only for specific purposes in non-sacred public contexts. This deliberate use – or avoidance of use – of IH as compelling evidence of the effect of negative language ideology on language use is the focus of the present chapter.

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 4 Speaking in the voice of the other

4.2 Yiddish-IH CS in daily settings Switching between Yiddish and IH is quite common in everyday spoken contexts. Speakers practice Yiddish-IH CS in their daily speech, with the amount of IH varying depending on the context, their command of the language, and their ideological stance. The following short example, from a Hasidic women’s casual conversation, demonstrates free Yiddish-IH mixing: 13

tox within

IH

šniyá secondIH

maxt makes

men impers

dus. this

‘You do this in a second.’ (Has. W. recorded in Bet Shemesh, 2006) Example (14) below is taken from a conversation between two Hasidic men of the Edah, organizing a public event and discussing technical details of amplification and transmission. The speaker switches freely from Yiddish to IH: 14

ix  bin,  begadól,     ob    ix  nisayón       a bisl I   am   IHin generalIH  have  I    IHexperienceIH   a little mit   šidurím.    lagbóymer   max ix šidurím     fin merón. […] with IHbroadcastsIH Lag Baómer do   I   IHbroadcastsIH from Meron šoyn     fir    yor    six (=vus ix)  probir  dortn  xevrót. already  four  year  that I       try     there  IHcompaniesIH di  xevrá      si(=se iz)  di   tayerste        xevrá, this IHcompanyIH  it is      the  most expensive  IHcompanyIH aval en       macáv   šeém    noflím,   en        macáv. but there_is_no  situation  that they  fall.3pl  there_is_no  situationIH

IH

‘I am, in general, I have some experience with broadcasts. On Lag BaOmer [a Jewish holiday] I do broadcasts from [the Israeli town] Meron. […] I’ve been trying [different] companies there for 4 years [now]. This [production] company is the most expensive, but it is the most reliable [lit.: there is no way that their transmission is interrupted, no way].’ (Has. M. recorded in Jerusalem, 2012)



4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

 69

The switch to IH at the end of example (14) probably derives from the availability of the IH idiomatic expression en macáv ‘no way’. Word retrievability is a common trigger for switching in many bilingual settings (Matras 2009: 105). However, and as we shall see below, due to speakers’ deliberate avoidance of IH, common triggers such as this one never lead to substantial switches in the analyzed corpus. The analysis of IH switches in daily contexts is extremely complex, due to the large number of variables governing linguistic behavior. In addition to individual speakers’ variables such as age, gender, communal affiliation, command of IHY and IH, and ideological stance, account also needs to be taken of conversation-related variables such as the topics discussed and the many discourse-structuring functions switching may serve (Auer 1984, 1998), external factors such as the identity of other participants and/or of bystanders, and the delicate negotiation strategies between speakers from different subgroups with different CS norms concerning the use of IH. A general observation that does emerge quite clearly, however, based on my years of fieldwork in Haredi neighborhoods, is that the bulk of daily Yiddish-IH CS among non-zealous speakers can be characterized as “smooth”: speakers freely alternate between Yiddish and IH, with no visible rhetorical effect of IH use.

4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts When moving from intimate non-formal settings to the formal context of public speech, the norms governing language usage become much stricter and more rigid. Switching to IH diminishes considerably as the context becomes more formal and public. The negative value attributed to IH can be ignored in casual conversations, but not in public contexts aimed at reinforcing the secluded Haredi identity. In public speaking in sacred contexts the profane connotations of IH entail that it is almost never used. One such example is the sermon a Hasidic rabbi delivers in the synagogue on the Sabbath and religious holidays (the rebbe’s tóyre, ‘The rabbi’s teaching’). The combined sanctity of the speaker’s elevated spiritual position and the holy time and place would render utterance of even a single word in IH pronunciation a flagrant deviation from Haredi linguistic decorum. In other Haredi genres of public speaking, defined here as “semi-formal” and “formal-but-not-sacred”, the norms governing IH usage are more complex. The relevant genres, which make up the bulk of the database for analysis, in the form of lessons, lectures and speeches, make it possible to distinguish between non-legitimate and legitimate use of IH. Spontaneous switches, as in examples (13) and (14), are very rare in these contexts. If they do occur, they are perceived

70 

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as non-legitimate speech errors that violate Haredi sociolinguistic conventions, usually generating some kind of self-correction. The speakers’ reactions to such switches demonstrate that spontaneous and smooth Yiddish-IH CS is not acceptable in public contexts. Spontaneous use of IH implies that the speaker is exposed to the profane language and interacts with its speakers to an extent to which it encroaches on his or her language use. This impression does not apply in the case of Haredi public speakers, mainly due to the “insider” nature of Haredi public gatherings, as events at which Yiddish and LK are the accepted means of discourse. In such circumstances, speakers who perceive themselves as figures of authority are expected to employ these insider codes without recourse to the external language. For example, free unintentional use of IH would be completely out of place at anti-Zionist demonstrations, when speakers voice protests against the Israeli government. Switches to IH in non-sacred public contexts can, however, be legitimized by speakers’ marking or “flagging” IH elements. Such framing of IH by use of overt means of drawing the audience’s attention to the change of language makes it permissible. In other words, suitably controlled use of IH for specific rhetorical purposes is acceptable, even by the most zealous speakers. In contrast to seemingly spontaneous CS patterns, where unmonitored use of IH might be perceived as undermining Haredi social boundaries, flagged usage of IH can symbolize the speakers’ ability to keep the worlds apart, thus maintaining Haredi independence and separateness. Therefore, flagged code-switching, distancing the speaker from the switch, is the established pattern of IH use in the public corpus. For this reason, a switch to IH is considered legitimate only when the language is overtly marked as extraneous, which is done in ways that serve one or other of two distinct functions: apologetic or ideological. In what I term the “apologetic” function, speakers use an IH term for lack of a Yiddish equivalent, largely with IH lexical items whose use in a specific context is considered problematic. The “ideological” function, by contrast, consists in deliberately derisive use of elements from IH in order to mark a statement or a concept as going against, and as inferior to, the Haredi way of life. In such cases, IH serves as a means of negative marking, often when secular or modern views are presented as inferior to Haredi beliefs.

4.3.1 Apologetic function In the bilingual setting of the IHY speech community, many lexical terms are familiar to speakers only in IH. These may be used as loanwords in daily conversations, but their legitimacy is questionable in public contexts, where a particular IH term



4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

 71

may be perceived as inappropriate, typically in relation to the topic under discussion or to the ideological affiliation of the audience. Such situations are signaled by the addition of meta-linguistic comments that acknowledge the switch, and which vary in keeping with the presumed level of impropriety, from a simple reference to the external origin of the term to an explicit expression of the speaker’s reluctance to use the term in question. Common meta-linguistic comments preceding or ­following the IH term are “(as) it is called” (es ruft zax, vi me ruft dos), “it is called in speech” (es ruft zax on in šprax) or “as it is called today” (vi me ruft dos aynt). By using vague terms such as “speech”, speakers address only the instrumental value of IH as a commonly understood foreign language, avoiding any direct reference to its negative connotations. Thus, the speakers’ comments turn common loanwords into insertional switches. These are IH words and expressions speakers use to compensate for lexical gaps in IHY, usually nouns or noun-phrases. The semantic qualities of the words and expressions that are used “apologetically” in the corpus are worth noting. According to Backus (2001), high semantic specificity of a word increases its chances of being used as an insertional switch. However, note that while the words in the following examples ((15) through (19)) are all highly specific (i. e. cannot easily be replaced with another lexical item, Backus 2001: 127), they are nevertheless not the most specific IH nouns employed in the corpus. The most specific IH nouns, including institutional terminology and additional cultural loans from the Israeli realia, are always integrated as common loanwords without apology, due to their clear identification with the Israeli reality (6.2.3). It is only when speakers – for want of Yiddish equivalents – employ neutral (i. e. not “Israeli”) IH terms in an internal Haredi context, that such apologetic switches occur. In example (15), a woman speaker uses the IH term for peer pressure, “láxac xevratí”, slightly distorting it to láxac xavrutí (lit. ‘friendly pressure’ instead of ‘societal pressure’): 15

siz (=es iz) do there is siz do: there is

epes, something

láxac xavrutí. IH pressure friendlyIH

me impers

ruft calls

es, it

si do there is

andere others

vos rel

aza vort, such_a  word

me     šemt    zax   epes     azey  eyner  farn    andern. impers  shames  refl  somewhat  so   one   for-the  other ‘There is something, it is called, such a word, there is, “peer pressure”. There are some people who sort of feel ashamed of one another.’ [Jer. W]

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The speaker feels the need to explain the term ‘peer pressure’ to her audience, as is common when speakers introduce technical or “modern” terms that might be unfamiliar to some listeners. Such “sophisticated” IH terms are flagged as elements that need to be explained. Since this specific term is not identified as negatively “Israeli”, and is used in (15) in a neutral (i. e. not markedly Haredi or sacred) context, the apologetic function of flagging is marginal, if present at all. Note that it is only the flagging that turns the IH term into a switch rather than a loanword (cf. 6.2.2, 6.2.3). Flagging becomes more apologetic when the use of IH is incompatible with the context, as illustrated in examples (16) and (17), in which the same IH expression, nekifót macpún (‘pangs of conscience’, ‘scruples’), is used by the same woman speaker in two different thematic contexts. Note that this particular IH expression is in common use in the speech community, whereas the Yiddish equivalent of ‘scruples’, skruplen, has not so far been attested in spoken IHY, indicating that the IH term is probably the only option familiar to the speaker and her audience. In example (16), the speaker was giving a sermon about the role of the month of Elul (August-September), a month that precedes the Jewish New Year and is traditionally dedicated to repentance. She used the IH nekifót macpún when describing emotions that arise before the High Holidays, adding a meta-linguistic remark: 16

me     rift    es  afile,  mentšn  vus   zenen  niš impers  calls  it   even   people   rel  are     not keyn  šóymrey      tóyre      ve-mícves    kenen us(=dus) unrifn  any  observers_of Torah    and-precepts can    this    call.inf mitn   numen:   nekifót     macpún,   vus  ervekn  zax with-the name     IHpangs_of   conscienceIH rel wake   refl dávke      in   di     teg. precisely   in   these   days ‘It is even called, people who are not observant Jews [lit. people who do not observe the Torah and its precepts] can refer to it by the name “conscience pangs”, that awaken precisely in these days [the days of Elul].’ [Has. W]

The meta-linguistic remark me rift es (‘it is called’) marks the IH expression as foreign, a marking that has an apologetic function here. The speaker probably



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feels uncomfortable using IH in such a sacred context (even though, as noted, this particular expression is commonly used in the speech community), and so identifies it as foreign, a word used by non-observant outsiders. By this framing of the foreign element, the speaker legitimizes its use. Yiddish and IH remain separate and the sacred and profane do not mix. The linguistic boundaries, as well as the social and ideological boundaries, remain stable. In contrast to the above situation, in a more neutral context the selfsame IH term occurs as a legitimate loanword, without any accompanying comment or reservation. Thus, in (17) the same speaker used the same term, a year before, in a general, non-sacred context: 17

de   mentš the   man oyxet also

ot has

nekifót IH pangs_of

a sax many

mul time

mit with

zix refl

alayn alone

macpún. conscienceIH

‘A person often experiences pangs of conscience with himself.’ [Has. W] In (17), the IH collocation appears as a common loanword, without phonological integration. That is, in (16) the speaker’s notion of impropriety and her meta-linguistic remark draw attention to the switch. In contrast to (16), the same IH term may occur as a legitimate loanword, passing relatively unnoticed, as in (17) and many other occurrences in the corpus, where speakers manifest no discomfort with using IH in a non-sacred thematic context (see 6.2.2, 6.2.3). The apologetic function is very clear in examples (18) and (19), where a speaker tried to avoid IH when addressing a zealous audience. The speaker here is a respected Jerusalemite expert in the field of education, a person who generally incorporates IH elements into lectures he gives in Yiddish. However, when invited to deliver a series of lectures to an audience of zealous Toldos Aharon Hasidim, he was explicitly asked to avoid the use of IH, due to this sect’s strict stance against the language.1 In these lectures, the speaker was extremely self-conscious about the use of IH, adding meta-linguistic apologetic comments whenever forced to use an element from the forbidden language. Consider example (18), where the speaker could not find a Yiddish equivalent for the IH noun taxarút (‘contest’, ‘competition’):

1 This fact was conveyed to me by one of my informants, who was one of the organizers of the lectures.

74  18

 4 Speaking in the voice of the other

eyne  fun  di   ergste zaxn    ken  zayn,   ven   a tate, one   of   the  worst things  can  be.inf  when  a father dos treft     a mol      ba  eltere  kinder,  firt       a mesúyemdiker, this happens  sometimes  with older  children  conducts  a certain taxarút, competitionIH

IH

ix I

veys know

ništ not

vi how

se eyst, it called

yo? yes

‘One of the worst things that can be, when a father – this happens sometimes with older children – conducts a certain contest, I don’t know what it is called, okay?’ [Jer. M] The speaker hesitates, pausing before using the IH word taxarút, a common loanword in IHY. As in example (16), it is the speaker’s attitude that marks the IH word as a foreign code-switched element. Thus, the meta-linguistic remark “I don’t know what it is called, okay?” is clearly apologetic, intending to convey that “I am not familiar with a Yiddish equivalent”, followed by an appeal to the audience for approval. Significantly, the speaker feels no need to translate the IH word, but assumes it is familiar to his audience. The foreign tenor of ‘contest’ in (18) or ‘pangs of conscience’ in (16) is a function of their ideological connotations as IH when used in an internal Haredi context, but they are not “truly” foreign in the sense of needing to be translated or explained. In the course of the lectures, this speaker’s attempts to avoid IH were so extreme that even phonologically i­ntegrated elements were not considered legitimate. Thus, in example (19), he apologizes for using “a modern word” for ‘flexibility’ (IH gmišút), although articulating it in the Ashkenazi way (gmíšus): 19

me      darf     obn       seyxl,   oder in,  in a moderner  vort, impers  has_ to  have.inf  brains  or  in    in a modern    word ix  veys    ništ  vi    me     ruft   dos, I   know  not   how  impers  calls  this gmíšus. flexibility

ništ geyn not go_in.inf

mitn with-the

kop in vant head in wall

arayn. go_in

‘A person must act wisely, or in, in a modern word, I don’t know what it is called, [to have] flexibility. Not to be stubborn. [lit.: not to knock one’s head against the wall]’ [Jer. M]



4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

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The apologetic comment in (19) is an exceptionally rare phenomenon in the corpus, where phonological integration of IH elements is the established method for legitimizing their use (see Section 6.2). The speaker is so self-conscious when out of his element, addressing a zealous crowd, that even a change of pronunciation does not seem sufficient to “purify” the IH elements he introduces. In example (19), as in (16), it is the speaker’s explicit acknowledgment of the language change that defines the use of the Hebrew term as a switch rather than a loanword. The marking of “problematic” items as foreign, usually accompanied by apologetic meta-linguistic comments, meets the speakers’ need to establish their legitimacy when using IH in a non-Israeli thematic context. Overt flagging of IH in sociolinguistically inappropriate contexts thus resolves the discrepancy between the language’s symbolic value and the content that it conveys. By contrast, when the linguistic means adopted matches the thematic content – that is, when IH is used in clearly “Israeli” contexts – flagging serves very different purposes.

4.3.2 Ideological CS While “apologetic” CS involves somewhat reluctant use of IH, “ideological” switching to IH is invariably deliberate. Both CS patterns are marked at the discourse level in order to maintain clear linguistic boundaries between Yiddish and IH, but in the “ideological” pattern the use of IH has yet another function: to emphasize the ideological alienation of particular content by giving linguistic prominence to IH elements. This type of IH usage reaffirms Haredi values, since the language is employed in negative (usually “Israeli”) contexts. Similar patterns of switching have been documented in other bilingual settings involving an in-group versus an out-group code, particularly in cases of political or ethnic conflict, often entailing language conflict regarding the maintenance and/or the status of the in-group minority language (e. g. Álvarez-Cáccamo 1996; Dorian 1997; Dunmore & Smith-Christmas 2015; Anchimbe 2015). In such cases, metaphorical switching is used to highlight the basic us/them distinction, a distinction highly crucial in the self-definition of the secluded Edah. The Edah is a typical “enclave culture”, striving to maintain its unique identity and distinct boundaries in the modern world (Almond, Appleby & Sivan 2003). The group members’ deliberate segregation from the outside world is supported by a strong sense of “us” versus “them”, and a self-perception of moral superiority in relation to the corrupt outside society, from which the enclave is isolated by a so-called “wall of virtue”. If, indeed, “the defining relations for the enclave are ‘inside-outside’ (relations between the enclave and what exists beyond its boundary)” (Almond,

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 4 Speaking in the voice of the other

Appleby & Sivan 2003: 32), then the symbolic roles of Yiddish as an insider code (and, particularly, of IH as an outsider code) govern the speech patterns of public speakers. Not only is the world beyond the “wall of virtue” replete with sin and heresy, but so, too, is the contemporary Hebrew language that it uses. Therefore, all deliberate “ideological” switches to IH discussed below exploit the outsider – and hence negative – nature of IH. Ideological switches may consist of single lexical items, but they are usually longer, often taking the form of quotes or pseudo-quotes, where the use of IH marks the voice of the “other” – someone outside the community, most commonly a non-observant, secular Jew. Most of the following discussion is dedicated to such direct quotations in IH. Note that while switching is common in bilingual conversations when introducing direct quotations (i. e. authenticating the quote by presenting it in its original language, Auer 1984: 64), what is notable in the present corpus is that the language used in direct quotations does not necessarily match the original language of delivery, but rather matches the ideological affiliation of the quoted speaker. Specifically, Haredi speakers identified with the in-group “us” are always quoted in Yiddish, even if their original words were uttered in IH. The following anecdote, taken from a sermon delivered by a prominent male public speaker in 1999, clearly illustrates the phenomenon of ideological Yiddish-IH code-switching. The protagonists are the late Pinchas Sapir (1906–1975, who held several ministerial posts in the government of Israel, 1955–1974) and Rabbi Yehuda Ades (b. 1937), dean of the Kol Yaʿakov yeshiva in Jerusalem. The speaker recounts an excerpt from an alleged meeting between the two, during which the young Ades, endeavoring to elicit financial aid from the Israeli minister, was treated with contempt. The dialogue between the two men is delivered in Yiddish, except for one IH sentence allegedly uttered by Sapir: 20

si [=es iz] it is

geven     reb be.ptcp   Rabbi

in póyres yóysef. in Porát Yoséf

un   di and the

ot has

im him

men impers

in memšóle, in government

yuda ádes. Yehuda Ades

yešive   ot ništ geat yeshiva has not have.ptcp

faršlept drag.ptcp

yener that_one

er’t he has

ot has

cu epes to some geeysn be_called.ptcp

gelernt learn.ptcp ken gelt, any money

a sar a minister pínxes sápir Pinchas Sapir

[…] yener   et     gebn   gelt. […] vi   er kumt    arayn    that_one will.3sg give.inf money   when he comes_in comes_in



 77

4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

cu yenem to that.dat fun from

óyxel eater_of

nevéyles, carrions

kukt looks

oyvn arop, un   er  zogt im: up   down and he says him

caír, young

ma what

báta came.2sg.m

limkór sell.inf

im him “ken yes

IH

yener that_one

on looks

talmíd xaxám scholar

li?” meIH

mit     aza with  such_a

zilzl.[…]    ix   bin  dox    a sar      in memšéles     yisróel contempt   I    am   after all   a minister    in government_of   Israel […] un and

du   bist you  are

[…] bistu are-you a gešeft?” a deal farkoyfn sell.inf

mir me

dox after all epes somewhat

zogt er: says he a vintelátor”. a fan darf need

si [es iz] do there is

a gehénem, a hell

ix I

dir you.dat

zol dir should  you.dat

kleyntšiker – ver bistu? tiny who are-you

gekumen come.ptcp

“yo.  ix   ob yes  I   have

vegn  vos for   what

ob have

aza such_a

ix I

im him

fregt er im: asks he him a vintelátor?” a fan un    dortn and  there gekumen come.ptcp a bisl a bit

farkoyfn sell.inf

dir you.dat “vos what

zogt: says

epes somewhat gekumen come.ptcp

i[=iz], is “du   veyst you  know

iz heys! is hot farkoyfn sell.inf

heys! hot

az that se  brent! it    burns

a vintelátor, a fan

ópkiln”. cool_off.inf

‘There was Rabbi Yehuda Ades. He studied at Porat Yosef [a Sephardic yeshiva in Jerusalem]. And the yeshiva didn’t have any money. So he was sent to some minister in the government, someone named Pinchas Sapir. [...] [They believed that] he would give money. [...] The moment he [Ades] enters [the room of] that heretic [lit. ‘carrion eater’, a man who eats non-kosher food such as animals that were not ritually slaughtered], he [Sapir] looks down upon him,

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and says to him: IH“Yes young scholar, what did you come to sell me?”IH. With such contempt. […] I am after all a minister in the Israeli government, […] and you are after all so worthless [lit. ‘tiny’] – who are you? […] Have you come to sell me something? Says he [Ades]: “Yes. I came to sell you a fan.” [Sapir] asks him: “What, what do I need a fan for?” [Ades] says: “You know that there is a hell, and [down] there it is hot! Hot! It burns! I came to sell you a fan, to cool it down a bit for you.” [Jer. M] This anecdote is a classic underdog story, where the hero outsmarts his socially and economically superior rival. Here, the adversary is Pinchas Sapir, a member of the ruling Israeli elite. Almost all political power in the first three decades of Israel’s existence was held by Sapir and his like: Jews of Eastern European extraction who had left the traditional world to join Zionist-Socialist political movements. The encounter between Sapir and Ades is a confrontation between opposites. On the one hand, the secular and Ashkenazi Sapir, a powerful member of the dominant left-wing Israeli political party, and on the other, the orthodox Oriental Ades, a young yeshiva student. For someone like Sapir, Ades is a representative of the old, rejected Jewish world: a non-productive member of society who wastes his time in a yeshiva instead of working. The ethnic affiliation is also of importance, since practically all political power in Israel at that time was in the hands of people of Ashkenazi descent, while Ades is an Oriental Jew of Syrian descent (from the Jewish community of Aleppo), studying at a Sephardic yeshiva. Consider now the choice of codes employed in this anecdote. If such a meeting had indeed taken place, it would have been conducted in Israeli Hebrew, the common language of Ades and Sapir. The speaker, however, presents the conversation in Yiddish, except for the first sentence uttered by Sapir, where the choice of IH characterizes him as an outsider, a representative of the Israeli government. The language choice thus conforms to Haredi values: the Sephardic Ades, who is ultra-Orthodox and therefore “one of us” (Yid. fun unzere), speaks here only Yiddish, while the Ashkenazi Sapir, whose native tongue was actually Yiddish, is quoted in IH. This code choice recurs consistently whenever public speakers use direct speech to convey a discussion between a Haredi and a non-Haredi. The speakers deliberately choose IH to mark the speech of outsiders, while everything uttered by a Haredi is presented in Yiddish, even if it was originally uttered in IH. A very similar use of language choice appears in Dorian’s (1997) study of the narratives of Gaelic/English bilinguals, where direct quotations appear in Gaelic when the quoted speakers are insiders, even if they were actually incapable of speaking Gaelic and their original words were uttered in English, while outsiders are quoted in English. It is clear that language choice in this case, as in example (20), is symbolic, reflecting first and foremost the us/them dichotomy



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 79

of the minority group (cf. Álvarez-Cáccamo 1996 on similar phenomena among Galician-Spanish bilinguals. Cf. also Rampton (2009: 703) on CS as a mechanism through which speakers can “conjure a different group identity or persona”). A similar example of “unrealistic code choice” (Dorian 1997) appears in example (21), which depicts a confrontation between Haredi and non-Haredi women in the vicinity of the Ministry of Education in Jerusalem. The Ministry is located near Haredi neighborhoods, and women who work there are occasionally reproached for their attire, which is deemed as not befitting Haredi requirements of modesty. The speaker, a young woman from one of the Hasidic sects in the Edah, recounts one such clash, where an argument between the women led to the arrival of policemen. The exchange was originally conducted in IH but, in the speaker’s presentation, the Haredi women’s remarks “you mustn’t dress like this”, are delivered in Yiddish. Only the Israeli official, the policeman, is quoted in IH. Thus, as in example (20), the code choices in this narrative reflect an “ideologized possible world” (Álvarez-Cáccamo 1996), where the characters are quoted in the languages symbolizing their identity. 21

ix ob es geert fin mayn mimen, zi voynt dortn lebn I    have it   hear.ptcp from my aunt-dat she lives there near misrád a-xinúx. zenen IH ministry_of the-educationIH are vus obn rel have froyen, women

gezen, see.ptcp

az that

ništ ungetin vi  se not dressed  as it

yedn every darf has_to

a pur a couple inderfri morning ci zayn. to be.inf

froyen   cidkuniyes, women righteous.pl.f kimen arrive

dortn there

un arrive

obn zay have they

zax     dortn   avekgištelt   in     in der fri        obn    zay refl   there   place.ptcp   and   in the morning   have   they moyxe         given.   zi   iz gigangen  ci ayn fro:    “me     protest.ptcp.sg.m  be.ptcp she is go.ptcp   to one woman  impers   tur ništ    gayn   azoy”,      zi    iz   gigangen ci a cvayte fro: must_not go.inf in such a way  she is  go.ptcp   to a second woman “me    tur ništ     gayn   azoy” […]      ayne fin di   froen […]    impers must_not go.inf in such a way one  of    the women 

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 4 Speaking in the voice of the other

ot    zax   ufgeregt,         far vus  me      zugt  ir    az     zi has  refl  get_excited.ptcp why   impers  says  her  that  she gayt  ništ  cniesdik    ungetin,  iz zi    gigangen  rifn      mištará.  gerifn  goes  not  modestly  dressed   is she  go.ptcp    call.inf  IHpolice IH  call.ptcp mištará,  mištará  iz ungekimen dortn in der fri,     in    zay police    police    is arrive.ptcp there  in  the morning  and they rifn  dei  fro:    tni         li     ta-pratím  šeláx.    call   this     woman    IHgive.imp.2sg.f  to.1sg  acc-details  your.sg.f tni        li      ta-pratím.   zugt  zi,  zi  get give.imp.2sg.f  to.1sg  acc-detailsIH  says  she   she gives ništ ka     pratím,  zi   darf    fregn  dem   ruv. not  any   IHdetailsIH  she has_to   ask.inf the.acc  rabbi ‘I heard it from my aunt, she lives there near the Ministry of Education. There were a couple of righteous women who saw that women arrive there every morning, not dressed properly. So one morning, they stood there, and staged a protest. One of them approached one of these women: “You mustn’t dress like this”, the other approached a second woman: “You mustn’t dress like this”. […] One of the women [the non-Haredi workers] […] got angry, why do people tell her that she is not modestly dressed. So she called the police. She called the police, the police arrived there in the morning, and they tell this woman [the Haredi woman]: IH‟Give me your details. Give me the details.” IH So she said, she doesn’t give any details, she has to ask the Rabbi [first].’ [Has. W] In both (20) and (21), IH is attributed to a specific speaker: the minister Sapir and the policeman respectively, both representatives of the outside world of the State of Israel. In both cases, the switching points were emphasized by a preceding pause, and the quotes were articulated at a slower rate. IH also occurs in pseudoquotes in the corpus, to describe a view or an attitude attributed to the non-Haredi majority. Such statements are not preceded by an explicit verb of saying, nor are they attributed to any specific speaker. Rather, the language switch itself is what marks these sentences as pseudo-quotes, as sayings that are attributed to someone (usually secular) outside Haredi borders (cf. Auer 1984: 66).



