Native Designations of Judezmo as a 'Jewish Language'

HIKREI MA‛ARAV U-MIZRAHStudies in Language, Literature and History

Presented to Joseph Chetrit

Edited by

Yosef Tobi and Dennis Kurzon

Editorial Committee: Yitzhaq Avishur, Moshe Azar, Sol Azuelos-Atias,

Moshe Bar-Asher (chair), Yaakov Bentolila, Dennis Kurzon, Yosef Tobi

The publication of this book was made possible by the assistance of the following foundations and institutions:

Matanel FoundationThe President of the University of Haifa

The Rector of the University of HaifaThe Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, the University of Haifa

ISBN 978-965-540-142-4

©Copyright by Carmel Publishing, Jerusalem 2011

Typograpphy: Pardess PublishingPrinted in Israel

Table of Contents

VOLUME I

The research work of Joseph Chetrit ה

The publications of Joseph Chetrit יא

PART ONESTUDIES IN JEWISH LANGUAGES

Yitzhak AvishurQuadriconsonantal verbs derived from nouns in Iraqi Judeo-Arabic (Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, and others) 3

Yaakov BentolilaThe Hispanic jota in the Ladino of North Africa 43

Moshe Bar AsherHigh language and spoken language in the Sharh copies of the “Song of Songs” 59

Yosef TobiLinguistic registers in the Jewish theatre of Tunis in the first half of the 20th century 83

Aharon MamanJewish Moghrabi from David Bouskila to Asher Cohen: A revival or a swan song?

111

Tsvi Sadan (Tsuguya Sasaki)The Bible and Yehoash’s Yiddish Translation

135

Ora (Rodrigue) SchwarzwaldExplicit and Implicit Hebrew in Rabbinical Ladino 155

Ofra Tirosh-BeckerNew and Old in the translation of the “Ethics of the Fathers” and its commentary 181

PART TWOSTUDIES IN LANGUAGE

Sol Azuelos-AtiasThe language of polemic discourse in the judicial drama 211

Moshe AzarPolysemy in the eyes of the lexicographer 235

Ilan EldarThe study of the Hebrew language in Medieval Italy

255

Michal EphrattSilence as expression and expressions of silence 275

Shosh ShakedThe Vinograd Report: The social perspective of criticism – pragmatic insights 299

Shimon SharvitVerbal ‘protection’ from the magic power of words 331

PART THREESTUDIES IN LITERATURE AND MUSIC

Tamar Alexander“Eat before they eat you”: Identity, memory and gender in Judeo-Spanish proverbs on food 365

Ephraim Hazan and Uri MelamedHomonyms in the poetry of Rabbi Abraham Ben Zimra 399

Meir Malul“Love thy neighbor as thyself” — Who is the “neighbor” and what is love? Kinship, altruism and negation of the Other in Biblical thought 429

Meir NizriThe complex Muwashshah forms of Hebrew poetry in Morocco in the 19th and 20th centuries 449

Joseph TedghiAn unknown poem by Shemuel Malka on Solika the Just 473

Edwin SeroussiA textbook on classical Ottoman music in an 18th century Ladino manuscript 491

Avi Eilam-AmzallagForms and musical rhythm in the piyyut of Moroccan Jews: The Gharnati style 505

PART FOURCHAPTERS IN HISTORY

Yosef Yinnon-FentonA Maghrebi pamphlet against Jews: The Book Aۥhkām al-Ďimma of ‛Abd al-Karīm al-Maghilli 529

Michael LaskierThe Jews of France at the height of the political confrontation between France and Israel, 1967–1974 567

Moshe AmmarThe life of Rabbi David Halevi 623

Yaron Tsur‘A totality of vanities’: Romanelli and the Jewish wedding in Morocco 657

VOLUME IISTUDIES IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH

Ruth Amar D’une complicité entre objets et stratégies narratives dans le récit de Tahar Ben Jelloun *1

Jean Baumgarten The Hebrew elements in Yiddish ethical literature: The Kav ha-Yashar by Tsvi Hirsh Koidanover (Frankfurt, 1709)

*15

Kenneth Brown“That’s how it is”: An account of death rituals in Salé, Morocco (circa 1935) *31

David M. Bunis Native designations of Judezmo as a ‘Jewish Language’ *41

Ami Elad-BouskilaThe role of titles in al-Tayyib Sālih’s Works *83

André E. Elbaz Un manuscrit inédit de médecine populaire de Rabat, au Maroc, au XIXe siècle *111

Dennis Kurzon Languages in the landscape as an historical index *129

Gérard Nahon Triste 14 juillet 1799 à Jérusalem: Une lettre de Mardochée-Joseph Meyuhas *149

Daniel J. Schroeter Views from the edge: Jews in Moroccan rural society (Ighil n’Ogho, 1917‒1998) *171

Norman A. StillmanThe functions of Hebrew in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic (with particular reference to the vernaculars of Fez, Sefrou, and Meknes) *193

David M. Bunis

Native Designations of Judezmo as a ‘Jewish Language’

The traditional vernacular of the Sephardic Jews of the former Ottoman Empire is a Jewish fusion language composed primarily of elements of medieval Ibero-Romance, Hebrew-Aramaic, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Balkan, and French and Italian origin. One of the unusual features of this linguist’s delight is the plethora of names by which the language has been called during the course of its history, by native speakers as well as by others. Some of the native glottonyms are characteristic of specific regions or periods of time, while others have been employed simultaneously—within the same region or period—sometimes by one and the same individual, even on the same page of a newspaper or book.

The wealth of native names may be seen as indicators of the shifting roles that the vernacular of the Sephardim has played over the past half millennium, especially the shifting perceptions of the language by its speakers. In part, the proliferation of names reflects the literary bilingualism of the community from its earliest days in the Ottoman Empire: the vernacular is referred to by diverse names not only in the vernacular itself but in the community’s rabbinical Hebrew literature, as well as in writings in other languages used by the Ottoman Sephardim such as French and Italian, Turkish, Greek, Romanian, and South Slavic languages.

The diversity of glottonyms also reflects a phenomenon characteristic of the language and its literature: the existence of strikingly divergent styles or registers of speech, and especially of writing, the user’s choice being determined by such factors as his or her educational background, social level and general religious and cultural orientation, and the subject under discussion. Stylistic variation is manifested primarily by the choice of stock components from which one’s lexemes, morphemes, and even syntactic constructions are drawn, by the alphabet and orthographic rules used to write the language—and by the name or names employed to denote it.

David M. Bunis*42

Today, among its speakers as well as its researchers, the language of the former Ottoman Sephardim is known mostly by names which connect it with Spanish or Romance, i.e., (e)spanyol (in Israel, Hebraized spanyolit) ‘Spanish,’ ǧudeo-espanyol ‘Judeo-Spanish,’ and laδino (cf. Latin latinus ‘Latin’). Although the last name was always popular in Sephardic texts when contrasting the Sephardic vernacular with Hebrew, the first two names appear to have become popular in the speech community from the middle of the 19th century, under the influence of Jewish Enlightenment and other Western European scholars who began taking an interest in the Ottoman Sephardim as “guardians” of linguistic and cultural treasures―including oral literature ―from Spain’s medieval past. From the early 19th century, Haskalah scholars were already referring to the language as “Judeo-Spanish,” or its equivalents in other European languages, just as they called Yiddish “Judeo-German.”1 Westernized intellectuals within the Sephardic community began to follow suit;2 and under the influence of the latter, the name ǧudeo-espanyol gained a certain degree of favor among the everyday speakers themselves, as especially did (e)spanyol. Perhaps the popularity of ǧudeo-espanyol and (e)spanyol was due to a sense among the speakers that these names helped establish a connection between the modern-day speech group which in the middle of the 19th century resided mostly in the Ottoman East, and Spain, which had been the home of their medieval ancestors and which, as a major, modern European

1 E.g., Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (5:2 [1841], pp. 16-18) reproduced a communication received from the Chief Rabbinate of Constantinople, in the original Hebrew and in its Sephardic vernacular translation; the latter was referred to in the periodical as a Jüdisch-Spanische Übersetzung. From the late 19th century, “judéo-espagnol” and its cognates became the preferred name for the language in the European publications which began to devote themselves to the subject (e.g., M. Grünwald, “Über den Jüdisch-spanischen Dialekt als Beitrag zur Aufhellung der Aussprache im Altspanischen,” Zur romanischen Dialektologie [constituting a separate issue of Jüdischen Centralblatt], Belovar, 1882, 48 pp.; Raymond Foulché-Delbosc, “Proverbes judéo-espagnols,” Revue Hispanique 2 [1895], pp. 312-352).

2 This was reflected in Sephardic maskilic publications in Hebrew (e.g., “li-lmod bə-miqra ha-’otiyyot ... ləšon-espanyol-yəhudi” ‘to learn to read the Judeo-Spanish alphabet,’ Barux Mitrani, Ḥinnuxe banim, Jerusalem, Y. D. Frumkin, [1875], p. 14), and in the vernacular itself (e.g., the periodical El nasyonal [5:1 (Constantinople 1877), p. 1] was described by its editor as a peryódiko žudeo espanyol). Unless enclosed within angular <> brackets, indicating material originally appearing in the Latin alphabet, the Sephardic vernacular material cited in this article is here transcribed in Romanization from texts originally in the Hebrew alphabet.

Native Designations of Judezmo as a ‘Jewish Language’ *43

power, enjoyed much greater prestige in the 19th century than the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. As a result of this extraordinary shift, members of the speech group began to denote their everyday native tongue by names imported from outside the speech community itself.

But what had the Sephardim in the Ottoman regions called their language before this terminological shift occurred? At first they appear to have used glottonyms recalling the Latin or Romance origins of Spanish such as laδino and romance, as well as the name franko—a parallel to Ottoman frenkçe ‘Western European language,’ recalling the ‘Western European’ origins of the refugees from Spain. But the Sephardim of the empire ordinarily referred to themselves as ǧuδyós or ǧiδyós ‘Jews’ when distinguishing themselves from their non-Jewish neighbors, and for the most part they were perceived by those neighbors as ‘Jews’ (e.g., Turkish Yahudiler, Cühud, Museviler, and especially derogatory çıfıt, a depreciatory reflex of Arabic yahūdī, through Persian ǧuhūd)3 rather than ‘Spaniards.’ Thus it was natural that, following their arrival in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the fifteenth century and the fading of the painful memory of centuries of residence in Spain culminating in the Expulsion, the Jews came to call their communal language the ‘language of the Jews’ or ‘Jewish language,’ especially when contrasting it with the languages of their gentile neighbors, which were known collectively by expressions such as lingwas de goyim or lešonoδ agoyim4 ‘gentile languages’ (and, in Hebrew

3 E.g., Evliya Çelebi, the 17th-century Ottoman traveler, referred to the ‘Jews’ Gate’ near the Yeni Cami mosque in Istanbul as the Çıfıt Kapısı, and called the ‘Jews’ Bath,’ evidently in the Tophane section of Istanbul, the Çıfıt Hamamı (Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi [Istanbul, İkdam, 10 vols., 1896–1938], vol. 1, Istanbul 1898, pp. 102, 332, cited in Uriel Heyd, “The Jewish Communities of Istanbul in the Seventeenth Century,” Oriens 6 [1953], pp. 299-314 [on pp. 310-311]).

4 E.g., Ya vemos kwantos ke saven lešonoδ agoyim i están noδeδim laléxem ‘We clearly see many [Jews] who know gentile languages and must wander from place to place to earn their bread’ (Yom Ṭov Krespín, Sefer ṣeda bə-yom ṭov, vol. 1, Izmir 1877, f. 117b).

David M. Bunis*44

texts, as synonymous ləšonot ha-goyim5), or lingwas/lingwažes aženas/-os6 ‘foreign languages’ (Hebrew ləšonot noxriyyot).7

This, of course, was completely in keeping with the terminological habit common throughout the Ottoman Empire, by which the name used by an ethnic group to denote its language derived from the name of the group itself, e.g., Türkçe among the Turks (Türkler), ’Ellyniká among the Hellenes or Greeks (’Ellynes). Among the Jews, this pattern is already to be seen in the Bible, in which the language of the ‘Judeans/Jews’ (Yəhudim) is sometimes called ‘Judean/Jewish’ (yəhudit).8 Today, analogous terminology is used in the State of Israel, where the language of the ‘Hebrews’ (‘Ivrim) is called ‘Hebrew’ (‘ivrit). Speakers of other Jewish languages have also called their languages ‘Jewish’ or ‘Hebrew’; the most outstanding example is Yiddish (yidish ‘Jewish’); others include Jewish Persian ebrí ‘Hebrew,’9 and Jewish Neo-Aramaic lišna yehudia ‘Jewish language.’10

Yet, due to the odd name-shift noted above, today many people are unfamiliar with the fact that, in past generations, Sephardic Jews throughout the Ottoman Empire referred to their language as the ‘Jewish language,’ ‘Jewish,’ and similar expressions demonstrating a native identification of the language with the Jewish community rather than with Spain or Spaniards. The purpose of the present article is to document this earlier terminological practice, as part of a larger study of the names used by the Sephardim and

5 E.g., ‘And Maimonides wrote at the end of Hilxot Sanhedrin that the names that are in a language of the gentiles (bi-lšon ha-goyim) are considered as appellations’ (Šim‘on ben Ṣemaḥ Duran [Algiers, 15th century], Yaxin u-Vo‘az, vol. 1, Livorno 1782 [Jerusalem 1970], no. 58); cf. also Yosef Karo, Bet Yosef, ’Oraḥ ḥayyim, Venice 1555, section 690 (ləšonot ha-goyim). For lack of space, citations from Hebrew texts are presented in this article in English translation only.

6 Cf. Raḥamim Mənaḥem Mitrani, Sefer me-‘am lo‘ez ... Yəhošua‘, vol. 2, Izmir 1870, f. 7a; ’Eli‘ezer Papo, Pele yo‘eṣ in ladinu, tr. Ye’uda Papo, vol. 1, Vienna 1870, p. 201; El meseret 23:2 (ed. Alexandre Benghiatt, Izmir 1918), p. 1.

