1. No category

HISPANIA JUDAICA BULLETIN
Articles, Reviews, Bibliography and Manuscripts on Sefarad
Editors: Yom Tov Assis and Raquel Ibáñez-Sperber
No 4 5764/2004
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies
Contents
Editorial
1
Articles
JOSEPH YAHALOM, Andalusian Poetics and the Work of
El‘azar ben Ya‘aqov of Baghdad
ILAN SHOVAL, “Servi regis” Re-Examined: On the Significance
of the Earliest Appearance of the Term in Aragon, 1176
NADIA ZELDES, The Queen’s Property: Isabel I and the Jews and
Converts of the Sicilian Camera Reginale after the 1492 Expulsion
JOSÉ R. AYASO, The Site of the Judería of Granada According to
Christian Sources: Facts and Myths
3
Dossier: Judeo-Iberian Languages
5
22
70
86
103
DAVID M. BUNIS, Distinctive Characteristics of Jewish Ibero-Romance,
Circa 1492
ALDINA QUINTANA AND I. S. RÉVAH (posthumous), A Sephardic Mahzor
for the Holidays with Ritual Prescriptions in Aragonese Romance
MERIXELL BLACO ORELLANa, A Manuscript from the XVth Century
in Hebrew-Aragonese Script (JNUL, Yah.Ms.Heb.242)
152
Book Reviews and Abstracts of Books Received
167
Bibliography and Manuscripts
Sefarad
Al-Andalus
Crown of Aragon
Crown of Castile
Navarre
Portugal
Culture
Conversos, Polemics and Inquisition
Contemporary Spain and Portugal
Manuscripts on Polemics
189
191
199
203
207
210
210
214
224
234
243
Guidelines to Authors
260
105
138
Dossier
Judeo-Iberian Languages
Jewish Ibero-Romance
Distinctive Characteristics of Jewish Ibero-Romance, circa 1492
David M. Bunis
I. Jewish Ibero-Romance Following the Expulsion
The Jews who left Iberia in 1492, in the wake of the Spanish edict of Expulsion,
took with them several regional varieties of Jewish Ibero-Romance, among them
Castilian, Catalan, Aragonese, Galician and Portuguese. Among their descendants
in the Ottoman Empire, North Africa and the Middle East, these diverse linguistic
varieties continued to be spoken to a certain extent during the 16th century. But from
then on the Iberian exiles united to cultivate a single, unique Ibero-Romance
language which survives to this day, with a linguistic geography of its own. The
non-Jewish language to which the modern language bears the closest resemblance
is medieval Castilian. The regional varieties of it used today, however, differ
considerably from any variety of Ibero-Romance recorded among non-Jews, either
before the Expulsion or after it.1
The historical development of the language used by the Sephardim of the
Mediterranean regions following the Expulsion is documented in thousands of
printed works and manuscripts.2 These present a picture of linguistic diversity —
with numerous changes recorded through time and in different areas, but also of
unity — much of the basic foundations being preserved among all speakers
wherever they resided, throughout the centuries of their dispersion. The surviving
documents demonstrate that, even during its earliest post-Expulsion stages, the
1
2
Book-length introductions to the language and its history include: D. M. Bunis,
Judezmo: An Introduction to the Language of the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman
Empire, Jerusalem 1999 (in Hebrew); P. Díaz-Mas, Los sefardíes: Historia, lengua y
cultura, Barcelona 1986; T. K. Harris, Death of a Language: The History of JudeoSpanish, Newark 1994; C. Lleal, El judezmo: el dialecto sefardí y su historia, Barcelona
1992; S. Marcus, The Judeo-Spanish Language, Jerusalem 1965 (in Hebrew); R.
Renard, Sépharad: Le monde et la langue judéo-espagnole des Séphardim, Mons
(Belgium) 1966; H. V. Sephiha, Le judéo-espagnol, Paris 1986; M. C. Varol-Bornes,
Manuel de Judéo-espagnol: Langue et culture, Paris 1998; M. L. Wagner, Caracteres
generales del judeo-español de Oriente, Madrid 1930.
For bibliographical details on printed works see: M. D. Gaon, The Judeo-Spanish Press:
A Bibliography, Jerusalem 1965 (Hebrew); E. Romero, La creación literaria en lengua
sefardí, Madrid 1992; A. Yaari, Catalogue of Judaeo-Spanish Books in the Jewish
National and University Library, Jerusalem, Jerusalem 1934 (Hebrew).