4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

 81

The excerpt in (22) illustrates the use of such a pseudo-quote in a public speech  delivered at a rally of the Edah in 1992, after an established Jerusalem Haredi school for boys began to accept government funding. The speaker, a Jerusalemite man, protested against the decision, on the grounds that financial support would eventually lead to government interference in the curriculum. Such interference, he lamented, would inevitably cause heretical concepts to infiltrate Haredi schools. To illustrate his argument, he described how the creation of the world is taught in public schools, using an IH sentence, “who created the world?” to represent a question allegedly asked in these schools. The choice of IH marks this question as one that is uttered outside Haredi boundaries, and it receives a reply that is so heretical that the speaker has a hard time even putting it into words. 22

mamlaxtí   iz der pšat nationalIH is the meaning

IH

az that

mit   ale kinder with all  children

vos rel

zaynen are

moyfia        morgn  in di   botey sefer, eybt  men   ništ appear.ptcp.sg.m morning in the schools   starts impers not on   mit   zey   fun   “beréyšes       bóro       eloykím starts with them from LK in the beginning created.3sg.m  God es   a-šomáyim  ve-es    o-órec” […]    acc  the-heaven  and-acc  the-earthLK mefúreš     ništ.   mi     bará        et    a-olám?  explicitly   not   IHwho   created.3sg.m   acc   the-worldIH áfre     le-púme,         šver    noxcuzogn, si vert LK dust-the to-mouth.poss.3sg.mLK difficult to repeat   it pass.3sg ništ dermont   dem šem    ašem       yisbórax.  not  mentioned the  name_of the name(=God) blessed_be_he ‘“National” [public-school education] means that with all the children that arrive at school every morning, you don’t start with them [saying] LK”In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.LK […] Absolutely not. IHWho created the world?IH May the mouth of him who dares utter such a heresy be filled with dust [Aramaic. Literally: Dust to his mouth]. It’s difficult to repeat, the blessed Lord’s name is not mentioned.’ [Jer. M]

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 4 Speaking in the voice of the other

The IH question in (22) is a pseudo-quote since it is not attributed to any specific speaker. The choice of IH stylistically contributes to the speaker’s marking of this question and its expected response as heretical. Deliberate use of IH is not limited to representations of direct speech, and speakers can switch to IH whenever they want to mark a phenomenon as negative. When isolated lexical items are concerned, there is a need to distinguish the ­spontaneous use of IH loanwords from the deliberate, derisive use of IH pronunciation. As with the distinction between loanwords and apologetic CS (examples (16) versus (17) above), it is the speaker’s meta-linguistic awareness that determines the existence of a switch, most generally discernible in the emphatic way IH elements are pronounced. Thus, speakers typically slow or pause before the switch, so as to highlight the change of language. This kind of deliberate use of the IH pronunciation for a single lexical item is illustrated in (23), where the speaker (who is the leader of the Jerusalemite Masmídim community) laments the moral deterioration of Israeli society, using an IH term for a fast-food ­restaurant: 23

zóylel  ve-sóyve     iz a mecíes […]  aynt   šemt    men  zax glutton and-drunkard  is a reality    today shames impers refl ništ, un se šteyt    of   di  šildn: mizlalá.    not and it is_written on the  signs  IHfast-food restaurantIH miz – la – lá! […]       bóyšu         ve-ikólmu!    fast-food restaurantIH  LKshame.imp.2pl  and-disgrace.pass.imp.2plLK

IH

noxn     góles,  nox    ales… after-the  exile  after  everything    ‘A glutton and a drunkard [Deut. 21: 20] is a reality. […] Today there is no shame, and it is written on the signs: IHfast-food restaurantIH [lit. ‘gluttonary’]. IHGluttonary!IH […] Shame on you! After the Dispersion, after everything…’ [Jer. M] The speaker in (23) stresses the fact that one of the IH terms for a fast-food restaurant derives from the pejorative Hebrew root z.l.l., ‘to gorge, overeat’, used in the Bible to denote a deadly sin (“And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he



4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

 83

die.” Deut. 20: 20–21). After quoting the biblical phrase zoylel ve-soyve (‘a glutton and a drunkard’, which belongs to the Merged Hebrew component of Yiddish, Niborski 2012: 142), the speaker denounces the modern IH term mizlalá (‘fast-food restaurant’), making deliberate use of IH pronunciation, negatively highlighting the foreign nature of both this institution and its name. The speaker apparently condemns the Israeli public for choosing such a word, a choice that testifies to secular unfamiliarity with sacred Hebrew values and texts. The use of IH to mark Israeli speakers, and Israeli attitudes and ideas, as in examples (20) through (23), is obvious and straightforward, directly based as it is on clear identification of IH with the Israeli authorities and the secular majority. However, profane “Israeliness” is not the only negative value attributed to IH in Haredi perception. As discussed earlier, IH is also perceived as a modern (hence negative), coarse and impure street language (Section 1.4.3). These negative attributes may be employed in public contexts, when speakers criticize people and phenomena inside the Haredi world. This is a more subtle use of IH, where the language switch helps to express negative moral judgments, defining an internal hierarchy within Haredi society rather than simply pointing to that which is Israeli and external. An example of this function is the marking of Hebrew-speaking Haredim from less stringent groups by quoting them in IH in cases where their conduct does not match desired Haredi standards, as in example (24). The speaker here is a Hasidic woman lecturing her audience about “guarding the tongue” (2.1.1), recounting a conversation she overheard between a Haredi mother and daughter in a taxi going from the mostly Haredi city of Bne Brak to Jerusalem: 24

iz gezesn  dortn a mame mit    ir    toxter,     di  toxter  iz  geven     nox is sit.ptcp  there a mother with  her  daughter  the daughter is  be.ptcp still a maydl,  in ix zic  dortn lebn zay.    […] ix  ob   farštanen  a girl     and I sit  there near them    I   have  understand.ptcp az  dei  maydl  iz  geforn                ofn      xófeš     ci   ir that  this  girl     is  go_by_vehicle.ptcp  on-the  vacation  to  her babe,        in   ir     mame  iz a šnir         ba dei babe. grandmother  and  her  mother  is a daughter_in_law  by this grandmother fregt  zi    ir:     “nu,    az  ma     i    amrá      aláy?”. asks  she  her   IH well  so   what  she  said.3sg.f  about.1sgIH

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‘…There was a mother with her daughter there, and the daughter was still a maiden [not married], and I am sitting there next to them. […] I understood that this girl spent a vacation at her grandmother’s, and her mother is this grandmother’s daughter-in-law. So she asks her [the mother asks the daughter]: IH‟ Well, so what did she say about me?” IH’ [Has. W] The mother in this story is violating Jewish ethical norms, since her question is considered an incitement to gossip and slander; it is quoted in the original IH as yet another rhetorical means of highlighting her wrongdoing. This is not a common phenomenon in the corpus, where generally every saying ascribed to a Haredi is presented in Yiddish, regardless of the original language of the utterance. This way of reporting speech is far more prominent in representations of conversations between Haredim and outsiders, as in examples (20) and (21), as cases where the language switch helps highlight the boundaries between Haredim and non-Haredim. However, when non-Haredim are not present at all, as in (24), the use of IH can demarcate an internal border, between “us” – the elitist Yiddish-speaking Haredi inner circle, and “them” – other Haredim, at least when they manifest improper behavior. The mother’s use of Hebrew in example (24) immediately depicts her as a relative outsider, one belonging to a less extreme Haredi sub-group. Women from the Yiddish-speaking Haredi hardcore usually feel superior to such women, and criticize their lower standards of religious observance and modesty (Zalcberg 2005: 193). The most striking difference between women from different groups concerns their head-covering. While women from Yiddish-speaking groups usually cover their heads with a kerchief, other Ashkenazi Hebrew-speaking (as well as Hebrew and Yiddish-speaking) Haredi women usually wear wigs, which are considered less modest by the hardcore Yiddish speakers. Besides implying the mother’s intra-Haredi affiliation, the switch to IH also assists in her characterization as a woman with lower ethical standards. The speaker’s choice to deliver the mother’s words in the original IH expresses her negative judgment of the mother’s behavior, emphasizing the moral distance between “us” (the speaker and her audience) and “them” (the mother in the taxi and her ilk). She is a woman who ignores the laws of pure speech, while “we”, righteous women, come here every week in order to learn about the selfsame laws and to improve ourselves (2.1.1). The negative attributes of IH, which create the desired rhetorical effect in (24), mainly take the form of vulgarity and coarseness (and also street-language; see 1.4.3). In different contexts, other negative traits may also play a role, includ-



4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

 85

ing modernity, or, more precisely, certain aspects of modernity. In an ultra-traditional society, whose guiding principle is the rejection of any innovation or change (1.2), the contemporary features of IH may also serve as a symbol of the shortcomings of modernity in general. Thus, for example, in (25) below, the woman-speaker switches to IH when ridiculing modern terminology. She tells her audience about a fellow public speaker, a rabbi who used to preach about child education in plain everyday language. When this rabbi discovered that the number of his listeners was declining, he changed his simple manner of speech, and began to use pompous and unnecessarily sophisticated terminology, as illustrated by the IH phrase “a-problemátika a-enošít” (‘the problematic nature of mankind’). 25

a-rav the-rabbi

yakovzon, Yakovzon

ofn about-the

ínyen fin issue of

mit with

di the

azoy vi as

ven er  ot ungeoybn ci redn when he has begin.ptcp to speak.inf xínex education

púšete šprax simple language mentšn people

lebn, live

fin kinder, of children

fin  mentšn, of    people azoy vi as

ot has

er ungeoybn he begin.ptcp

azoy vi as

mentšn people

mentšn  redn, people   speak firn zix. behave

ober fin  mul ci mul   iz geven     vayniger   in   vayniger mentšn but  from time to time  is be.ptcp  fewer      and fewer    people vus rel

zenen are

im gekimen oysern. ot er farštanen, him come.ptcp hear_out.inf has he understand.ptcp

az    der cíbur    far vemen  er ot     geret        darf    obn that this public for whom   he has speak.ptcp has_to  have.inf de   knakedige  verter,  in   er iz  ariber  a kurs […]  the  bombastic  words   and  he is  over    a course  ci  zugn    di   ale púšete zaxn,    de púšete švaxkaytn    fin mentšn […] to   say.inf  the all   simple things  the simple weaknesses  of people ot   er púšet   genimen  in   es ungetin    mit   de  šayne    verter fin ant. has he  simply take.ptcp and it   dress.ptcp  with the beautiful words of today

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de problemen  fin  de mentšn   fin   antige           caytn, de problemen     the problems   of    the people  of   contemporary  times the problems fin  a mentš,   me    rift    es un  :   a-problemátika of   a man     impers   calls  it calls    IHthe-problematicality a-enošít.    siz   púšet    de  knakedigere     numen. the-humanIH it is simply the more_bombastic name ‘Rabbi Yakovzon, when he began to speak about the topic of children’s education, he began with everyday simple language, just like people speak, as they live, as they behave. But gradually fewer people came to his lessons, and he understood, that this public, for whom he spoke, has to have pompous words [lit. crackling words], so he attended a course […] [where he learned] to say simple things, [to talk about] simple human weaknesses […] he simply dressed them in fancy contemporary language. The problems of people in our time, the problems of a person, it is called [mockingly]: “The problematic nature of mankind” [laughter in the audience]. It’s simply the more high-falutin term.’ [Has. W] The speaker in (25) emphasizes the switch point with a preceding pause, aimed at enhancing the potentially comical effect of the IH phrase. The high-flown style of this expression is achieved mainly by the use of the foreign word problemátika (‘problematicality’), which contributes to the speaker’s criticism of unnecessarily complex, “advanced” terminology, in contrast to “the simple language” praised by the speaker. Needless to say, this simple homely language is Yiddish. But the listeners in the story were not interested in the rabbi’s sincere and sensible words, so he had to use an embellished, artificial style of speech to gain their attention. The symbolic role of IH in this example, as the language of progress and modernity, coincides to some extent with that of German in the Eastern European Yiddish-speaking sociolinguistic setting. In this respect, IH replaces German as the prototypical modern language, as the source of sophisticated, progressive terms, which can thus be used mockingly and pejoratively even in the most traditional of Haredi contexts (Harshav 1990: 62–63, 67; see also Weinreich 1980: 418–419; Mark 1963: 75). The CS patterns involving IH in examples (20)-(25) are similar to external language mixing patterns found in other minority language settings, yet they all share an additional layer of symbolic representation derived from the status of IH in the speech community. The major symbolic functions of switching to IH as illustrated in examples (20) to (25) above are summarized in Table 4.2, as follows.



4.3 Yiddish-IH code-switching in public contexts 

 87

Table 4.2: Symbolic functions of IH in “ideological” switches Symbolic function of IH

Examples

outsider, Israeli, language of authority outsider, Israeli, language of authority outsider, Israeli, blasphemous language

(20) a quote attributed to an Israeli minister (21) a quote attributed to an Israeli policeman (22) a pseudo-quote, supposedly uttered in a public (secular) school (23) an IH term (‘Gluttonary’) (24) a quote attributed to a Haredi woman (25) a pretentious IH phrase

outsider, Israeli, blasphemous language outsider, coarseness/vulgarity outsider, modern

The “outsider” quality of IH is manifested in all these cases, demonstrating once again that “metaphorical codeswitches are seen to acquire their meaning through reference to a basic ‘we/they’ social dichotomy that is reflected in the associated languages” (Woolard 1987: 106). While other symbolic attributes of IH (such as vulgarity, modernity, or profanity) may but need not occur in different circumstances, the basic insider/outsider distinction is always maintained. Deliberate choice of IH thereby aids speakers in demarcating the clear boundaries of Haredi society. The person who is quoted in IH is negatively marked as an outsider, even if he or she is a Haredi, as in example (24), where the woman referred to is marked as a relative outsider, neither secular nor yet fully “one of us”, and use of IH helps the speaker to both criticize her and to create the required distance between her and “us”. Not only people, but concepts, too, may be marked as “outsiders” by the choice of IH, as in examples (23) and (25). Everything that lies beyond Haredi borders is inevitably perceived as negative, and public speakers’ controlled and deliberate use of IH serves to mark their clear perception of social boundaries. In sum, Yiddish and IH are kept apart in public and formal contexts, as a symbol of the sharp distinction between the identities indexed by these languages. The linguistic borders can be somewhat undermined in humoristic contexts, but even then IH is used in a deliberately monitored fashion. One such context is the carnivalesque Jewish holiday of Purim, a special occasion when, once a year, what is normally prohibited and repressed is permitted, in keeping with the Purim adage “the world is turned upside down” (Heb. ve-nahafox hu). One social norm that can be violated is the public use of IH in zealous sects. This occurs on such occasions when, in addition to the widespread Purim customs of masquerading and heavy drinking, Yiddish-speaking Haredim also observe the tradition of special public performances for Purim (Yid. púrim špil) in which deliberate switching to IH can have a comical effect, inducing laughter through the very fact of public use of the forbidden language. One such example was recorded in 2004 at the Masmídim yeshiva in Jerusalem, a Jerusalemite institution known for its annual Purim shows. This show

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presented two actors in the role of elderly Haredi Jews of Jerusalem, exchanging nostalgic jokes and stories. The actors spoke only Yiddish, interspersed with Arabic and Judeo-Spanish loanwords testifying to their distinguished Jerusalemite origin (see Notes on terminology 0.1.1). The switch to IH appeared when one of the two performers was discussing the invention of telephones with his friend, and informed him of the existence of cellular phones. At that very moment, his cell-phone evidently began ringing in his pocket, at which the actor held up the cell-phone to his ear and answered it, switching from his slowly-delivered Jerusalemite Yiddish to a rapid stream of fluent Israeli Hebrew: 26

Actor 1: eyner someone

ot has

gizogt say.ptcp

ništ lang, not long

az that

iz šoyn   do eyxet di    zelbe zax, is already [t]here also the same thing on without

aynt today

on, without

on, without

kin štrik. me ken redn  on ken štrik. any wire impers can talk.inf without any wire

Actor 2: on      a without  a

štikl piece-dim

štrikl! wire-dim

Actor 1: on      a štrik!  me     ken redn,    ay ay ay… without  a wire    impers  can talk.inf   great uy uy uy,  se  treyslt   mir  di   kešene.  uh-oh    it    shakes  me  the   pocket  Actor 2: vos what

i    dos? is   this

a kešene a pocket

vos rel

treyslt? shakes

Actor 1 [answering the cell-phone]: álo yósi?     álo yósi?    aní edabér Hello Yossi  Hello Yossi IHI talk.fut.1sg itxá      od      kama dakót,    aní yošév   po with.2sg.m in_another a few minutes   I    sit.sg.m  here im   benadám  mevugár. […]  tišmá, with  person     elderly        listen. fut.2sg.m aní kama peamím amárti  lexá,   al    titkašér I   several times  told.1sg  to.2sg.m  don’t call.fut.2sg.m

4.4 Conclusion 

 89

be-émca  še-ani medabér im benadám. ma   ze   ex in-middle that-I  talk.sg.m  with person    what this how atá    tída?        ma  ze  ex  atá you.sg.m know.fut.2sg.m what this how you.sg.m tída?         titkašér      ve-tišál. know.fut.2sg.m  call.fut.2sg.m  and-ask.fut.2sg.mIH Actor 1: Someone said not long ago, that today there is the same thing [telephone], without, without a wire. Actor 2: without a piece of wire! Actor 1: without a wire! You can talk, it’s wonderful... uh-oh, my pocket is shaking. Actor 2: How come? A pocket that shakes? Actor 1: (IH) Hello, Yossi? Hello, Yossi? I’ll talk to you in a few minutes, I’m sitting here with some old man. […] listen, I already told you a couple of times, don’t call me when I’m talking to someone. What do you mean, how can you know? What do you mean, how can you know? Just call and ask. [Jer. M, Jer. M] After this short exchange, the speaker immediately switched back to Yiddish and returned to his interlocutor. This short scene induced laughter, probably caused both by the general transformation of the actor’s behavior and by the matching language switch. The relative length of the IH switch is facilitated by the humorous context, since, normally, even deliberate “ideological” IH switches extend no longer than a single sentence. This lengthy segment in the “forbidden language” derives its comic effect from the negative qualities attributed to IH and from its constant public societal repression. It is a language everybody knows, which is nevertheless usually absent from the public sphere. The public display of the rejected language in itself has liberating qualities.

4.4 Conclusion In the IHY speech community, public gatherings of various types share a common goal of strengthening traditional values and group identity. These are insider events, where people come to be reassured over and over again as to the righteousness of their traditional way of life and their communal affiliation. The insider

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nature of these gatherings and their focus on Haredi ideals are also reflected in the selection of language, since Yiddish represents group membership as well as the idealized Haredi way of life (2.3.5). The ideal is a detached and “pure” Haredi existence, which speakers try to display not only by speaking in Yiddish, but also by their efforts to avoid IH. A “pure” Yiddish, free of observable Israeli interference, represents the desired Haredi segregation and is considered fitting for such public events. This supposedly Israeli-free Yiddish is the product of deliberate effort. It does not exist in everyday contexts, where spontaneous use of IH is fairly common: daily spoken Yiddish reflects the complex reality of IHY speakers and the ever-growing dominance of IH. However, from the public speakers’ point of view, this linguistic reality discloses an unwanted social reality, and therefore has no place in controlled public settings. If a mixed code can represent a mixed identity (Myers-Scotton 1998: 99–100), then advocating Haredi separateness compels speakers to avoid language mixing as much as possible. This avoidance of mixing supports Blommaert & Rampton’s claim (2012: 12) that “habitually using one ideologically distinguishable language, style or register means steering clear of and not using others”, and is a stylistic choice signifying a distinct identity (Irvine 2001: 22), rather than deriving from problems of competence, since the analyzed corpus makes it clear that avoiding IH is not a matter of insufficient linguistic proficiency in that language. Switching to IH is permitted only when it is used instrumentally and speakers’ awareness of the language change is overtly demonstrated. The external nature of IH is always stressed, while the negative qualities attributed to it may be highlighted (ideological CS) or avoided as far as possible (apologetic CS). A switch may be “apologetic” or “ideological”, but it is always controlled, a monitoring that becomes more pronounced in keeping with the increase in level of formality and in speakers’ zealousness. While controlled use of CS is permitted, the negative perception of IH limits more spontaneous patterns of CS, so that public speakers are on constant alert. Their linguistic awareness typically focuses on pronunciation of IH elements, since this functions as the sole identifier of the outsider language. As a result, their attempts to avoid IH concentrate on the phonological realization of Hebrew segments. Their attempts to avoid IH involve both a conscious abstention from IH pronunciation and systematic adherence to the LK pronunciation of all Hebrew switches (excluding, of course, those that are flagged IH switches). Even partial modifications of pronunciation are usually considered sufficient to legitimize a Hebrew switch (5.4.1, see also 6.2). Another factor that influences the legitimacy of a Hebrew switch for some speakers is its length, since the foreign IH pronunciation becomes more conspicuous the longer the Hebrew segment. The legitimate length for an IH segment depends on speakers and context, but is usually no

4.4 Conclusion 

 91

more than two words (Chapter 6), while zealous speakers naturally try to avoid even one word in the “forbidden” pronunciation, unless it is used intentionally and, especially, derisively. The unique characteristics emerging from the analysis of the IHY public corpus – namely the negative marking of IH combined with the public speakers’ elevated linguistic awareness and the deliberate nature of their speech – suggest that public speakers may be attempting to “switch off” a part of their linguistic repertoire. The widely accepted psycholinguistic assumption that bilinguals can never really “turn off” one of their languages (Grosjean 2001, Grosjean 2013: 16, 20–21) notwithstanding, note that since “purification” attempts are based primarily on pronunciation, it is not in any case the entire language that is avoided. That is, the bilingual public speakers are attempting to switch off the phonological realization of the language, rather than the language itself. The nature of the Haredi distinction between the two Hebrews is such that most of the linguistic resources of Hebrew remain at the disposal of public speakers. Given that the Haredi distinction between LK and IH is vague in theory but clear-cut in practice, speakers’ command of Hebrew and their overall Hebrew repertoire need to be distinguished from their active performance of Hebrew elements and segments in their Yiddish. In other words, they are free to use structures and expressive means from all the historical layers of Hebrew, avoiding only IH pronunciation and possibly also certain lexical items identified as Israeli (Chapter 6) – but with one important caveat: the speaker who in principle can make free use of the LK pronunciation is almost always a man. While attitudes and strategies concerning IH are largely shared by both men and women, command and use of LK in the speech community are gender-oriented. The factor of gender, of utmost importance in this speech community, is considered next, in Chapter 5.