7 E.g., “The will was translated from a foreign language (mi-lšon noxri) into the Holy Tongue” (Yosef Ben Lev [Maharival, b. Monastir 1505, d. Constantinople 1580], Šə’elot u-tšuvot, Constantinople 1573 [Jerusalem 1988], vol. 1, no. 64); “If a city has two names, one in the speech of Israel (bə-fi Yisra’el) and one in a foreign language (bi-lšon noxri), the name by which Israel calls it is the primary one” (David Pardo [b. Italy, 1718, d. ’Ereṣ Yiśra’el, 1790], Mixtam lə-Dawid, ’Even ha-‘ezer, Salonika 1772, no. 9).

8 E.g., II Kings 18:26.9 Haideh Sahim, personal communication, for which I express my gratitude.10 ’Avraham Ben-Ya‘aqov, Qəhillot Yəhude Kurdistan, Jerusalem 1961, p. 21.


other Jews to denote their languages.11 In order to furnish a picture of the use of the glottonyms under study over time, they will be discussed according to the chronological order of their appearance in the sources. Reference will be made to native terminology in the vernacular itself, and in Hebrew texts by Ottoman Sephardic authors.

Before the Expulsion

In sources preceding the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, references to the Ibero-Romance used by Jews are few. Some connect the language with Romance or Latin in general; but a few appear to connect Jewish linguistic habits with the Jewish community. The term <judayco> (< Lat. iūdaĭcus) appeared, with reference to Jewish prayer texts, in Christian accusations against Jews made to authorities of the Inquisition, such as that against the convert called María Alonso, of whom it was claimed that she <rezaua oraçiones judaycas e ebraycas> ‘recited Judaic and Hebraic prayers’ (from Ciudad Real 1484).12 Here <judayco> may have denoted ‘judaized Romance,’ presumably as opposed to <ebrayco>, denoting ‘Hebrew.’ The term could also have referred simply to prayer texts with an obvious Jewish content, though not necessarily in a distinctively Jewish language. In an earlier document, the 14th-century Biblia medieval romanceada judío-cristiana,13 in which Jews had probably had a hand, Biblical Hebrew yəhudit ‘(in) the Judean/Jews’ language’ (i.e., Hebrew) was rendered <lengua judayca> (in II Kings 18:26) and <judaycamente> (in II Kings 18:28).

Pre-Expulsion Hebrew works refer to distinctions between the terminology of Jews and Christians by means of circumlocutions such as X, še-ha-‘ivrim

11 For an analysis of the names for Judezmo within the broader framework of native names for Jewish languages, see David M. Bunis, “The Names of Jewish Languages: A Taxonomy,” in Il mio cuore è a oriente: Studi di linguistica storica, filologia e cultura ebraica dedicati a Maria Luisa Mayer Modena, eds. Francesco Aspesi, Vermondo Brugnatelli, Anna Linda Callow & Claudia Rosenzweig, Milan, Cisalpino, pp. 415-433.

12 Haim Beinart (ed.), Records of Trials of the Spanish Inquisition in Ciudad Real 1. 1483-1485, Jerusalem, Israel National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974, p. 229.

13 2 vols., Madrid, Francisco Suárez, 1950–55.

David M. Bunis*46

qor’im Y ‘X, which the Hebrews call Y,’14 X, ha-niqra ben ha-nosərim Y ‘X, called among the Christians Y.’15 Christian characters appearing in such works referred to their own terminology as ha-niqra ’eslenu X ‘which is called among us X,’16 as opposed to that used among the Jews or Hebrews—ha-niqra ’eslam Y ‘which is called among them Y.’17

Following the Expulsion

Among the Jews’ neighbors in the Ottoman Empire In the Ottoman Empire the Jewish community was known as the Yahudi milleti ‘Jewish nation,’ and early on, among the Turks, their everyday vernacular was called Yahudice,18 Musevice,19 or, disparagingly, çıfıt ‘Jew(ish).’ Thus, of Sir Dudley North (1641-1691), an English agent for the Turkey Company in Constantinople from 1662 to 1680, it was said: “Our merchant was not ill qualified to travel in this country [i.e., in Spain, in 1680] and to converse in the great trading towns; for he spoke Giffoot very fluently, which is corrupt Spanish. But because the Jews write it in Hebrew characters (which he also could) is it

14 E.g., “Wə-haya ze ‘erev paskwa de sensenyas ’ašer ha-‘ivrim qorin pesaḥ” ‘And this was on the eve of the holiday of unleavened bread, which the Hebrews call pesaḥ’ (Šəlomo ben Verga, Sefer Ševeṭ Yəhuda lə-rabbi Šəlomo ben Verga, ed. Yitzhaq Baer, Jerusalem, Mossad Bialik, 1947, p. 46).

15 E.g. “U-Ven Sira ze hu Yəhošua‘ ben Sireq ... wə-niqra ben ha-noṣərim Ǧosefus Sirek” ‘And Ben Sira is Yəhošua‘ ben Sireq … and he is called among the Christians Ǧosefus Sirek’ (Ben Verga, Ševeṭ Yəhuda, p. 20).

16 E.g., “Dawid ba-‘et ha-hi ‘adayin lo haya mədabber mi-koaḥ ha-niqra ’eṣlenu esprito santo” ‘David at that time still did not speak with the power called among us that of the holy spirit’ (attributed to a Christian king, Ben Verga, Ševeṭ Yəhuda, p. 85).

17 E.g., “Ba-ḥibbur ha-niqra ’eṣlam talmud, wə-hu peruš ha-Brivia” ‘in the composition called among them the Talmud, which is a commentary on the Bible’ (Ben Verga, Ševeṭ Yehuda, p. 26).

18 E.g., Yahudice ‘Spanish as spoken by Sephardi Jews,’ Redhouse Yeni Türkçe-Ingilizce Sözlük, Istanbul, Redhouse, 1990, 11th ed., p. 1236. According to a message posted in the Ladinokomunita internet forum (Digest 3183, 19 September 2007), Turks used the more specific term alman Yahudicesi (“German Jewish”) for ‘Yiddish’.

19 Since the stem Yahudi ‘Jewish’ was perceived to be somewhat derogatory in Turkish, the more “politically correct” Musevice ‘Mosaic’ (< Arabic Mūsawī < Mūsa ‘Moses’) has been used in recent years; e.g., El Tiempo: türkçe musevice siyasi haftalık (Time: Turkish [and] Jewish [language] political weekly), Istanbul 1957.


called Giffoot, or the language which the Jews speak.”20 The Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi (1611-1682), who visited Salonika in 1668, offered samples of the language he called ‘Jewish’21 – obviously referring to the Sephardic vernacular―in his famous travelogue, Seyahatname.22 Similar terminology was employed among other peoples of the region as well: the language was known as Evreiká ‘Hebrew’ in Greek,23 Jevrejski jezik and derogatory Židovski jezik or Čifut ‘Jewish language’ in Serbian (informant, b. Sarajevo),24 and similar terms in Macedonian25 and Bulgarian.26 Well into the 20th century, such terms were used with respect to the Sephardic vernacular in official publications such as state census reports and dictionaries published throughout the region.27

Among the speakersWith reference to the ‘Judean/Jews’ language’ (i.e., Hebrew) designated in the Bible as yəhudit, the pre-Expulsion translation <judayco> cited above was echoed in the 16th century in the Roman-letter Ferarra Bible of 1553, produced

20 Roger North, The Lives of the Right Hon. Francis North ... of the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North, London, 1826, vol. 3, p. 93; apud José M. Benardete, New York, Hispanic Institute in the United States, 1952, p. 106.

21 Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, vol. 3, pp. 120-121, cited in Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, New York, W. W. Norton, c1982, p. 82; cf. also Apostolos Evangelou Vacalopoulos, A History of Salonika, Salonika, n.p., 1963, p. 84.

22 For details see footnote 3 above. 23 Greek census, 1958.24 Benko S. Davitscho of Belgrade reported that, of the Jews replying to the Serbian census

survey published in 1900, “se trovaron muchos ... que, hablando la jerga castellana en las listas mencionadas, la bautizaron de otro nombre, por ejemplo: como hebrea” [i.e. jevrejski] (Angel Pulido Fernández, Españoles sin patria y la raza sefardí, Madrid, E. Teodoro, 1905, p. 641).

25 “The Macedonians always called the spoken language of the Jews the ‘Jewish’ and never the ‘Spanish language’ ” (Žamila Kolonomos, Proverbs, Sayings and Tales of the Sephardi Jews of Macedonia, Belgrade, Savez jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije, 1978, p. 69).

26 Bulgarian Evrejski ezik is defined as ‘the Hebrew language …; Ladino …; Yiddish’ in T. Atanasova, M. Rankova, R. Roussev, D. Spassov, Vl. Phillipov & G. Chakalov, Bulgarian-English Dictionary, Sofia, Naouka I Izkoustvo, 1980, p. 199.

27 E.g., the language of the Jews was listed as “Yahudice,” “Juive,” and “Yiddisch” (!) in the Turkish census reports published in Ankara 1935–1969, and as “Langue juive” in the Bulgarian census of 1900 (cf. Saül Mézan, Les juifs espagnols en Bulgarie, Sofia, Amischpat, 1925, p. 81). Paralleling the shift in native usage itself, in more recent years, ‘Jewish’ has been changed to ‘Spanish’ (i.e., Ispanyolca) in the Turkish census reports.

David M. Bunis*48

by conversos returned to Judaism in Italy, where one finds <hablar Judaico> (Nehemiah 13:24). In a Hebrew-letter Sephardic vernacular manuscript translation of Kings produced in Constantinople in 1580, yəhudit in II Kings 18:26–28 was rendered by the more popular phonological reflex of Latin iūdaĭcus, ǧuδeyγo (ג‘ודייגו); and the anonymous Hebrew-letter Judezmo Bible glossary Ḥešeq Šəlomo of Venice 1588 offers the reduced form ǧuδeγo (ג‘ודיגו).28

Another term for ‘Jewish language’ with probable reference to Hebrew, ǧuδesko, appeared in the first Judezmo adaptation of the 16th-century Hebrew work Sefer ha-yašar, from the second half of the 17th century. In it Pharoah is asked with respect to Joseph: Este ǧuδyó no save avlar otro ke ǧuδesko: I komo será sovre mozotros por vizir, despwés ke no save mwestra lingwa? ‘This Jew does not know how to speak anything but Jewish; so how will he be a viceroy over us, since he does not know our language?’29 But there is no evidence that either ǧuδe(y)γo or ǧuδesko was used by the Ottoman Sephardim specifically to denote their everyday vernacular. Instead, they used the glottonyms: el ǧuδezmo, el ǧuδyó or el ǧiδyó, lingwa de ǧuδyós, la lingwa žudayka, and la lingwa ǧuδía. The remainder of this paper will be devoted to remarks regarding these names.

El ǧuδezmo

Of the native glottonyms designating the Ottoman Sephardic vernacular as a ‘Jewish language,’ el ǧuδezmo appears to have enjoyed the most widespread geographic distribution, over the longest period of time. Among the names for

28 16th-century Judezmo ǧuδeγo provides indirect documentation of the etymon of Old Spanish judiego ‘Jewish, Judaic, Hebraic’—with i perhaps introduced under the influence of judío ‘Jew’—proposed by Joan Corominas (Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, vol. 3, Madrid, Gredos, 1984, p. 534, s. judío). In the 16th century the word was also used adjectivally, e.g., una uzansa ǧuδeγa ‘a Jewish practice’ (Me’ir [ben Šəmu’el Benveniste], tr., Livro lyamaδo en lašón hakóδeš Šulxán hapanim i en laδino meza de el alma, Salonika 1568, f. 107a).

29 Moshe Lazar, ed., Sēfer ha-yāšār: First Ladino Translation (Haverford College, Ms. Hebr. 18), Lancaster Ca., Labyrinthos, 1998, f. 147r. The neologism ǧuδesko is modeled after the numerous native glottonyms with the Hispanic-origin suffix -esko (e.g., turkesko ‘Turkish,’ documented among the Ottoman Sephardim from the 16th century); but this glottonym does not seem to have gained popularity among the speakers and no longer survives.


Jewish languages, ǧuδezmo is particularly interesting in that it exhibits formal, semantic, and functional divergence from its etymon.

Formal distinctiveness Among Christian Spaniards of the Middle Ages, cognate judaísmo (< Latin iūdaĭsmus), denoting ‘Judaism,’30 constituted a learned word,31 and when used, it preserved its learned form, having two vowels in hiatus (-ai-). In the pre-Expulsion Jewish community the corresponding lexeme must have constituted an element of everyday vocabulary, used in its original sense of ‘Judaism’—one of the senses it continues to have in the present-day Sephardic vernacular.32

30 Cf. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua española, Madrid 2001, 22nd ed., judaísmo ‘profesión de la ley de Moisés.’