[Hispania Judaica *4 5764/2004]
[105]
David M. Bunis
‘Jewish Castilian’ of the Mediterranean Sephardim exhibited phonological, grammatical, lexical, syntactic and stylistic features which distinguished it from the
Ibero-Romance of non-Jews.3 The speakers even called their language by distinctive names, among them: Ladino4 — emphasizing its primarily ‘Latin’ or Romance
composition; Franko — an allusion to its ‘Western European or “Frankish”’, as
opposed to Eastern, origins (cf. Ottoman Turkish Frenkçe); Djudezmo and Dji-/
Djudyó ‘Jewish’– since the language was perceived by its speakers, as well as their
neighbors, as the everyday ‘language of the Jews’ (cf. Ottoman Turkish Yahudice);
and, in the modern period, Judeo-espanyol, a pseudo-scientific name borrowed
from European intellectuals, many of whom did not maintain a very positive
attitude toward the language, considering it a “jargon”.5 The distinctiveness of the
Jews’ language vis à vis its non-Jewish correlate became ever more pronounced
with the passing of time, especially among the popular sectors of the speech group,
who were relatively free of influence from prestige varieties of peninsular Spanish
and made no special efforts to maintain the Hispanic component of the language
intact, but who freely borrowed elements from local languages such as Ottoman
Turkish,6 North African Arabic,7 and, in the modern period, significant European
languages used in the region such as Italian, French8 and German.
3
4
5
6
7
8
E.g., see D. M. Bunis, ‘Phonological Characteristics of Ibero-Romance Elements in the
First Printed Ladino Bible Glossary (Sefer Ó eß eq Íelomo, Venice 1587/88)’, in M.
Abitbol, Y. T. Assis, G. Hasan-Rokem (eds.), Hispano-Jewish Civilization after 1492,
Jerusalem 1997, pp. 203-252; A. Quintana, ‘Concomitancias lingüísticas entre el
aragonés y el ladino’, Archivo de Filología Aragonesa 57-58 (2002), pp. 163-192; ibid.,
‘Geografía lingüística del judeoespañol de acuerdo con el léxico’, Revista de Filología
Española 82 (2002), pp. 105-138; H. V. Sephiha, Le ladino, Judéo-espagnol calque,
Deutéronome, Paris 1973, 1979, 2 vols.
The Judezmo spelling used in the present article is, with slight variations, that adopted
by the Israel Authority for Ladino Culture, Jerusalem. See also footnote 26 below.
See D. M. Bunis, ‘Modernization and the ‘Language Question’ Among the JudezmoSpeaking Sephardim of the Ottoman Empire’, in H. E. Goldberg ed., Sephardi and
Middle Eastern Jewries: History and Culture in the Modern Era, Bloomington, In.
1996, pp. 226-239; D. M. Bunis, ‘Modernization of Judezmo and Hakitia (JudeoSpanish)’, in R. S. Simon, M. M. Laskier and S. Reguer eds., The Jews of the Middle
East and North Africa in Modern Times, New York 2003, pp. 116-128.
Among others, see M. C. Varol, ‘Influencia del turco en el judeoespañol de Turquía’,
in W. Busse, H. Kohring and M. Shaul eds., Sephardica 1: Hommage à Haïm Vidal
Sephiha, Berne 1996, pp. 213-237.
E.g., see J. Benoliel, Dialecto judeo-hispano-marroquí o hakitía, 2d ed., Barcelona
1977.
For instance, see H. V. Sephiha, ‘Le judéo-fragnol’, Ethno-psychologie 2-3 (1973), pp.
239-249.