5 The impact of gender In the highly conservative Haredi society, gender boundaries are clearly demarcated. Men and women fulfill traditional gender roles, receive decidedly different types of education, and spend most of their day with members of their own gender. Their speech patterns are highly affected by these separate life courses, most particularly as regards command and use of Loshn-kóydesh. Over and above this differentiation, moreover, Haredi women and men are subject to largely contrasting sets of sociolinguistic norms governing speech, to the extent to which women’s speech is so restricted that their voice is virtually silenced in mixed-gender public contexts. The corpus analyzed for this study provides rich evidence of some of these gender-based distinctions, primarily in the use of LK, with men and women manifesting very different patterns of code-switching between Yiddish and LK – ­deriving from the two factors noted above: distinct levels of command and use of LK and the strict sociolinguistic norms regarding language and gender. Specifically, free mixing of Yiddish and LK is considered a markedly masculine style of speech, and is therefore avoided by women.

5.1 Gender segregation in Haredi society At first glance, the most obvious expression of gender-related distinctions in Haredi society is seen in the rigorous code of dress and hairstyle: women and men are intentionally differentiated, practically from birth. Women wear only long-sleeved, modest dresses, while men wear traditional dark suits. Women grow their hair long before marriage, but cover it completely after the wedding, while men have very short hair, except for side-locks, with their secondary sexual characteristics emphasized by untrimmed beards. Even a baby girl, apart from wearing only dresses, will have her ears pierced in the first months of her life, so that her earrings may serve as yet another means of gender identification. Haredi gender segregation begins in infancy. Girls and boys attend separate, single-gender preschools and schools, and spend their free time with same-­ gender friends, as they will in adulthood. They receive very different types of schooling, in keeping with their different future roles: after marriage at a young age (ideally eighteen), women are expected to devote themselves to domestic life and raising a family, while the highest aspiration for men is a life dedicated to the study of sacred texts.1 Strict laws and norms of gender separation in Haredi 1 Women are also expected to support their husbands financially, so that the latter can devote themselves to the study of the sacred texts. See Friedman 1988; El-Or 1994; Caplan 2003b: 247–253. DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-006

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 5 The impact of gender

society include such prohibitions as a woman not being allowed to converse with a man, or even be in the same room with him unless he is a member of her close family. Men and women are separated at all social gatherings as well. For example, when friends gather at a home, the women sit in the kitchen while the men sit in the living room, and at celebrations such as weddings, men and women sit in different halls. This separation is maintained not only in the private sphere but in the public domain as well: special Haredi bus lines (called Mehádrin bus lines), for example, separate the sexes, with women sitting at the rear of the bus, and men in the front. Haredi women are constantly subjected to the demands of cníes (‘modesty’), which are required of them in dress, conduct, and in how they speak. “Modest speech” is first and foremost manifested by silence: a women’s voice is perceived to be sexually stimulating, and must therefore be silenced in public settings (Berman 1980; Vaisman 2013: 340, 351). Women are not allowed to sing in public, to address men outside of the home, or even to raise their voices in the presence of men. They are advised not to talk much in other settings as well. Their manner of speech is supposed to be quiet and restrained, and they are expected to adhere to a “pure” language, avoiding coarse words and slang (Oryan 1997; Zalcberg 2005: 179–180). Further, most women speakers in the corpus, as well as many of those in their audience, belong to a currently growing movement dedicated to “guarding the tongue”, which requires its followers to be constantly on their guard while speaking, totally avoiding slanderous speech (2.1.1). Ideally, even everyday conversations are subject to strict self-monitoring, revealing awareness of what is considered “proper language”, and this pressure is considerably heightened when addressing an audience. Moreover, all women speakers in the corpus under study here belong to sects that observe particularly strict gender separation. The IHY speech community is generally more conservative than Hebrew-speaking Haredi groups, with the Edah observing extremely stringent codes of modesty. Thus, the women speakers in the corpus all wear kerchiefs rather than wigs, and those among them who belong to “Hungarian” groups shave their hair regularly following marriage (Zalcberg 2005: 373–402). The women of the Edah also receive very limited formal education in comparison with other Haredi women, especially those outside the Edah who attend the Bet Yaakov schools. The most conservative Yiddish girls’ schools in the Edah stress the importance of cooking and sewing, and their students are provided with only minimal literacy in Hebrew (2.2, p. 33; Shneller 1978; Bogoch 1999: 130). These gender-differentiated educational norms engender two distinct paths in the domain of literacy, with the divergence between them becoming more entrenched over time. In the Yiddish-speaking hardcore, women are more literate in Yiddish, while men have far greater literacy in LK than women. The prestigious



5.2 Men, women and LK 

 95

language of sacred Hebrew and Aramaic texts is regarded as masculine in essence, so that women are supposed to use it only in a restricted manner. A woman’s free use of LK would be considered highly improper, as deviant as if she were to suddenly grow a beard (Miron 2009: 195. See also Benor 2004 and Seidman 1997). This perception of LK is especially salient in public and formal contexts, where social awareness of “correct” gender-based behavior is particularly strong, so that these public contexts afford valuable insights into the effect of gender on language usage. The focus below is specifically on the way gender determines speakers’ use of LK in public Yiddish contexts, demonstrating that the code-switching patterns of women and men differ markedly whenever LK is involved.

5.2 Men, women and LK The Haredi perception of LK is basically textual: LK is defined as the language of Hebrew and Aramaic sacred texts, used mainly in ritual and study (3.1). Men’s ritual use of LK is more extensive than that of women, a circumstance that contributes to the gender difference in command of LK. Yet the factor of ritual remains secondary compared to the main cause for this gender difference: the domain of study. The study of sacred LK texts, fundamental to the Haredi way of life and the highest aspiration of every Haredi man, is not an option for women in this community. In consequence, Haredi men read, study, recite and write in LK far more than do women. Moreover, this gender-based distinction is not merely a matter of quantity: not only do men use LK more than women, they are also required to achieve a higher level of understanding, since the level of literacy involved in ritual versus scholarly use of LK differs profoundly. Women’s use of LK is mostly limited to reciting prayers, blessings and psalms (without necessarily understanding them), whereas men’s scholarly use of the language demands deep understanding of the texts to which they are exposed (Heilman 1983: 161– 200). This distinction is less clear-cut in Israel, where Haredi women manifest a relatively higher understanding of LK than their counterparts abroad, as a result of the fact that they typically have good command of IH (Assouline 2014b). Nonetheless, men’s mastery of LK remains significantly greater than that of the women. Men’s elaborated scholarly use of LK contributes to their ability to use the language actively, to the point where they are not only able to read or recite from LK texts, but can also write in LK and even “speak” it on special occasions (1.3.1). By contrast, women’s ritual use of the language is essentially passive and never productive: they can read and recite, but almost never write in LK, nor do they freely generate LK utterances in their speech. The results of this active-passive distinction are clearly manifested in the public CS patterns discussed below.

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5.2.1 Ritual use of LK The ritual use of LK mainly comprises prayers and blessings, recited at home or in the synagogue. Some of these are recited every day (such as the prayer on waking, various blessings over food, or the Amidah ‘standing’ prayer recited by men three times a day); others are by week, month or year (such as the Sabbath and holiday prayers). While blessings are mandatory for both men and women, most of the prayer services are obligatory only for men, so that men’s ritual use of LK is considerably greater than that of women. Constant and repeated recitation of ritual texts provides men with a deep and intimate familiarity with LK, and an ability to quote freely from these sources at will. Memorizing large portions of texts is also supported by the melodic nature of Jewish liturgy, which functions as a mnemonic device. By contrast, women are exempt from most prayers, so that their reservoir of memorized liturgical texts is very restricted compared to that of men. Aside from prayers and blessings, the major liturgical function of LK is the ritual recitation of the Torah, conducted solely by men in the synagogue at least three times a week. Men’s active reading from the Torah, as well as their continual exposure to hearing it read out loud, helps them construct yet another textual reservoir, shared by other male members of the speech community. The effect of such liturgical use of LK is evident in the public corpus, where most LK switches are taken from the linguistic repertoire that is repeatedly recited as part of the obligatory ritual practice – a very common phenomenon among men, occurring to a far lesser extent among women.

5.2.2 The domain of study Contemporary Haredi society is often referred to as a “society of scholars” (Heilman & Friedman 1996: 9–10; Friedman 1991: 73–77), in which most men are engaged throughout their lives in an “eternal review and ritualized study of sacred Jewish texts” (Heilman 1983: 1). Numerous cultural, social and economic mechanisms support this scholarly ideal, as the axis around which Haredi society revolves. This scholar-society is composed only of men, and study of the sacred texts takes place in masculine territories such as yeshivas or kollels (for married men), which are out of bounds to women. In accepted ultra-Orthodox doctrine, the only role a woman has in fulfilling the precept (mitzvah) of Torah study is catering to and caring for her husband and sons, seeing to all of their material needs, and so liberating them from everyday matters, enabling them to devote themselves entirely to the study of the Torah. Men begin their years of study at the age of three, when they enter the xéyder (see p. 50). After learning the Hebrew



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alphabet, they begin to study biblical and Mishnaic texts. In the traditional method of study, still ­prevalent in most educational institutions in the speech community, the teacher (the melámed/rebbe) melodically recites a biblical verse or a Mishnaic phrase together with a Yiddish translation, which the students repeat after him. Writing is limited to classes of “general studies”, which in the Edah’s educational system consist of basic arithmetic and a class called “Loshnkóydesh” (2.2), in both of which the students write in Hebrew. In “Loshn-kóydesh” classes the boys learn Hebrew calligraphy and basic Hebrew grammar, and copy Hebrew stories in order to expand their vocabulary and improve their spelling. As they mature, most of their curriculum is dedicated to the study of the Babylonian Talmud, usually conducted in pairs (xavrúse, Heilman 1983: 206–214), almost exclusively orally, since their study takes the form of discussing the Talmudic text with their study partners. The language of the Babylonian Talmud is mostly Aramaic, so that during their years of study men acquire a certain proficiency in Aramaic, without ever studying the language in a structured manner. By contrast, the women’s sacred curriculum is decidedly smaller (2.2), with no direct access to the Talmudic texts, so that a salient linguistic gender difference relates to the command of Aramaic, as manifested in the public corpus: men quote freely from Aramaic while women almost never use the language. In contrast to boys’ extensive study of the Talmud as well as other rabbinical texts, girls learn only limited Talmudic expressions relevant to their future roles as wives and mothers. These expressions appear in special anthologies for girls, often abridged and translated into Hebrew or Yiddish, so that their access to Talmudic texts is virtually ­non-existent. Besides, the pronouncedly masculine identification of Talmudic texts hinders women’s ability to use them in public. If a woman speaking in public does quote from the  Talmud, it will be in a highly reserved manner, fundamentally different from the freely uninhibited public use of rabbinical texts common among men.

5.2.3 The impact of Israeli Hebrew on command of Loshn-kóydesh The IHY speech community thus emerges as maintaining a traditional gender distinction with regard to LK. During fieldwork, I often came across the idea that LK is “not for women”, explicitly voiced by men and women alike. One Jerusalemite male informant, for example, told me that “Women have Hebrew and Yiddish. They don’t have LK”. Such statements convey the notion that women operate in a bilingual setting, with no real access to the third, sacred language. The question arises, however, as to how true this is in Israel. Women in Yiddish-speaking Haredi communities in the US and Europe probably do have only minimal access

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 5 The impact of gender

to LK, but the case of Israeli women is different. The strict Haredi distinction between LK and IH in theory ignores their obvious kinship, as well as the fact that command of IH can facilitate access to LK. Thus, a woman who speaks IH may understand LK on a level not known in the past, or in contemporary Haredi communities outside Israel. In fact, the entire IHY speech community represents a command of LK that is new to the history of Yiddish (5.4.4). In the past, only a small, learned male elite knew enough LK to be able to use it freely and creatively (Weinreich 1980: 225; Parush 2004; Stampfer 1993). In Israel, however, such free usage characterizes most speakers thanks to their knowledge of IH. Use of LK attested to in the corpus is affected in two different ways by IH, one passive and the other active. The passive effect of IH promotes a better understanding of many features of LK that are similar to their counterparts in IH, and affects women as well as men. In the “active” sense, speakers can permute almost any element in IH into LK – thus rendering it “kosher” or legitimate – by simply changing its pronunciation. This “surreptitious” version of LK, based on IH, is found mostly among men. Significantly, while command of IH increases women’s understanding of LK, this greater competence is not in keeping with accepted sociolinguistic norms and so is not overtly displayed in the public corpus. Women try to obscure the fact that they have a relatively good understanding of LK quotations from sacred texts, and their active use of LK is limited by the communally-accepted boundaries governing language use (5.3, 5.4.3). Interestingly enough, these boundaries themselves have shifted due to the impact of IH, so that use of LK deemed acceptable among women is currently much wider than in documented Yiddish (5.4.4). Nonetheless, the clear gender distinction regarding use of LK still prevails. Women may use LK more than before, but never in what is widely perceived as a masculine manner

5.2.4 Gender and CS patterns The gender-based distinction regarding LK use and command is clearly expressed in the public speakers’ switching patterns. The men’s use of LK is more extensive and versatile than that of women. First, men switch to LK more often than women: women speakers in the corpus switched to LK approximately 6 times every 1000 words, as against men switching to LK about 5 times per 100 words.2

2 The frequency of code-switching to LK was examined in a corpus of 40,000 words: 25,000 from the women’s corpus and 15,000 from the men’s corpus. Note that due to the heterogeneity of the men’s corpus, certain genres contained up to 10 switches to LK every 100 words.



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Moreover, women’s switches are more homogenous – both in content and structure – than the varied switches found among men. Women’s switches consist mostly of quotes (generally from the limited corpus of Hebrew sacred texts familiar to them), while men’s switches range from quotes (from rich textual sources in Hebrew and Aramaic that vary in their level of erudition) and paraphrases of quotes to freely generated Hebrew expressions. Finally and most significantly, the switching patterns of the two genders are themselves distinct, since women usually “flag” their LK switches while men tend to integrate them smoothly into the stream of their Yiddish output. The following sections provide a closer analysis of women’s and men’s public use of LK.

5.3 Women’s versus men’s treatment of LK quotes Quotes from sacred Hebrew and Aramaic texts are frequently employed in the public corpus, reflecting the community’s extensive and ongoing contact with LK texts. Use of quotes depends largely on gender, with men employing quotations in a far more varied and elaborated manner than women. This gender distinction is manifested both in the structural patterns of integration of quotes into the Yiddish stream of speech, as well as in their possible rhetorical effects. A woman who publicly quotes from a sacred text tends to flag the switch, so stressing that it was imported from a different linguistic system – usually by introducing the quote by reference to its source and following it with a Yiddish translation. The following is a typical example from the women’s corpus: 27

šteyt in pírkey    óvoys: ve-évey          mekábel is_written in chapters_of fathers LKand-be.imp.2sg.m  receive.ptcp.sg.m es acc

kol o-ódom be-séyver pónim yófoys. all the-man in-facial_expression beautifulLK

mi zol ufnemen yedn mentš  mit    a frayndlexn pónim. impers should receive.inf every-acc man    with  a friendly-dat face ‘It is written in Pirkey Ovoys [Ethics of the Fathers]: LK“receive all men with a pleasant countenance”LK [Avoth 1, 15] – One should receive every man with a friendly face.’ [Jer. W]

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This switch is flagged by several means. The public speaker notes the source of the saying, pauses before its delivery, recites the Hebrew quotation at a slower rate of speech, and finally adds a Yiddish translation. All this is customary among women when speaking in public. At first glance, such a treatment of quotations seems only natural outside the Ashkenazi diglossic context. After all, quotations, and especially quotations from a different language, are usually flagged in other linguistic settings as well (cf. Gumperz 1982: 75–76; Romaine 1995: 162). However, when the fact that this pattern is not usually shared by the men of this community is taken into account, it becomes clear that this is not a universal pattern, but one that is gender-based. In contrast to women, men typically integrate LK quotes smoothly into their Yiddish, as in example (28), taken from a political speech by a Jerusalem community leader: 28

me    ken dos  gor   faršteyn.     mit   a bisl isbóynenus. impers can this fully understand.inf with a bit  meditation si (=es iz) ništ keyn it is not  not_a

xóyšex darkness

LK

yexáse érec cover.fut.3sg.m earthLK

in dem. in that

‘One can fully understand it, with some contemplation. It is not obscure at all.’ [lit. There is no LKdarkness shall cover the earth LK [Isaiah 60:2] in that]. [Jer. M] The man in (28) uses the quote in a completely different manner from the woman in (27). He makes use of an excerpt from the Bible out of its original context, inserting it into a Yiddish sentence with no reference, preceding pause, change of speech rate or translation. The different ways of integrating a LK quote in (27) and (28) illuminate the gender-determined attitudes towards the sacred texts and the language they use. The woman in (27) stands as an outsider, in awe before the sacred text. She presents a fraction of it to her audience with due veneration and respect, pointing out its original source. Her careful treatment of the LK quote indicates her gender-structured distance from the sacred texts as a woman. She is but a visitor in the garden of the sacred scriptures. By contrast, the man in (28) is the owner of that garden. Learned Jewish men are masters of the sacred texts, and this garden is their playground. Men can creatively use quotes out of their original context, paraphrase and manipulate them for their rhetorical needs, play with their various meanings, as well as with their acronyms, numerical values etc. Men’s mastery and sense of ownership is explicitly manifested in their free and creative use of LK (see 5.4 below).



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The issue of translation merits special consideration. Acquisition of LK in the traditional Ashkenazi educational system has always been accomplished through fixed translation (5.2.2). The children who repeat the teacher’s melodic reciting of a LK segment with its Yiddish translation are supposed to acquire LK through the Yiddish translation rather than by structured study (see Noble 1943; Turniansky 1988). Since this type of translation is found in the early stages of Haredi formal education, its employment by women freezes their status as pupils rather than masters. The translation common among women is often automatic or a pseudo-translation, one that reflects the Hebrew text, usually maintaining its original vocabulary. Consider example (29), where a female speaker quotes a segment of a biblical verse and adds a Yiddish translation: 29

faranen a púsik, e, fin there_is a verse  eh of (the) der núvi the prophet a-šém? the-LordLK zayn be.inf

zugt azoy: says so mit with

de the

vus what

núvi. prophet [one of the biblical books of Prophets]

ba-mú with-what

LK

zol should

ix I

akádem meet.fut.1sg kimen come.inf

es acc

mekádem meet.ptcp.sg.m

riboyne-šel-óylom? Lord-of-world

‘There is a verse, eh, from the prophet. The prophet says thus: LK“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?”LK [Micah 6:6] – With what should I come before the Lord?’ [Has. W] The woman in (29) renders the Hebrew verb akádem (‘I will meet’) using the same verb in a periphrastic construction mekádem zayn (‘to meet’). In this construction, a Hebrew participial form (here mekádem, ‘meet’) functions as the lexical core of the periphrasis, while conjugation is performed by the Germanic light verb zayn (‘to be’; see below, 6.3.1). The documented Merged Hebrew component of Yiddish includes many such periphrastic verbs, but mekádem zayn is not one of them. Therefore, this translation would probably be of little use to someone who is not familiar with the meaning of the Hebrew verb to begin with. This seemingly redundant type of word-for-same-word translation is quite common among women. What is the function of such a translation? In addition to actually

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clarifying the Hebrew quote, it appears to serve symbolic ­functions. Together with other measures (change of speech rate etc.), the systematic translation of LK quotes helps women emphasize their socially required distance from the sacred texts. In other words, while men’s and women’s distinct integration patterns of LK quotes derive mostly from gender-based differences in LK command, they may also be attributed to the maintenance of Haredi sociolinguistic norms. Thus, women’s careful treatment of quotes is not only an outcome of their limited command of LK, but also a result of the perception of the sacred texts and their language as masculine. Even if an Israeli woman understands a certain “masculine” LK quote (probably facilitated by her command of IH), she will try to camouflage her true linguistic competence, so as to avoid a display of knowledge of the holy tongue on a level higher than that perceived as socially legitimate for women (see a broader discussion of women’s use of LK quotes in Assouline 2014b). This cautious treatment of LK quotes is but one example of women’s adherence to Haredi sociolinguistic “modesty” norms restricting their speech (5.1). The flagging of LK switches helps female speakers demonstrate a specific facet of “correct” gender-based linguistic behavior, namely the avoidance of masculine language. A woman’s manifestation of what are perceived as masculine speech patterns would be considered improper and immodest. Therefore, flagging is especially salient when women quote from the Talmud, which is regarded as an exclusively masculine text (5.2.2). Women’s rare public quotations from the Talmud are highly controlled and cautious, because they feel obliged to demonstrate that they are not overstepping their limits. Their efforts can be very explicit, as in the usage of concomitant expressions such as “it is not for women” (Assouline 2014b: 169). By contrast, men’s free use of Talmudic quotes and terminology is a signal of elevated scholarly status, hence a welcome and common phenomenon in public contexts. Men’s freedom and creativity in employment of quotes are also manifested in the rhetorical purposes these LK excerpts serve. For female speakers, the basic reason for quoting from LK is to present the voice of authority, in a manner perceived as fitting for an audience of women. For men, LK quotes serve various rhetorical purposes, based on the overall communal familiarity with the sacred texts (see 2.3.1, example (6)). Men who speak to other men take for granted their audience’s familiarity with the quote, as well as its textual and extra-textual context (cf. Reshef 2009). Consider the rhetorical effects achieved by integrating two LK quotes in example (30). The male speaker is a well-known elderly Hasidic educator, delivering a speech at an assembly dedicated to education in 2005. In his speech, he spoke about the importance of personal guidance for young yeshiva students who are in danger of going astray, and stressed the crucial role of the educators who deal with these “problematic” youths. In the segments presented in (30), the speaker warned his audience of educators that the task of saving



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young souls is critical for the future of the Jewish people, and therefore should be undertaken with the utmost seriousness and responsibility: 30

di    zelbe  zax   rabóysay,  loy   yíkrav           ayner  vus ot the  same  thing  gentlemen  LKneg  approach.fut.3sg.m LK  one    rel has ništ bakimen di   yesóydes  fin de adrúxe  viazoy me    darf    imgayn not  get.ptcp the principles of the guidance how   impers has_to treat.inf mit with

di the

yinge      šsílim, young    seedlings

mit with

di the

yinge netíes. […] young plants

darfn   zey   visn       az     dúmoy              ve-dám have_to   they   know.inf   that   LKblood.poss.3sg.m   and-blood_of zariyóysov           zenen  túli        in  enkere     ent. descendants.poss.3sg.m LK  are    dependent  in   your.pl-pl  hands ‘The same thing, gentlemen, LKhe shall not approach LK [e. g. Leviticus 21:17; Numbers 17:5] who has not received the principles of guidance, how to handle the young plants, the young seedlings. […] They [the educators] should know that LKhis [the pupil’s] blood and the blood of his descendantsLK [Sanhedrin 4, 5] are in your hands.’ [Has. M] The two LK switches in (30) are typical of men’s use of the sacred texts. The speaker uses fractions of LK quotes, smoothly integrated into his Yiddish (as also in example (28)). Despite their smooth integration, these two switches serve clear rhetorical purposes (4.1). In the first switch, the speaker inserts the Hebrew loy yíkrav (‘he shall not approach’), thus creating a sentence with a Hebrew verb and a Yiddish subject. The biblical appearances of this excerpt are related to the ­prohibition of access to a holy territory or practice. In Numbers 17:5, “he who shall not approach” refers to an outsider, who is not one of Aaron’s descendants, and therefore is not allowed to perform the ritual of incense offering; and in ­Leviticus 21:17–18 it refers to an offspring of Aaron who has a defect and therefore may not perform the ritual offering. This switch raises immediate associations with priests (Heb. Kohanim) and their holy missions. The educators in the audience are implicitly thus compared to holy priests: a select and elite group, who pursue sacred tasks. Educating future generations is thus equated with performing holy rituals in the Holy Tabernacle, and not every man is worthy of or suited to this task.