31 Castilian judaísmo is classified as a ‘cultismo’ in Corominas, Diccionario, vol. 3, p. 534.32 Among the Ottoman Sephardim, ǧuδ-/ǧudezmo/-u is the only form of the word denoting

‘Judaism’ employed through the late 19th century; e.g., Toδo ombre ke el mesmo se kontraδize de si a si en habla o en hečo no es razón de kreer ensu ǧuδezmo ‘Any man who contradicts himself in word or deed should not be believed with regard to his Judaism’ (Baḥye ben Yosef ibn Paquda, Ḥovat ha-ləvavot, tr. Yosef Formón, Salonika c1569, f. 7a). In Ottoman Judezmo the word acquired several derivative senses: ‘croyances, rites et pratiques du judaïsme; ferveur, attachement pour la religion juive’ (Joseph Nehama, Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid, C.S.I.C., 1977, p. 238, s. ǧuđésmo); e.g., El ke aze el moeδ en su zemán i kon ǧuδezmo, ya está kontente el Šem yiδbarax ‘He who celebrates the festival at its proper time and in the proper Jewish manner, (with him) is God quite content’ (’Avraham Palači, Sefer wə-hoxiaḥ ’Avraham, vol. 2, Salonika 1862, f. 49b); La mužer resivyó el orden ... del xaxam, ečándole miles de bendisyones i entrándole mas enel korasón el ǧuδezmo ‘The woman accepted the rabbi’s orders, pronouncing thousands of blessings upon him and having her dedication to Judaism enter deeper into her heart’ (El ǧuγetón 5:18 [ed. Eliyya R. Karmona, Constantinople 1913], p. 2); Los ke van a morar aδyentro de Yerušaláyim devrán ser muy ... puros de ǧuδezmo ‘Those who will live in Jerusalem will have to be very pure in their observance of Judaism’ (El meseret 23:27 [1919], p. 7). The expression kozas de ǧuδezmos denotes ‘Jewish matters,’ cf. [El Nuvelista es] la gazeta franseza entera de kozas de ǧuδezmos ‘Le Nouvelliste is the [Izmir Jewish] French periodical devoted entirely to Jewish matters’ (El meseret 23:19 [1919], p. 4). One who does not conform to the way of life prescribed by the rabbis is said to be livyano en el ǧuδezmo ‘flippant about Judaism’ (’Avraham Pontremoli, Sefer ḥanox la-na‘ar, vol. 1, Izmir 1862, f. 88b) or flošo enel ǧuδezmo ‘(literally) weak in Judaism’ (Yiṣḥaq Farḥi, Aleγría de purim, Livorno 1875, f. 5b). In the Ḥaketía of Moroccan Sephardim, the word assumes the form žuδezmo, and is used solely in the singular, in the sense of ‘religiosidad [judía], ortodoxía, observación rigurosa de los preceptos religiosos [del judaísmo]’ (José Benoliel, Dialecto judeo-hispano-marroquí o hakitía, Barcelona, Ameller, 1977, 2nd ed. p. 220; Alegría Bendayán de Bendelac, Diccionario del judeoespañol de los sefardíes del norte de Marruecos [jaquetía tradicional y moderna], Caracas, Centro de Estudios Sefardíes de Caracas, 1995, p. 385).

David M. Bunis*50

As such, medial -ai- in the word underwent the popular Ibero-Romance monophthongization process -ai- > -ay- > -ey- > -e, yielding ǧuδezmo—a phonological form unknown in Castilian—which, although first documented among the Ottoman Sephardim in the mid-16th century,33 was probably in use among the Jews of medieval Spain.34

Semantic distinctiveness: ǧuδezmo ‘Judaism’ → ‘Jewish language’ By at least the first half of the 18th century, the Jewish reflex of iūdaĭsmus diverged semantically as well as formally from its Castilian counterpart. In at least three major Sephardic population centers of the Ottoman Empire—Salonika, Constantinople, and Edirne—ǧuδezmo had evidently acquired the added sense of ‘Jewish language’ in general, and probably ‘language of Ottoman Sephardic Jews’ in particular. For example, in Salonika, 1715, ’Aharon ’Aškənazi testified that, during a journey from Edirne, he had come upon a Jew who, among Turks, was called Šaín,35 and was asked by the latter to inform the Jews of Salonika that a certain Jewish woman’s son-in-law had “dropped dead” (the coarse expression used by the stranger leading the rabbis to believe that the son-in-law had converted to Islam) and was about to be buried by the Turks. The Jew from Edirne went over to see the body of the deceased and realized that he knew the man. He reported to the Salonika rabbinical judges: Lo viδe en la kara i lo konosí ke.era el yerno de …, ke.se yamava en ǧuδezmo Šemwel Ovaδyá ‘I saw his face and recognized him as the son-in-law of … , who was called in Judezmo Šemwel Ovaδyá.’36

33 En el ǧuδesmo i obra de virtuδ se halyan … dos estremos ‘In the observance of Judaism and practice of virtuous acts are found two extremes’ (Pilar Romeu, ed., Moisés Almosnino: Crónica de los Reyes Otomanos, Barcelona, Tirocinio, 1998, p. 223 [from 1567]). Spelled <Iudesmo> or <Judesmo>, this form of the word is also found in texts produced by ‘Spanish-Portuguese’ or ‘Western Sephardim,’ mostly the descendants of crypto-Jewish New Christians (e.g., Menasseh ben Israel, Thesouro dos Dinim, Amsterdam 1647, f. 59b). But among the Spanish-Portuguese the Spanish learned form <judaismo> is encountered as well (e.g., David Pardo, <Compendio de dinim>, Amsterdam 1689, p. 294).

34 “The term Judesmo probably goes back to pre-Expulsion times as the Judeo-Spanish equivalent for ‘Judaism’ ” (Herman Salomon, The American Sephardi 6:1-2 [New York 1973], p. 96).

35 Cf. Turkish Şahin < Persian Šāhīn.36 Ḥayyim Šəmu’el ben David Florentín, Sefer me‘il Šəmu’el, Salonika 1725, no. 21.


That ǧuδezmo was one of the terms employed by the Constantinople Sephardic community to denote ‘Jewish language’ is demonstrated in ’Avraham ben Yiṣḥaq ’Asa’s translation of the Biblical phrase wə-’al-tədabber ‘immanu yəhudit (‘and speak not with us in the Judeans’/Jews’ language’) in II Kings 18:26 as ‘i non avles kon nos en ǧuδesmo,’ in the edition of Former Prophets with Ladino translation published in Constantinople in 1743.37 The use of the word in the sense of ‘Jewish language’ must have been well established by this time; otherwise it is inconceivable that ’Asa would have incorporated it into his Bible translation, the language of which tends to be extremely conservative. While ’Asa’s use of ǧuδezmo to translate a Biblical word referring to ‘Hebrew’ does not prove that it was also used in his time to denote the Ottoman Sephardic vernacular, this certainly might have been the case; well into the 19th century, Biblical yəhudit was translated as yidish in Yiddish Bible translations, although the latter word had begun to denote ‘Yiddish’ centuries before.38

Unlike the case in other Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Judeo-Persian, in which the ‘Jewish language’ is denoted by a noun that, from the

37 Sefer nəvi’im rišonim … ‘im la‘az, tr. ’Avraham ’Asa, Constantinople 1743; in the remaining volumes of his Ladino Bible translation, published in Constantinople 1743–1745, ’Asa used the same translation for yəhudit (i.e., in II Kings 18:28; Isaiah 36:11, 13; Nehemiah 13:24; II Chronicles 32:18).

38 For example, yəhudit in Nehemiah 13:24 was translated as yidish in the Yiddish text by Yəhuda Leyb ben Ze’ev appearing in Kitve qodeš nidpasim me-ḥadaš, Vienna 1840, although that word had already appeared in the sense of ‘Yiddish’ in the 17th century (see Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, tr. Shlomo Noble, Chicago, University of Chicago, 1980, p. 315). Especially in publications from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, ǧudezmo occasionally denoted ‘Hebrew’ into the 20th century, especially in the writings of religious scholars who, for ideological reasons, could accept only Hebrew as ‘the Jewish language’: e.g., it appeared in opposition to španyol, denoting the ‘Sephardic vernacular,’ in the phrase Fwe un savyu puet in ǧudezmu, španyol, i arabu ‘He was a sagacious poet in Hebrew, Španyol, and Arabic’ (Ya‘aqov Altarats, Trizoru di Yisrael, vol. 4, Belgrade 1894, p. 223). But since ǧuδezmo ordinarily denoted the ‘Sephardic vernacular’ in the speech of the Ottoman Sephardic folk, rabbinical writers often added the parenthetic gloss lašón akóδeš or ivrí to indicate that they were employing ǧuδezmo in the sense of ‘Hebrew’ rather than ‘Judezmo’; e.g., mildar … la lingwa ǧudezma, la kwala es yamada lašón akódeš, ... i … istrinar ... kilalim di la gramátika ǧudezma, il kwal es yamadu dikduk lašón ivrí ‘reading the Jewish/Hebrew language, which is called lašón akoδeš, and introducing the rules of Jewish/Hebrew grammar, called grammar of the ivrí language’ (Moše David Alkalay, Šəmona pəraqim mi-sefer ḥinnux ləšon ‘ivri u-mvo ha-diqduq, Bucharest [1860], p. [i]).

David M. Bunis*52

outset, also functioned as an adjective meaning ‘Jewish,’ the semantic shift ‘Judaism’ → ‘Jewish language’ evidenced by ǧuδezmo calls for an explanation. This shift first arose perhaps in the 16th century,39 possibly as a result of the use of ǧuδezmo in expressions in which its meaning was somewhat ambiguous. One such expression was nombre en ǧuδezmo (or, in Hebrew texts, šem [ba-/šel] yahadut/yəhidut) or ‘name in Judaism, Jewish name’ (which could also be interpreted as ‘name in the Sephardic vernacular’), denoting (a) the name by which an individual was known within the Jewish community, as opposed to the Christian name formerly used by a converso, or that still used by him occasionally, when among non-Jews, after he had returned to Judaism,40 or (b) the Turkish name used by a Jewish businessman when interacting with Turks during business trips throughout the Ottoman Empire,41 or by a Jew who had converted to Islam.42 For example, a responsum of David Ibn Zimra (b. Egypt c1479, d. Eretz Yisrael 1573) discussed a claim by a former crypto-Jew from Portugal who testified in a rabbinical court “that when he was in the Kingdom of Portugal … Andrea Luis came and said to Miss Ledisia Xaluṭa: ‘The daughter of your maid, Rika, who is called that now in Judaism (bə-yahadut) … her daughter, now called in Judaism Klara …, is my daughter,

39 The documentation of ǧuδeγo and ǧuδesko in the sense of ‘Jewish language’ into the 17th century does not necessarily preclude the parallel contemporaneous use of ǧuδezmo in that sense.

40 On the Jewish names, or ‘names of/in Judaism’ (šem šel/ba-yahadut), secretly given to crypto-Jews or adopted by former New Christians upon returning to the open practice of Judaism, see Ben Lev, Šə’elot u-tšuvot, vol. 3, no. 27. Cf. also: “We heard them say that the witnesses are Israelites, and when they are among gentiles they change their names to gentile names (bə-šem gayyut), and when they are among Israelites they are called by their name of Judaism (bə-šem yahadut)” (Yom Ṭov Ṣahalon [1559–c1620], Šə’elot u-tšuvot Mahariṭ Ṣahalon ha-ḥadašot, annotated by Yosef Boksboym, Mas‘ud Ben Šim‘on & Moše Rubenstein, two vols., Jerusalem, Maxon Yərušalayim, 1980, no. 158).

41 E.g., of a certain Jew it was said “[The Jews] called him Šabbətay and the Turks called him Šabán” (Šəmu’el de Medina [Salonika, 1506-1589], Šə’elot u-tšuvot Maharašdam, ’Even ha-‘ezer, Salonika 1596, no. 51 [from 1561]).

42 E.g., “He saw … the convert named Mehmed Reíz, whose former name in Israel was ’Avraham Yatom” (Moše Benveniste [1606-1677], Šə’elot u-tšuvot pəne Moše, vol. 3, Constantinople 1719 [Jerusalem 1988], no. 15, from 1660).


because your maid got pregnant from me.”43 The phrase in Judaism used with reference to the “Jewish” names Rika and Klara, as opposed to the names used by these women when they had been posing as Christians, could also have been understood as meaning in the language of the Jews.

Furthermore, Jewish witnesses in rabbinical courts of the Ottoman Empire frequently swore en sus almas i en sus ǧuδezmos ‘on their souls and on (“in”) their Judaisms’ (or, in Hebrew texts, ‘al nafšam wə-‘al yəhidutam) that their testimony was truthful.44 Their oath was on their Judaism, but it was phrased in the language of the Jews.

Another somewhat ambiguous expression was estar en ǧuδezmo, meaning literally “to be in Judaism,” i.e., ‘to be Jewish, to practice Judaism openly.’ Having a rabbinical Hebrew parallel in haya ba-yahadut,45 it designated (a) the former state of Jewishness of an individual who had become a converso or New Christian in Iberia, or (b) the re-acceptance and open practice of Judaism by such an individual outside of Iberia. For example, in a rabbinical responsum of Yəḥi’el Basan (b. Rhodes 1550, d. Constantinople 1625) a reference to ‘those who openly practice Judaism [as opposed to being crypto-Jews or New Christians]’ took the form eyos ke están en ǧuδezmo.46 Because the phrase en

43 David Ibn Zimra, Responsa, vol. 2, Warsaw 1882, no. 651. Cf. also “Regarding those conversos (’anusim) whose families had been forced to convert many years ago and who were born in non-Jewishness (ba-gayyut) and say that they remember their father’s name in Judaism (šem ’avihem bə-yahadut)…” (Karo, Šə’elot u-tšuvot bet Yosef, section Dine giṭṭin wə-gerušin, no. 1); “If that name [used by a convert to Islam] is common among Jews, one may use it in a bill of divorce, since one who sees the bill will say that the name in Judaism (di-šəma ba-yahadut) was changed to Yosef [from Yusuf]” (Yəšu‘a Ševabo Zayin [b. Egypt, c1670–1740], Peraḥ Šušan, ’Even ha-‘ezer, kəlal 1, no. 8, Jerusalem 1994).

44 E.g., “There came before us … Šem Ṭov … and on his soul and on his Judaism (wə-‘al yəhiduto) he said…” (Yiṣḥaq Adarbi [b. Salonika c1510], Divre rivot, Salonika 1581, no. 208). In Judezmo, in such contexts, the corresponding expression is en su ǧuδezmo ‘in his Judaism/Judezmo’; if several people are testifying together, the plural form is used: e.g. Mozotros los afirmaδos ... damos eδuδ en mwestras almas i en mwestros ǧuδezmos ... komo ... ‘We the undersigned … testify on our souls and on our Judaisms ... that ...’ (Rə’uven ’Eliyyahu Yiśra’el [b. 1856], manuscript text from 1885, f. 23a, kindly shown to me by Rabbi Marc Angel of New York).

45 E.g., “A certain apostate who was a convert and an unbeliever, when he was in Judaism (bi-hyoto ba-yahadut), was a writer of divorce bills” (Yosef Karo [1488-1575], Šə’elot u-tšuvot bet Yosef, ’Even ha-‘ezer, section Dine giṭṭin wə-gerušin, Salonika 1598 [Jerusalem 1960], no. 14).