[106]
Jewish Ibero-Romance
II. Jewish Ibero-Romance Before the Expulsion
For over a hundred years scholarly interest in the language of the Sephardim as it
developed after the Expulsion, and in the often characteristically Jewish writing
created in it, resulted in a flourishing research literature on these subjects.9 But not
limiting themselves to the post-Expulsion period, scholars with a historical bent
have also examined evidence of Ibero-Romance as used by the Jews before the
Expulsion.10 Basing themselves on the available sources, they have tried to answer
a particularly intriguing question concerning the Sephardim and their language: did
the Jews use a distinctive variety — or varieties — of Ibero-Romance even before
the Expulsion of 1492?11
1. Documentation
Unfortunately, as compared with the quantity and diversity of written material
produced in ‘Judezmo’ since the Expulsion, the documentation of varieties of
Ibero-Romance which had been used by the Jews of medieval Iberia – or ❺➆➀
(la‘az), as they generally referred to the language when writing in Hebrew — is
scarce. What little evidence remains is almost entirely of a literary or legal nature
(e.g., poetry, translations or transliterations of prayers and other literature, communal regulations and records, instructions concerning the recitation of prayers and
observance of religious rituals), written by relatively learned, outstanding members
of the community. Some of this material (e.g., the so-called Biblia de la Casa de
Alba) was actually composed by Jews for non-Jewish patrons, a fact which
undoubtedly influenced their linguistic character. The Hispanic components of the
varieties of language documented in some of these texts resemble the languages
9
Bibliographies include: D. M. Bunis, Sephardic Studies: A Research Bibliography,
New York 1981; M. Sala, Le judéo-espagnol, The Hague 1976.
10 Jewish varieties of pre-Expulsion Ibero-Romance are documented and analyzed in
recent works such as Y. T. Assis, J. R. Magdalena Nom de Déu and C. Lleal,
Judeolenguas marginales en Sefarad antes de 1492 (Aljamía romance en los documentos
hebraiconavarros – Siglo XIV), Barcelona 1992; Y. T. Assis, C. Lleal and J. R.
Magdalena Nom de Déu, Aljamías hebraicoaragonesas (Siglos XII-XV), Barcelona
1995; L. Minervini, Testi giudeospagnoli medievali, Naples 1992, 2 vols.; A. Várvaro,
‘Il giudeo-spagnolo prima dell’espulsione del 1492’, Medioevo Romanzo 12 (1987), pp.
155-172; P. Wexler, The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews, Albany, N.Y.
1996.
11 E.g., see S. Marcus, ‘A-t-il existé en Espagne un dialecte judéo-espagnol?’, Sefarad 22
(1962), pp. 129-149; P. Wexler, ‘Ascertaining the Position of Judezmo within IberoRomance’, Vox Romanica 36 (1977), pp. 162-95.
[107]
David M. Bunis
used by the Jews’ Christian neighbors in the more peripheral regions of Iberia in
which they were evidently produced, e.g., Aragonese,12 Catalan, Portuguese. The
language in other documents bears a closer resemblance to the more central
Castilian, which became the language of the Spanish court and the basis of Standard
Spanish. It is unclear how much one can safely extrapolate from such texts, written
by Jewish literati, about the language(s) actually used on a daily basis by more
ordinary members of the medieval Iberian Jewish communities, who would have
constituted the great majority of the Jewish Ibero-Romance speakers.
2. Elitist Versus Popular Registers
Looking closely at some of the writings from the period, one finds hints of a gap
which may well have existed between the variety or varieties of language used by
a small intellectual elite, including an ‘official’ chancellery variety of medieval
Jewish Ibero-Romance of the kind which most of the surviving formal documents
perhaps illustrate,13 and the popular language of the everyday medieval Iberian Jew.
In most pre-Expulsion Hebrew-letter ‘Jewish Castilian’ texts of a formal literary
type, meant for a male audience, the Romance component generally resembles that
found in Castilian literary texts written by Christians during the same period, and
often differs in various respects from the Romance component of Judezmo as
documented after the Expulsion. However, in a rare, fully vocalized pre-Expulsion
vernacular prayerbook meant for women and published by Moshe Lazar in 1995
under the title Siddur Tefilot: A Woman’s Ladino Prayer Book,14 we already find
several characteristics ordinarily thought of as typical of post-Expulsion Judezmo.
For example, in the women’s prayerbook one finds, as variants of the forms
found in other pre-Expulsion texts, phonological features which become increasingly common in sixteenth century Judezmo texts. One such feature is sporadic h
(i.e., ❸) corresponding to Old Spanish [OS.] <f> and to later Spanish <h>, the latter
realized as phonological zero (e.g., ❸§❶❽❸ hija ‘daughter’ [f. 255a], OS. fija, later
Spanish hija). In 16th century Judezmo texts, <§➈> and <❸> commonly alternate,
and from the eighteenth century are systematically replaced in Judezmo by alef ⑨,
representing phonological zero. Further, the women’s prayerbook contains numerous examples of yeísmo, i.e., y (written ❽) corresponding to Old Spanish palatalized
12
For examples see the articles by Blasco Orellana and Quintana in this volume, as well
as the works cited in footnote 9 above.