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The speaker in (30) switches again to LK when he stresses the enormous responsibility of educators, warning his audience that the fate of their pupils, as well as that of their descendants, is in their hands. He does so by inserting a Hebrew quote from the Mishnaic tractate of Sanhedrin, ‘his blood and the blood of his descendants’. The tractate deals with dinei nefashot (lit. ‘laws of souls’, capital cases or legal cases concerning life and death), and this excerpt is taken from the warning to witnesses who testify in capital cases: “Know then that capital cases are not like monetary cases. In civil suits, one can make monetary restitution and thereby effect his atonement. But in capital cases he is held responsible for his blood [of the accused] and the blood of his [potential] descendents until the end of time.” (Mishnah, Sanhedrin, 4, 5). Here, again, the rhetorical effect of the switch is clear, presenting education as a matter of life and death, with eternal consequences. The educators are thus depicted as responsible not only for their pupils’ souls, but also for the souls of all their future descendants, until the end of time. The rhetorical functions of the two quotes in (30) are obvious, serving the speaker’s aim of demonstrating to his audience of educators the utmost importance of their vocation. The speaker’s ability to use only a fraction of a quote, counting on his audience’s familiarity with its meaning as well as its original context, is common among men but extremely rare among women. Men’s profound and extensive literacy and continuous exposure to the sacred texts enable them to pick a quote that fits their purpose with no special effort. This familiarity with the sacred texts also enables speakers to integrate into their Yiddish partial quotes or paraphrases of quotes. This erudition also enables them to extend their use of LK beyond quoting from sacred texts, as will be discussed in the next section.

5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases In addition to quotes from sacred texts, public speakers also integrate free Hebrew phrases (or rather LK phrases, in the Ashkenazi pronunciation) into their Yiddish. While quotes may be in Hebrew as well as Aramaic, the formation of a new phrase requires a good command of the language, which applies in this context only to Hebrew. The productive use of free Hebrew phrases is sharply gender-differentiated, with men’s use of free phrases being much more common and varied than that of women. Table 5.1 demonstrates the main gender differences concerning the usage of free Hebrew phrases.



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Table 5.1: Men’s versus women’s use of free Hebrew phrases Use of free Hebrew phrases

Men

Women

Frequency Length of switched segments

Frequent Generally 2–5 words, longer segments occur as well Collocations and free phrases

Rare 2 words

Lexical boundedness/ colloquiality Type of CS pattern

Intra-sentential and inter-sentential; intra-sentential – generally insertional, also alternational (Muysken 2000)

More collocations than free phrases Intra-sentential, insertional

As can be seen in Table 5.1, women’s usage of free Hebrew phrases is highly fixed. The women keep to an insertional CS pattern, typically involving collocations (cf. Backus 2003), which may be interpreted as closer to phenomena of borrowing rather than “true” CS (see Section 5.4.2). “True” CS, namely alternational CS, was attested only among the men. In other words, not a single alternational switch to LK was attested among female speakers in the entire corpus. Unlike women, men who speak in public freely integrate various Hebrew phrases in their Yiddish. Mixing of Yiddish and LK among men has long been documented in traditional Ashkenazi society. Special attention has been given to the mixed language common among learners, who alternate freely between Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic during their oral study of the Talmud (Heilman 1981, 1983: 172–176; Weinreich 1980: 225; see also Weiser 1995). This mixed variety can be termed “mixed scholarly style”. It is the customary manner of communication in scholarly settings, where learned Jewish men spend most of their time. Similar language mixing is also characteristic of “sacred” public genres, such as sermons delivered by spiritual leaders. Since this mixed style is identified with prestigious scholarly and sacred settings, male speakers tend to use it in other public contexts as well, possibly as a means of enhancing rabbinical and scholarly authority (cf. Bailey 2007: 35–36, on the sociolinguistic functions of frequent switching as a style). In the analyzed formal-but-not-sacred corpus men adopt this general pattern, with Yiddish as the frame language and constant switching to LK, although usually the extent to which LK is used remains lower than in actual scholarly or sacred settings. Men’s public employment of free Hebrew phrases presents us with the most complex form of language mixing in the corpus. In the first place, this pattern includes many manifestations of language mixing within the boundaries of a single sentence (intra-sentential CS). In addition, men’s mixed variety presents a case of special interest for the study of CS in general, since it seems that the boundaries between languages in this context are somewhat fuzzy (see Matras

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2009, esp. pp. 308–309, on the notion of “bilingual repertoire” rather than mastery of two distinct linguistic systems; see also Gardner-Chloros 1995, Álvarez-Cáccamo 1998 and Milroy & Gordon 2003: 198). This specific “fuzziness” is caused by the presence of the Merged Hebrew component in Yiddish (Notes on terminology 0.2). Since Yiddish already contains many Hebrew morphemes, single words and phrases, which form an integral part of its vocabulary, it is not always easy to identify the switch points between Yiddish and Hebrew. Moreover, it is not always clear whether the speakers did in fact switch languages. The Merged Hebrew component comprises more than a list of lexical items; it contains established borrowing mechanisms that facilitate free borrowing from Hebrew, according to the speakers’ needs and erudition. This phenomenon is highly conspicuous among educated men, such as the speakers in the present corpus. We shall see later how this open and flexible nature of the Merged Hebrew component may make it difficult to distinguish a switch from a borrowing (5.4.2). A different issue relating to the usage of free Hebrew phrases is their possible rhetorical effect. Unlike quotes, free Hebrew phrases do not usually serve specific rhetorical purposes. Their rhetorical effect is rather a general and accumulative one, deriving from the overall prestigious “scholarly” impression created by frequent use of LK. Since the mixing of Yiddish and LK testifies to the speaker’s erudition, it carries a general rhetorical force that is not related to any specific switch. A public speaker who mixes a lot of LK into his Yiddish can thus lay tacit claim to scholarly, rabbinical and even spiritual authority. For this reason, intensive mixing of LK is a symbol of elevated social status, and only distinguished male members of the speech community freely use it in public. The prestigious status of LK should be accounted for when we study men’s motivations for switching, particularly when free Hebrew phrases are concerned. However, when we consider female speakers, the picture is completely reversed. The same “scholarly” rhetorical effect that encourages men to code switch discourages women from doing so. A final point related to the rhetorical effect of free phrases concerns their marking at the discourse level. Their lack of specific rhetorical effect is usually matched by their smooth integration into the Yiddish framework. While quotes can be marked at the discourse level (almost invariably among women and occasionally among men), the transitions from Yiddish to free Hebrew phrases and back to Yiddish are usually smooth.

5.4.1 Men’s use of free Hebrew phrases Men’s common switching pattern to free Hebrew phrases is insertional (Muysken 2000). Most typically, Hebrew nominal, prepositional or adverbial phrases are



5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases 

 107

inserted into a Yiddish sentence. The Hebrew phrases may include elements from different layers in the history of the language (including Israeli Hebrew), but, invariably, they will be articulated in the Ashkenazi pronunciation. In order to illustrate men’s use of free Hebrew phrases, consider example (31). This is an excerpt from a political speech given by a prominent member of the Toldos Aharon Hasidic sect, delivered in Jerusalem in 1992. The male speaker called upon his audience to brace themselves against government attempts to interfere with the isolated Haredi educational system, switching freely between Yiddish and LK: 31

lomir in  inzere  ercer  zax   mexázek       zayn,  in   visn let_us  in  our.pl  hearts  refl  strengthen.ptcp.sg.m  be.inf  and  know.inf es    ašér  lefunéyni.      vus   zoln     mir  tin LK acc  rel  in_ front_ of.1plLK  what  should  we  do.inf in in

inzer our

macuvéyni situation.poss.1pl

LK

úni? weLK

‘Let us strengthen ourselves in our hearts, and know LKwhat lies ahead LK. What should we do in our LK (our) situation? LK’ [Has. M] In this short excerpt, the speaker switched twice to intra-sentential free Hebrew phrases: he employed a Hebrew object clause following a Yiddish verb (‘know what lies ahead’), and switched to Hebrew in the middle of a noun phrase, resulting in the excess use of two possessive pronouns (‘in our our situation’). This natural coexistence of Yiddish and LK is found only among men. Unlike women’s perception of LK as an external and masculine language, for the male speaker both Yiddish and LK are internal languages, which can easily be used together within the boundaries of a single sentence. In the public corpus such smooth Yiddish-Hebrew CS is possible only with Hebrew segments that are identified and performed as LK, that is, in the Ashkenazi pronunciation. The vague Haredi linguistic distinction between LK and IH facilitates the presence of Modern Hebrew segments in such smooth CS, provided, of course, that they are performed as LK segments. This “camouflaged” Hebrew is manifested in example (32), from a sermon delivered in 1999 by a leader of one of the Jerusalemite groups. The speaker switched to a sentence that derives from Modern Hebrew, but articulated it using the Ashkenazi ­pronunciation:

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 5 The impact of gender

me     ot    gezindikt,  un   me     šmayst impers  has  sin.ptcp    and  impers  thrashes unz,  un   bexol zoys      šteyen  mir  bi-mesíres néfeš […] us    and  nevertheless  stand  we   with-self_sacrifice beséyder,  gezindikt -  ober,  oyxáxnu     es   acméynu. OK       sin.ptcp   but   LKproved.1pl  acc  selvesLK ‘We sinned, and we are punished [lit. thrashed]. And nevertheless we stand [firm] with devotion […] OK, we sinned, but we proved ourselves [worthy].’ [Jer. M]

The Hebrew sentence used in (32), oyxáxnu es acméynu (‘we proved ourselves’), clearly reflects a Modern Hebrew usage, common in Israeli Hebrew.3 The Ashkenazi pronunciation of this sentence is almost comical, as the meaning of ‘to prove oneself worthy’ exists only in Modern Hebrew, while in previous historical layers of Hebrew the common interpretation of this sentence would be ‘we reproved ourselves’. Here again the nature of the Haredi distinction between the two Hebrews, which is not based on linguistic criteria, is evident (see Chapter 3). Any Hebrew segment can be articulated in the Ashkenazi pronunciation, and as long as this segment is pronounced as LK, it is considered “kosher” and may be used interchangeably with Yiddish. The triggers for switching in examples (31) and (32) are different. The switch in (32) is probably the result of a lexical gap, since an equivalent expression in not available in Haredi Yiddish. Converting the Hebrew phrase oyxaxnu es acmeynu ‘we proved ourselves worthy’ to Yiddish through the common mechanism of a periphrastic construction for the borrowing of Hebrew verbs (6.3.1) is also not a preferred option, since it would result in an ambiguous phrase: the Yiddish calque “mir obn zix moyxíax geven”, would be more readily understood in this specific context (of sin and punishment) as ‘we reproved ourselves’ rather than ‘we proved ourselves worthy’. In example (31) it is harder to find discernible triggers for the switches. The Hebrew-source Yiddish word mácev (‘situation’) may have inspired the second switch (“in our our situation”), but not directly. The speaker used an inflected form that is clearly Hebrew (macuvéyni, ‘our 3 There is no documentation of this expression in the historical dictionary of the Hebrew language, documenting Hebrew until the 1930s (as of December 2013). See maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il. It is first attested in the historical Jewish press website (web.nli.org.il/sites/JPress/ English) in Israeli newspapers from the 1940s. This expression is possibly a calque of the German sich (Acc.) selbst beweisen.



5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases 

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s­ ituation’). In addition, neither of the switches in (31) carries a specific rhetorical value, other than the general prestige attributed to LK. The prestigious status of LK can encourage public speakers to use it as much as possible, but it cannot explain why a certain switch happened at a certain point. However, we can often identify what triggers a specific switch to a free Hebrew phrase. One common factor is the Merged Hebrew component of Yiddish: the employment of a Yiddish element derived from Hebrew may facilitate a switch (Notes on terminology 0.2). Consider example (33), from an instruction lecture for grooms, preparing them for future married life. In this excerpt, the speaker switches to LK after the Hebrew-derived Yiddish adjective kedáy ‘worthwhile’: 33

si (=es iz)   šoyn   kedáy     laxásoys    al   kol   a-pšóim      it is      already   worthwhile  LKcover.inf  on  all   the-misdeeds  ve-a-migróes      ve-a-xisróynoys   ve-a-ávloys  and-the-­defects   and-the-faults    and-the-injustices  ve-a-mixšóloys and-the-obstaclesLK

un azey vayter. and so on

‘It is already preferable LKto cover all the misdeeds, defects, faults, injustices and obstacles LK etc.’ [Jer. M] The Hebrew switch in (33) is based on the biblical “love covereth all sins” (Proverbs 10:12), paraphrased and elaborated. The paraphrase complements the predicate kedáy (‘worthwhile’), which is an established Hebrew-source Yiddish word: kedáy laxásoys – ‘it is preferable to cover’. The Merged Hebrew component is extremely prominent in IHY, since almost every Hebrew lexical item can be borrowed into Yiddish (Chapter 6). Thus, alongside hundreds of documented Merged Hebrew elements that appear in every Yiddish dictionary (such as kedáy), IHY possesses many Hebrew elements borrowed through Israeli Hebrew (see Chapter 6. Note that although borrowed from Israeli Hebrew, these items are not in themselves necessarily “modern” or “Israeli”, but can also derive from previous Hebrew chronolects). Moreover, the Merged component is even more dominant among men, who can freely borrow from various Hebrew sources thanks to their erudition. Thus, men’s public speech is riddled with numerous Merged Hebrew elements, both documented and new, which are not perceived as specifically “Yiddish” or “Loshn-kóydesh”. These shared elements may facilitate CS, as is documented in other cases of l­anguage

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contact, for shared vocabulary is often a convenient switching point (Clyne 2003: 162; de Bot, Broersma & Isurin 2009: 92). Moreover, the Merged Hebrew component includes not only lexical items but also borrowing mechanisms and established patterns of integrating Hebrew elements into Yiddish. One of these mechanisms, which functions as a common switch point, is the periphrastic construction for borrowing Hebrew verbs (as in example (29); see 6.3.1). In this case, switching necessarily involves a higher level of control than in cases possibly triggered by shared vocabulary, such as in (33). Consider examples (34) and (35) from the men’s public corpus, where a switch to Hebrew follows the Hebrew-derived verbs: 34

kimt  os  az   miz (=me iz) yóyce           nífsad    lexalítin. comes out that impers is    exit.ptcp.sg.m LKdefeated completelyLK ‘It turns out that one comes out [of it] LKin a very bad shape LK [lit. ‘having lost everything’].’ [Has. M]

35

der gárin  vus    me     ot     noytéya       geven the seed  rel  impers  has   plant.ptcp.sg.m  be.ptcp be-líboy          šel  kol    éxod   ve-éxod     zol in-heart.poss.3sg.m  of    every   one    and-oneLK   should

LK

macmíyax sprout.ptcp.sg.m

zayn be.inf

péyroys. fruit.pl

‘So that the seed that one [had] planted LKin the heart of each and every oneLK should bear fruit.’ [Has. M] In example (34) the speaker uses a documented Yiddish verb of Hebrew origin, but with a different meaning. In documented Yiddish, the verb yóyce zayn, with the Hebrew participial yóyce (lit. ‘exit’) and the Germanic light verb zayn (‘to be’), means ‘to satisfy’, ‘to get away with something’ (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 588). This meaning derives from the Hebrew Mishnaic phrase yaca/lacet yedey xova (‘to fulfill one’s Halakhic obligation with minimal effort’). In example (34) this verb signifies ‘to exit’, as is common in Hebrew. This semantic change may teach us something about the nature of the switch. This is not triggering at the surface structure level, where a Yiddish verb of Hebrew origin “drags” Hebrew complementation, but is rather a pre-planned switch, where the verb already serves in the meaning relevant for the upcoming complementation. In example (35) surface structure triggering is even less plausible, since there is a Germanic participle (geven) separating the verb’s Hebrew



5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases 

 111

lexical core and the Hebrew complementation. In other words, in (34) and (35) it is not a specific Hebrew lexeme that triggered the switch; rather, the borrowing mechanism offered the speakers a convenient switching point (cf. Broersma & de Bot 2006).

5.4.2 The Code-switching – Merged Hebrew continuum In most bilingual settings, difficulties in differentiating a switch from a borrowing arise mainly where single words are concerned (Matras 2009: 106). However, in the analyzed corpus similar doubts may occur with regard to longer Hebrew segments, since the Merged Hebrew component, which is an integral part of Yiddish, includes not only single words but also longer phrases. Thus, the status of Hebrew phrases in the analyzed corpus may be ambiguous. How can we decide whether a certain Hebrew phrase constitutes a switch, or whether it is incorporated similarly to documented Merged elements? This distinction is quite simple when there is a formal difference between the integration patterns of documented versus new Hebrew phrases. However, in the absence of such a clear distinction, Hebrew phrases will be analyzed along a continuum, ranging from CS to Merged elements (cf. Matras 2009: 110–114). Some new Hebrew phrases will be more easily identified as part of the expanding Merged Hebrew component or rather as “true”, bona fide switches, while others will be considered intermediate forms. This analysis will be supported by the gender-based differences concerning the use of LK. Specifically, since women’s use of LK is restricted, we assume that Hebrew structures and phrases that are common among women are necessarily closer to Merged elements than they are to switches. First, let us consider an easily analyzed type of Hebrew phrase: Hebrew nominal phrases, composed of noun + adjective (according to Hebrew word order). Nominal phrases of {noun + adjective} are documented in Yiddish, as part of the Merged Hebrew component. The documented Merged phrases function as one lexical unit with one central stress. For example: psure-tóyve (‘good tiding’, Heb. lit. ‘messagegood’) (Niborski 2012: 84). These are Hebrew collocations that became regular Yiddish nouns (the collocations either formed originally in Hebrew or later in the Ashkenazi diglossic setting). Similar new Hebrew {noun + adjective} phrases are frequently inserted in the public speakers’ Yiddish. However, these can be free phrases as well as collocations, with independent stress for every element. For example: 36

zey they

obn have

epes somewhat

a matóre a goal

‘They have some common goal together’. [Jer. M]

mešutéfes shared

cuzamen. together

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 5 The impact of gender

The Hebrew nominal phrase matóre mešutéfes (‘a common goal’) in (36) is a switch rather than a Merged element. The independent stress for each element (matóre mešutéfes) signals a switch to a different linguistic system. Other phonological distinctions between Whole Hebrew and Merged Hebrew are of little help. The central distinction between the pronunciation of the two concerns the maintenance of unstressed vowels in Whole Hebrew or LK, versus their neutralization in Merged elements (2.3.3; see also Katz 1993: 56). However, in the analyzed corpus speakers can pronounce switched phrases as Merged elements, as in example (37): 37

a tálmed  filt      di     regúšes   pnímiyes  fin   de    arc a pupil   feels   the   feelings   internal    of   the  heart fin of

der this_one

vus rel

er   lernt he   teaches

mit    em. with   him

‘A pupil feels the inner emotions of the heart of the person who teaches him’ [Has. M] The speaker in (37) pronounces the Hebrew nominal phrase as if it belonged to Merged Hebrew rather than to Whole Hebrew, neutralizing the final vowels. A Whole Hebrew pronunciation would maintain the final vowels: regúšoys pnímiyoys. Moreover, speakers of IHY often do the opposite: they pronounce established Merged elements in a similar manner to Whole Hebrew. Specifically, they maintain unstressed vowels that are traditionally neutralized in Yiddish. This is one of the most salient phonological changes in the Merged Hebrew component of IHY, caused by the influence of IH (2.3.3). Either way, the documented vowel distinctions between Merged Hebrew and Whole Hebrew pronunciation cannot assist us in the current analysis. In the case of nominal phrases, the stress pattern is the primary expression of a switch from Yiddish to Hebrew. The switch to another linguistic system enables speakers to continue in Hebrew, by expanding and elaborating the nominal phrase, as in (38): 38

eyn   zax one   thing

iz is

dox yet

do [t]here

a dóvor póšut a LKthing simple

meóyd   meóyd   betáxlis. very      very     completelyLK ‘There is yet one thing that is a LKcompletely, totally simple thingLK.’ [Jer. M]



5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases 

 113

The speaker in (38) adds three Hebrew adverbs (‘very very completely’) to the Hebrew nominal phrase dóvor póšut (‘simple thing’). The Hebrew adverb meóyd (‘very’) has no independent status in Yiddish (including IHY), hence its employment marks the continuation of an obvious switch to Hebrew. Another clear sign of a switch is the employment of Hebrew grammatical elements such as the definite article, as in example (39): 39

dos iz eyne  fun this is one    of

di the

dvórim things

LK

a-nefúcim the-widespread

beyóyser. highlyLK

‘This is one of the LKmost common thingsLK.’ [Jer. M] As noted earlier, Merged nominal phrases function as a single lexical unit, and are therefore marked as definite, similarly to other Yiddish nouns, with a preceding Yiddish definite article (di psure-tóyve ‘the good tiding’). By contrast, in (39) the Hebrew definite article is used in the middle of the noun phrase, specifying the adjective ‘widespread’ as definite. In Hebrew definite nominal phrases of the form noun + adjective, both the noun and the adjective are marked as definite (Heb. ha-dvarim ha-nefocim, ‘the-things the-widespread’). In (39) the Hebrew noun was marked as definite by the Yiddish definite article di, but the speaker also marked the adjective as definite, conforming to the Hebrew pattern of definiteness agreement. While nominal phrases are easily identified as switches, Hebrew adverbial phrases are much harder to define. Let us first observe an established Merged Hebrew adverb, begile-róš ‘bareheaded’, which refers to a Jew whose head is uncovered. This is a common Yiddish adverb, documented in Yiddish dictionaries (e. g. Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 703). A grammatical analysis of this adverb may identify it as a switch, since it maintains the Hebrew grammatical structure of a Hebrew preposition preceding a construct phrase: 40 be-gile in-uncovering.cnst

róš head

(‘bareheaded’)

However, such an analysis is oblivious to the wider cultural and historical Ashkenazi diglossic context. The centuries-long coexistence of Yiddish and Hebrew ensured the introduction of Hebrew phrases into the common Yiddish vocabulary. These phrases became an integral part of Yiddish, although they remained morphologically unintegrated. Moreover, the constant infiltration of Hebrew ele-

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 5 The impact of gender

ments introduced into Yiddish not only content morphemes but also function or system morphemes (Muysken 1995: 183). Some Hebrew function morphemes have a semi-independent status in Yiddish, among them Hebrew prepositions (Mark 1978: 354–355). One of these prepositions is the Hebrew b- (‘in’), which appears in the discussed adverb (begile-róš) as well as in dozens of other Yiddish adverbs. This preposition can also be joined by non-Hebrew elements, as for example in the adverb bigváld (‘by force’; lit. in-force), where the Hebrew derived b- (here bi) is joined by the Germanic gvald (‘violence, force’). The fact that Yiddish contains Hebrew-source function morphemes presents complications that are uncommon in most bilingual settings. Usually, the usage of function morphemes from language A in an utterance in language B serves as a valuable indication of a possible switch (see Myers-Scotton’s “System Morpheme Principle”, Myers-Scotton 1993b: 98. See also Muysken 2000: 154–183). Yet in IHY, a Hebrew-derived preposition governing an adverbial phrase is not a sufficient indication of a switch. Furthermore, the stress pattern that helped us determine the status of Hebrew nominal phrases cannot assist in the analysis of adverbial phrases, since both established as well as newly introduced adverbial phrases may share the same stress pattern. Consider the Merged Hebrew adverb in (41) versus the “new” adverb in (42): 41

bekól-róm (Heb.) in voice loud/high ‘aloud’ (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 689)

This documented Yiddish adverb maintains independent stress for every element. The same happens in example (42), where a public speaker uses a Hebrew adverbial phrase that is not documented in Yiddish: 42

zugt er says he

mir me

bekóyl in-voice

rúfe: weak

nayn. no

‘He tells me quietly: no.’ [Has. M] The stress pattern in both adverbial phrases in (41) and (42) is identical. The two phrases differ in their vowel realization: the original Hebrew /ō/ is pronounced as /o/ in the Merged element in (41), bekól, and as /oy/ according to Whole Hebrew pronunciation in (42), bekóyl. However, due to the general fluctuation in the pronunciation of Hebrew elements in IHY, it is not clear whether this distinction is