46 Yəḥi’el Basan, Šə’elot u-tšuvot, Constantinople 1737, f. 88b.

David M. Bunis*54

ǧuδezmo in such contexts was somewhat ambiguous—it originally denoted ‘in Judaism,’ but also resembled parallel phrases such as en turkesko or en serbesko, in which the reference was to a language—the meaning of en ǧuδezmo was evidently reinterpreted as ‘in the Jews’ language,’ in addition to ‘in the Jews’ religion.’

The use of ǧuδezmo in the sense of ‘Jewish language’ might also have been meant or understood as an abbreviated form of the expression lingwa/lašón de ǧuδezmo ‘language of Judaism/Jews,’47 in contrast to the language or manner of speaking of non-Jews, as well as to the non-judaized Castilian of Iberian conversos who returned to Judaism in the Ottoman regions. It is important to note in this regard that the expressions hablar en cristiano (literally, “to speak in Christian”) and decir en cristiano (“to say in Christian”) are used in Spanish to denote ‘to speak/say in Spanish,’ as well ‘to speak/say simply or clearly; to talk sense.’48 During the period of Muslim occupation of Spain, cristiano as a glottonym stood in opposition to names designating ‘Arabic,’ also used metaphorically for ‘unclear language.’49 If this term was known to the Jewish exiles from Spain who found refuge in the Ottoman Empire it could easily have constituted an antonym for characteristically Jewish speech, or speech en ǧuδezmo ‘in Judaism, in Jewish,’ as opposed to the language of Spanish Christians, old and new, as well as to the languages of non-Jews in the empire.

Functional distinctiveness The shift in the semantic sense of ǧuδezmo from ‘Judaism’ to ‘Jewish (language)’ also caused a grammatical shift: originating as a substantive, the

47 This expression was probably known from at least the 18th century and continued to enjoy some use into the modern era, e.g., Avraam Sarano … es perukero, kere dezir barbero, o adetá berber por berber en nwestro lašón de ǧuδezmo ‘Avraam Sarano is a hair stylist, that is, a hair dresser, or plainly put, a barber, in our language of Judezmo/Judaism’ (El meseret 23:62 [1919], p. 7).

48 Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., s. cristiano: hablar en cristiano ‘(coloq.) 1. expresarse en términos llanos y fácilmente comprensibles, o en la lengua que todos entienden; 2. hablar en castellano’; decir en cristiano ‘expresarse en términos llanos.’

49 Cf. S. hablar en arábigo (literally, ‘to speak Arabic’) ‘to talk double Dutch’ (Colin Smith, ed., Collins Spanish–English English–Spanish Dictionary, London 1977, s. arábigo); estar algo en arábigo (literally, ‘to be in Arabic’) ‘to be very difficult to understand something’ (Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., s. arábigo).


word began to function as an adjective as well, as is usual with Hispanic-origin language names in Judezmo, as in other languages, e.g., J[udezmo]. fransés m. ‘French language’; adj. ‘French,’ turkesko/turko m. ‘Turkish language’; adj. ‘Turkish.’50 Thus the original substantive denoting ‘Judaism’ also came to function as an adjective meaning ‘Jewish.’ The suffix -ezmo began to be perceived as an adjectival suffix, and by at least the mid-19th century, when used adjectivally, ǧuδezmo was inflected for gender and number:51 e.g., kifí

50 The adjectival function enjoyed by ǧuδezmo among the Ottoman Sephardim reminded David S. Blondheim of Old Spanish ju-/iudezno/-diezno, which he defined as ‘d’origine juive’ (Les parlers judéo-romans et la Vetus Latina, Paris, E. Champion, 1925, p. 65), but, more strictly speaking, seems to have denoted a ‘young Jewish male’ (i.e., it was a substantive; see Helen Boreland, “Typology in Berceo’s Milagros: The Judiezno and the Abadesa prenada,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 60:1 [1983], pp. 15-29).

51 Apparently on analogy with this, the suffix -ezmo came to be employed as an adjective marker in other neologisms, such as krisyanezmo ‘Christian’ (e.g., la ley kristyanesma ‘the Christian religion’ [Ya‘aqov Altarats, Trizoru di Yisrael, vol. 3, Belgrade 1894, p. 41]; Izu kitar todus lus livrus ǧudezmus i krisyanesmus ‘He had all of the Jewish and Christian books taken out’ [Altarats, Trizoru di Yisrael, vol. 4, p. 245], and anglezmo ‘English’ (e.g. Un ǧuδyó ... italyano o anglezmo ‘An Italian or English Jew’ [Yaqim Bexar, Lingwa i nasyón yisraelita, Constantinople, 1910, p. 30]). Once ǧuδezmo had acquired an adjectival function in the sense of ‘Jewish,’ speakers could then create further innovative derivatives such as dezǧuδezmo ‘unkindly (literally, “un-Jewish”)’; e.g. Siría muy feu i dizǧudezmu azer ansí un pasu ‘It would be very ungracious and unkindly to take such a step’ (Il kureu di Vyena 6:18 [Vienna 1875], p. 1). (Christian Spanish does not appear to have a parallel negating construction incorporating cristiano, instead using circumlocutions such as poco cristiano to denote ‘unchristian’; the Judezmo neologism was perhaps influenced by German unchristlich.) Since ǧuδezmo also functioned as a noun denoting ‘Judaism; Jewish language; etc.,’ an alternative adjective was derived through the suffixing of -ozo (cf. Old Spanish -oso): the occasionally jocular adjective ǧuδezmozo ‘assiduous in the practice of Judaism; pious; religious; fanatically observant’ (cf. Cynthia M. Crews, “Notes on Judæo-Spanish,” Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, vol. VII, part III (1955), pp. 192-199 [on p. 197]; e.g., Merese bezaδo: Sin ser ǧuδezmozo, yiné se trespasa por su ermano de ley ‘You deserve a kiss: Without being a religious fanatic, you nevertheless feel a deep affection for your Jewish brothers’ (Aksyón, Salonika 1938 [unidentifiable issue and page number]). On analogy with the westernizing form ǧudaizmo ‘Judaism,’ borrowed in the 19th century from French or Italian and enabling an unambiguous semantic distinction between ‘Judaism’ and ‘Judezmo’ (e.g., El ǧudaizmo de estas partes ‘Judaism in these regions’ [La epoka 26:1295 [Salonika 1901], p. 5), the perhaps ironic form ǧudaizmozo was also employed in the senses conveyed by ǧuδezmozo (e.g., Se fizo muy ǧudaizmoza ‘She became extremely religious’ (El kirbač 2:8 [Salonika 1911], p. 1). In Viennese texts ‘Judaism’ was also denoted by the Germanizing form il ǧudaizmus (e.g., Il kureu di Vyena no. 3 [1870], p. 1).

David M. Bunis*56

il duver ǧudezmu [=m.sg.] ‘according to Jewish obligation’;52 Son de la ley γreγa, ǧuδezma [=f.sg.] i protestante ‘They are of the Greek, Jewish and Protestant religions’;53 istanpar livrus ǧudezmus [=m.pl.] ‘to publish Jewish/Judezmo books;’54 kantikas ǧudezmas [=f.pl.] ‘Jewish songs.’55 Something done ‘as accepted among the Jews’ or ‘in Jewish fashion’ was designated as a la ǧuδezma.56

Intensified use of ǧuδezmo in the 19th and early 20th centuries From the early 19th century there is increasing documentation in Sephardic vernacular writings, from locales throughout the Ottoman Empire, of the use of ǧuδezmo in the specific sense of ‘Ottoman Sephardic vernacular.’ For instance, according to a testimony presented in a Salonika rabbinical court in 1824, a Salonikan visiting Egypt was taken captive for ransom by Muslim brigands. A fellow Salonikan managed to visit the prisoner in an inner cell in which he was being held. The visitor began to converse with him in Judezmo but quickly understood that the man was trying to present himself as a non-Jew, perhaps so that his father would not be pressured to pay an exorbitant ransom fee: in order to safeguard his ruse, the prisoner immediately asked his visitor not to speak with him in the language associated with Jews. The visitor later described his interaction with the detained man in a letter addressed to the prisoner’s father, which was presented in the rabbinical court. Among his remarks he wrote: Fwi al saray i buškí aí.… Entrí aδyentro i viδe un mučačo ečaδo, i.le avlí. Me dišo ke.no le avlara en ǧuδezmo.57

52 Alkalay, Šəmona pəraqim, f. [iv]a.53 Ša‘are mizraḥ 1 (ed. Rəfa’el ‘Uzi’el, Izmir 1846), p. 54.54 Alkalay, Šəmona pəraqim, f. [v]a.55 E.g., kantikas miatad ǧudezmas, miatad slavonezas ‘songs half Jewish, half

Slavic’ (Ilustra gwerta di istorya, 2nd series, 2:4 [Vienna 1881], p. 86). This stood in opposition to kantiγas de goyim, e.g., Šalíax sibur ke … kanta kantiγas de goyim le defenderán ke non aγa tal ‘a synagogue cantor who sings gentile songs shall be prohibited from doing so’ (’Avraham ’Asa, tr., Sefer šulḥan ha-melex, Constantinople 1749, f. 25b).

56 E.g. asta kavo de este mez, a la ǧuδezma, fin de teveθ ‘by the end of this month, according to the Jewish calendar, the end of Teveth’ (El meseret [16.12.1918], p. 3).

57 ‘I went to the palace and looked there… I went inside and saw a young man lying down and I spoke with him. He told me not to speak to him in Judezmo’ (Ya‘aqov Rəfa’el Mənaše, Bə’er ha-mayim, ’Even ha-‘ezer, Salonika 1836, no. 67).


In the presence of gentiles, the Jews’ group language naturally functioned as a secret code incomprehensible to most outsiders. In a literary re-enactment from Salonika, 1849, of a conversation ostensibly held before the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV between Šabbətay Səvi, the false messiah of 17th -century Izmir, and the sultan’s formerly Jewish physician who had converted to Islam, the latter advised Šabbətay to accept Islam as well. He offered the advice in their mutual vernacular. In the literary portrayal, the interaction was described as follows: I estava delantre el rey un méδiko ke era ǧiδyó i se izo turko, i le dišo a Šabetay Seví en ǧuδezmo, “Savrás ke estás en sekaná, tu i los ǧiδyós; i syendo ansí, mi konsežo es ke te aγas turko .”58

From the middle of the 19th century the publication of historical works on medieval Spanish Jewry by scholars of the Jewish Enlightenment caused intellectuals in the contemporary Sephardic communities to reflect on their continued use of a vernacular originating among the Spaniards, who had expelled their forefathers from the land in which they had dwelled for centuries. Some of the Sephardim in the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires who addressed the issue expressed pride in their community’s having maintained Hispanic cultural traditions into their own times, but others were less enthusiastic. In a supplement to the Viennese Sephardic periodical Il kureu di Vyena published in 1872, the Sephardic rabbi David Ha-Levi of Bucharest characterized the language used by his community as a ‘black memory, a bitter souvenir’ (negru rikordu, tristi suvinir) of their tragic Spanish past. To him it seemed a bizarre irony that in the Ottoman Empire the descendants of Jews who had been cruelly exiled from Spain should continue to consider the truest sign of a Jew to be his speaking the language commonly known as ‘Jewish’:

In Ǧirmanya, Fransya, Italya i Grigaya, lus mwestrus tumarun la avla dil lugar, i munčus di lus sifaradim in Nimtsía i Rumanía dešan ambizar a.lus ižus la avla dil paéz ondi si topan, i il ǧudezmu dišarun para las vyežas i las mosas.

58 Yosef Me’ir Śaśon & Yiṣḥaq Bəxor Amarači, Musar haskel, Salonika, 1849, f. 65b. In a linguistically western-influenced 19th-century re-creation of this conversation, the phrase en ǧuδezmo was replaced by en la lingwa espanyola (Livro de los akontesimyentos de Šabetay Seví yamaδo Meoraoθ Seví, Salonika 1871, p. 135).

David M. Bunis*58

In Turkía es il vidraderu sinyal di un ǧidyó, kwandu avla il ǧudezmu... 59

To Ha-Levi, the ‘Jewish language’ was merely ‘defective Spanish.’ Ha-Levi was perhaps the first to stress the problematic absence of modern technical terms in the language (Il ǧudezmu ki avlamus es difiktozu... Li faltan las palavras téxnikas). While praising the loftiness of Hebrew, he proposed that Judezmo speakers replace their language with a ‘broad, cultured, and civilized language’ such as those of Europe.60

The ‘popular,’ ‘low-prestige’ character attributed to the Sephardic vernacular by westernized native intellectuals of the 19th century was further brought to the fore in Šəlomo ben Astrugo’s adaptation of Le mariage forcé by Moliere (or Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1620–1673), published in Vienna, 1890. The original French text contains a dialogue between the haughty polyglot Pancrace and the simpler Sganarelle. When Sganarelle asks to speak with Pancrace, the latter asks him in which language he would prefer to converse; increasingly frustrated by the seemingly endless list of foreign tongues Pancrace suggests, Sganarelle shouts in despair “Non, non; français, français, français,” i.e., in the everyday language of Moliere’s audience. In his adaptation, Astrugo omitted espagnol from the list of languages proposed by Pancrace—since, under the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment, by the late 19th century the terms (i)španyol and (e)spanyol were employed by some Levantine Sephardim to denote their vernacular—and he replaced Moliere’s français with ǧuδezmo:

Sganarel: Yo kero avlarvos de una koza.Pankrás: I de ke lingwa kereš servirvos kon mi? … Kereš avlarme italyano? Sganarel: No.Pankrás: Almán? … Ingléz? … Latino? … Γreγo? … Ebreo? … Siryako? … Turko? … Arabo? … Fransés? Sganarel: No, no, no, no, no, ǧuδezmo, ǧuδezmo, ǧuδezmo, ǧuδezmo, ǧuδezmo.