13 The texts reproduced in this volume in the articles by Blasco Orellana and Quintana
would seem to illustrate regional forms of these literary varieties.
14 Lancaster, Ca.
[108]
Jewish Ibero-Romance
λ <ll> (e.g., ➌⑨➂⑨❽ yamar ‘to call’ [f. 27a], OS. llamar); as well as examples of
the related use of <❽❽➀> to denote a historically epenthetic y between a front vowel
and another vowel (e.g., ⑨❽❽➀❽❷ diya ‘day’ [4b], OS. día); and the loss of historical
λ (> y > zero) between a front vowel and another vowel (e.g., ❸⑨❽➀❹➈ pulía ‘moth’
[252a, OS. polilla]). Additionally, in most pre-Expulsion Hebrew-letter Jewish
Castilian texts there is a systematic orthographic distinction in the representation
of the sounds denoted by Old Spanish <s-, -ss-, -s> (i.e., ➍) as opposed to <ç/-z>
(➅ or, less commonly, ➊). However, in the women’s prayerbook one finds numerous examples of seseo, i.e., the realization as s of the sounds denoted by Old
Spanish <ç/-z), realized today as [0] in Castilian but as s in Andalusian, American
Spanish and Judezmo; e.g., ➃❹❽➍⑨➌❹⑨ orasyón ‘prayer’ [64b]), OS. oración, ➍⑨➈
pas ‘peace’ [67b], OS. paz.15
Some of the phonological shifts documented in the women’s prayerbook have
morphophonemic ramifications. For example, the shift n- > m- is documented in
several instances of mos (➍❹➂) as the first person plural object and reflexive
pronoun, corresponding to Standard Castilian nos (e.g., mos responderá ‘He will
answer us’ [21b], literary OS. nos responderá; enkorvarmosemos ‘we shall bow
down’ [9a], literary OS. encorvarnosemos). Here, as in popular and regional
Spanish, this instance would seem to reflect influence from the first person plural
verbal ending -mos, and perhaps the first person singular object and reflexive
pronoun me. There are also several instances of mwV- corresponding to literary Old
Spanish nuV- in the variants mwesos (181a☎➍❹➍❽⑨❹➂), mwestros (188a ➍❹➌❼➍❽⑨❹➂)
‘our (m. plural)’ (OS. nuessos, nuestros), which are also known in popular and
regional Spanish. Here, two factors seem to have been at work: the phonological
tendency to realize nasal n as m before the bilabial glide w as a form of anticipatory
assimilation; and, again, the influence of the m in the first person morphemes
(plural) -mos and (singular) me.16
Some features exhibited in the women’s prayerbook are purely morphological,
such as the use of the variant -emos (➍❹➂❽-), corresponding to Standard Castilian
-amos (although -emos is known in popular and regional Spanish) as the first person
15 For recent discussion of these phenomena in Spanish, see R. Penny, A History of the
Spanish Language, Cambridge 1991, pp. 30, 79-82 (on f > h), 90-93 (on yeísmo), 8690 (on seseo).
16 On nos > mos in varieties of Spanish, see R. Menéndez-Pidal, Manual de gramática
histórica española, Madrid 1953 (9a edición), p. 252; A. Zamora Vicente, Dialectología
española, Madrid 1967, p. 360; V. García de Diego, Gramática histórica española, 3d
ed., Madrid 1970, p. 28; R. Lapesa, Historia de la lengua española, Madrid 1981 (7th
edition), p. 303; M. Alvar and B. Pottier, Morfología historica del español, Madrid
1983, p. 123. On muesso, muestro in Spanish, see García de Diego, ibid., p. 220;
Lapesa, ibid., p. 303.
[109]
David M. Bunis
plural preterite marker of -ar conjugation verbs. The women’s prayerbook contains
over 20 examples of the type favlemos (➍❹➂❽➀⑩⑨§➈) ‘we spoke’ [75a], esperemos
(➍❹➂❽➌❽➈➍❽⑨) ‘we waited’ [156b], as opposed to literary OS. fablamos, esperamos.