5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases 

 115

sufficient to identify the adverb in (42) as a switch. Another difference between the two adverbs relates to their lexical status: the phrase ‘in a loud voice’ in (41) is more widespread than the phrase ‘in a low voice’ in (42), and, unlike the latter, enjoys the status of a collocation. The distinctions in lexical status and pronunciation prevent the clear identification of the adverb in (42) as a Merged element, yet we cannot identify it as a real switch to Hebrew. Most new Hebrew adverbial phrases in the corpus are therefore placed along the Codeswitching-Merged Hebrew continuum, while their levels of lexical freedom and phonological realization affect their location on this continuum. A third, sociolinguistic factor that can contribute to our analysis of Hebrew adverbial phrases is the speaker’s gender. As we have seen in Table 5.1, women’s usage of free Hebrew phrases is limited to insertions of two-word segments. They never expand those insertions, unlike men who may elaborate insertions as in example (38). Besides, most women’s Hebrew insertions consist of collocations and quasi-collocations rather than lexically free phrases. Therefore, adverbial phrases that are regularly employed by women can be defined as closer to Merged elements than to switches. The gender factor reflects the speakers’ implicit notions of language mixing norms, adding a sociolinguistic perspective to the analysis of switching patterns. Women who speak in public avoid what is considered improper use of masculine language, and therefore their use of LK quotes is controlled and cautious, as is their use of free Hebrew phrases. In this specific sociolinguistic context, Hebrew phrases used by women cannot be fully considered as switches, regardless of their grammatical and lexical characteristics. Consider, for example, the Hebrew adverbial phrase used by a female speaker in (43): becúre gášmis (‘physically’; lit. ‘in-manner corporeal /material’): 43

si (=es iz) it is

gevorn become.ptcp

pógum, defective

becúre in-manner

gášmis, corporeal

un and

er he

zuxt     mit    lixt     az    a dokter  zol     em   oyseyln. searches  with  candles  that  a doctor  should  him  heal.inf ‘It became defective, physically, and he desperately searches for a doctor who can heal him.’ [lit. ‘searches with candles’, an idiom based on Zephaniah 1:12, “I will search Jerusalem with candles”.] [Jer. W] What is the status of the Hebrew adverbial phrase in (43)? It might be regarded as a switch, since it cannot be considered a typical collocation, and it is preceded and followed by a short pause. On the other hand, the fact that this is a short

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 5 The impact of gender

phrase, of which the two initial elements are documented in Yiddish (b- ‘in’ and cúre ‘face’; Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 447; cúre is semantically changed under the impact of IH, see 6.4), might support its identification as a Merged element. Here we can be assisted by the gender factor and decide that since a woman used this phrase it should be perceived as closer to a Merged element than to an actual switch. Another similar example from the corpus concerns the common adverbial phrases with the pattern beóyfn (‘in-manner’; IH beófen) + adjective. These phrases are common in Hebrew, and many enjoy colloquial status in IH. The female public speakers used many phrases with this basic pattern, such as beóyfn tívi (‘naturally’; lit. ‘in-manner natural’), beóyn klóli/klúli (‘generally’; lit. ‘in-manner general’) and its antonym beóyfn próti/prúti (‘specifically, in particular’; lit. ‘in-manner individual’, differing from the common meaning in IH, beófen pratí, ‘privately’), as in the following example: 44

eyb if

mir we

viln want

arbetn work.inf

afn on-the

nóyse subject

fun  šmíras       alóšn      beóyfn        yesóydi [...] of    guarding_of   the-tongue  in-manner  thorough ‘If we want to work on the matter of “guarding the tongue” thoroughly [...]’ ­[ Jer. W] Male speakers in the corpus commonly used this pattern as well, as in the following example (with the Arabic loanword rásmi ‘official, officially’ serving in both IH (beófen rásmi) and Jerusalemite Yiddish (Kosover 1966: 316)): 45

i is

geven be.ptcp

aza such_a

rusland Russia

zibecik seventy

yor year

vos  ot   gegangen  oysmekn  dem     reboyne-šel-óylom rel  has  go.ptcp     erase.inf  the.acc   Lord-of-world beóyfn in-manner

rásmi. official

‘There was such a Russia that for seventy years officially tried to erase the Lord.’ [Jer. M]



5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases 

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The adverbial phrases in (44) and (45) can both be regarded as closer to Merged elements than to CS due to their collocative status, limited two-word length and the fact that they are commonly used by women (note also that beóyfn itself is documented in Yiddish (‘in such a way’), Niborski 2012: 37). However, unlike women’s use of short collocative phrases, expansions of such phrases, as well as less colloquial phrases, were found only among men, as in the following examples: 46

a vayb ken elfn a man beóyfn níflo ve-nóyro. a wife  can help.inf a husband in-manner wonderful and-awe_inspiring ‘A wife can help her husband in an immense, powerful manner.’ [Jer. M.]

47

se  ot    zax    ungeoybn   di    redífes     vus   ot    zax it   has  refl  begin.ptcp  the  persecutions  rel  has  refl gecoygn-    vus  ot    zax     mitpatéax          geven   di     lecte extend.ptcp  rel  has  refl  develop.ptcp.sg.m  be.ptcp    the  last por couple

yur year

beóyfn in-manner

mávil terrifying

beyóyser very

on without

a  šim  proporcye. a  any  proportion ‘Persecutions began, that lasted-, that developed in the last couple of years in a very extreme manner, on a different scale.’ [Has. M] In examples (46) and (47), the male speakers used adverbial phrases that are less colloquial than the phrases mentioned above (e. g. beóyfn tívi, ‘naturally’). In addition, the phrases were expanded by an adjective in (46) and an adverb in (47), thus bringing them closer to the CS end of the CS-Merged Hebrew continuum. Similar expansions never occurred among women speakers in the analyzed corpus. (Note also the distinctly Whole Hebrew pronunciation of the Hebrew phrase in (46): níflo ve-nóyro, with maintenance of unstressed vowels, rather than nífle ve-nóyre).

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 5 The impact of gender

Significantly, women’s usage of phrases such as becúre gášmis in (43) or beóyfn yesóydi in (44) may be considered acceptable in the IHY setting, but is most unusual in the overall historical perspective of the Yiddish language. Women in traditional Ashkenazi communities were usually familiar with only a restricted list of Merged Hebrew elements. The ability to introduce new Hebrew phrases, as in (43) and (44), is clearly an outcome of Israeli women’s command of IH. As will be demonstrated in the next section, IHY speakers’ mastery of IH undermines the traditional gender distinctions, as well as the documented differences between Merged and Whole Hebrew.

5.4.3 The impact of IH on the CS-Merged Hebrew distinction When using the terms “Whole Hebrew” and “Merged Hebrew” in the current analysis, it is important to note that the distinction between them does not always accord with Max Weinreich’s primary definition (Weinreich 1980: 351–353; Notes on terminology 0.2). In documented Yiddish, Merged Hebrew differed linguistically from Whole Hebrew in its formal characteristics. Merged elements were integrated phonologically and morphologically into Yiddish, while Whole Hebrew elements maintained their grammatical independence. The main phonological distinction concerned the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, which were maintained in Whole Hebrew and neutralized in Merged Hebrew. However, this distinction is practically irrelevant in the Israeli context, since under the influence of IH, unstressed vowels can also be maintained in Merged elements (2.3.3). Besides the loss of the clear phonological distinction, a basic morphological trait of Merged Hebrew is disappearing in IHY as well. This trait was described by Uriel Weinreich (1958) as the frozen nature of Merged Hebrew: since Merged Hebrew elements became common Yiddish words, they have lost their connection to their original linguistic system. Therefore, they no longer possess grammatical Hebrew traits such as morphological declension, reflecting tense, gender, person or number. For example, Weinreich notes that the common Yiddish greeting šolem aléyxem (‘hello’; lit. ‘peace onto-you.pl’), will never be inflected in the singular form *šolem oléxo (‘peace onto-you.sg’), regardless of the circumstances. If a speaker adds the grammatically correct Hebrew declension then “it is no longer Yiddish” (U. Weinreich 1958: 58). That is, if a Hebrew element manifests a Hebrew inflection it should be regarded as representing Whole Hebrew rather than a Merged element. In the past such a declension was found only amongst the small scholarly elite and was beyond the reach of most men, let alone women. Moreover, women and non-erudite men probably did not recognize most of the Merged Hebrew elements as Hebrew, let alone were able to inflect them.



5.4 The use of free Hebrew phrases 

 119

I observed this phenomenon personally (in a Yiddish class at the Hebrew University, 1999), when I witnessed an elderly Yiddish speaker from a former Soviet state, who realized for the first time that her favorite Yiddish curse, zolst aynnemen a misemešíne (‘may you have a strange death’), is based on the Hebrew mitá mešuná ‘strange death’ (lit. ‘death strange’), and not on some obscure Slavic term as she had previously thought. This points to the common sociolinguistic situation throughout most of Yiddish history, when non-erudite speakers used Hebrew-derived elements without necessarily knowing their origin (U. Weinreich 1958: 58; cf. Bar-Asher 1978). However, in the IHY speech community, familiarity with Hebrew as a living, spoken language rather than as a corpus of texts, changes the way speakers use Hebrew elements in their Yiddish. Merged Hebrew elements that were frozen in the past currently display considerable grammatical flexibility in IHY, due to the speakers’ command of IH. One salient demonstration of this grammatical flexibility is the use of Hebrew clitic object and possession pronouns. Free usage of Hebrew clitic pronouns is not attested in documented Yiddish, but it is very common in the corpus. Consider the following two examples, where a man (48) and a woman (49) used inflected Hebrew prepositions: 48

mir zaynen mexánex di    kinder letoyvós-om. we  are educate.ptcp.sg.m the children to_good_of-poss.3pl.m ‘We educate the children for their own good.’ [Jer. M]

49

yeder ayner  zol      dus filn     mibxinús-oy every one    should  this feel.inf  from_point_of_view-poss.3sg.m az that

er he

endert changes

zix. refl

‘Everyone should feel it from his point of view, that he is changing.’ [Has. W] The two prepositions in (48) and (49) manifest Hebrew morphological declensions of person, gender and number. The Hebrew derived preposition letóyves (‘for the benefit of’) is documented in Yiddish (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 570; for example: letóyves dem kind, ‘for the benefit of the child’). However, Hebrew inflection as in (48) letoyvósom (‘for their benefit’) is not attested in documented Yiddish. The Hebrew declension of the Hebrew preposition in (49), mibxinúsoy

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(‘from his point of view’), is also a new phenomenon in Yiddish, and the preposition itself is not documented in Yiddish dictionaries. As noted above, according to Uriel Weinreich’s distinction, clitic morphological declension as in (48) and (49) marks a shift to Hebrew. However, in the analyzed corpus such declension is common among men and women alike. Therefore, the question arises as to whether we can still claim that this declension contradicts the frozen nature of the Merged component, so that both occurrences in (48) and (49) constitute a switch to Hebrew. It seems that the Israeli setting requires a modification of Uriel Weinreich’s analysis. According to this modification, the nature of the Merged component has altered under the impact of IH, so that morphological declension does not necessarily mark a switch to Hebrew. It seems that while the documented Merged Hebrew elements reflected the limited communal level of Hebrew literacy in the Diaspora, the bilingual setting in Israel allows speakers a more flexible use of Hebrew components. The fact that women can also use inflected forms (as in (49)) indicates that employment of Hebrew morphology, which was previously a clear sign of Jewish learnedness, does not bear the same elitist social value today as it had in the past. If all contemporary adult speakers of IHY are familiar with Hebrew declension, then usages such as in (48) and (49) can be considered an expansion of the Merged component rather than a clear switch to Hebrew. Regardless of the grammatical analysis, it is clear that such usage is not considered a sign of learnedness by the speakers: if it were, women would not be employing it in public. In other words, the  use of Hebrew clitic morphology by women does not indicate women’s usage of masculine language, but rather that Hebrew morphology can be naturally used within IHY. This is one of the many demonstrations of the flexible nature of the Merged Hebrew component of IHY (see a broader discussion in Chapter 6).

5.4.4 Men’s versus women’s use of free Hebrew phrases We have seen that women’s use of free Hebrew phrases is very restricted when compared to men’s switching patterns. What are the causes of this clear gender differentiation? Can we explain this disparity by the communal gender differences regarding command and use of LK? Or should we also consider the impact of gender-related sociolinguistic norms? As I hope to demonstrate, at least some of the restrictions on women’s CS patterns derive from the implementation of strict norms regarding gender-proper speech, and not from women’s lack of competency in code switching.



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Differences in command and use of LK can account for most of gender differentiations, especially those concerning “true” LK. Mastery of “true” LK is defined here as the ability to freely use quotes from sacred texts or their paraphrases. This ability reflects male speakers’ erudition, their memorized reservoir of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, and their acquired competence in manipulating the language of these texts and integrating it into their stream of Yiddish speech. Compared to men, women enjoy very restricted access to the sacred texts. However, most of the free Hebrew phrases in the corpus do not reflect “true” LK. Rather, these phrases fall within the wider grey area of general “Hebrew”, not typically biblical or Mishnaic or identified with specific texts or with other historical layers of Hebrew. In addition, these phrases include many Modern Hebrew elements, which are obviously not identified by the speakers as typically Israeli but fall within the same grey area. Thus, all these phrases are equally accessible to men and women, through their command of IH (note also that lexical items in IH reflect various historical layers of the language, see 6.1 below). When we consider the use of insertions, then a short phrase such as matóre mešutéfes (‘common goal’) in example (36), which is commonly used in IH, is as readily accessible to women as it is to men. However, women use such phrases much less than do men. The disparity is even greater when we consider Yiddish-LK alternations, rather than LK insertions. It can be argued that since a. women have a good command of IH; b. they can alternate freely between Yiddish and IH in their daily speech; and c. they are familiar with the basics of the phonological transformation of IH into LK (6.2), then they should have the theoretical ability to mix Yiddish and Hebrew, similarly to men. However, this is never done in the corpus. Women never alternate between Yiddish and LK. In fact, women have no setting whatsoever where they can freely mix the two languages (in contrast to their restricted insertional use of LK attested in the corpus). The crucial factor here is not whether women do or do not have the assumed competence of mixing Yiddish and LK: their competence is of little importance, since they lack the habit of, and the social legitimacy for, performing such CS. The mere idea of freely using Hebrew segments in the Ashkenazi pronunciation is unthinkable, since it is a clear violation of the community’s gender-determined speech codes. In the public corpus, women’s speech code requires them to keep within the Yiddish framework, without uncontrolled usage of LK. This socially-structured distance from LK is therefore reflected in women’s CS patterns of free Hebrew phrases. Their usage of insertions implies an asymmetry. The insertional pattern has been described as asymmetrical by Muysken (2000), referring to the speakers’ assumed unequal bilingual proficiency (Muysken 2000: 9; see also Myers-Scotton 1993b). In our case, women’s actual bilingual proficiency might well be higher than that presented in their CS patterns. However, asymmetry definitely exists on the symbolic level, reflecting

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women’s attitudes towards the languages. Women cannot display an equal use of Yiddish and LK, and their limited insertional CS pattern testifies to their socially proper distance from the sacred tongue. By contrast, the alternational pattern implies symmetry, and has been associated with balanced bilingualism (Muysken 2000: 8; see also Poplack 1980). The alternational pattern attested among men echoes the scholarly mixed style in which men are socialized during their continuing schooling. Therefore, we can say that not only do men have better knowledge of LK, but they have also acquired the habit of alternating LK and Yiddish during their years of study. In the public corpus, switching to LK has clear stylistic functions, such as characterizing a scholarly way of expression. For male speakers, alternations and long insertions of LK are always a welcome and accessible option, hence the trigger for switching is, at least in part, stylistic. Naturally, a specific switch can simultaneously accord with other triggers, such as vocabulary gaps. And yet the stylistic function in itself suffices to trigger a switch among men. The opposite holds for women, since the same clear masculine and scholarly qualities of free LK usage restrict their CS patterns.

5.5 Gender and CS patterns in the corpus: Conclusion The public speakers’ usage of LK provides an illuminating example of genderdetermined CS patterns. Men’s free and smooth switching patterns reflect their better command of LK and their years-long habit of mixing the languages in scholarly settings. This mixing is further supported by the prestigious attributes of LK and the mixed scholarly style. The masculine connotations of this mixed style limit women’s CS patterns, which are restricted, controlled and usually “flagged”. Throughout the public corpus, women consistently use LK quotes as well as free phrases in an entirely different way from men. In explaining this clear distinction, we have addressed both gender differences in language use and command, as well as the strict gender-based sociolinguistic norms in Haredi society. Proficiency differences alone cannot account for all manifestations of this phenomenon. Women’s limited access to LK can explain why their sources for quotations are fewer than men’s, or why they almost never use Aramaic, but it cannot fully clarify the consistently diverse patterns. Moreover, women’s command of IH facilitates their access to LK in a manner hitherto not attested in traditional Yiddish-speaking communities. Their enhanced understanding of LK quotes can plausibly explain the employment of seemingly redundant pseudo-translations (5.3). Moreover, command of IH not only facilitates the understanding of “true” LK segments, but can also be transformed to fabricated LK (or camouflaged IH)



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as in example (32). However, as we have seen, this phenomenon occurs only among men. Almost every use of LK among women must be flagged, since it is the smooth pattern that announces the masculine sense of ownership and command of LK. Therefore, we can argue that the distinct CS patterns originate, at least partially, from the implementation and internalization of sociolinguistic norms shaping feminine and masculine styles of speech. Women avoid free mixing of LK not because they cannot perform it, but because this mixing is regarded as masculine. Somewhat similar phenomena have been found in other traditional societies, and these might shed more light on Haredi gendered speech patterns. One salient example is provided by Haeri (1987, 2000), who analyzed Egyptian women’s relatively limited use of Classical Arabic forms compared to that of men. The role of LK in the IHY triglossic setting shares several important similarities with that of Classical Arabic in the Arabic diglossic setting. Both are the prestigious languages of the sacred texts, used in religious rituals as well as serving as the community’s common written medium. Haeri notes that while women’s limited use of Classical Arabic forms is generally explained by their restricted knowledge of the language, even educated women who do have access to Classical Arabic still use these forms less than men (Haeri 2000: 69). A different study of the respective use of Standard Arabic forms among educated Iraqi men and women yielded similar results, showing that educated women use fewer standard forms, identifying them with men’s rather than women’s language (Bakir 1986. See also Al-Wer 2014). Similar perceptions of masculine and feminine speech styles seem to affect IHY speech patterns as well. In the Haredi setting, women’s avoidance of masculine speech styles also reflects the firm requirements of modesty. A woman who speaks in a “masculine” style of speech would severely violate the modesty code, based on the biblical dictum “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deut. 22:5). This dictum has been substantially elaborated in ultra-Orthodox doctrine, and is taken as relating not only to dress but also to behavior, speech patterns and other external manifestations of a clear gendered identity. Therefore, since mixing of Yiddish and LK is identified as masculine, IHY speaking women must avoid it, regardless of their unprecedented knowledge of Hebrew. Women can switch to LK, but only in a restricted manner considered socially legitimate. Most typically, women’s consistent flagging of LK quotes testifies to feelings of distance and reverence, thus placing them in the legitimate marginal position allotted to them in the hierarchical Haredi linguistic system.

6 Processes of lexical borrowing The Yiddish spoken by contemporary Haredim in Israel is rife with Hebrew loanwords. Some of these words are part of the documented Merged Hebrew component, while others are new to Yiddish. These new elements, more of which are constantly being borrowed via Israeli Hebrew, are the focus of this chapter. The basic difference between the documented Hebrew component and the new “Israeli” elements derives from the context in which they are borrowed: the Merged Hebrew component largely reflects a diglossic setting, while borrowing from IH is the result of bilingualism (Weinreich 1980: 213, 602; Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 66).1 In the Ashkenazi diglossic setting, contact with Hebrew was mainly through texts, since Yiddish speakers encountered Hebrew (and Aramaic) in ritual and study, but never used it as a means of everyday spoken communication. Only the scholarly elite knew enough Hebrew to understand it or even to make active use of it in writing. Most Yiddish speakers, men and certainly women, had a very limited knowledge of the sacred tongue (see references in 5.2.3). The nature of this contact with Hebrew affected how the Hebrew component was integrated. A limited societal command of Hebrew, combined with the textual basis of speakers’ familiarity with the language, contributed to what Uriel Weinreich defined as “the frozen nature of the Hebrew component” (5.4.3). By contrast, in Israel today, Yiddish-speaking Haredim enjoy an unprecedented familiarity with, and hence knowledge of, Hebrew, particularly in comparison to other Yiddish-speaking communities, both past and present. They speak Israeli Hebrew on a daily basis, and use Hebrew as their major medium of written communication, so that they are in fact bilingual (1.3.1). Over the course of time, this situation comes to affect the Hebrew elements (both documented and new) in their Yiddish, since speakers identify the Hebrew origins of such items, and can relate to their grammatical and semantic properties when used in Hebrew. Ready and constant access to Hebrew as a spoken language, rather than one confined to textual resources, affects the way borrowed elements are integrated into Yiddish, making them less “frozen” than before. Under the impact of IH, such elements may with time reassume some of their original traits, resulting in a grammatical “awakening” of the Hebrew component. These processes are discussed below in relation to the morphological interference of IH (Section 6.3) and to semantic changes deriving from the impact of IH (Section 6.4). In these respects, speakers are largely unaware of the effect of IH on their borrowing patterns, so that issues of language and ideology play no part in the process. This is not the case, however, where phonological

1 See a different view in Katz 1985, Wexler 1990. DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-007

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realization of Hebrew borrowings is concerned, since, in this domain, speakers are acutely aware of certain major features of IH pronunciation, which they may therefore try to avoid. In consequence, negative attitudes to IH may instigate a deliberate phonological integration of Hebrew borrowings in specific contexts, so leading to a deliberate blurring of the Israeli origin of borrowed items (mainly nouns), as noted below (Section 6.2).

6.1 Lexical borrowing from Hebrew in IHY Lexical borrowing from Hebrew is very pronounced in IHY, as is readily observed by outsiders as well as members of the community. When I began my study of Haredi Yiddish, the most common reaction I received from lovers of Yiddish was, “How can you stand that Yiddish? It’s full of Hebrew” (cf. Katz 2004: 380). Criticism of extensive borrowing can also be heard within the speech community itself. One Jerusalemite informant lamented the current state of Haredi Yiddish, claiming that “We have only a hundred Yiddish words. All the rest is Hebrew” (1.4.3). Naturally, this negative attention is focused on those IH loanwords that maintain their distinct pronunciation. There is indeed a great deal of lexical borrowing in the community, due in part to the ever-increasing gaps in the vocabulary available to the speakers. Since most speakers use Yiddish only in limited insider domains, and do not read or write in Yiddish, their Yiddish vocabulary is steadily decreasing. In fact, borrowing from Hebrew may be so extensive as to create difficulties in communication between American and Israeli Yiddish speakers (Isaacs 1999b: 114; Fader 2009: 98). However, since the public speakers are so-called “super-speakers”, with a Yiddish vocabulary that is probably richer than that of most IHY speakers, the corpus for the present study does not reflect the actual extent of lexical borrowing in the community at large (2.2). Nonetheless, lexical borrowing from Hebrew is very widespread even among the highly proficient public speakers under study here. In addition to lexical borrowing due to vocabulary gaps, IHY speakers also freely use numerous Hebrew words that have high-frequency, accessible equivalents in Yiddish. For example, in the analyzed corpus both the Yiddish word problém (‘problem’) and its Hebrew equivalent beayá/báye (‘problem’) (with or without phonological integration: IH beayá, integrated as báye; see 6.2.2, example (55)) are used with equal frequency. This type of free borrowing reflects the speakers’ intensive contact with Hebrew, and, as noted, is much more salient outside the public corpus. Moreover, under the impact of Hebrew the overall frequency of Hebrew elements (both documented and new) is much higher than that of their Yiddish equivalents. For example, in the analyzed corpus the frequency



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of the previously undocumented Hebrew derived periphrastic verb máxlet/­máxlit zayn (‘decide’) (decide.ptcp.sg.m + be) is fifteen times higher than that of the Yiddish equivalent bašlisn (‘decide’); and the frequency of the Hebrew derived šáyle (‘question’) is twenty times higher than that of the Yiddish fráge (‘question’). In the case of šáyle, which is a documented Merged Hebrew element, an additional semantic change is involved. In documented Yiddish, šáyle refers mainly to questions regarding ritual purity (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 393), whereas in the corpus the word šáyle is mainly used in a generic sense, similarly to the IH šeelá (‘question’). This shows that contact with IH not only leads to the introduction of numerous new Hebrew loanwords into IHY, but also greatly increases the extent to which established Hebrew elements are used. Moreover, these documented elements generally undergo semantic modifications under the impact of IH, so that their meaning usually coincides with the one common in IH. Hebrew lexical items are borrowed through several channels, the main source being spoken IH, which almost all adults speak fluently. In addition, speakers borrow IH words they encounter through reading, in which case their pronunciation may be faulty, due to the lack of diacritics (indicating vowel quality) in contemporary Hebrew orthography (Mishor 2006; Matras & Schiff 2005: 147). I first encountered this phenomenon during fieldwork, when a member of the Jerusalemite Tóyre VeYíre community offered to instruct me on the intricate web of Hasidic sects in the zealous Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea-Shearim. He said that he could get me inside any group, since “everybody knows me in Mea-Shearim”, and added in IH: “I am a ‘brand-name product’” (originally in IH ani móteg). I did not understand him immediately, since he mispronounced the IH word for ‘brandname’, mutág, which in unvocalized script could also stand for the (nonexistent) word móteg. Similar examples are attested in the corpus, usually where foreign words are concerned. For example, during a political speech a zealous Jerusalemite speaker mangled the Arabic word intifada (‘uprising, resistance’), which he pronounced antipada: mir zaynen megádl antipáda di ciyóynim! (‘We raise our children to rebel against the Zionists’, lit. ‘we raise intifada [against] the Zionists’). This speaker probably understood this word as anti+pada. Significantly, most Hebrew words that infiltrate Yiddish through reading are not necessarily “Israeli” or Modern Hebrew words. The highly literate members of the speech community constantly read a variety of Hebrew texts, and these constitute yet another source of borrowed Hebrew elements. Therefore, most lexical borrowings in the corpus are established Hebrew elements that can be found in several historical layers of the language, including Modern Hebrew (note that the lexicon of Israeli Hebrew draws extensively on previous Hebrew chronolects; see Schwarzwald 2013a). These words were probably borrowed through spoken and written sources alike, with the multiplicity of sources serving to support the processes of borrowing.