59 ‘In Germany, France, Italy, and Greece, the members of our group have adopted the local language, and many of the Sephardim in Austria and Romania allow their children to speak the language of their place of residence, and they leave Judezmo for the old women and servant girls. In Turkey, the true sign of a Jew is when he speaks Judezmo’ (David Ha-Levi, Trizoru di la kaza no. 16, supplement to Il kureu di Vyena 3:17 [Vienna 1872], p. 8).

60 Ibid.


Pankrás: A! En ǧuδezmo!?Sganarel: Si sinyor.Pankrás: Pasaδ dunke de la otra parte, porke esta oreža es apartaδa para las lingwas sientífikas i estranžeras, i esta es para la lingwa de kaδa dia.61

By this means Astrugo achieved in his Judezmo version the same effect produced by Moliere in the French. Note that Moliere’s ‘Hébreu’ was retained (as ebreo) in Astrugo’s adaptation, thus demonstrating that he expected his readers to understand ǧuδezmo as a designation of the ‘Sephardic vernacular,’ and not ‘Hebrew’ or some other Jewish language.

In 1897, Alexandre Benghiatt (the pseudonym of Bəxor Gavri’el Benghiatt, a prolific Izmir journalist and translator) established a ‘political, scientific and literary’ periodical in Izmir called El meseret (The Joy).62 At first, Benghiatt followed in the linguistic footsteps of the preceding generations of Ottoman Sephardic journalists, whose writing displayed massive influence from French and Italian—languages enjoying great prestige in the empire—as a result of the authors’ education in local schools taught in those languages. Given this orientation it was natural for Benghiatt to designate the language of his paper, intended for Izmir Jewry at large, as espanyol (en publikando oy este folyo en espanyol…).63 But those Izmir Sephardim capable of understanding the kind of language Benghiatt thought to employ in his paper generally preferred to

61 Šəlomo ben Astrugo, El kazamyento forsaδo, Vienna 1890, pp. 23-26. The French text reads:

Sganarelle: Je veux vous parler de quelque chose.Pancrace: Et de quelle langue voulez-vous vous servir avec moi …? Voulez-vous me

parler italien ?Sganarelle: Non.Pancrace: Espagnol ? … Allemand ? … Anglais ? … Latin ? … Grec ? … Hébreu ? …

Syriaque ? … Turc ? … Arabe ?Sganarelle: Non, non ; français, français, français.Pancrace: Ah ! français.Sganarelle: Fort bien.Pancrace: Passez donc de l’autre côté ; car cette oreille-ci est destinée pour les langues

scientifiques [et étrangères], et l’autre est pour [la vulgaire et] la maternelle. (Molière, Le mariage forcé, in Oeuvres de Molière, avec des notes de tous les commentateurs,

vol. 1, Paris, Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1890, pp 419-448. I found the Judezmo text amongst the papers of William Milwitzky housed in the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.)

62 Cf. T. meserret < P. masarrat < A. masarra + ta marbuṭa.63 El meseret 1:1 (1897), p. 1.

David M. Bunis*60

read papers in French and Italian rather than in the Sephardic vernacular; and thus the periodical’s linguistic register actually constituted a barrier which prevented Benghiatt from communicating with exactly that sector of Izmir Jewry he sought to reach—the ordinary person in the street, having minimal knowledge of French and Italian. Benghiatt came to realize his mistake, and in later issues of the paper he eventually switched to a much more popular variety of language, as well as to the language-name ordinarily used in that popular variety—ǧuδezmo.64

In El meseret, Benghiatt recommended that journalists writing about matters of significance to the entire community use clear, ‘ordinary Judezmo’ (ǧuδezmo kabá or kabá ǧuδezmo)65 that grocers and fruit-sellers could understand.66 Trying to foster an interest in literature and creative expression among the community’s youth,67 he invited letters and articles from younger readers, recommending that they write in Judezmo (Rekomendamos a los elevos de eskrivir… en ǧuδezmo).68 In 1900 Benghiatt added an Arabic-letter Ottoman Turkish section to the paper (Empesando de oy ... el “Meseret” apareserá en turko i en ǧuδezmo);69 but the time was not yet ripe for such a venture, and

64 A poem by Benghiatt from 1891, reproduced in El meseret (6:36 [1902], p. 6) from an unspecified source, demonstrates that he had already occasionally designated his language as ǧuδezmo in earlier writings: in it he referred to bonos en turko i tambyén en ǧuδezmo, i avia tambyén en γreγo de mezmo ‘vouchers in Turkish and also in Judezmo, and there were some in Greek as well.’

65 The former order reflects Hispanic syntax, the latter, Turkish (cf. T. kaba türkçe ‘common Turkish’).

66 Esto lo deven los gazeteros de eskrivir kon byervos klaros i ... ke sean eskritas en ǧuδezmo kabá para ke lo entyenda i el bakal i el manaf (El meseret 2:44 [1898], p. 344). When readers—including fictitious ones—caught Benghiatt drifting from ‘common Judezmo’ into a style more reminiscent of that used by the rabbis, they complained: Mas antes era en adetá kabá ǧuδezmo ke mos eskrivía, aγora es kon pesukim ke mos está avlando ‘Before you used to write for us in plain Judezmo, and now you’ve started speaking to us using Biblical verses’ (El meseret 23:54 [1919], p. 1).

67 El meseret voiced the complaint: Vemos elevos saliδos i salyendo delas eskolas dela Aliansa de Ezmir no saver redižir no solo dos byervos en turko o en fransés, ma mezmo en ǧuδezmo ‘We see pupils having completed their studies in the Alliance school of Izmir who not only cannot compose two words in Turkish or French, but not even in Judezmo’ (El meseret 12:45–46 [1908], p. 10).

68 Cf. El meseret 5:4 (1900), p. 6; 5:45 (1900), p. 5.69 ‘Beginning today El meseret will appear in Turkish and Judezmo’ (El meseret 4:1 [1900],

p. 3).


by 1902 the Turkish section had been discontinued (la partiδa turka fwe ... remplasaδa kon ǧuδezmo).70 Sixteen years later Benghiatt was to write that El meseret was ‘a paper meant to be read by people who knew no language other than Judezmo.’71 Other contributors to El meseret also employed the name ǧuδezmo; for example, a reader, advertising his professional expertise in order to gain employment, wrote: Un sinyor, ... poδyendo byen tener una korrespondensya en turko, fransés, ǧuδezmo, i al menenester en γreγo, kere topar un posto.72 In El meserret local non-Jewish transportation authorities were thanked for replying to Jewish correspondence in the language of the Jews;73 and for posting schedules of their services in Judezmo.74

Within the linguistic Babel which the Ottoman Empire constituted, Benghiatt estimated the number of Judezmo speakers in 1910 to be some 300,000.75 Of the Jews expected to attend a theatrical performance in a Talmud Torah in Izmir in 1919, he suggested that barely 10% could understand Hebrew and 40% could appreciate a monologue in Turkish, while all could understand

70 ‘The Turkish section has been replaced by Judezmo’ (El meseret 6:16 [1902], p. 1).71 El Meseret es un žurnal para ser meldaδo de akeos ke no konosen otra lingwa mas ke el

ǧuδezmo (El meseret 23:32 [1918], p. 1).72 ‘A gentleman able to maintain correspondence in Turkish, French, Judezmo, and, if

necessary, Greek, seeks a position’ (El meseret 19:23 [1914], p. 1).73 Nos azemos el plazer de ... rengrasyar el direktor ǧeneral ... [de] la kompanía del

kamino de fyerro de Aydin ... por … responder en nwestra lingwa, en ǧuδezmo, a las reklamasyones o demandas ke nwestros negosyantes del enteryor le adresan iγwalmente en ǧuδezmo. ‘It is a pleasure for us to thank the general director of the Aydın Railroad Company for answering, in Judezmo, claims and queries that our businessmen of the interior address to him, likewise in Judezmo’ (El meseret 8:14 [1904], p. 5).

74 E.g., En los avizos ke la aǧensya maritima … está metyendo en la pwerta de su aǧensya, ay espesyalmente syempre uno eskrito en ǧuδezmo. ‘Among the notices placed on the door of the maritime agency, there is always one especially written in Judezmo’ (El meseret 23:69 [1919], p. 3).

75 Akí, en Turkía, kada nasyón tyene su lingwa. Mas neγro ke en Bavel, akí avlan el turko, el γreγo, el fransés, el ǧuδezmo, el arabo, el ermení, eče[tra].... Toδos los ǧuδyós ke avlan en ǧuδezmo en Turkía suven apenas al número de 300 mil. ‘Here, in Turkey, each nation has its language. Worse than in Babel, here they speak Turkish, Greek, French, Judezmo, Arabic, Armenian, etc. All of the Jews who speak Judezmo in Turkey barely reach 300,000’ (El meseret 14:41 [1910], pp. 3–4).

David M. Bunis*62

Judezmo.76 Benghiatt used ǧuδezmo to denote the vernacular used by them in its broadest sense, in all stylistic varieties, including the archaic variety used in calque translations of sacred Hebrew texts, sometimes called laδino.77 In some regions of the former empire, Sephardim continued the pre-Expulsion tradition of writing their vernacular in the ‘Jewish’ or Hebrew alphabet until World War II; both its printed letters and cursive script were also denoted, among others, by the terms ǧuδezmo78 and letras ǧudezmas (Jewish letters),79 as opposed to non-Jewish alphabets and scripts, known collectively as letra

76 Del públiko ke va asistir ... a_la fyesta del Talmuδ Torá ... apenas el dyes por syen entyende el lašón akóδeš i el kwarenta por syen entyende o se plaze oir monólogos en turko, myentres ke … toδos los ke van asistir… son ǧuδyós.... Una ves ansí, porké no azerles γostar alγún monólogo o alγuna čika komedya en ǧuδezmo? ‘Of those who will attend the Talmud Torah festival, barely 10% understand the Holy Tongue and 40% understand or enjoy hearing monologues in Turkish, while all those who will attend are Jews. Therefore, why not let them enjoy a monologue or comic sketch in Judezmo?’ (El meseret 23:48 [1919], p. 3).

77 For example, in 1919 he wrote: [En] el Kal Kaδoš de la Sinyora, ... myentres los tres mwaδim, en las orasyones, los pyutim serán kantaδos en ǧuδezmo, en luγar ke syempre, asta aγora, lo fweron i lo deven ser, en lašón akóδeš ‘In the Sinyora Synagogue, during the prayers of the three festivals, the hymns will be sung in Judezmo, instead of, as always, until now, they were—and they should be—sung, in the Holy Tongue’ (El meseret 23:67 [1919], p. 3). This contrasts with the more narrow definition of ǧuδezmo, ‘le judéo-espagnol vernaculaire,’ proposed by Haïm V. Sephiha (Le ladino: Judéo-espagnol calque—Deutéronome, Paris, Centre de Recherches Hispaniques, 1973, p. 48).

78 De onde trušeron los ǧuδyós de Turkía estos karakteres en ǧuδezmo ke forma nwestra eskritura? (El meseret 11:16 [1907], p. 5); “La escritura llamada judeo-española ... era comúnmente llamada giudesmo” (Michael Molho, Usos y costumbres de los sefardíes de Salónica, Madrid, C.S.I.C., p. 113).

79 Cf. Ya‘aqov Altarats, Sefer zixron Yərušalayim, Belgrade 1887, p. 91. On the denotation of the ‘Jewish’ alphabet as letras ǧuδías see the discussion of lingwa ǧuδía, below. In Hebrew texts produced by Judezmo speakers, the corresponding terms were kətav ‘ivri, e.g., “If it was written in Hebrew script (bi-xtav ‘ivri)…” (Karo, Bet Yosef, ’Oraḥ ḥayyim, section 690), kətav Yisra’el, e.g., “A bill … not necessarily in the writing of Israel (bi-xtav Yisra’el) but even written in a gentile language (bi-lšon ha-goyim)” (Binyamin ben Mattatya [16th century], Sefer šə’elot u-tšuvot Binyamin Zə’ev, Jerusalem 1959, no. 28), and ’otiyyot ha-qodeš ‘letters of holiness’ (e.g., preface to Šəlomo ibn Gabirol, ’Azharot ha-qodeš with Judezmo translation, Livorno 1777, f. [1]a).


de goyim ‘gentile letters,’80 eskritura de goyim ‘gentile writing,’81 or eskritura ažena ‘foreign writing.’82 In the early 20th century, the use of the Latin alphabet in an anonymous letter written in Judezmo was enough to cause the editor of El meseret to suspect that its author was a convert to Christianity.83

Nor was El meseret the only periodical in which the Sephardic vernacular was regularly referred to as ǧuδezmo: in Salonika, for instance, popular periodicals directed toward the Jewish working class and written in their variety of everyday language frequently used this name as well. Inspired perhaps by the rising nationalism of the Greeks and other co-territorial gentile populations who were carving new nation states out of the dismembered Ottoman Empire, and also reflecting the popular and socialist orientation of his time and place, Moïse Levy, editor of the satirical periodical El kirbač84 (The Whip, 1911–14) of Salonika, as well as many of its contributors, viewed the folk vernacular of his community as a Jewish national language whose users should speak and write it with pride. Writing under the pen-name ‘Kampana’ (Bell), Levy criticized those local Jewish shopkeepers who placed signs in front of their stores in all manner of languages, but—perhaps out of shame or fear—not in Judezmo; and he praised a local Greek merchant, enjoying a considerable Jewish clientele, for putting up a shop sign in Judezmo:

Porké nwestros ermanos non meten toδos, sovre los portales de sus γrutas, sus nombre en ǧuδezmo? Tyenen eyos virγwensa? Les kosta alγuna koza? Tyenen eyos alγún espanto? De kyen? Porké razón?... Siγún el Kirbač, en Saloniko,

80 Cf. Me’ir, Šulḥan ha-panim, ff. 2a, 3b.81 E.g., Istá iskritu in iskritura di guyim ‘It is written in a gentile [here the reference

was probably to Arabic-letter Ottoman Turkish] script’ (’Eli’ezer ben Šem £ov Papo, Sefer Dammeseq ’Eli‘ezer: ’Oraḥ ḥayyim, Belgrade 1862, f. 61a). The analogous term in the Hebrew of the Ottoman Sephardic rabbis was kətav ha-goyim, e.g., “He who knows how to read gentile script (kətav ha-goyim)…” (Karo, Bet Yosef, ’Ḥošen mišpaṭ, section 45); “In the script of the Italian gentiles [bi-xtav ha-goyim ha-italyanos] I saw…” (Ben Lev, Šə’elot u-tšuvot, vol. 1, no. 33).

