Collecting and Engaging with Jewish Heritage Words

Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion's Jewish Language Project has launched Heritage Words, an initiative that collects and engages with words from ancestral Jewish languages. Featuring expanded crowdsourced dictionaries, a podcast, and Word of the Week social media posts, Heritage Words is part of the Jewish Language Project's Heirloom initiative, which documents and educates about endangered Jewish languages, highlighting Jewish ancestral diversity.

"Many Jews continue to engage with their ancestral languages long after their families have shifted to other languages - through songs, literature, and more," said Jewish Language Project Founding Director Sarah Bunin Benor, Ph.D., Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics at HUC-JIR. "Heritage words are an important aspect of this post-vernacular engagement. I'm pleased that the Jewish Language Project is highlighting this phenomenon."

Jewish heritage words, Benor explained, come from minority languages once spoken by Jews' ancestors, passed down the generations in families and communities and incorporated into English and other dominant languages. She cites a few examples: "Some descendants of Yiddish speakers use such expressions as, 'Put your keppie [little head] down and go shluffy [to sleep].' Syrian Jews call a joke by the Judeo-Arabic word dahak. Many Sephardic Jews in Seattle refer to underwear with the Ladino word bragas. And Persian Jews praise a child by saying 'moosh bokhoratet,' - which is like 'cutey,' and literally means 'may a mouse eat you.'"

Benor initiated the Jewish English Lexicon in 2007 as a project in a class she was teaching at HUC-JIR. Over the years, the Lexicon has expanded considerably. A recording feature was added so that users can listen to pronunciations of entries and example sentences, submitted by the Lexicon's users. While a majority of the Lexicon's 3600 entries also appear in print Jewish-English dictionaries, over 900 are documented only on that site. Additional crowdsourced dictionaries were added for Jewish heritage words in Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Swedish, and Russian.

Common categories of heritage words include foods (Juhuri: qoqol, Yiddish: cholent, Judeo-Arabic/Ladino: adafina, Bukharian: bakhsh), kinship terms (Juhuri: deday, Modern Hebrew: ima, Yiddish: tate, Persian: baba), terms of endearment (Persian: joon, Judeo-Arabic/Modern Hebrew: kapara, Yiddish: neshomele), cultural and religious terms (Bukharian: kenisa, Judeo-Arabic/Ladino: kuracha, Yiddish: pushke), and other expressions (Persian: chetori, Yiddish: a yor mit a mitvokh, Ladino: bivas kreskas enfloreskas, Persian: ghorboonet beram, Juhuri: mugum mə).

The term "heritage words" was coined by Evelyn Dean-Olmsted in her dissertation and a 2012 academic paper based on her research on Syrian Jews in Mexico. Dean-Olmsted, creator of the Latin American Jewish Lexicon and a member of the Jewish Language Project's advisory board, says, "People hold these words dear; they are often used or associated with strong emotion. In many communities that have experienced language shift across generations, heritage words play an important role in enacting and transmitting collective identity." Dean-Olmsted is interviewed on the first episode of the podcast, which explores significance of heritage words by interviewing people who use them, including writer Sarah Sassoon and actor Mayim Bialik.

Kyle Fingerhut, a linguistics and Jewish studies student at the University of Amsterdam, moderates the Jewish English Lexicon and manages the other dictionaries. "I appreciate the opportunity I've had to document heritage words I inherited from both the Moroccan and Ashkenazi sides of my family (such as kumparayena, mdurayena, tishdakh, and messer)," Fingerhut says. "I even find myself using handy phrases I've discovered in the lexicon (such as hamevin yavin). Overall, the JEL has allowed me to connect with my Jewish identity like never before. I hope more Jews can share that experience." Fingerhut is also developing a Jewish Dutch Lexicon based on his B.A. thesis.

Noah Khaloo, a linguistics Ph.D. student at UCSD and a Documentation Assistant for the Jewish Language Project, says, "My role in developing the Jewish English Lexicon was adding words in my heritage language, Persian, that are used regularly in spoken Jewish English. These included names for Jewish holidays and common Iranian foods. This work was particularly meaningful to me, as it allowed me to consider my heritage language in a novel context. I had never truly registered that words in my heritage language play a role in how I communicate in English."

The Heritage Words podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can hear the trailer here. Episodes will be posted every two weeks. Videos of each episode will be posted on the Jewish Language Project's YouTube channel.

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