The -emos ending seems to reflect influence by the first person singular preterite
ending -é, which is used consistently in the known pre-Expulsion and 16th century
‘Jewish Castilian’ texts. The use of -emos for the preterite creates a formal
distinction between that tense and the present tense, represented by -amos (e.g.,
esperamos ‘we wait’). By at least the eighteenth century, on analogy with verbs
of the -er and -ir conjugations, which have always been denoted by the first person
singular and plural markers -í and -imos, Judezmo singular -é and plural -emos of
-ar verbs yielded to -í and -imos, respectively, thus leveling the paradigm: e.g., avlí
‘I spoke’, avlimos ‘we spoke’ in a vocalized text from 1739.17
Another distinctive morphological feature in the women’s prayerbook, as opposed to other pre-Expulsion Hebrew-letter ‘Jewish Castilian’ texts, is the use of
the variant -stes (➍❽❼➍❱), corresponding to Standard Castilian -ste (although -stes
is known in popular and regional Spanish) as the second person singular preterite
marker; e.g., regmistes (➍❽❼➍❽➂❶❽➌) ‘you redeemed’ [138b], respondistes
(➍❽❼➍❽❷➄❹➈➍❽➌) ‘you answered’ [70b], amastes (➍❽❼➍⑨➂⑨) ‘you loved’ [149a],
literary OS. redimiste, respondiste, amaste. The final -s of -stes was added on
analogy with the -s marker of the second person singular in all other tenses (e.g.,
rigmes ‘you save’).18 By at least the eighteenth century the -stes ending had become
universal in Judezmo;19 however, by the end of the eighteenth century the first s
seems to have been perceived as tautological and the -stes ending began to be
supplanted by -tes (➅❽❼-), which is the modern form (e.g., regmites ‘you saved’).
The women’s prayerbook also includes lexical forms characteristic of popular
Spanish in general, which were absent in more literary pre-Expulsion Jewish texts
and were rejected in Standard Castilian, but which became widespread, and in some
instances standard, in post-Expulsion Judezmo, as in popular and regional Spanish:
e.g., muncho (❹§❶➄❹➂) ‘much’ (17a), delantre (❽➌❼➄⑨➀❽❷) ‘in front of’ (2a) vs.
Standard Castilian mucho, delante.
17
These forms (and many others illustrating the -é > -í and -emos > -imos shifts) occur
in the vocalized Ladino Pentateuch translation published by Avraham ben Yis. ˙aq Asa
in Constantinople 1739, these two in Genesis 28:15 and Exodus 14:12, respectively.
18 On -emos and -stes in Spanish, see Zamora Vicente, Dialectología española, p. 184;
García de Diego,Gramática histórica española, p. 229; Lapesa, Historia, pp. 302-303;
M. Alvar and B. Pottier, Morfología histórica del español, p. 273; Penny, A History
of the Spanish Language, pp. 179-189.
19 E.g., cf. forms such as afirmastes ‘you affirmed’, komistes ‘you ate’, oyistes ‘you heard’
in Avraham ben Yis. ˙aq Asa, Letras de Rabi Akiva, kopyadas de lashón akódesh en
ladino (Constantinople 1729), ‘Dinim’, f. 5b.
[110]
Jewish Ibero-Romance
Hebrew texts written after the Expulsion furnish further evidence of the gap
which may well have existed between elitist and popular medieval Jewish IberoRomance. For example, the distinguished Spanish-born rabbi Yosef Caro (b. Toledo? 1488, d. Safed 1575), used the diminutive form (❹➍❻➀⑨❽❷) ➍⑨❽❽➀❽➋➍❹➌
(roskilyas [de alhashú]) to denote certain dough pockets or rusks filled with honey
or sugar, almonds, walnuts and spices, in his halakhic classics Bet Yosef20 (first
published in 1555) and Í ul˙an ’Arux 21 (first published in 1564-65). The form
corresponds with rosquilla, a diminutive of rosca ‘ring-shaped bun, rusk, loaf’, cited
by the late 15th century Spanish grammarian Antonio Nebrija22 and used in Castilian
to this day. The Roman-letter form <rosquilla> is also encountered in the writings
of crypto-Jews, who would have had to speak in the same manner as Gentiles in
order to succeed in their feigned Christianity.23 A popular “Ladino” adaptation of
part of Í ul˙an ’Arux, entitled Í ul˙an ha-Panim, meant for the common man unable
to read Caro’s original Hebrew, was published in Salonika in 1568 — only three
years after the first Hebrew edition and during Caro’s own lifetime. In the vernacular
adaptation, the translator rejected Caro’s form roskilyas, replacing it with (❽❷
❹§➍⑨❻➀⑨) ➍⑨❼❽➋➍❹➌ (roskitas [de alhashú]),24 which is in fact the phonologically
motivated diminutive used by Judezmo speakers to this day.25
20
❹§➍❻➀⑨❽❷☎☎➍§⑨❽➀❽➋➍❹➌☎➁❽⑨➌➋➄❸☎➃❹❶❿☎➁❽❷➋➍❹☎➍⑩❷⑩☎➁➎❹⑨☎☎➒➁➐§❽⑨➀➂➂➍☎➁❽➅❽❿☎
(sec. 168, 3); the term is offered as the name of the food described in ’Arba‘a Turim
(first complete edition, Piove di Sacco, 1475), by Ya‘aqov ben Asher (1270?-1340) as:
➁❽❺❹❶⑨❹☎➁❽❷➋➍❹☎⑨➌➋❹➊☎➁❽⑨➀➂☎➃❽➅❽❿☎➃❽➂❿☎❽❹➍➆➍☎➎➈☎⑨❹❸☎❲❲❲☎➃❽➄➅❽❿⑩☎❸⑨⑩❸☎➎➈
➁❽➀⑩➎☎❽➄❽➂❹ (’Ora˙ Ó ayim, sec. 168, 3).