82 Cf. Papo, Pele yo‘eṣ in ladinu, vol. 1, p. 201.83 El awtor ... deve de ser un israelita nwevamente ... konvertiδo al kristyanizmo, pwes ke el

eskrivyó la karta en karakteres latinos (fransezes), ma en avla en ǧuδezmo del mas barato ‘The author must be an Israelite newly converted to Christianity, since he wrote his letter in Latin (French) characters, but in the Judezmo language, of the cheapest kind’ (El meseret 12:27 [1908], p. 5).

84 Cf. T. kırbaç.

David M. Bunis*64

se deve de meter sovre toδas las entraδas de las γrutas ǧuδías, tablós kon los nombres en turko, ǧuδezmo, vlaxesko, yurukesko, i arnautesko si se topa ǧusto; ma syempre en turko i en ǧuδezmo es menester. Porké ke non se sepa kwando los patrones son ǧiδyós, ižos de ǧiδyós, ermanos de ǧiδyós, i sangre de ǧiδyo? Ke ay en esto?Morčópolos, toδo en non syendo de nwestra rasa, si komo es prátiko i tyene mučas mužeres ǧuδías komo klientes, eskrivyó en ebreo su nombre sovre una vitrina. Bravo, Morčópolos! Aškolsún Morčópolos! Porké, alora, ke los bwenos ǧiδyós ke avrieron la nweva γruta enfrente de Merkaδo Yešuá—ke biven kon ǧiδyós, ke tyenen sangre de ǧiδyós—non eskrivan ainda sus nombre en ǧuδezmo sovre la vitrina?85

Levy praised the younger Jewish men of his city for unabashedly speaking and reading Judezmo in public (Oy ... los mansevos no se avriγwensan mas de ser ǧiδyós, i avlan i meldan en ǧuδezmo).86 But he expressed frustration and dismay over the lack of even one single speech in Judezmo, or on behalf of the Jewish community, during a national celebration held outside the government house.87

85 ‘Why don’t all of our brothers put their name in Judezmo on the entrances to their shops? Are they ashamed? Does it cost them anything? Are they afraid? Of whom? Why? In the opinion of El kirbač, signs should be put at the entrances of Jewish shops with the name in Turkish, Judezmo, Romanian, Yuruk, and Albanian, if they think it’s right; but Turkish and Judezmo are always a must. Why shouldn’t people know when the owners are Jews, sons of Jews, brothers of Jews, and of Jewish blood? What’s wrong with this? Morčópolos, although not of our race, but nevertheless a practical man having many Jewish women as clients, wrote his name in Hebrew on one of his shop windows. Bravo, Morčópolos! More power to you, Morčópolos! Why, then, have the good Jews who opened the new shop in front of Merkaδo Yešuá’s store—who live with Jews, and have Jewish blood—not yet written their name in Judezmo on their window?’ (El kirbač 1:23 [1910], p. 4).

86 ‘Today the young men are no longer ashamed to be Jews, and they speak and read Judezmo [in public]’ (El kirbač 1:13 [1910], p. 2).

87 El día de la dolarmá los elevos de la eskola ǧuδía arivaron los últimos al Xukyumet, para dar las últimas palmaδas i γritar “Yašasún millet!” “Yašasún vatán!” Ma non uvo un basarvaδán ke avriera la boka en ǧuδezmo o por los ǧiδyós. Todos se avriγwensaron ‘The day of the public festivities the pupils from the Jewish school were the last to arrive at the government house, and the last to applaud and shout “Long live the nation!” “Long live the homeland”! But there wasn’t a single person who opened his mouth in Judezmo or on behalf of the Jews. Everyone was embarrassed’ (El kirbač 1:32 [1910], p. 3).


In Istanbul, capital of the empire, the name ǧuδezmo occasionally appeared in Judezmo periodicals.88 It also denoted the Ottoman Sephardic vernacular in several official communiqués issued by the Chief Rabbinate. For example, in a booklet from 1911 outlining the requirements of candidates seeking election to the Meclis Umumi (General Council of the Jewish Community in Istanbul), we find a stipulation that they know how to read and write Judezmo:

Dispozisyones legales por las eleksyones para el Meǧlís Umumí.... 6. Son aptos a ser kandidatos ... los mas notavles del luγar ... ke saven avlar i eskrivir el ǧuδesmo.... Syendo ke los myembros del Meǧlís Umumí son destinaδos a ser eskožiδos un dia por myembros del Meǧlís Ǧismaní, i ke, siγún la ley, alγunos de entre eyos deven konoser el ebreo i el turko, los ke konosen estas lingwas deven, a kondisyones iγwales, ser preferiδos alos otros.89

Again, as was noted regarding Astrugo’s translation of Moliere’s play, the denotation of ‘Hebrew’ by ebreo in this document demonstrates that, in this text, ǧuδezmo referred to the everyday Sephardic vernacular.

Through business and social interactions with Jews, members of other local national groups sometimes acquired an active knowledge of the Jews’ language. Unscrupulous individuals occasionally tried to take advantage of this knowledge to “pass themselves off” as Jews when engaging in reprehensible acts. El kirbač of Salonika, for example, reported that Greek thieves and kidnappers tried to escape from their Jewish captors by claiming, in Judezmo, that they were Jews.90 When such reports were reproduced in

88 E.g., Vo avlar en ǧuδezmo ‘I’ll speak in Judezmo’ (El burlón [Constantinople, 1909], p. 1).89 ‘Legal provisions for the elections to the Meclis Umumi… 6. Eligible to be candidates are

the most notable local individuals who know how to speak and write Judezmo… Since members of the Meclis Umumi are destined to be chosen for membership in the Secular Council and, according to law, some of these must know Hebrew and Turkish, those who know these languages must, other conditions being equal, be preferred to the others’ [dated 16.12.1910] (Gran Rabinato de Turkia, Las eleksyones para el Meǧlís Umumí, Constantinople [1911], p. 5).

90 E.g., El xallaxut, ke savia avlar bweno en ǧuδezmo, para fuyir de la mala ora, ni kitó, ni metyó, dišo ke era ǧiδyó. ‘The cur, who knew how to speak Judezmo well, in an attempt to escape from his misfortune, did nothing less than to say he was a Jew’ (El kirbač 3:45 [1912], p. 1); Un yaván, por saver dos palavras en ǧuδezmo, se kyeria pasar komo ǧiδyó ‘A Greek, knowing two words in Judezmo, tried to pass himself off as Jewish’ (El kirbač 3:46 [1912], p. 2).

David M. Bunis*66

periodicals in other cities, some local dialect features were supplanted by others (e.g., Salonika ǧiδyó was replaced by Istanbul ǧuδyó ‘Jew’); but since the name ǧuδezmo was known throughout the region, there was never a need to replace it.91 Imposters from distant Jewish communities, too, tried their hand at speaking Judezmo in order to gain the confidence of local Ottoman Jews.92

In the folk periodicals and popular sections of the Sephardic vernacular press of Salonika, the glottonym ǧuδezmo continued to appear regularly until the Nazis entered the city and put a brutal end to its Jewish press.93

Ǧuδezmo ‘Jewish language’ in idiomatic expressions From the 16th century, Judezmo was the linguistic badge of the Ottoman Jews, and most Jews in the empire spoke it. Thus, into the 20th century, ǧuδezmo was used metaphorically to denote plain, clear, everyday language, presumed to be understood by all (Jews). When a thick-headed person refused to understand a line of argumentation, he would be asked No entyendes en ǧuδezmo? (Don’t you understand Judezmo?);94 and someone who spoke unintelligibly would be told Avla en ǧuδezmo! ‘Speak clearly!’ (just as Spanish-speakers use the parallel expression, recalled above, ¡Habla Usted en cristiano!).95 To assert that what he had said was crystal clear, a writer in Salonika exclaimed Ya entendéš en ǧuδezmo! (You know very well what I mean! [literally, “You understand Judezmo very

91 E.g., the name ǧuδezmo appeared in adaptations of the aforementioned articles from El kirbač republished in El ǧuγetón of Istanbul, in issues 4:44 (1913), p. 3, and 4:45 (1913), p. 3.

92 For example, an issue of El meseret contained the following warning: Ay en nwestra sivdaδ ... un šarlatán arrivaδo dela Tunizia ... avlando un ǧuδezmo charpeado. ‘There is in our city a charlatan, having arrived from Tunisia, speaking a broken Judezmo’ (8:13 [1904], p. 4).

93 E.g., noting the decline in the use of Judezmo in Salonika, a merchant wrote: No vo a tener mas menester de yaziǧís en ǧuδezmo. ‘I will no longer need Judezmo secretaries’ (Aksyón 12:3200 [1940], p. 2).

94 Cf. Aksyón 10:2564 (1938), p. 2.95 In El meseret (25:8 [1920], p. 4), a request that important information be brought to the

attention of the general public was phrased as follows: Kale ke nos lo aγan konoser en avlándomolo en ǧuδezmo ‘They have to let us know in explicit language (in Judezmo)’; cf. also Fávlale en ǧuδezmo ... no te miran en la kara ‘Speak to him plainly (in Judezmo) and he won’t even look at you’ (Aksyón 7:1645 [1935], p. 2).


well!”]).96 A writer who used ‘pure Judezmo’ was said to write en ǧuδezmo farsí;97 while one who used fancy words with which ordinary people were unfamiliar was asked Kon este favlar a_la moda, ke kyeres dezir en ǧuδezmo? ‘With this new-styled speech, what do you really mean (in Judezmo)?’98 When challenged by outsiders, who sometimes argued that the Sephardim were not speaking ‘Jewish’ but ‘Spanish,’99 some native speakers contested by pointing out that their language was one thing, and the Spanish of, say, the contemporaneous Castilian press was quite another.100 In fictitious letters, westernized, Gallicizing “authors” apologized to editors of Jewish humor periodicals for writing in French rather than “en judaïsme” (“Comme je ne sais pas écrire en judaïsme, je t’écris en français”).101 When local frankos, or ‘Westernized’ Jews, who occasionally deigned to speak the language of the Jews rather than more prestigious French, proved themselves able to speak en bwen ǧuδezmo ‘in good Judezmo,’102 they received ironic praise from journalists for ‘sounding Jewish.’103

Decline in the popular use of ǧudezmo As noted at the beginning of this article, from the late 19th century, with the westernization of the Ottoman Sephardic communities and attempts on the part of some intellectuals to connect the Sephardic vernacular and its speakers with Spanish and Spain, the glottonym ǧuδezmo came to have competitors, especially pseudo-scientific terms designating Judezmo as

96 El kirbač 2:50 (1912), p. 3.97 El meseret 8:29 (1904), p. 4; cf. T. Far(i)sî (< A. fārsī) ‘Persian’ + fasih ‘correct and clear

speech; eloquent, fluent’ (< A. faṣīḥ).98 El rizón 4:8 (Salonika 1929), p. 2.99 The ancient Romans would undoubtedly find it odd that the inhabitants of present-

day Spain, speaking what is clearly a variety of language derived from their ‘Latin’ or ‘Roman,’ should claim to be speaking ‘Spanish’ or ‘Castilian.’

100 “Ultimamente uno ... me habla disiendo: ‘Es verdad que lo que nosotros hablamos es una lengua Europea? No es en Judesmo lo que nosotros hablamos?’ Y contestándole con un número del Liberal él reió y continuaba á leir; y á su grande marabilla él se oponí, disiendo, ‘Ésto es otro spañol y el nuestro es otro’ ” (Rafael Cohen, Izmir 1904, in Pulido, Españoles sin patria, p. 52).

101 El kirbač 1:17-18 (1910), p. 8.102 E.g., La trompeta 1:19 (Salonika 1923), p. 4.103 E.g., Izak save el trukwesko a fondo ... i kwando favla en ǧuδezmo parese un ǧiδyó ‘Isaac

has a deep knowledge of Turkish, and when he speaks Judezmo he sounds just like a Jew’ (El kirbač 4:63 [1913], p. 3).

David M. Bunis*68

“Judeo-Spanish” or simply “Spanish.” Even here, the traditional term had an influence on native adaptations of the neologism “Judeo-Spanish”: in early instances of the hyphenated term, ‘Judeo-’ was denoted by native ǧuδezmo rather than foreign ǧudeo-. Thus, in the 1870s, “Judeo-Spanish” hymns were referred to as pizmunim ǧudezmus španyolis;104 the regulations governing a Turkish hospital were said to have been translated into ǧuδezmo espanyol;105 and in the 1880s the “Spanish Jewish” community of Vienna was referred to as la kumunidad ǧudezma ispanyola.106

But from the late 19th century, the rising prestige enjoyed throughout the Ottoman regions and their successor states by French, Italian, and emerging national languages such as Turkish and Greek was in direct proportion to the increasingly negative attitude toward Judezmo and characteristically Judezmo linguistic forms maintained by many westernized Sephardim having a secular, European-style education. Already in the 16th century, the community’s rabbinical elite had tended to reject the denotation of the Sephardic vernacular as ‘Jewish,’ arguing that the only real ‘Jewish’ language was Hebrew.107 In the 19th century this contention was accepted by political Zionists as well.108 From the middle of the 19th century the name ǧuδezmo and the ‘Jewishness’ of the Sephardic vernacular were also rejected by Spaniards and other Europeans taking an interest in the Sephardim. For example, the Spanish senator Ángel Pulido wrote: “No hay un lenguaje que pueda llamarse con propiedad judesmo, como idioma de los sefardim, sino que hay un castellano viejo corrompido,

104 Moše David Alkalay, Ḥinnux ləšón ‘ivrí, [Belgrade 1871], f. [ii]a.105 Lo trezladaron en ‘ǧuδezmo espanyol’ (Estorya o notas sovre el Ospidal Rotšild, Izmir

[1875], p. 29). Interestingly, in recent years, the name djudezmo-espanyol/-iol has appeared several times in Judezmo communiqués posted on the internet forum [email protected], e.g., in Digest Number 3284, from 26 December 2007.