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6.2 Phonological integration of IH loanwords Lexical borrowing from IH may be problematic for zealous speakers, and the common way of overcoming this difficulty is the deliberate phonological integration of borrowed elements. Most IH elements can be pronounced similarly to Merged Hebrew elements, thus exempting the speaker from dealing with the ideological legitimacy of a specific Hebrew word. As will be shown, even a partial phonological integration can be sufficient to create the desired distinction from the Israeli pronunciation. The phonological integration spread in IHY is primarily a change in stress. The stress pattern in IH is predominantly word-final, as in a word like sipúk (‘satisfaction’); when pronounced with the typical Ashkenazi penultimate stress, sípuk, it can be considered phonologically integrated and so a “kosher” loanword, even for zealous speakers. Phonological integration of an IH word may also involve other changes, mostly in the realization of vowels (see Table 2.1), but, due to the phonological interference of IH, some of these documented differences have been obscured in IHY, so that the stress pattern may remain the only differentiating variable (6.2.1). Phonological integration is particularly common when speakers wish to obscure the Israeli origin of a loanword, although in some contexts the opposite occurs and the Israeli origin is deliberately emphasized by a distinct pronunciation. One such example of the latter phenomenon was provided by an informant from the Toldos Aharon Hasidic sect, who recounted a conversation with one of the sect’s well-known zealots. Since his interlocutor was known for his strong objection to the use of IH, the informant consciously tried to avoid IH pronunciation. As a result, when he mentioned the Orthodox weekly Mishpacha (Heb. ‘family’), he pronounced its name as in Merged Hebrew mišpúxe (is the commonplace Yiddish word for ‘family’). However, the zealot immediately “corrected” him, saying that “this periodical should be called mišpaxá” (IH pronunciation). The reason is that this popular weekly is relatively moderate, and so rejected by Haredi extremists. By using the Israeli pronunciation of the journal’s Hebrew name, the speaker created a distinction between this name and the Merged element mišpúxe (‘family’), while at the same time expressing his negative opinion of the periodical. The need for semantic differentiation between IH words and their Merged Hebrew cognates is a significant factor influencing speakers’ pronunciation (6.2.2, 6.4). However, most IH words have no such cognates, so that their pronunciation is affected primarily by the speakers’ ideological stance towards IH. This short exchange displays the two different zealous strategies for dealing with IH: camouflaging the Israeli word by changing its pronunciation, or deliberately and perhaps derisively using the IH pronunciation. The two strategies serve in opposing semantic-pragmatic settings: the first is common in neutral



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contexts, while the second occurs in “Israeli” contexts. In the case at issue here, the zealous speaker rejected his interlocutor’s attempt to legitimize the periodical’s name because he wanted to place it in a negative “Israeli” context. In such settings, emphasis on the distinct IH pronunciation may mark the relevant lexical items as switches rather than loanwords (see example (23)). The following sections describe certain aspects of the phonological integration of IH words in IHY, focusing on the effect of ideological issues on speakers’ pronunciations.

6.2.1 Principles of phonological integration in IHY IHY speakers are aware of three main distinctions between IH pronunciation and that of Merged Hebrew, manifested in the stress pattern and the pronunciation of several vowels and one consonant (Notes on terminology 0.1.3, 0.2; Table 2.1). For example, the differences between the IH mišpaxá and the Yiddish word mišpóxe/ mišpúxe (‘family’) include a change of stress (word-final in the IH mišpaxá and penultimate in the Merged component mišpóxe/mišpúxe), the pronunciation of the IH vowel [a] versus the pronunciation [o]/[u] in Merged Hebrew (mišpaxá – mišpóxe/mišpúxe), and the neutralization of the final unstressed vowel in the Merged component (mišpóxe/mišpúxe). Other changes of pronunciation in the corpus, deriving from the phonological interference of IH, are described in 2.3.3 (Table 2.1). These include mainly the maintenance of unstressed vowels in IHY Merged components as, for example, the pronunciation yíuš (‘despair’) attested in the corpus, as distinct from the documented Yiddish pronunciation yíeš (IH yeúš). These changes are fundamentally different from the speakers’ deliberate attempts at phonological integration, since they operate in the opposite direction. The unconscious phonological interference of IH brings the Merged elements’ pronunciation closer to that of IH, while the deliberate attempts at phonological integration are aimed at differentiating the two pronunciations: Phonological integration:

Phonological interference:

deliberate distancing from IH

creates similarities to IH unnoticeable to the speakers (Table 2.1)

Since our main interest is in deliberate changes reflecting linguistic ideologies, the focus in what follows is on the three mechanisms of phonological integration: change of stress, pronunciation of vowels, and pronunciation of the consonant taw.

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As noted above, phonological integration of Hebrew loanwords in IHY consists primarily of a change in stress, from word-final to penultimate. For example, the IH mašbér (‘crisis’) can be pronounced mášber and thus be phonologically integrated. However, penultimate stress also exists in IH, as in the IH word láxac (‘pressure’), in which case phonological integration is not possible. Consequently, IH words with penultimate stress that are borrowed into Yiddish may be articulated identically in both IH and Merged Hebrew (as well as Whole Hebrew or LK). As for pronunciation of vowels, this is dependent on the stress pattern, since only if the stress has been changed can vowels be changed accordingly. The major changes are presented in Table 6.1 (compare Table 2.1): Table 6.1: Pronunciation of vowels in Hebrew elements in IHY Hebrew Vowel IH pronunciation

IHY pronunciation Jerusalemite Yiddish

Qamatz Tzere

[a] racíf (‘continuous’) [e] megív (‘reacts’)

Holam

[o] nosé (‘subject’)

Shuruq

[u] kvucá (‘group’)

Hasidic Yiddish

usually [o] rócif usually [ey] méygiv

usually [u] rúcif ususally [ay], also [ey] máygiv, méygiv usually [oy], also [ey] nóyse, usually [oy] nóyse néyse [u] kvúce usually [i] kvíce

Table 6.1 shows that the Hebrew vowels qamatz, tzere, holam and shuruq in IH loanwords can be articulated as in documented Merged elements. However, they may also be pronounced as they are in IH. For example, the IH pkakím (‘traffic jams’) was attested in the corpus with a change of stress (pkákim), but not with the Ashkenazi realization of the qamatz (pkókim or pkúkim). This is not surprising, since the Hebrew (Tiberian) system of vocalization is neither transparent nor intuitive for most IH speakers (Mishor 2006: 124–127). The Tiberian vocalization denotes distinctions that are not reflected in the IH pronunciation, mainly in the form of seven cardinal vowels versus the five cardinal vowels of IH. IHY speakers are in fact more familiar with the Tiberian vocalization system than most Hebrewspeaking Israelis, since the Ashkenazi pronunciation maintains the qamatz/ patah and tzere/segol distinctions, which are not present in spoken IH. Nevertheless, they are not familiar with the vocalization system as a whole, but only with its manifestations in LK texts and, most of all, in the Merged component. They can therefore identify the vocalization of an IH loanword with a familiar nominal pattern, that is, an IH word that is morphologically similar to common Hebrewsource Yiddish loanwords. However, they will not necessarily identify the vocalization of words with less familiar patterns, such as pkakím (see 6.2.2).



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A third mechanism of phonological integration concerns the Hebrew consonant taw, which has two distinct pronunciations in Merged elements, but only one pronunciation in IH. In IH taw is always pronounced [t], while the Ashkenazi pronunciation distinguishes between its pronunciation as a [t] or as an [s], reflecting a historical plosive/fricative distinction (2.3.3; Rendsburg 2013; Bolozky 2013a). Speakers are aware of this difference, especially in word-final positions, as in the Hebrew ‘Sabbath’: šabát (IH) versus šábes/šábos (Merged/ Whole Hebrew). Therefore, a common means of phonological integration is the pronunciation of a word-final taw as [s]. This change alone can create sufficient distinction from IH pronunciation, even without a change in stress or vowel pronunciation. One such example is the loanword mašmaús (‘meaning’), attested in the corpus. The only distinction between this form (mašmaús) and the original IH form (mašmaút ‘meaning’) is the pronunciation of the final taw as [s] rather than [t], while the stress and vowels remain unchanged.2 A similar example from the corpus is pisarón (‘solution’) (colloquial IH pitarón). This is in fact a case of hypercorrection, since in the Hebrew form pitarón the t is not a historical fricative but rather a geminated t (nominal pattern ‘qittalon’). In sum, pronunciation of integrated Hebrew words in IHY is more varied than in the documented Merged Hebrew component, and includes many occurrences of partial integration. In what follows, any loanword that is distinct from IH will be considered as phonologically integrated, whether it is fully integrated and therefore similar to established Merged elements, or only partially integrated (possibly due to the phonological interference of IH). As long as there is an obvious change of pronunciation from IH – usually a change in stress – the word will be regarded as phonologically integrated.

6.2.2 Phonological variation: the case of Hebrew nouns The phonological variation of Hebrew words in IHY affects both documented and newly introduced lexical items. Hebrew words may appear in their IH pronunciation (even if they are established Merged elements, documented in Yiddish), or in a phonologically integrated form, that is, as noted, involving some deliberate change from IH pronunciation. The goal in this section is to describe the variables influencing the Israeli/integrated variation in Hebrew nouns, focusing on

2 The documented Merged cognate mašmóes (‘probably’) (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 256) is not attested in the corpus, where this word appears only as a noun denoting ‘meaning’, partially or fully phonologically integrated (mašmaús, mašmóes, mašmúes).

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the effect of linguistic ideology. Nouns were chosen for this purpose, since they are the most common objects of lexical borrowing in IHY, as in other bilingual settings, thus affording a substantial quantity of data (Matras 2009: 167–168). In order to confine analysis to loanwords from IH, Hebrew loanwords documented in Yiddish (that is, Merged elements) were excluded from consideration.3 The pronunciation of Hebrew nouns in the corpus is influenced by lexical as well as sociolinguistic factors, taking into account their semantic orientation (“Israeli” or neutral) and their structural attributes (particularly, similarity to established Merged elements). As is shown in figure 6.1 (based on analysis of 600 loanwords from the present corpus), chances of phonological integration increase if the noun is semantically neutral (that is, not identified as “Israeli”), and if its morphological structure is familiar to the speakers from other Hebrewsource Yiddish words: Greater chance of phonological integration------------------Semantic field Israeli ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Neutral

Structure of noun Rare (or absent) in the Merged component: -----------------can be difficult to integrate

Widespread in the Merged component: can be integrated automatically based on analogy

Figure 6.1

The most important factor affecting phonological integration is semantic. Cultural loans usually maintain their IH pronunciation, in the corpus as well as in daily IHY. Examples include Israeli institutional and political terminology, medical, technological and other “modern” terms, and additional objects and concepts reflecting Israeli realia. For example: taxaná (‘station’), ramzór (‘traffic light’), tipúl nimrác (‘intensive care’), švitá (‘[labour] strike’), azaká (‘alarm, siren’), tašlumím (‘installments, payments’), bitúax leumí (‘social security’) or tipát-xaláv (‘infant healthcare clinic’; lit. ‘drop of milk’). 3 Merged elements are defined here as words documented in at least one of the following dictionaries: Weinreich 1977 [1968], Harkavi 1928, Spivak & Yehoyosh (Blumgarten) 1911, Niborski 2012. Note that some IH loanwords have documented Merged cognates; nevertheless, they are considered here as IH loanwords if they differ phonologically, morphologically or semantically from their documented Merged cognates.



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Other loans from IH will be referred to as “neutral”. These are nouns that are not necessarily identified as Israeli, and which may or may not be phonologically integrated. The pronunciation of such “neutral” nouns is affected by their structure (facilitating or hindering phonological integration – see below), and largely by sociolinguistic factors related to the identity of the speaker and the specific context of use. The speakers’ speech habits regarding IH pronunciation are crucial, and these are generally determined by group affiliation. Speakers from zealous groups are more likely to integrate most loanwords phonologically in their attempt to avoid IH. By contrast, speakers from groups that are more tolerant towards IH, and use more IH in daily life, tend to pronounce neutral loanwords in the IH pronunciation. Thus, the level of bilingualism usually conforms to the group’s ideological stance towards IH. Moreover, speakers who freely use IH are also more likely to pronounce even established Merged elements in the IH pronunciation. In addition to the individual speaker’s speech habits, the sociolinguistic context is also of great importance. In Chapter 4 we saw what happened to a Jerusalemite educator when addressing a zealous audience: although usually articulating loanwords in their IH pronunciation, in this specific context the educator tried to integrate every Hebrew word phonologically (Chapter 4, examples (18) and (19)). Thematic context is also highly significant. In examples (50) and (51) two male Jerusalemite speakers both use the same IH loanword to denote ‘atmosphere, mood’ (IH avirá). This is a neutral loan, which is not identified as “Israeli”, so that speakers can articulate it as a Merged element (avíre) or as in IH. In a negative context, there is a greater chance that the word will be pronounced as in IH (example 50), whereas in a positive context, it will usually be phonologically integrated (example 51): 50

me    ot   gelebt    in aza    min avirá       fun aza impers has live.ptcp in such_a sort IHatmosphereIH of   such_a mem tes 49

šáre gates_of

túme. impurity

‘They lived in such an impure atmosphere.’ [Jer. M] 51

a mentš  iz mexúyev  cu šafn     in štub  a gešmake avíre, a man   is obligated to create.inf in home a pleasant atmosphere a eylike a holy

avíre. atmosphere

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‘A man is obligated to create in his home a pleasant atmosphere, a holy atmosphere.’ [Jer. M] The speaker in (50) is referring to the biblical Exodus, describing the moral deterioration of the people of Israel in Egypt preceding the Exodus. According to Jewish biblical exegesis (Midrash), the Jews in Egypt were “sunken in 49 gates of impurity”, just one step away from the fiftieth gate, considered the lowest degree of moral corruption. This immediate negative context might have semantically colored the Hebrew word, leading to a choice of IH pronunciation. The IH pronunciation in its turn might have added a negative nuance and an Israeli association to the Egyptian setting, comparing the state of the people of Israel in Egypt to the present state of Haredi Jews in the Israeli Diaspora (1.4.2). By contrast, the speaker in (51) is lecturing about domestic harmony, describing the desired approach of a father to his family. The father, according to the speaker, is obligated to create “a pleasant, holy atmosphere”. In this context, the IH loanword is phonologically integrated. Regardless of a specific speaker’s speech habits, a neutral IH loanword used in an immediate “holy” context is almost always phonologically integrated in the corpus. A similar manifestation of the tendency to phonological integration in a non-secular context is found in examples (52) and (53)–(54), where the same Hebrew word (‘possibilities’) appears in IH pronunciation in a neutral context (52), but is phonologically integrated in a more sacred context (53)–(54). 52

di you

ost have

geat have.ptcp

ale all

efšaruyót. IH possibilitiesIH

‘You had all possible options.’ [Has. W] 53

der eyberšter ot  unz gegebn   yóymom mit   láylo [...] the Lord    has  us   give.ptcp day     with night er he

git gives

unz us

ale all

efšóruyoys. possibilities

‘The Lord gave us day and night [...] he gives us all the possibilities.’ [Jer. W] 54

ot    de[r]  ribóyne-šel-óylem  gegebn     mer   efšúriyes has  the    Lord-of-world     give.ptcp   more  possibilities fin of

zicn sit.inf

in and

lernen. study.inf



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‘So the Lord gave more possibilities to sit and study [the Torah].’ [Has. M] When the context is neither clearly negative nor clearly positive, free variation is common in the pronunciation of semantically neutral nouns. Variation can occur even within a single utterance, as in example (55), where the Hebrew word for ‘problem’ appears in both pronunciations: 55

a mol   iz di   beayá       fiziše.     póšet    a strep  in aldz. a time  is the  IHproblemIH  physical  simply  a Strep  in throat un and

a mol a time

iz di    báye is the  problem

a xáver a friend

vos paynikt. rel bothers

‘Sometimes the problem is physical, simply a streptococcal infection in the throat. And sometimes the problem is a friend who bothers [the child].’ [Jer. W] The speaker in (55) is a Jerusalemite woman, talking about possible reasons for a child’s unusual behavior. The semantically neutral word ‘problem’ appears first in the IH pronunciation beayá, and then is phonologically integrated and pronounced as a Merged component: báye. Similar neutral words attested in the corpus in both the integrated and the non-integrated form are, for example, bikóret (IH)/bikóyres (‘criticism’), misgéret (IH)/misgéres (‘framework’), regašót (IH)/ regóšes (‘feelings’), and sikúy (IH)/síkuy (‘chance’). Significantly, some IH loanwords cannot be phonologically integrated due to the need for semantic differentiation. This happens when an IH loanword has a cognate that is part of the established Merged Hebrew component. For example, the IH loanword xevrá (‘society; company’) cannot be phonologically integrated most of the time, since there exists an established Merged cognate xévre (‘group of friends’) (see Chapter 4, example (14)). Similarly, the IH bitaxón (‘confidence, security, defense’) cannot be modified due to its established cognate, bitóxn (‘faith’). In these cases, the pronunciation differentiates the two distinct meanings. This phenomenon has been documented in Yiddish ever since Modern Hebrew became a spoken language (Weinreich 1968 [1953]: 55–56). Consider the following examples, where the IH maalót (‘temperature degrees’) maintains its IH pronunciation due to the established Hebrew-source Yiddish máyles (‘virtues’) (example (56), in two different stretches of speech from the same speaker), and the established Yiddish dúgme (‘example’) is similarly differentiated from its IH cognate dugmá, used here as in ‘pattern’ (57):

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 6 Processes of lexical borrowing

si   given    dortn,  ix  vays,   cvancik  maalót     intern it is  be.ptcp  there   I   know  twenty   IHdegreesIH   below-the éfes. zero

[...]

der the

aybišter Lord

et will.3sg

zen see.inf

dayne your-pl

máyles. virtues

‘In this place it was, well, twenty degrees Celsius below zero. [...] The Lord will see your virtues.’ [Has. W] 57

eyner someone

ot has

gegebn give.ptcp

a a

dúgme [...] example

zi     iz  gegangen     garbiyónim  mit    a  dugmá. she  is  go(wear).ptcp  pantyhoses  with  a  IHpatternIH ‘Someone gave an example [...] She wore patterned pantyhoses.’ [Jer. W] Another example I recorded during fieldwork is the IH word meniá (‘contraception’) (from IH emceéy meniá, ‘contraceptive methods’), documented in a Yiddish conversation with a 38-year-old Hasidic mother of eleven, who told me she was going to ask her rebbe’s permission to use contraception temporarily, since she did not want to be pregnant for the forthcoming wedding of her eldest son. The word meniá, besides being an obvious cultural loan from IH, cannot be phonologically integrated due to the established Yiddish cognate meníe (‘obstacle, impediment’). Note, however, that semantic interference from IH might change this state of affairs, so that even phonologically integrated nouns can maintain their IH meaning (see 6.4.1 below). This phenomenon can result in polysemy of the kind in examples (56) and (57) we see speakers attempting to avoid. The phonological integration of neutral words can be facilitated by their structural traits. For example, IH loanwords with nominal derivation patterns that are widespread in the Merged component are more likely to be phonologically integrated than basic, non-derived nouns. Speakers can identify this pattern (Heb. mishqal; see Schwarzwald 2013b), as well as its Merged Hebrew pronunciation. This familiarity helps them to integrate phonologically any loanwords sharing this pattern, based on an analogy with established forms. One such example is the case of IH verbal nouns in the mishqal pattern haCCaCá – an actional nominal derived from a verb in the verbal hif’il pattern. Many nouns of this pattern are found in the Merged Hebrew component, pronounced haCCóCe in Standard Yiddish (e. g. haskóme ‘agreement’, hafsóke ‘pause’, haclóxe ‘success’). IH loanwords in this same pattern are usually



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phonologically integrated in the  corpus (e. g. amxóše ‘illustration’, cf. IH (h)amxašá, aftóe ‘surprise’, cf. IH (h)aftaá, aškóe ‘investment’, cf. IH (h)aškaá). Another factor is regularity of use, so that nouns of high-frequency use are more likely to be ­phonologically integrated than those less commonly used. Relatively speaking, this is a secondary factor compared with those noted earlier, so that a commonly used “Israeli” noun usually maintains its original IH pronunciation even if it is ­high-frequency, while a rarely used noun may be phonologically integrated due to the speaker’s speech habits, the context or the specific nominal pattern. In sum, several factors may be involved in how a given word is pronounced. The interplay of different factors emerges into view when comparing how the same Hasidic male speaker (recorded during fieldwork) pronounced the two Hebrew loanwords for ‘grape-juice’ and ‘orange-juice’ respectively – both lexical borrowings from IH noun-compounds: mic-anavím (lit. ‘juice-grapes’), mic-tapuzím (lit. ‘juice-oranges’). The speaker phonologically integrated the term for ‘grape-juice’, pronouncing it micanúvim, while maintaining the IH pronunciation of ‘orangejuice’. Several factors may have been at play here. First, the Hebrew word for ‘orange’ is modern, while the word for ‘grapes’ goes back to the Bible, so that there might be a more “Israeli” nuance to the word tapúz (‘orange’; an acronymic form of tapúax-zaháv, ‘golden apple’), compared to the more “LK” word for grapes. Besides, grape-juice may serve in the ritual blessing over the wine, part of the Kiddush (lit. ‘sanctification’) ceremony performed on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays – the blessing may be recited over wine or grape-juice and, if children are present, they usually drink the latter. The role of grape-juice in the ritual adds two possible factors influencing pronunciation. The first is contextual: since grape-juice is part of a sacred ritual, its name might be also “sanctified”, hence pronounced as a Merged element. A second factor is regularity: while drinking orange-juice is a question of personal choice, many Haredi families buy grape-juice every week (for the children participating in the Sabbath ritual). Thus, since the term ‘grape-juice’ is used regularly, it is more likely to be phonologically integrated. A similar interplay of factors shapes the pronunciation of many other Hebrew words in the corpus. The following section examines the effect of sociolinguistic factors on how certain nouns are pronounced. The combined effect of speaker’s ideology and the specific context of use is illustrated by analysis of scientific or technical loanwords from IH.

