Der Faschismus des 20. Jahrhunderts hat die jüdische Kultur in Europa in ihrer ursprünglichen Form und Verbreitung weitgehend zerstört. Die Überlebenden brachten ihre Kultur in neue Umgebungen, wo sie teilweise wiederbelebt wurde. Auch die Sprachen fielen dem zum Opfer oder wurden im Zuge der Assimilation und Akkulturation aufgegeben oder zumindest durch die verschiedenen neuen Kontaktsituationen stark beeinflusst. Als in den 1950er Jahren absehbar war, dass viele Überlebende, die in den alten europäischen Territorien aufgewachsen waren, ihre Muttersprache nicht an ihre Kinder und Enkel weitergeben würden, erkannte Uriel Weinreich die Notwendigkeit und Chance, Sprache und Kultur dieser Sprecher systematisch zu dokumentieren. Im Rahmen seines Projekts 'Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry' (LCAAJ) sammelten 18 Interviewer zwischen 1959 und 1972 auf der Grundlage eines umfangreichen Fragebogens Interviews mit fast 1.000 Informanten. Das im Rahmen des LCAAJ gesammelte Material ist ein unerschöpflicher Fundus und die beste Quelle, die wir zu den historischen jiddischen Dialekten Mitteleuropas haben. Mit der Veröffentlichung der digitalisierten Kopien der schriftlichen Aufzeichnungen (Feldnotizen) durch die Columbia Libraries im Jahr 2018 wurden die Rohdaten des LCAAJ der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht. Zwischen 2017 und 2022 hat das Projekt 'Syntax of Eastern Yiddish Dialects' (SEYD) diese Feldnotizen im Hinblick auf syntaktische und auch morphologische Strukturen ausgewertet. Der vorliegende Band präsentiert eine Auswahl dieser Phänomene. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf den empirischen Daten sowie deren Einbettung in einen (mikro)typologischen Kontext. Eine Vielzahl von Karten veranschaulicht die räumliche Dimension der grammatischen Variation in den ehemaligen europäischen jiddischen Dialekten.

The book presents issues connected with languages of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews: Judeo-Spanish, Yiddish, and co-territorial languages. It contains linguistic and sociolinguistic descriptions, the presentation of languages in literary works and their translations, as well as lexicographical and cultural observations.

Sex Therapy with Religious Patients is a comprehensive guidebook for mental health professionals who work with those struggling with sexual issues within a religious context. The book provides practical guidance on how to approach sensitive topics related to sex and religion, including addressing religious beliefs and values that may impact sexual behavior, beliefs, and attitudes. Drawing on research and clinical experience, the book offers a range of evidence-based interventions for working with individuals from different Jewish, Christian, and Muslim backgrounds. It also explores the unique challenges and opportunities presented by patients’ religious beliefs and provides strategies for integrating spirituality into the therapeutic process. The book is written in an accessible and engaging style, with real-life case examples and exercises that can be used in therapy sessions. It is an essential resource for mental health professionals seeking to enhance their skills in working with religious individuals who are seeking sex therapy.

At the intersection of Jewish studies and linguistic research, the essays assembled in this book approach the topic of the languages of Sephardic Jews from different perspectives, spanning chronologically from the Middle Ages to the present day. Drawing on diverse sources – from medical glossaries to inquisition archives, from rabbinic responsa to recordings of today's speakers – the scholars collaborating on this project have endeavoured to reconstruct fragments of a complex and elusive linguistic reality, which over the centuries has been shaped by the historical experience of its speakers. An innovative collection of rigorously conducted synchronic and diachronic studies that contributes to expanding our knowledge and opening new perspectives on crucial issues, such as the effects of contact on the linguistic structures, the possibility of a norm for polycentric languages, the relationship between the lexicon of a language and the vitality of its speech community.

Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book is a collection of twenty-four essays on various aspects of Hebrew book production in the 16th through 18th centuries. The subject matter encompasses little known printing-presses, makers of Hebrew books, and book arts. The print-shops were in such locations as Padua, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Verona, and the first presses in Livorno. Among the makers of Hebrew books are a peripatetic printer, a chief rabbi accused of plagiarism, a convert to Judaism, and a court Jew. Book arts address the titling of Hebrew books, dating by means of chronograms, printers’ pressmarks, mirror-image monograms, and the development of the Talmudic page. The book is completed with miscellaneous but related articles on early Hebrew book sale catalogues, worker to book production ratio in an eighteenth century press, and an attempt to circumvent the Inquisition’s ban on the printing of the Talmud in sixteenth Century Italy.

This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.

This Handbook of Jewish Languages is an introduction to the many languages used by Jews throughout history, including Yiddish, Judezmo (Ladino) , and Jewish varieties of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Berber, English, French, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Iranian, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Malayalam, Occitan (Provençal), Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Syriac, Turkic (Karaim and Krymchak), Turkish, and more. Chapters include historical and linguistic descriptions of each language, an overview of primary and secondary literature, and comprehensive bibliographies to aid further research. Many chapters also contain sample texts and images. This book is an unparalleled resource for anyone interested in Jewish languages, and will also be very useful for historical linguists, dialectologists, and scholars and students of minority or endangered languages. This paperback edition has been updated to include dozens of additional bibliographic references.

The book focuses on the history, ethnography, and convoluted ethnic identity of the Karaites, an ethnoreligious group in Eastern Galicia (modern Ukraine). The small community of the Karaite Jews, a non-Talmudic Turkic-speaking minority, who had been living in Eastern Europe since the late Middle Ages, developed a unique ethnographic culture and religious tradition. The book offers the first comprehensive study of the Galician Karaite community from its earliest days until today with the main emphasis placed on the period from 1772 until 1945. Especially important is the analysis of the twentieth-century dejudaization (or Turkicization) of the community, which saved the Karaites from the horrors of the Holocaust.

Kabbalah and Ecology is a groundbreaking book that resets the conversation about ecology and the Abrahamic traditions. David Mevorach Seidenberg challenges the anthropocentric reading of the Torah, showing that a radically different orientation to the more-than-human world of nature is not only possible, but that such an orientation also leads to a more accurate interpretation of scripture, rabbinic texts, Maimonides and Kabbalah. Deeply grounded in traditional texts and fluent with the physical sciences, this book proposes not only a new understanding of God's image but also a new direction for restoring religion to its senses and to a more alive relationship with the more-than-human, both with nature and with divinity.