106 Adolfo de Semlinksi, Istorya di la kumunidad yisrailit ispanyola in Vyena, tr. Mixa’el Mənaḥem Papo, Vienna 1889, p. 2.

107 E.g., of the Ottoman Sephardic masses of 18th-century Constantinople, Ya‘aqov Xulí wrote in the Hebrew-language introduction to his Me‘am lo‘ez on Genesis (Constantinople 1730, f. 1a): ‘They do not know how to speak Jewish [yəhudit, i.e., Hebrew] according to the requirements of Moses and Israel’; cf. also “Mwestra lingwa … es il lašón akódiš” ‘Our language is the Holy Tongue’ (Papo, Pele yo‘eṣ in ladinu, vol. 1, p. 203). See also footnote 37 above.

108 For example, at the end of the 19th century a Zionist in Istanbul wrote: La lingua žudayka es el hebreo ‘The Judaic/Jewish language is Hebrew’ (El tyempo 22:24 [1894], pp. 283–284).


adulterado con muchas y distintas alteraciones”109; he further remarked that “el judesmo es el castellano alterado con impurezas regionales.”110

As a result of this antagonism toward the name on the part of scholars esteemed by members of the speech community, and perhaps a fear that calling the language ‘Jewish’ would be interpreted by westerners and westernized Jews as a sign of one’s ignorance of the “true nature” of the language, many native speakers gradually rejected ǧuδezmo and the innovative variant ǧuδezmo espanyol in favor of more Europeanized, pseudo-scientific ǧuδyó espanyol, and then its more foreign equivalent ǧudeo-espanyol (corresponding to French judéo-espagnol and the like), and particularly (e)spanyol—the use of the last glottonym perhaps meant to imply an awareness on the users’ part that their language was “really” a variant of the more prestigious Spanish and nothing more—or at least their desire that this be so.

In communities in which Sephardim resided alongside members of other Jewish subculture groups, the designation of the language of the Jewish ‘others’ as ‘Jewish’—especially the use by the often numerically predominant and more veteran Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim of the glottonym yidish, and equivalents in local non-Jewish languages such as English “(to speak) Jewish”—may have caused the Sephardim to think twice about designating their own language as ‘Jewish,’ when other names were available. Substituting other names may also have been part of a strategy used by the Sephardim to distance themselves from the Ashkenazim and make themselves more distinctive. Haïm V. Sephiha attributed the decline in the use of the glottonym ǧuδezmo and its substitution by laδino, ǧudeo espanyol, and other glottonyms to factors such as “esthétisme, snobisme, prestige, euphémisme, etc.”111

Nevertheless, supporters of the popular language and its traditional name and lexicon railed against what they perceived as an onslaught of Western European borrowings in the modernized language. For example, the Salonika-born

109 Pulido, Españoles sin patria, p. 146. Already in The Voice of Jacob (1:3 [London 1841], p. 21), the Ottoman Sephardic vernacular was referred to as “a corrupted Spanish.” The Spanish historian José Amador de los Ríos publicized a report that the Jews of Turkey “parlent un espagnol assez corrumpu toutes les cotes du Levante” (Estudios históricos, políticos y literarios sobre los Judíos de España, Madrid 1848; cf. Grünwald, “Über den Jüdisch-spanischen Dialekt,” p. 27).

110 Pulido, Españoles sin patria, p. 143.111 Sephiha, Le ladino, p. 49.

David M. Bunis*70

historian and folklorist Rabbi Michael Molho criticized a ‘sermon delivered in Judezmo, full of Gallicisms.’112 On the eve of World War II, Salonikan nostalgists defended the language of the Sephardic folk, praising its wealth of idiomatic expressions113 and arguing that ‘You can say everything in Judezmo.’114 But ǧuδezmo was not the only glottonym such writers used; they also had recourse to the more “modern” names. Remarking that the Sephardim of Salonika were becoming Hellenized, one writer used both the old and new names for the language, illustrating the vacillation in glottonym use which, thereafter, was to characterize the speech community: Mezmo kwando avlamos en ǧuδezmo, iné se ve ke somos elenos. El žudeo-espanyol ke un tyempo estava arevertyendo de byervos turkos ... oy mostra klaramente las sinyales de la enflwensa elena.115

Ǧudezmo in research publications The native use of the glottonym ǧuδezmo has been cited in the research literature on the Sephardic vernacular since the end of the 19th century: for example, in 1890 Mayer Kayserling wrote: “Ce jargon ... les juifs dans les pays des Balcans le nomment Judesmo.”116 It has been used by numerous scholars from the speech community itself; e.g., in 1904, reporting on a dramatic production in Izmir, the historian Abraham Galante wrote: Primera noče de purim, se ǧuγó por mansevos ǧuδyós, en ǧuδezmo ... una pyesa ‘On the first night of

112 Un sermón prononsyaδo en ǧuδezmo kon byervos frankeaδos (Aksyón 11:3031 [1939], p. 2).

113 E.g., Manka de ekspresyones nwestro ǧuδezmo? ‘Does our Judezmo lack expressions?’ (Aksyón 10:2571 [1938], p. 2). The writer argued that it did not.

114 Se pweδe dezir toδo en ǧuδezmo (Napolitán [=Alberto Molho], Aksyón 10:2570 [1938], p. 2).

115 ‘Even when we speak Judezmo, one nevertheless sees that we are Hellenes. The Judeo-Spanish that once was brimming with Turkish words today clearly shows signs of Hellenic influence’ (Aksyón 11:3175 [1939], p. 3).

116 Biblioteca Española-Portugueza-Judaica, Strasbourg 1890, p. XVIII. Cf. also George Cirot, Bulletin Hispanique 9 (1907), p. 434: “Ce djidio, ou judesmo comme l’appelent d’ordinaire les Juifs...”


Purim a piece was performed in Judezmo by young Jewish men.’117 In the same year, Abraham Danon of Edirne published an article devoted to “le jargon ... affublé du titre honorifique de Judesmo par les descendants des exilés.”118 In addition to its use in Salonika, Istanbul, Izmir, Bucharest, Vienna, and Edirne, as documented above, researchers have also confirmed the use of the term

117 El meseret 8:21–22 (1904), p. 8. Other scholars from the Sephardic community who have documented the use of ǧuδezmo in the sense of ‘Ottoman Sephardic vernacular’ include: Saul Mézan (Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10, Berlin 1934, p. 558); Joseph Nehama, Histoire des Israélites de Salonique, Salonika 1935, p. 170; Sabetay Djaen (Judaica 73-75 [Buenos Aires 1939], p. 40); Henry V. Besso (Bulletin Hispanique 50 [1948], pp. 371-372); Michael Molho (Usos y costumbres, p. 152); José M. Estrugo (Sefarad 14 [1954], p. 129); Enrique Saporta y Beja (Refranero sefardí, Madrid-Barcelona, C.S.I.C., 1957, p. 12); Adolfo Arditti (Voz Sefaradí 24 [Mexico City 1968], p. 27); Leon Ligier (The American Sephardi 2:1-2 [1968], p. 80); Israel S. Révah (in Iacob M. Hassán, ed., Actas del Primer Simposio de Estudios Sefardíes, Madrid, C.S.I.C., 1970, p. 448); Baruch Uziel (in Hassán, Actas, p. 322); M. J. Benardete (in Hassán, Actas, p. 416); Moshe Attias (in Hassán, Actas, p. 420); Isaac Moskona (Annual [of the Social, Cultural, and Educational Association of the Jews in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria] 6 [Sofia 1971], p. 179); David Benvenisti (Yəhude Saloniki ba-dorot ha-’aḥaronim, Jerusalem, Kiryat Sefer, 1973, p. 123); Haïm V. Sephiha (Le ladino, p. 49); Shlomo Ruben-Mordechay (personal communication); Vicky Tamir (personal communication); Albert Devidas (personal communication). The use of the lexeme in that sense is included in dictionaries by native speakers such as: Nehama, Dictionnaire, p. 238, s. ǧuđésmo; Klara Perahya et alia (eds.), Diksyonaryo Judeo Espanyol–Türkçe, Istanbul, Gözlem, 1997, p. 68, s. cudesmo; Drita Tutunović, Diksionario ladino serbo, Belgrade, Nova, 1992, p. 83, s. đudezmu; Elli Kohen & Dahlia Kohen-Gordon, Ladino-English/English-Ladino Concise Encyclopedic Dictionary (Judeo-Spanish), New York, Hippocrene, 2000, p. 202 s. Judesmo/Judezmo; Avner Perez & Gladys Pimienta, Diksionario Amplio Djudeo-espanyol–Ebreo, La Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino i su Kultur & Sefarad—El Instituto Maale-Adumim, 2007, p. 126, s. djudezmo.

118 Kelete Szemle 4 (1903), p. 220.

David M. Bunis*72

in Hebron,119 Ruse,120 Sofia,121 Kastoria,122 Bitola (Monastir),123 Alexandria,124 Bursa,125 Gelibolu,126 Çanakkale, Lulu-Burgas, Tekirdağ, Rhodes, and Skopje (Yugoslavia).127

Popular re-ascent of the glottonym ǧudezmo Since World War I, Judezmo (also spelled “Djudezmo/-smo,” “Dzhudezmo”) has been the name for the Sephardic vernacular favored by researchers drawn to the comparative study of Jewish languages such as Šim‘on Bernfeld, Salomon Birnbaum, Max Weinreich, Uriel Weinreich, Joshua A. Fishman, and Paul

119 “Ils ne se doutaient pas ... que la langue qu’ils parlaient ne fût pas juive, cette langue s’appelant, d’ailleurs, ‘Judesmo’,” Ovadia Camhy, “Les textes,” in Léon Algazi, Chants séphardis, London, World Sephardi Federation, 1958, p. x.

120 “Ha-yəhudim yiqrə’u śəfatam ‘ǧudezmo’ kəmo še-ha-’aškənazim yiqrə’u śəfatam ‘yudiš’,” Salomon Rosanes, Divre yəme Yiśra’el bə-Togarma, vol. 1, Tel-Aviv, Dəvir, 1930, p. 282.

121 Isaac Moskona, “About one of the Components of the Language ‘Djudezmo’,” Annual [of the Social, Cultural, and Educational Association of the Jews in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria] 6 (Sofia 1971), pp. 179–220.

122 “Ladino, called judesmo by the Spanish Jews” (Joy Zacharia, “A Study of the Castoriali Dialect [of Judeo-Spanish],” B.A. honors thesis, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachussetts, 1958). In a personal communication to me, the father of the author of this study, who was born in Kastoria, related how, as a young immigrant in New York’s Lower East Side, he was sent to buy kosher bread from a Jewish bakery; entering and hearing the bearded Ashkenazi shop keepers speaking a language other than ǧuδezmo, he assumed they were non-Jews and returned home without the bread.

123 “The Jews of Macedonia themselves never referred to their own language as ‘Ladino’ or ‘Judeo-Espagnol’ but simply said ‘favlar in djudezmu’ [to speak Jewish]” (Kolonomos, Proverbs, p. 69).

124 My thanks to Dr. Albert Devidas for informing me of this in a personal communication. 125 “Another term was also used to mean Judeo-Spanish, and that was Judesmo” (Ben Zion

Maimon (La Boz [Seattle, Wa., November 1974]).126 In a personal communication a speaker from Gelibolu born in 1908 told the author that,

“Even today, “when we’re among the Sephardim, we never say ‘talking Spanish’; it’s always ‘Judezmo.’ ”

127 I take this opportunity to thank the many speakers from diverse regions of the former Ottoman Empire who informed me that the glottonym ǧuδezmo was used in their native cities.


Wexler.128 Especially following the “re-legitimation” of the glottonym ǧuδezmo after World War I by scholars from the speech community itself such as Salomon Rosanes, Saul Mézan, Joseph Nehama, Michael Molho, Israel Révah, Isaac Moskona, and (anyos munčos i bwenos ke tenga) Haïm Vidal Sephiha—and especially Sephiha, who has shown a preference for this language name and encouraged its use—the vitality of the name ǧuδezmo has been reasserting itself in recent years among native speakers. During the years 2004–2008 the language was referred to as djudezmo/djudesmo in 311 separate Judezmo postings in the Ladinokomunita internet forum and Sefaraires internet mailings.

Other designations of the Sephardic vernacular as a ‘Jewish language’

While ǧuδezmo is clearly the oldest and most widespread glottonym denoting the Sephardic vernacular as a ‘Jewish language,’ a few other terms, of similar meaning (i.e., ‘Jewish’), were also used. They are presented here in their chronological order of documentation in the primary literature.

128 E.g., Šim‘on Bernfeld, Rəšumot 1 (1918), p. 255; Salomo Birnbaum, “Dzhudezme [Judezmo],” YIVO-bleter 11 (1937), pp. 192–198; Max Weinreich, YIVO-bleter 14 (1939), p. 209, History, p. 54; Uriel Weinreich, College Yiddish, New York 1949, p. 143; Joshua A. Fishman, Yiddish in America, Bloomington, Indiana 1965, p. 77; Paul Wexler, “Ascertaining the Position of Judezmo within Ibero-Romance,” Vox Romanica 36 (1977), pp. 162–195 (on p. 162).