6.2.3 Ideology and the pronunciation of “scientific” or technical terms In the IHY speech community, ideological issues have great significance, affecting phonological integration of borrowed IH words, with, as noted above, zealous

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speakers usually avoiding the IH pronunciation unless the context is obviously “Israeli”. When discussing “Israeli” or clearly non-Haredi issues, even zealous speakers tend to articulate cultural loans in the Israeli pronunciation. Such “external” terms are introduced into the speech community through contact with the non-Haredi world. Medical terms are an obvious example, since IH is the common spoken language in the Israeli healthcare system. Consider example (58), where the speaker, a Jerusalemite woman, reports the successful results of a hearing test. The term ‘hearing tests’ is pronounced as in IH (bdikót šmiá, ‘examinations-hearing’): 58

borexašém,        bdikót       šmiá   in tipát    xaláv – blessed_be_the_Lord IHexaminations_of hearingIH in IHdrop_of milkIH ales everything

iz is

beséyder. fine

‘Thank God, [we did] hearing tests in tipát xaláv [infant healthcare clinic] – everything is fine.’ [Jer. W] As long as the loanword maintains its culture-specific Israeli or “external” context, as in example (58), it generally retains its IH pronunciation as well. However, when speakers use “modern” terms in Haredi contexts, these will most often be phonologically integrated, since the Israeli origin of such terms needs to be obscured to legitimize their use in insider contexts. Consider the different treatment of IH loanwords in examples (59) and (60). In (59) a Hasidic woman tells her audience about a spaceship that failed to receive transmissions from earth, a context that is utterly foreign to the Haredi world. She uses many IH loanwords (spaceship, space, transmission etc.), all in the IH pronunciation: 59

me dercaylt, az impers tells that

mot(=me ot) impers has

aroysgešikt a xalalít, send_out.ptcp a IHspaceshipIH

ofn    xalál.    in    si du     radarím   vus zay   gibn iber to-the   IHspaceIH  and  there is  IHradarsIH  rel they  deliver di   šidúr,          ofn     xalál. […]  in   siz  ništ  ungekimen the IHtransmissionIH to-the  IHspaceIH  and it is not   arrive.ptcp



6.2 Phonological integration of IH loanwords 

 139

ka   verter,  me     ot    niš  geert      gurništ. […] any  words  impers  has  not  hear.ptcp  nothing ot    men     gemizt     arupbrengen     dem     xalalít, has  impers  must.ptcp  bring_down.inf  the.acc  IHspaceshipIH val       er ken   niš  arbetn    in aza      círe, because  he can  not  work.inf  in such_a  manner in   me    ot   im   ungeoybn   nuxkikn:   di    manóa, and  impers  has  him  begin.ptcp  check.inf  the  IHmotorIH di, di, di    rámkolim,   ales,      xamcán,   alc        ot   the the the  IHspeakersIH  everything  IHoxygenIH  everything  has getoygt.     obn   zay   mámeš  cenimen       dem be_fit.ptcp  have  they  really    take_apart.ptcp  the.acc xalalít,     in   zay   zenen  ungekimen  ci di   štof IH spaceshipIH and  they  are    arrive.ptcp  to the  material fin  di    ripúd        fin di benklax  fin de xalalít. of   the  IHupholsteryIH  of the chairs    of the IHspaceshipIH ‘They say, that a spaceship was sent into space. And there are radars, that communicate the transmission, in space. […] And no words arrived, they didn’t hear a thing. […] They had to bring the spaceship down, since it cannot function this way, and they started to check: the engine, the, the, the amplifiers, everything, oxygen, everything was fine. They literally took the spaceship apart, until they reached the material of the upholstery of the chairs of the spaceship.’ [Has. W] The speaker goes on to explain that transmission failed due to the presence of shátnez in the upholstery of the spaceship’s seats, referring to the biblical law prohibiting the wearing of a fabric containing both wool and linen. According to her, the mixed fabric in the spaceship’s seats blocked the transmission from the ground station, and it was later “scientifically” proven that such a fabric can in fact block sound. This pseudo-scientific proof serves the speaker in her explanation of an obscure precept, since the prohibition of wearing shátnez is a biblical

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regulation for which no reason is stated. Yet, according to the speaker, the story of the spaceship points to the rationale of the shátnez precept, which is that the wearing of clothes made of such mixed fabric blocks one’s prayers from reaching the Lord. This is a typical Haredi employment of “science” in order to prove the superiority of the Torah, as described by Caplan (2003a): “Similar to other fundamentalist societies, haredim are characterized by an ambivalent, love-hate approach to modern science. Thus we can find a complete rejection of academic approaches, assumptions and conclusions, […] and an occasional use of scholarship as proof for the truth or triumph of religion – all at the same time” (Caplan 2003a: 95, see also Caplan 2003b: 253–256). This ambivalent approach is demonstrated by the speaker in (59). Throughout her entire sermon, she explicitly rejects modern science, claiming that “everything is written in the Torah” (ales štayt in tóyre). At the same time, she quotes allegedly scientific justifications for various precepts and aspects of Haredi life, such as kosher food or the Haredi dress code, analogous with her reasoning regarding the shátnez precept. All such scientific and technical terms were consistently pronounced as in IH. The external nature of these terms is clear, since Haredim do not engage in any form of scientific research, thus accounting for the IH pronunciation of all loanwords. However, the situation changes when the loanwords originate from a field of inquiry in which Haredim do have an active interest, such as psychology. No member of the IHY speech community engages in research in the exact sciences, but many are involved in therapeutic and educational activities, which may relate to modern psychological practice. Haredi educators and counselors treat learning disabilities, cope with the mental problems of juveniles, engage in couple and family counseling, and so on. While there seems to be a growing acceptance of modern psychology in many Haredi groups (see e. g. Caplan 2003b: 257–258; Mintz 1992: 219–222), the common approach to psychology in the analyzed corpus is explicitly negative. In the corpus, psychology is depicted as an evil science, aimed at undermining the desired world order and contradictory to human nature. Thus, for example, one of the female speakers told her audience that Pharaoh was in fact a psychologist. The Talmud states that Pharaoh tortured the people of Israel by giving women men’s work and vice versa (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah, 11, 2). According to the speaker, “the evil modern psychologists” (de rešóim psixologn fun aynt) also try to distort human nature, similarly to the cruel Egyptian ruler. This is a common explicit attitude in the corpus towards psychology and psychologists as the representatives of modern values.4 At the same time, many 4 For a typical Haredi critique of modern psychology, see Friedlander 1992: 32–44, where the author warns his readers about the dangers of the Adlerian book “Children: The challenge” by R. Dreikurs.



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modern psychological terms in Hebrew infiltrate the speakers’ Yiddish, mainly those involved in education and counseling. These Haredi experts read psychological and pedagogical material in Hebrew, and borrow Hebrew professional terms, such as ‘conditioning’. However, when they use such terms in a public non -professional context they cannot use them in their original Israeli form. These terms have to be assimilated into Yiddish – their external nature must be blurred so that they can be presented as part of a Jewish “psychological” theory, or as part of a Jewish method of education. In other words, these terms must be phonologically integrated (e. g. tatakóre instead of the IH tat-(h)akará ‘subconscious’). Consider example (60), where a male speaker instructs betrothed young men about married life (an “instruction for grooms”, 2.1.2). The speaker uses the modern term “self-esteem” (IH (h)aaraxá acmít), which is commonly used in IH. This term is phonologically integrated: 60 dus iz de emese aarúxe this is the true   esteem

ácmis vus self rel

a mentš ken a man can

unkimen ci dem. arrive.inf to this

‘This is the true self-esteem that a man can achieve.’ [Has. M] A term such as ‘self-esteem’ is usually not used in the internal and intimate context of groom instruction in its IH pronunciation. This would stress the term’s external nature: both its Israeli common usage and its possible derivation from a rival, non-Haredi system explaining the human mind and behavior. The adoption of such terminology into a Haredi framework is therefore usually accompanied by phonological integration, turning the IH borrowing into a “kosher” Merged Hebrew word. Note that this phenomenon is context-dependent, common especially when the speaker acts as mediator between the technical terms and his or her audience. By contrast, in internal professional conversations between Haredi educators, technical terms are usually articulated in the IH pronunciation. Consider the use of the term ‘diagnostic battery’ in example (61), taken from the instructions given by a Haredi educator to his colleagues. Such terms are generally not used when addressing a lay audience, but are common in exclusively professional contexts, usually in their IH pronunciation, as in example (61): 61

der kind darf nemen, si du this child has_to take.inf there is

a gance solelá a whole IHbatteryIH

fin ivxuním. of IHdiagnosesIH

‘This child has to take, there is a whole diagnostic battery.’ [Has. M]

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In conclusion, use of IH technical and “scientific” terms is a good test case for the impact of context and ideology on phonological integration. In an external thematic context, such as the story of the spaceship in (59), technical terms are usually articulated as in IH. However, when technical (generally psychological) terms are used in Haredi-internal contexts, public speakers tend to adjust their pronunciation in order to actualize their integration and acceptance into Haredi terminology.

6.3 Morphological impact of IH The previous section indicated how context and speakers’ ideological attitudes may affect the pronunciation of IH loanwords. Speakers can control (to a limited extent) only the linguistic features of which they are aware, mainly those carrying a clear extra-linguistic meaning. In the Haredi context, the phonological realization of Hebrew words is such a feature, since the two distinct forms of pronunciation carry opposing symbolic connotations. Lexicon and phonology are probably the two linguistic categories serving the most significant sociolinguistic functions in the analyzed corpus. Unlike lexical and phonological interference, morphological interference is not discernible to the speakers, and as a result, speakers’ attitudes towards IH play no part in this case. One cannot resist what one does not identify (Matras 2009: 220). In the case of IHY, the morphological impact of IH is liable to change the integration patterns of borrowed IH items, or, following the terminology of Matras & Sakel (2007), the matter replication (i. e. lexical borrowing from IH) is combined with pattern replication: speakers not only use Hebrew lexical elements, but may also replicate Hebrew grammatical structures while using these elements. Consider, for example, the structural integration of IH nouns. One common result of the morphological impact of Hebrew is the absence of the Yiddish indefinite article before a borrowed IH noun, as in example (62): 62

di the

moyl mouth

iz vi is like

kaséfet. vaultIH

IH

‘The mouth is like a vault.’ (lit. ‘The mouth is like vault’) [Jer. W] In example (62), the indefinite article is omitted before the IH ‘vault’ (di moyl iz vi [a] kaséfet). The speaker is probably influenced by the equivalent IH sentence, since there is no Hebrew parallel to the Yiddish indefinite article:



IH: ha-pe the-mouth

6.3 Morphological impact of IH 

hu cop

kmo like

 143

kaséfet vault

Dozens of similar omissions of the indefinite article are attested in the corpus. In all these cases, the indefinite article is omitted before IH loanwords that are pronounced as in IH (cf. Berk-Seligson 1986: 328). These IH nouns can be viewed either as loanwords whose integration pattern has been influenced by IH, or, due to the grammatical aberration, as single word insertions or code-switched elements (Poplack & Meechan 1995: 200; see also Romaine 1995: 127–129). A further outcome of IH influence on the structural integration of nouns concerns their plural inflection. In documented Yiddish, most Merged Hebrew nouns maintain their original Hebrew plural inflection, for example sakóne – sakónes (‘danger[s]’) (cf. IH sakaná – sakanót, ‘danger[s]’. See Mark 1978: 160–172, Zaretski 1926: 69–70). Some Hebrew-derived nouns have a different plural inflection in Yiddish, either a Hebrew inflection differing from the original Hebrew (e. g. šábes ‘Sabbath’ – šabósim, masculine plural suffix, and not feminine plural as in Hebrew, cf. IH: šabát – šabatót), or a non-Hebrew plural inflection. In the analyzed corpus, these nouns manifest a gradual shift towards the regular Hebrew pluralization. For example, the noun šo/šu (‘hour’) is usually pluralized šóes/šúes, as in Hebrew (cf. IH šaá – šaót), and not with a Germanic inflection as in documented Yiddish (šóen). Another example is the noun móker (‘source’), whose Hebrew pluralization in the corpus mekóyres (‘sources’) reflects the common IH form mekorót. The documented Hebrew pluralization mekóyrim (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 255), which differs from that common in IH, was not attested in the corpus. A further example is the noun sxus (‘merit’), which appears in the corpus both in a documented masculine plural Yiddish form (with the Hebrew masculine plural suffix –im: sxúsim), as well as in the feminine Hebrew inflection sxúyes (as in Hebrew, cf. IH zxut – zxuyót). Besides modifying patterns of morphological integration, contact with IH can also determine the form of the borrowed element when documented Hebrewsource Yiddish elements differ from their IH equivalents. In these cases, IHY speakers often replace the documented form with the one common in IH. For example, the Yiddish compound verb megázem zayn (‘to exaggerate’) has been almost completely replaced by the verb mágzim zayn, reflecting the usual IH form magzím (see 6.3.1.); and the documented noun óyšer (‘wealthy person’) (IH óšer, ‘wealth’) is used in the corpus parallel to the Hebrew-derived noun óšir, which is not documented in Yiddish (cf. IH ašír, ‘wealthy person’). The following sections focus on yet further marked cases of morphological impact or pattern replication in lexical borrowing in IHY in relation to borrowing

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patterns of Hebrew verbs (Section 6.3.1) and of borrowed adjectives and adverbs (Section 6.3.2). It will be shown that established patterns of borrowing are undergoing change due to the speakers’ command of IH, as shown by certain semantic changes attested in the Hebrew loanwords in the corpus (Section 6.4). The discussion concludes with a general evaluation of the overall impact of the bilingual context on use of Hebrew elements in IHY (Section 6.5).

6.3.1 The integration of Hebrew verbs Hebrew-derived verbs are integrated into Yiddish in two distinct ways, either by morphological modification or by a periphrastic construction (Sasaki 1993: 137– 140, Sadan 2013: 1038). In the first case, verbs are created by the addition of a Germanic verbal suffix to a Hebrew verbal or nominal element. For example, the documented Yiddish verb xólemen (‘to dream’) is created by the addition of the Germanic suffix –en to the Hebrew-derived noun xólem (‘dream’). This pattern is almost never used in the corpus for the borrowing of new verbs (Assouline 2010a: 29). The second pattern, however, is highly productive in the corpus, and can be used for the integration of practically every Hebrew verb into IHY. In such cases, the Hebrew participial form known as beynoni (‘intermediate’) is inserted into a compound construction with a Germanic light verb (cf. Matras 2009: 176 on the integration patterns of borrowed verbs, specifically (5)c on verbs borrowed into a compound construction). For example, in the documented compound verb mámšex zayn (‘to continue’), the masculine singular form of the Hebrew beynoni (mámšex) functions as the lexical core of the periphrastic expression, while conjugation is conveyed through the Germanic light verb zayn (‘to be’), as in: ix bin mámšex (‘I continue’; lit. I + am + continue.ptcp.sg.m); mir zaynen mámšex (‘we continue’; lit. we + are + continue.ptcp.sg.m), er hot mámšex geven (‘he continued’; lit. he + has + continue.ptcp.sg.m + be.ptcp) etc. (Mark 1978: 311–315; Muysken 2000: 184–185). The different Hebrew verb patterns (binyanim) are accompanied by the Germanic verbs zayn (‘to be’) or vern (‘to become’) (depending on the specific Hebrew verb pattern), and sometimes also by the Germanic reflexive pronoun zix. The Hebrew lexical core can include other elements, generally nominal or adverbial complements, in addition to the participial form. For example, the documented verb mevaker-xóyle zayn (‘to visit a sick person’) includes the Hebrew beynoni verb form meváker (visit.ptcp.sg.m) and the Hebrew xóyle (‘sick person’ (sick.m.sg)) (Sasaki 1993: 138). Almost all the new (i. e. not documented) Hebrew-source verbs in the corpus  are borrowed by means of this periphrastic construction. The Hebrew lexical core can either be phonologically integrated, or appear in its IH pronun-



6.3 Morphological impact of IH 

 145

ciation, depending mainly on the individual speaker’s speech habits and attitude  towards IH. Examples (63) and (64) illustrate two periphrastic constructions with Israeli Hebrew verbs sharing the same verb pattern (meCaCeC). In example (63), the Hebrew element is pronounced as in IH (meCaCéC), while in (64) the Hebrew element is phonologically integrated through a change of stress (meCáCeC): 63

zayn  púnem his     face

iz is

mešadér transmit.ptcp.sg.mIH

IH

az that

er iz ceknakt. he is crushed

‘His face reflects his depression.’ [Has. M] 64

zay be.imp.2sg

visn know.inf

vizoy how

ci to

meávxen diagnose.ptcp.sg.m

zayn. be.inf

‘You should know how to diagnose.’ (from IH meavxén) [Has. M] The periphrastic construction in the corpus generally operates as in documented Yiddish. Substantial deviations from the established pattern exist in the IHY speech community, but not in the analyzed public corpus (cf. Benor 2012: 92). Such violations characterize speakers for whom Yiddish is a second language but not the public speakers (2.2). Consider example (65), produced by a young teacher in a girls’ school, who is not a native Yiddish speaker. The teacher instructed her pupils in the folding of a cardboard model, using a periphrastic construction with the Hebrew verb ‘to fold’. According to the established pattern, we would expect the form mekáp(e)l/mekapél zayn (fold.ptcp.sg.m + to be, with or without phonological integration). However, while in the documented pattern the Hebrew lexical core is a fixed masculine singular participial form, this speaker used the IH feminine plural participial form when addressing her pupils: 65

ayx you.pl

zenen are

es it

mekaplót IH fold.ptcp.pl.fIH

azoy. so

‘You fold it this way.’ (recorded in Jerusalem, 2006) While use of Hebrew inflected forms instead of fixed forms is extremely rare among native Yiddish speakers, two less conspicuous types of IH influence on the peri-

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phrastic construction are commonly found in the corpus – in use of verbs of the reflexive (or reciprocal) hitpa’el verb pattern, and in bound verbal phrases. The Hebrew verb pattern hitpa’el often carries reflexive or reciprocal meanings, which carry over to the documented Yiddish periphrastic construction, since verbs in hitpa’el are almost always borrowed with the Germanic reflexive pronoun zix. The established borrowing pattern for hitpa’el verbs in Yiddish is: zix + misCáCeC + zayn, for example, zix misxátn zayn (‘to become connected by marriage’) (Weinreich 1977 [1968]: 536). This documented pattern is quite common in the corpus as well, as in example (66). Here the woman speaker integrates an IH verb (in the IH pronunciation, mitCaCéC) using the established periphrastic construction: 66

di     velt the  world

iz is

zax refl

mitkadém. progress.ptcp.sg.mIH

IH

‘The world is progressing.’ [Has. W] In addition to the established pattern, verbs in hitpa’el (both documented and new) are also used in the corpus without the Germanic zix. Consider example (67), where the documented verb zix misbóynen zayn (‘to contemplate’) (Niborski 2012: 324) appears without the zix (misbóynen zayn): 67

zey    obn they  have

keyn not_a

mol time

ništ not

misbóynen watch.ptcp.sg.m

geven. be.ptcp

‘They never thought [about it].’ (According to the established pattern: zey hobn zix keyn mol ništ misbóynen geven) [Jer. M] The omission of the pronoun zix is a new phenomenon, which is probably influenced by the speakers’ command of IH. In the documented Merged component the added zix had an important grammatical role, marking the reflexive or the reciprocal sense of the Hebrew element. In a bilingual setting such marking is unnecessary, however, since speakers are familiar with the semantics of the Hebrew verbs, so the Germanic pronoun becomes redundant. The omission of the zix can be viewed as a semantic-grammatical “awakening” of the Hebrew component. In the documented construction with zix, the Hebrew participial functioned only as a frozen lexical element, requiring the assistance of Germanic grammatical “crutches” (cf. Matras 2009: 182). However, in contemporary IHY the same



6.3 Morphological impact of IH 

 147

Hebrew participial form has regained some of its grammatical features due to speakers’ command of IH (see another example of zix omission in example (79) below. For additional changes in the borrowing of verbs in hitpa’el see Assouline 2010a: 34–40). Another type of periphrastic verb in documented Yiddish, which includes additional elements (generally nominal or adverbial complements), is conjugated similarly to other periphrastic verbs noted above. The Hebrew participial and its complement function as a single lexical unit with one main stress, and remain bound throughout the conjugation. For example, in the verb mevaker-xóyle zayn (‘to visit a sick person’), the participial meváker (visit.ptcp.sg.m) and  the ­complement xóyle (‘sick person’) are always bound: ix bin mevaker-xóyle ‘I visit a sick person’ (lit. I + am + visit_sick person); ix hob mevaker-xóyle geven (‘I visited a sick person’; lit. I + have + visit_sick person + been); ix vel mevaker-­xóyle zayn (‘I will visit a sick person’; lit. I + will + visit_sick person + be) etc. This is not the case in the analyzed corpus, however, where the common integration pattern of a Hebrew participial form and its complement is not as a single bound lexical unit, but rather as two distinct elements. The verbal phrase is broken up, so that the participial form can be separated from its complement. Consider example (68), where the documented verb oymed-benisóyen zayn (‘to resist ­temptation’; lit. stand.ptcp.sg.m in-temptation, Niborski 2012: 371) is separated into parts. 68

yóysef   a-cádik Joseph  the-righteous

ot has

óymed stand.ptcp.sg.m

geven be.ptcp

benisóyen. in-temptation

‘Joseph the righteous resisted temptation.’ [Has. M] In example (68), the past participle geven separates the Hebrew participial form from its complement. In documented Yiddish these two remain bound, with a single main stress: 69

yóysef   a-cádik Joseph  the-righteous

ot has

oymed stand.ptcp.sg.m

benisóyen in-temptation

geven be.ptcp

Most such periphrastic verbs (with additional elements) in the corpus, whether documented in Yiddish or newly borrowed from IH, are dissembled as in example (68). In (70) we can see another separated periphrastic verb, pronounced as in IH:

148  70

er he

 6 Processes of lexical borrowing

darf has_to

maké put_down.ptcp.sg.m IH

IH

zayn be.inf

šoraším. IH rootsIH

‘he has to put down roots.’ [Has. M] In (70) the infinitive zayn (‘to be’) separates the Hebrew participial form from its complement, while according to the documented construction the two should have been bound (er darf make šorašim zayn; ‘he has to {put down roots} to be’). The recurring separation of such verbs in the corpus is yet another demonstration of the independent nature of the Hebrew component in IHY. The process of lexical borrowing in IHY is not as mechanical as in documented Yiddish, where a certain Hebrew phrase was integrated in a compound construction as one fixed unit. Most Yiddish speakers in the past were probably unable to decipher the phrase or identify its separate components. However, since all current IHY speakers are also Hebrew speakers, they are familiar with the different components outside of their occurrence in the specific phrase, and are aware of their independent grammatical status. Once again, there is evidence here of the different results of borrowing in a diglossic versus in a bilingual setting. When borrowing from a familiar spoken language the borrowed items are no longer “frozen”. They maintain a certain flexibility and independence, as well as some of their original grammatical features.

6.3.2 The integration of Hebrew adjectives and adverbs The borrowing of Hebrew adjectives is also affected by the bilingual setting of IHY. One difference between documented and current borrowing patterns concerns the lexical category from which attributive adjectives are derived. While in documented Yiddish, attributive adjectives were derived from various Hebrew lexical categories, in IHY they are usually derived from other Hebrew adjectives. Consider, for example, the following documented Yiddish adjectives, derived from Hebrew non-adjectives: émes (‘true’, derived from the noun émes ‘truth’), šábesdik (‘festive’, derived from the noun šábes ‘Sabbath’, with the Germanic suffix -dik), bekóvedik (‘honorable’, derived from the adverbial bekóved ‘honorably’, lit. in-honor, with the suffix -dik). In IHY, many adjectives are automatically derived from their Hebrew equivalents, usually with the Germanic suffixes –(i)š or –dik. This direct derivation creates a Yiddish pattern that reflects the original Hebrew pattern. For example, the IH rav mefursám (‘famous rabbi’; lit. rabbi.masc.sg famous.masc.sg) is calqued in IHY as mefúrsemdiker rov (‘famous[-masc.sg] rabbi’), with the Hebrew adjective morphologically integrated by the suffix –dik. This borrowing pattern is very common in the corpus, as in (71) and (72):



 149

6.3 Morphological impact of IH 

71  a kicóyniše míkre ‘an extreme occurrence’ from IH kiconí ‘extreme’ [Has. M] 72  mešúxleldike otos ‘advanced automobiles’ from IH mešuxlál ‘advanced’ [Jer. W] In other words, speakers tend to automatically replicate the Hebrew adjectives in Yiddish, by choosing them as the direct source for borrowing. Note that these are attributive adjectives, which form part of the Yiddish nominal phrase and so are generally phonologically and morphologically integrated in the corpus. Yiddish attributive adjectives are generally prenominal, but they can also be postnominal in an appositional construction (e. g. a meydl a šeyns, ‘a beautiful girl’, lit. a girl.neut.sg a beautiful-neut.sg). The similarity between this word order and the usual Hebrew word order (noun – adjective) facilitates the appearance of morphologically unintegrated Hebrew postnominal attributive adjectives, as in (73): 73

me impers

kimt arrives

ništ un not arrives

ci de to the

toyfúes phenomena

fin de of   the

problemen rígšiim. problems emotional.pl.m ‘One does not reach the phenomena of emotional problems.’ [Has. M] In example (73) the adjective ‘emotional’ appears in its Hebrew plural form (conforming to the plural Yiddish noun ‘problems’) without morphological integration. This is a common phenomenon in appositional constructions in the corpus, serving as yet another example for the morphological impact of IH. Another example of a morphologically unintegrated Hebrew postnominal attributive adjective appears in (74): a gloz xad peamí (‘a disposable glass’; lit. ‘a glass [Yiddish] disposable [IH]’). In this case, the word order of noun.sg + adjective.sg replicates the Hebrew nominal phrase construction, violating the pattern of the Yiddish appositional construction (since the indefinite article is not repeated before the adjective as is required in Yiddish): 74

eyb  se  cubrext  zax    ba  em    a gloz   xad peamí, if    it   breaks   refl  by  him  a glass  IHdisposableIH varft throws

er he

os this

aroys out

in in

mist. garbage

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 6 Processes of lexical borrowing

‘If he breaks a disposable glass, he throws it in the garbage.’ [Jer. M] A different type of borrowed adjective is the predicative adjective, which is grammatically independent and therefore is usually not morphologically integrated into Yiddish. Its phonological integration depends on the individual speaker’s speech habits, the context etc. Here are three examples of Hebrew predicative adjectives from the corpus, all maintaining the established masculine singular form, documented in Yiddish: 75

er he

iz geven is be.ptcp

zayer  medíxdex very    depressed.sg.m

nuxn after-the

šmis. conversation

‘He was very depressed after the conversation.’ [Has. M] (medíxdex – ­phonologically integrated. IH meduxdáx) 76

vaser water

šakúf. transparent.sg.mIH

iz is

IH

‘Water is transparent.’ [Jer. W] 77

zey  zenen they  are

meuxzáv, disappointed.sg.mIH

IH

zenen are

metuskál. frustrated.sg.mIH

IH

‘They are disappointed, frustrated.’ [Jer. M] Only very few predicative adjectives in the corpus are morphologically integrated into Yiddish. One example is the borrowed predicative adjective ‘organized’ (from IH mesudár, ‘organized’), which may be morphologically integrated by the Germanic suffix –dik: mesúderdik/mesíderdik (e. g. ales vet zayn mesúderdik, ‘everything will be organized’). However, this predicative adjective is usually used in its Hebrew form, with or without phonological integration: mesudár (as in IH) or mesúder/mesíder (ales vet zayn mesudár/mesúder, ‘everything will be organized’). Once again, the common use of non-integrated predicative adjectives is influenced, at least in part, by the speakers’ command of IH. Several similar adjectives are documented in Yiddish (for example nóki, ‘broke; cleaned out’, lit. clean), but their high distribution in the corpus testifies to the impact of the bilingual setting. The impact of IH is even more evident when we consider the borrowing patterns of Hebrew adverbs. Most Hebrew adverbs in the corpus are used in their



6.4 Semantic interference of IH 

 151

IH forms, and have no similar prior documentation in Yiddish. The common use of non-integrated adverbs is also supported by their grammatical independence. In example (78) we can see such an IH adverb (an adjectival masculine singular form, commonly used as an adverb in colloquial IH): 78

me impers

iz ništ   gekimen is not    come.ptcp

ci mir to me

yašír. IH direct.sg.mIH

‘They did not come directly to me.’ [Has. W] The common use of unadapted loans as in (78) reflects the dominance of IH, as well as the specific speaker’s speech habits and attitudes towards IH. Some speakers do try to integrate borrowed adverbs, at least phonologically. However, even when adverbs are morphologically integrated, the impact of IH is still obvious since they are usually derived directly from IH adverbs. For example, the adverb rígšisdik (‘emotionally’) is derived from the IH adverb rigšít (‘emotionally’).