David M. Bunis*74

El ǧu-/ǧiδyó129 The earliest such term is el ǧu-/ǧiδyó, literally ‘Jewish.’130 In native texts it begins to appear early in the 19th century, and the contexts of several of its uses are reminiscent of those of ǧuδezmo. For example, with respect to the brothers of the Biblical Joseph, who had become prince of Egypt, it was said that “They did not know that Joseph understood them, saying to themselves ‘He does not know how to speak in Jewish (i.e., Hebrew).’ ”131 A reference to the former name of a Jewish apostate, ‘in Jewish,’ was phrased as Un mešumaδ, ke su nombre en ǧiδyó era Avner.132 In Salonika, the expression (f)avlar de ǧiδyó a ǧiδyó “to speak from one Jew to another” was used to designate speaking in popular Judezmo, or speaking frankly.133 In fictional pieces in the Judezmo press, naive Judezmo speakers were portrayed as finding it difficult

129 Cf. Spanish judío < Latin iūdaeus.130 The name ǧiδyó began to be documented and discussed by researchers at the turn of the

20th century. E.g., in Belgrade, the Zionist leader Max Nordau entered a shop and, hearing the owners speaking what he thought was Spanish, asked a woman present: “¿Habla usted español?” She is said to have replied: “No, señor, hablo chudeo [i.e., ǧudyó]” (Pulido, Españoles sin patria, p. 47). The Romance philologist Max L. Wagner observed, with respect to the Ottoman Jews, that “A su habla la llaman [ĝudío] [i.e., ǧuδyó] … Los judíos españoles mismos no saben con frecuencia que hablen castellano” (Bulletin de Dialectologie Romane 1 [1909], pp. 55-56). Use of this name is also cited by Pulido, Españoles sin patria, pp. 332, 442; Georges Cirot, Bulletin Hispanique 9 (1907), p. 434; Kalmi Baruch (Revista de Filología Española 17 [1930], p. 117); Saul Angel-Malachi (Ləšonenu la-‘am 18 [1967], p. 11); Gentille Farhi (Hispanic Review 5 [1937], p. 151).

131 Eyos no savían ke entendía Yosef, ke dišeron, “No save avlar en ǧuδyó” (’Avraham de Kastro, Tolədot ’adam [=Sefer ha-yašar] en laδino, Constantinople 1823, f. 120a). As was noted above, the neologism ǧuδesko appeared instead in the Judezmo version of Sefer ha-yašar published by Lazar.

132 ‘An apostate, whose name in ǧiδyó was Avner’ (Pinḥas ’Eliyyahu Ben Me’ir, Sefer ha-bərit ... en avla muy linpya, tr. ’Avraham Benveniste Gatenyo, Salonika1847 , f. 131b).

133 E.g., in a fictional piece in a Salonika periodical, a character who tried to speak Hebrew with a Jew in Salonika received the reply: En ebreo yo non entyendo kolay; ezvarea, dunke, de ǧiδyó a ǧiδyó; ... ávlame, te roγo, un poko mas kabá ‘I don’t understand Hebrew easily; so express yourself as from one Jew to another; speak to me, if you please, a little more plainly’ (El čaketón 2:36 [1921], 1). See also El rizón 2:2 (Salonika 1927), p. 2; Aksyón 11:2953 (1939), p. 3.


to accept as Jews individuals who could not speak en ǧiδyó.134 In present-day Istanbul, ǧuδyó appears to be the most widely used name designating the Sephardic vernacular as ‘Jewish’; but in the Ladinokomunita internet forum and Sefaraires internet mailings of 2004–2008 the glottonyms ǧuδyó/ǧiδyó appeared in only thirty postings – one tenth of those noted for ǧuδezmo.

Lingwa de ǧu-/ǧiδyós ‘language of Jews’ In Hebrew texts the term ‘languages of the Jews’ was already used in the 16th century with reference to the languages brought by the Iberian Jewish exiles to the Ottoman Empire.135 In the modern era we find the same term used in the vernacular of the Sephardim itself: according to article 19 of the edition of the Konstitusyón para la nasyón yisraelita de la Turkía published in Constantinople in 1865, the qualifications which candidates for membership in the Meclis Umumi had to possess included an ability ‘to read and write languages of Jews/Jewish languages’ (por meldar i eskrivir lingwas de ǧuδyós, p. 11). The Sephardic vernacular and Hebrew were undoubtedly two of the languages alluded to.136

Lingwa žudayka ‘Judaic/Jewish language’ Formally reminiscent of the translation of Hebrew yəhudit as ǧuδe(y)γo in Judezmo Bible translations from the 16th century (as recalled above), and of

134 E.g., the German-speaking švabus or švábu-djidyós ‘Swabian Jews’ with whom Judezmo speakers in Bosnia had contact were said to be odd, since they ‘live at home without speaking “Jewish” ’ (<Estus švabus bivin in kaza sin avlar in gjidjo> (Jevreski glas 5:45 [Sarajevo 1931], p. 7). Similarly, Yiddish speakers questioned the Jewishness of individuals who could not speak Yiddish; cf. Ḥayyim ben Yiṣḥaq of Volozhin et al., Ḥuṭ ha-məšullaš, vol. 1, Vilno 1842 (Israel 1968), no. 5.

135 E.g., ‘There is no custom in the Ottoman Empire (Togarma), in all the languages of the Jews (bə-xol ləšonot ha-yəhudim) that came from the [lands of the] Expulsion, to call someone up to the Torah according to his father’s name (Moše Mitrani [Ha-mabbiṭ], b. Salonika, 1500–1580], Sefer šə’elot u-tšuvot Mabbiṭ, vol. 2, part 1, Venice 1630 [Jerusalem 1984], no. 53).

136 The phrase also occurs in yet another reference to the assertion by members of Pharoah’s court that Joseph knew only the ‘language of the Jews’: Está eskrito en.el kanún de Misráyim ke no pweδe enreynar ni ser vizir en Misráyim sinó el ke save setenta lešonoθ, i este no save avlar otro ke en lašón de ǧiδyós. ‘It is written in the law code of Egypt that no one can rule nor be a viceroy of Egypt except one who knows seventy languages, and this person only knows how to speak in the language of the Jews’ (’Avraham Palači, Wa-yosef ’Avraham, Izmir 1881, f. 24a).

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the use of letra ǧuδeka (“Judaic/Jewish letters”) to denote the ‘Jewish’ or Hebrew alphabet in the first volume of Ya‘aqov Xuli’s Me-‘am lo‘ez, Sefer bə-rešit, published in Constantinople in 1730,137 from the late 19th century the more modern form (lingwa) žudayka occasionally denoted the Ottoman Sephardic vernacular.138 Ultimately a reflex of Latin iūdaĭcus, this form was probably a late-19th-century borrowing reflecting French judaïque rather than a preservation of an older Judezmo lexeme. Although occasionally used in the modern language as an adjective denoting ‘Judaic’ or ‘Jewish,’139 the lexeme does not seem to have gained widespread use to denote ‘Judezmo.’140

Lingwa ǧuδía ‘Judezmo language,’ letras ǧuδías ‘Judezmo letters,’ kantes ǧuδías ‘Judezmo songs,’ palavras ǧuδías ‘Judezmo words’ In the 20th century the term lingwa ǧuδía ‘Jewish language,’ preceded by the definite article or by mwestra ‘our,’ also denoted ‘Judezmo.’ For example, a nationalistic Salonika journalist sought the help of local preachers to dissuade westernized young Jews from printing their names on their prayer shawl bags in the Roman alphabet rather than in ‘our letters, in our Jewish language.’141 A producer of kosher meat was said to mark his product ‘kosher’ using ‘Jewish

137 On f. 54b.138 E.g., La lingua espanyola se yama onde nozotros la lingwa žudayka ‘The Spanish language

is called among us la lingwa žudayka (the Judaic/Jewish) language’ (Max Grünwald & Nissim M. Aseo, El tyempo 22:24 [Constantinople 1894], pp. 283–284).

139 E.g., mwestra literatura žudayka ‘our Judaic/Jewish literature’ (Barux Mitrani, Don Yosef i su iža, Vienna 1878, p. [iii]).

140 In the second half of the 19th century the meaning of lingwa žudayka varied, depending on context: in a Hebrew grammar for Judezmo speakers it denoted ‘Hebrew’ (e.g. La flor de la lingwa žudayka ‘The flower[ing] of the Jewish [i.e., Hebrew] language,’ Yə’uda ’Abba, Sefer yavi mi-piryo, Izmir 1878, p. 11); in a translation of a novel about Jewish life in Poland it denoted ‘Yiddish’ (cf. Ḥatan ha-melex wə-’Ester ha-šəniyya, Salonika [1888], f. 13b).

141 Non ... es ǧusto de eskrivir sus nombre a la franka, kwando ya tenemos mwestras letras, mwestra lingwa ǧuδía ‘It is not right to write their numbers in European fashion, when we have our letters, our Jewish language’ (El kirbač 1:29 [1910], p. 2).


letters.’142 ’Eliyya R. Karmona, editor of El ǧuγetón of Constantinople, explained the failure of city authorities to issue a ‘Jewish’ version of a public notice as resulting from their not knowing which language to use: “Spanish” was not really their language, he argued, and many young people were no longer familiar with the traditional “Judeo-Spanish” alphabet, instead using Latin characters when they wrote in the ‘Jewish language.’143 Being illiterate in their traditional alphabet did not prevent people from being able to enjoy traditional music, however; an Istanbul music supplier advertised a large stock of ‘Turkish, Hebrew and Jewish [i.e., Judezmo]’ recordings.144 A young woman in Salonika bemoaned her weak Judezmo and her inability to find the ‘Jewish words’ to express her ideas.145

Concluding remarks

We have seen that, from at least the 17th century, among its popular-level speakers as well as among their non-Jewish neighbors, the traditional vernacular of the Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire was known as the ‘Jewish language.’ The most widespread native name expressing this was el ǧuδezmo; various other synonyms were used as well. The rabbinical elite, and Zionists,

142 Mete kon su mano el byervo ‘kašer,’ en la kavesa [del koδrero] kon letras žuδías ‘With his own hand he puts the word kašer, in Jewish letters, on the animal’s head’ (El ǧuγetón 4:1 [1912], p. 4). Initial ž- in žuδyó, etc., probably reflects influence by French <j-> in <juif>, and perhaps the misinterpretation by Judezmo speakers (under French influence) of modern Spanish <j> as representing ž.

143 Saveš de ke la prefektura dela siuδaδ no proklamó el apello en lingwa ǧuδía? Porke keδó en dupyo en ké lingwa ke la estampe. Si la aze en espanyol, no es nwestra lingwa, i mas, ke munčos mansevos žuδyós no saven meldar el žudeo espanyol, i kwando eskriven alγuna letra en este idyoma eskriven kon karakteres latinos (fransezas) esta lingwa ‘Do you know why the prefecture of the city did not publish the appeal in a Jewish language? Because it was in doubt as to which language to publish it in. If in Spanish, it is not our language; and what’s more, many young Jews do not know how to read Judeo-Spanish, and when they write a letter in this language they write it in Latin (French) letters’ (El ǧuγetón 5:16 [1913], p. 3).

144 Tyene munčas plakas de kantes turkos, ebreos i ǧuδías [!] (El ǧuγetón 19:42 [1927], p. 4).145 Mučas vezes perkuro de favlar en ǧuδezmo. Ma sin kyererlo, vo enklavando aδyentro

palavras de otras lingwas... Non topo las palavras ǧuδías. ‘Many times I try to speak in Judezmo. But without wanting to, I stick in words from other languages. I don’t find the Jewish words’ (Aksyón 10:2570 [1938], p. 2).

David M. Bunis*78

however, tended to reject this use, arguing that the only real ‘Jewish’ language was Hebrew. The name ǧuδezmo and the ‘Jewishness’ of the Sephardic vernacular were also rejected by European scholars. Under their influence, from the middle of the 19th century, westernized intellectuals in the Sephardic community began to reject the designations of the language as ‘Jewish’ until World War I, when a few native scholars as well as researchers attracted to comparative Jewish interlinguistics began demonstrating an acceptance of such designations in their research publications.

On the eve of World War II members of the speech community were using diverse names for their language. In a given speech act, the same individual might use three or more different names; for example, a young writer in Salonika described his having understood a sermon by a local preacher in the following terms: El diskorso en espanyol ya lo entendí (kyen non save en ǧuδezmo?)... [Era] en un žudeo espanyol košo ‘The lecture in Spanish I understood (who doesn’t know Judezmo?) It was in a crippled Judeo-Spanish.”146 This glottonymic diversity continues in the present. But while spanyol shows great popularity at the grass roots level, and ǧudeo-espanyol and laδino are widely used among native intellectuals, designations of the language as ‘Jewish’—especially ǧuδezmo and ǧuδyó—are still in use and appear to be gaining popularity.

The multiple language names used for the Sephardic vernacular would seem to suggest a deep-rooted instability on the part of the speakers with respect to their perception of their language, possibly deriving from the speakers’ tendency to perceive of the language in a multitude of ways, from diverse vantage points, as determined by those parameters of interpretation deemed appropriate in any specific social context. The parameters of interpretation themselves reflect the numerous socio-cultural shifts which have occurred within the community over the course of its history. Perhaps the glottonymic flux mirrors a high level of tolerance – or maybe a sense of confusion or indecision, a refusal to commit to a single ideology, or simply a supreme indifference – on the part of the speakers toward the diverse ‘faces’ of their native language and culture which its many glottonyms present to the world: ‘Jewish,’ ‘Hispanic,’ ‘Eastern,’ ‘Western,’ ‘Ours,’ ‘Theirs,’ and assorted combinations thereof. Possibly this fluidity derives from the fact that, among

146 Aksyón 10:2616 (1938), p. 2.


some – and perhaps many – members of the speech community, its native language and culture are not considered of sufficient import to merit a clear-cut, universally accepted terminology of reference, having for centuries been evaluated by the native rabbinate as of secondary significance in relation to Hebrew language and culture, and by the community’s modern, westernized intellectuals as inferior to Spanish in all respects and even an embarrassment when attempting to present themselves as heirs to the Golden Age Jewish community of medieval Spain.

It remains to be seen whether the surviving speakers of the Sephardic vernacular—itself increasingly an endangered species—will return, as a group, to the more traditional names designating their language as ‘Jewish,’ or opt for the more “scientific” or ‘other’-oriented substitutes in vogue at present, or in fact avoid commitment by continuing to mix and match the multitude of names. Whichever solution the community prefers will give food for thought to students of language and society.

David M. Bunis*80

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Native Designations of Judezmo as a 'Jewish Language'

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