6.3.3 Morphological impact of IH: Conclusion The extensive lexical borrowing from IH is supported by established borrowing mechanisms from Hebrew to Yiddish. Thus, for example, an IH verb can be automatically integrated into Yiddish using the available periphrastic construction described in 6.3.1. These integration patterns were shaped in a diglossic setting, when written and recited texts served as the main source for borrowing from Hebrew. In the contemporary Israeli context, speakers’ bilingualism may modify these integration patterns, and even render them less necessary over time. As the command and use of IH expand, IHY speakers tend to use more unadapted IH forms in their Yiddish. Speakers may modify the IH pronunciation for ideological reasons, but the morphological traits of the Hebrew loanwords are increasingly influenced by how, and how much, they are used in IH.

6.4 Semantic interference of IH 6.4.1 Semantic changes in documented Hebrew-source loanwords Contact with IH affects not only the form, pronunciation and integration patterns of loanwords, but also their meaning. Hebrew loanwords in the corpus are overwhelmingly used with their characteristic meaning in IH. This is especially discern-

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ible when the sense of established Hebrew-source forms has changed under the impact of IH. For example, the documented Yiddish verb zix misyáxes zayn means ‘to have respectable lineage, to take pride in one’s lineage’ (Niborski 2012: 325). This verb occurs more than 20 times in the corpus, but never in the documented meaning. Rather, it is used as its IH equivalent mityaxés (‘to treat’). For example: 79

mir  vel   kukn    vi    avrom     ovinu       ot   misyáxes we  will  see.inf  how  Abraham   our_father  has  treat.ptcp.sg.m geven be.ptcp

cu to

di the

arbet task

fun of

axnóses órxim. hospitality

‘Let’s see how Abraham our forefather treated the act of hospitality.’ [Jer. W] (Note the additional omission of the Germanic zix [ot misyáxes geven and not ot zix misyáxes geven] –see 6.3.1). Another example of such semantic change is the documented Hebrew-source noun nisóyen (‘temptation’), which is often used in the corpus to mean ‘experience’, which is widespread in IH (e. g. ix ob nisóyen, ‘I am experienced’. cf. Kantor 1997: 137). Note that this phenomenon might clash with another tendency, namely the IH pronunciation of certain elements in order to create a semantic distinction between them and their Merged cognates (see 6.2.2, after example (55)). In other words, when the meanings of Merged elements differ from that of their IH cognates, speakers may use the IH pronunciation in order to create a semantic differentiation between the two (nisayón, ‘experience’ versus nisóyen, ‘temptation’; see Chapter 4, example (14)). At the same time, they may use a Merged element in a meaning common in IH (nisóyen, ‘experience’), a phenomenon which can be alternatively analyzed as a phonological integration of the IH nisayón (‘experience’). The polysemy of nisóyen (‘temptation’/‘experience’) remains, whether we choose to describe nisóyen (‘experience’) as a documented Merged component whose meaning has changed or as a phonologically integrated loanword from IH. A similar example is the established Hebrew loanword cíen (‘the grave of a Hasidic rabbi, gravestone’; Niborski 2012: 420), which is attested in the corpus both in its documented meaning and in its common IH meaning (‘test grade’; IH ciún). As noted earlier, the vast majority of Hebrew-source words in the corpus are used in their common IH meaning. This is not surprising when we examine new IH loanwords, but it also holds true for established Hebrew-source loanwords whose documented meaning differs from that common in IH. As a result, almost all Hebrew elements in the corpus are used in their IH meaning.



6.5 The lexical effect of IH: Conclusion 

 153

6.4.2 IH calques in the corpus The growing semantic convergence of IHY with IH is manifested not only by the fact that the vast bulk of Hebrew elements in the corpus are used with their IH meaning, but also by the hundreds of IH calques attested to. IH collocations and idioms are constantly integrated into the speakers’ Yiddish, usually through partial calquing; that is, some elements are translated into Yiddish while others remain in their original Hebrew form (with or without phonological integration). For example leygn a pas (‘not give a damn’; lit. ‘to put a line’, IH lasím pas) or zayn in de inyúnim (‘to be in the know’; lit. ‘to be in the matters’ IH li(h)yót ba-inyaním). Similar examples can be found in the IHY excerpts in this book, such as in aza círe (‘in such a manner’) in example (59) (IH becurá kazót). círe (or cúre) is a Merged Hebrew element (meaning ‘face’ in documented Yiddish), which is consistently semantically modified in the corpus under the impact of IH. Full calques are also attested in the corpus, as for example arbetn af (‘pull someone’s leg’; lit. ‘to work on’, IH laavód al).

6.4.3 Lack of awareness of IH impact The striking semantic impact of IH is not something speakers are aware of. They are oblivious to the semantic changes in established elements, as well as to the gradual disappearance of meanings that are not common in IH. They are entirely unaware that almost none of the Hebrew elements in their Yiddish are used with their original, established – Biblical, Mishnaic, Medieval or Rabbinic meanings; and that when the historical usage diverges from the contemporary one, the current meaning in IH is used. Nor are speakers aware of their frequent calquing from IH. This situation is in all likelihood supported by the restricted Yiddish literacy of members of the community (1.4.3). In effect, exposure to older Yiddish texts might have slowed down the rate of semantic change by giving speakers access to expressions and idioms from written Yiddish, as well as to Hebrewsource elements used in established meanings that do not necessarily conform to current IH usage.

6.5 The lexical effect of IH: Conclusion The lexical impact of IH on speakers’ Yiddish is profound and extensive. In the first place, as a language used on a daily basis by almost all IHY speakers, IH is the most accessible source for lexical borrowing. Borrowing from IH is further

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supported by the existing Hebrew component of Yiddish, which contains not only lexical elements and an established method for their phonological integration, but also provides syntactic mechanisms for borrowing from Hebrew, such as the periphrastic construction noted above as a means for incorporating Hebrew verbs (6.3.1). As a result, all speakers in the corpus make widespread use of Hebrew elements, to an extent that goes far beyond earlier assessments of the Hebrew component of Yiddish. Examination of a 40,000-word sample of the analyzed corpus (see p. 98, note 2), excluding segments of code-switching to Hebrew, revealed that Hebrew lexical elements account for around 25 % of the words spoken by men and 15 % by women (cf. the estimation of the percentage of Hebraisms in written Yiddish as 5.38 % in Mark 1954). This considerable component includes new loans from IH but also reflects the rise in the usage of established, documented elements. Some such elements were evidently borrowed due to lexical gaps in IHY (including IH cultural loans, Matras 2009: 150), whereas others are often used alongside – and, as noted earlier (6.1), more often than – their Yiddish equivalents. The impact of IH gives rise to radical changes in the nature of the Hebrew component of Yiddish. While in documented Yiddish the Hebrew component was typically scholarly or even sacred, this does not tend to be the case with Hebrew elements in IHY. As noted, established elements are often used with their IH meanings, and this applies to all speakers, not merely to a limited learned elite. Thus, the lexicon of IHY is gradually converging towards that of IH, both in quantity and in semantic quality. The Hebrew elements in the corpus are integrated into the speakers’ Yiddish, with different levels of phonological, morphological and syntactic integration. Minimal phonological integration, performed by stress change, is usually sufficient for the legitimization of IH loanwords. Even a zealous speaker, who ideologically rejects the use of IH, can easily borrow from IH thanks to this basic phonological integration, which serves to obscure the Israeli origin of the loanword. Once the stress has been changed the Hebrew word can be considered “kosher” and may be used legitimately in various contexts. This simple automatic mechanism enables speakers to borrow almost every IH word, thus exempting them from dealing with issues of language ideology regarding the negative status of the majority language, allowing the continuation of free lexical borrowing from IH.

Contact and ideology: Conclusion The language used by public speakers from the extremist Edah demonstrates to what extent language attitudes and ideologies can affect language use. Studies of other situations of language contact have shown that negative attitudes may have the effect of minimizing lexical borrowing and of restricting free language mixing, since the latter does not occur when “the codes involved symbolize social groups in conflict/competition with each other” (Myers-Scotton 1991, cited in Treffers-Daller 1992: 154). Such phenomena find expression in the material analyzed in the present context to such a degree that not even a single instance of free switching to Israeli Hebrew was observed in the entire corpus of 250 hours of recorded speech. This striking result can be attributed to a combination of factors: the subjects were speakers from the most segregated groups within the Yiddishspeaking Haredi minority; they have a unique status and play an important role in their community as spiritual leaders, preachers and lecturers; and they share the communal rejection of the majority language and a highly controlled speech register. Together with the elevated meta-linguistic awareness of the speakers in the corpus analyzed here, these circumstances combine to support implementation of the speakers’ communal linguistic ideology in their actual speech usage, yielding significant efforts to fight the impact of Israeli Hebrew, as demonstrated in this study. In relation to the corpus in question, Israeli Hebrew is an outsider code, a status that is especially meaningful in the ideological context of a fundamentalist “enclave culture” like the Edah (Almond, Appleby & Sivan 2003). The members of the Edah deliberately segregate themselves from the outside world in their ongoing struggle to maintain their distinct identity within the wider Jewish Israeli society. Their segregation is supported by a strong sense of “us” versus “them”, with the insider group perceived as morally superior to the corrupt society outside. These socio-cultural features underlie most of the linguistic phenomena described in the present volume concerning the use of Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew, since the symbolic roles of Yiddish as an insider code and, particularly, of IH as an outsider code govern the speech patterns of public speakers. This is a highly ideologically charged case of Gumperz’s “we/they code” contrast, resulting from strict boundaries drawn between “us” and “them”. Not only is the outside world seen by the Edah as sinful and heretical, but so too is the contemporary Hebrew language that it uses. The status of IH as an outsider code thus shapes the code-switching patterns analyzed in Chapter 4, since deliberate use of IH invariably marks as negative what lies beyond the boundaries of the Edah, namely, Israeli society and modern values, as well as non-zealous Haredi groups (Table 4.2). Lexical borrowing from IH is also influenced by the outsider status of the language, as discussed in Chapter 6: as long as borrowed elements reflect DOI 10.1515/9781501505300-008

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 Contact and ideology: Conclusion

an external context lying outside the bounds of the community they may maintain their original IH pronunciation, but when loanwords are used in an insider-­ Haredi context, they become phonologically integrated, thus forming legitimate elements of the Yiddish language. In other words, the outsider code can be used only in external contexts, so that whenever speakers refer to the world “outside the wall” they may switch to IH or employ an IH loanword; but when these speakers wish to import IH elements into their world, they must first neutralize their immoral symbolic value, an end for which a simple change of pronunciation usually suffices. The mechanism of phonological integration, through which IH words and segments can turn into “kosher” Yiddish words or pseudo-Loshnkóydesh expressions, helps speakers to reconcile the tension between their inevitable use of IH (inevitable due to the growing lexical and structural erosion of their Yiddish vernacular) and their ideological resistance to the language. This tension echoes the ongoing Haredi endeavor to distinguish between the instrumental and the moral aspects of modernity (1.2), with IH representing both an inescapable instrumental value (as a significant repertoire of linguistic items and structures) and a negative moral value. Yet Haredi efforts to resolve this dual nature of IH may be complicated, as demonstrated in Chapter 3, with speakers’ attempts to obscure their inevitable use of IH resulting in evasive formulations such as “Hebrew which is not Hebrew”. The instrumental value of Israeli Hebrew is evident when non-formal registers of speech are considered, since there is no escape from the dominance of IH in everyday life. IH is not simply a secular variety (as it is symbolically portrayed in the public corpus), since it is also the dominant language inside Haredi society. Most Haredim speak only IH (1.1), and even Yiddish-speaking Haredim from the Edah use IH regularly, generally with other, Hebrew-speaking Haredim. Yet the public context ignores this reality, highlighting the negative symbolic role of IH so that its free use is deliberately avoided. It is thus important to differentiate explicitly between ideological language attitudes (most clearly expressed in formal and monitored settings such as the public corpus analyzed here) and instrumental attitudes that shape daily speech patterns (compare, for example, Edwards 2010: 126, on the “grudgingly instrumental motivation” for language shift from Irish to English in nineteenth-century Ireland). In public speech, characterized by an attempt to adhere to the community’s declared language ideology, the use of linguistic varieties corresponds to their symbolic value rather than to everyday sociolinguistic reality. The symbolic value of the community’s sacred variety LK as a prestigious masculine code is also intensified when speaking in public, as discussed in Chapter 5. As a result, men’s speech is saturated with LK expressions, while women use it restrictedly and carefully, flagging switches to LK, which is for them, to some



Contact and ideology: Conclusion 

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extent, a “they code”. The most striking finding in this respect is the fact that not a single alternational switch to LK was attested among female speakers in the entire corpus. In fact, LK is not a typical “they code”, indexing the world outside the enclave, but rather an internal code highly revered by the entire community, men and women alike. Nevertheless, the masculine image of LK creates a distance between this variety and the female speakers, reflected in the distinct code-switching patterns of the two sexes observed in the corpus. When using LK, similarly to what happens in their use of IH, speakers use free and “smooth” code-switching only when both varieties symbolize parts of their identity: a male speaker can freely mix Yiddish and LK since both index his identity as a member of the Edah (Yiddish) and as a learned Jew (LK), whereas all speakers (men and women alike) “flag” IH, thus demonstrating their rejection of what it symbolizes. Some of these phenomena may also be found in daily speech, although possibly to a lesser extent, yet the special position of the public speakers demands that they employ the different codes deliberately in this way, in order to construct a desired public Haredi identity. This ideal identity adheres to the traditional and scholarly values symbolized by the use of Yiddish and LK and denies the current impact of IH as an unwanted intrusion on the part of a non-Haredi Israeli reality. The public corpus analyzed in this volume thus allows us a glimpse into the community’s ideal language, where linguistic ideologies of the community find their fullest expression.

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Index Ades, Yehuda 76–78 agreement 113 Amish 10 anti–Zionism 8, 10–11 Arabic xii, 19, 88, 123 – Classical 123 – loanwords 21, 116, 127 Aramaic xiii, 12, 58, 81, 97, 104, 105, 122, 125 Ashkenazi pronunciation xiii, 39–40, 49–51, 53–56, 107–108 – ritual use 13 – non-ritual use 13, 55 – see also Hebrew, “Whole Hebrew”  Batzri, David 57–58 Begin, Menachem 50–51 Belz 7, 29, 30, 49, 55 Ben–Yehuda, Eliezer 46–48 Bet Shemesh 6, 15, 68 Bible xiii, 46–47, 49, 82, 100, 137 Breslev  8, 30 children 23, 25, 65 – and language maintenance 13, 16–17, 19, 21, 31 – and literacy 14 code switching 34–35, 42, 59, 61–62, 65–67, 86–87, 90, 155–157 – alternational 105, 121–122, 157 – avoidance of 34, 36, 42, 69–70 – vs. borrowing 72–73, 82, 111–117 – in daily conversations 22, 34, 64–69, 90 – flagged 3, 63–65, 70, 72–73, 75, 90, 99–102, 122–123, 156 – and gender 93, 98–99, 105–106, 122–123 see also gender, determined speech codes  – insertional 71, 105, 106, 121–122 – inter-sentential 105 – intra-sentential 105, 107 – metaphorical 3, 63, 75, 87 – smooth 3, 65–67, 69–70, 99–100, 106–107, 122–123, 157

– trigger 65, 69, 108–111, 122 colloquiality (lexical boundedness) 105 content morphemes 114 definite article 113 dialects, see Yiddish in Eastern Europe; Yiddish in Israel, Hasidic , Jerusalemite  dibbuk 56–59 diglossia (and triglossia) 2, 11–14, 25, 46, 63, 66, 100, 113 – Arabic 123 – Ashkenazi 11–12, 14, 46, 113, 125 domains 2, 13–14, 52, 64–65, 67 dress code 9, 93, 140 – head-covering 9, 84 – modesty 79, 94, 123 Dushinski 8, 28, 53 Edah Haredit 6, 52, 55–56, 75, 94, 155 education 33, 37, 93–94, 97, 101–102 – of boys 14, 18, 30, 33, 50, 93, 97 – of girls 14–18, 22 n 4, 28, 30, 33, 93–94, 97, 145 educational institutions, boys and men – kollel 96 – xeyder 50, 96–97 – yeshiva 7, 18, 42, 67, 96 educational institutions, girls’ schools – Bnos Yerusholayim 28 – Khínukh Yerusholayim 28 – Beys Yankev Hayoshn 28 – Bet Yaakov 18, 94 Egypt 123, 134 enclave culture 15, 75, 155 English xi, 12, 23–24, 28, 35, 56, 78, 156 – Hasidic 35 French 28 Gaelic 78 gender 22–23, 33, 69, 93–95 – determined speech codes 3, 42–43, 64, 91, 99–100, 102, 104–105, 111, 115–123

172 

 Index

– “modesty”\“modest speech” 21, 84, 94, 102, 123 – see also dress code; guarding the tongue  German 47, 86, 108 n 3 Germanic xi, 5 – component of Yiddish 20, 21 n 3, 41, 101, 110, 114, 143, 144, 146, 148, 150, 152 Gordon, Juda Leib 47 Greek 47 guarding the tongue 28, 84  Hebrew – Hebrew-Aramaic sacred texts 12–13, 33, 36, 49, 95–96, 99–100, 102, 121  – component of documented Yiddish (“Merged Hebrew”) xiv, 20, 39–41, 111, 113–114, 118–119, 125, 135–136, 143, 146 – component of Israeli Haredi Yiddish 109–120, 125–132, 143–152 – dominance of 2, 14, 17–19, 23–25, 90, 156 – forbidden words 47–49, 62 – impact of Israeli Hebrew on Israeli Haredi Yiddish see interference  – Modern xii, xiii, 11, 45–50, 58, 83, 107–109, 121, 127, 135 – opposition to Modern/Israeli Hebrew 10– 11, 18, 21, 45–47, 54 – pronunciation of Israeli Hebrew xii-xiii, 39–40, 59, 90–91, 128, 130–132, 135, 138, 152 – speakers 8, 17–19, 31, 54–56, 59, 83, 130, 156 – “Whole Hebrew” xiv, 39, 112, 118, see also Ashkenazi pronunciation  – word order 111, 149 – written 13–14, 45, 46, 48–51, 53, 62, 97 – see also Loshn-koydesh  “Hungarian” Hasidim xi, 8, 9, 94 ideology – Haredi 9–10 – language 14–17, 21, 67, 78–79, 87, 90, 128, 155–156 – zealous 11, 46, 58–59 – see also anti-Zionism; Hebrew, opposition to Modern/Israeli Hebrew  indefinite article 142–143, 149

integration – morphological 41, 110, 143–144, 148, 154 – phonological 20, 23, 38, 39, 40–41, 74–75, 126, 128–137, 140–142, 145, 150–154, 156 interference 2, 19–20, 24–25, 27, 37, 62, 90 – morphological 125, 142–143, 145–151 – phonological 38–40, 128–131 – semantic 136, 151–153 Judeo-Spanish xii, 88 “Judaism of the Torah and the state” 47 language maintenance 6, 9–18, 24–25, 31, 75 – shift 13–17, 24–25, 28, 31, 156 lexical borrowing 3, 20, 22–25, 40–41, 60–61, 70–75, 108–111, 126–127, 153–154, 156 – cultural loans 23, 61, 71, 132, 136, 138, 154 – see also Hebrew, component of Israeli Haredi Yiddish; integration  Lithuanian \ Litvish-Yeshivish streams 7, 30, 55 Loshn-koydesh (‘the holy tongue’) – command in the past 12, 98, 118, 125 – definition xiii, 13 – Haredi definition 49 – vs. Israeli Hebrew 45–46, 49, 51, 54, 58 – pronunciation, see Ashkenazi pronunciation; Hebrew, “Whole Hebrew”  – ritual use 13, 37, 96 – scholarly use 96–97 – switching to 42–43, 105–106, 121–123, 156–157 – and women 95–97, 100, 121–123 ma’amar leshon hakodesh (‘Treatise on the Holy Tongue’), see Vayoel Moshe  Masmídim (Kal Adas Yerusholaim) 8, 82 – Masmídim yeshiva 87 Mea-Shearim, neighborhood 127 Midrash 36, 134 morphological integration, see integration  Neturei Karta 8 Ottoman 9, 46

Index 

phonological integration, see integration  plural 143, 145, 149 polysemy 136, 152 prestige 10, 15–19, 109 Prushim 8, 52 psychology 140–141 Purim 87 – purim špil 87

 173

super speaker(s) 27, 30, 34, 37, 40, 41, 126 system morphemes 114 System Morpheme Principle 114

quotations – of direct speech 77–81, 83–84 – from sacred texts 36, 81, 97, 99–104

Talmud 29, 97, 102 – study 13, 27, 42, 97, 105 Teitelbaum, Yoel 11, 46 Toldos Aharon 8, 24, 28, 30, 48, 73, 107, 128 Toldos Avrom-Yitzchok 8, 28 Toyre VeYire 8, 127 translation 17, 97, 99–102, 122 trigger, see code-switching, trigger 

Rashi’s commentary 37 Rokakh, Yissachar Dov 55 Roth, Aharon 48

Vayoel Moshe 11, 46, 54 Vizhnitz 7, 29, 53 vocalization, Tiberian 130

Sabbath 24, 31, 42, 69, 96, 137 Sapir, Pinchas 76–78, 80 Satmar xii, 8, 11, 19, 28, 46–47, 51, 53, 56–59 – women 35 semantic 132, 134–136, 146 – change 37, 40, 48, 110, 116, 125, 127, 151–154 – differentiation 128, 135, 152 – specificity 71 – see also interference, semantic  semi-speaker(s) 31 – see also super speaker(s)  Sephardic (Haredim) 7, 52, 55–57, 59, 77–78 Septuagint 47 slang 12, 21, 94 – “street” language 21, 83–84 Slavic (component of Yiddish) 20, 41, 119 Spanish 28, 79 speech community 30–31, 33

Weiss, Yitskhok Tuvia 52, 55–56, 59 Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 51, 53 Yiddish, American 14, 35, 126 Yiddish, in Eastern Europe (“Documented Yiddish”) xi–xiii, 5, 20, 38, 86 – dialects xi-xiii, 18, 27, 38 Yiddish, in Israel (“Israeli Haredi Yiddish”) – Hasidic xi, xii, 18, 27, 38, 39, 130 – Jerusalemite xi-xv, 18, 27, 39, 88, 116, 130 – literacy 14, 19–20, 33, 40, 94, 153 – phonology xi, 37–38 – standard variety, lack of 18, 20, 25 – second language speakers 31, 34, 145 – see also language maintenance; prestige  Yiddish, sanctity of 10, 16–17 Yiddish, Standard 18, 61, 136 Yosef, Ovadya 55