21 ➒➁➐§❽⑨➌➋➄❸☎➁❸❹☎➁❽➀⑩➎❹☎➁❽❷➋➍❹☎➁❽❺❹❶⑨❹☎➌➋❹➅☎❹⑨☎➍⑩❷☎➁➎❹⑨☎➁❽⑨➀➂➂➍☎➁❽➅❽❿☎➃❽➂
❹§➍❻➀⑨❽❷☎➍§⑨❽➀❽➋➍❹➌ (’Ora˙ Ó ayim, sec.168, 7).
22 A. Nebrija, Dictionarium ex hispaniensi in latinum sermonem, [no year (=1495 or
1493)], facsimile edition, Madrid 1951. An Andalusian Arabic cookery manuscript
probably from the 13th century offers a recipe for rosquillas rellenas de miel (see F.
de la Granja Santamaría, La cocina arabigoandaluza según un manuscrito inédito,
Madrid 1960 [=extract of Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Madrid, Facultad de
Filosofía y Letras, 1959], p. 20; A. Huici Miranda, Traducción española de un
manuscrito anónimo del siglo XIII sobre la cocina hispano-magribí, Madrid 1966, p.
114. A recipe for rosquillas also appears in Libro del arte de cocina, por Diego
Granado (1599), published with an introduction by J. del Val in Madrid, 1971, p. 405.
23 D. Gitlitz and L. K. Davidson cite a source from 1505 (A Drizzle of Honey: the Lives
and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews, New York 1999, pp. 266, 295).
24 Íul˙ an ha-Panim, Salonika 1568, f. 28a.
25 The motivating factor is the -k- in the stem, attracting diminutive-forming -ita rather
than more prevalent -ika (The suffix -ilya is completely non-productive in Judezmo).
For a comprehensive analysis of diminutive formation in Judezmo, see D. M. Bunis,
‘Ottoman Judezmo Diminutives and Other Hypocoristics’, Linguistique des langues
juives et linguistique générale, edited by F. Alvarez-Pereyre and J. Baumgarten, Paris
[111]
David M. Bunis
An opposition in Sephardic communities between an elite sector and a popular
majority, partially reflected in their divergent language, is also suggested in 16th
century sources written in the language itself in the Ottoman Empire. For example,
in various statements in his Sefer Hanhagat Ha˙ayim … Rejimyento dela Vida
(Salonika 1564), Rabbi Moße Almosnino (c. 1515-c. 1580) of Salonika alluded to
distinctions between his use of the vernacular — which he called romance (f. 13a),
a name often used among contemporaneous Christian speakers of Ibero-Romance
— and that of “el vulgo”26 ‘the common people’. He described the latter as ‘people
who are not learned/wise, as is commonly true of most rustic people’,27 and he
recommended that their opinions on matters not be heeded.28 Whereas Almosnino
referred to a ‘violent, angry, depraved’ person as airado (S.[panish] airado), “el
vulgo” commonly called such a person kruel (S. cruel ‘cruel’).29 “El vulgo” used
the term onra ‘sense of personal honor’ (S. honra) for what Almosnino perceived
as vanigloria ‘vainglory, vanity, arrogance’ (S. vanagloria).30 Almosnino noted
that the common people had distinctive names for various vices, which he himself
refrained from mentioning.31 Weird phantoms believed by “el vulgo” to appear to
them by day or by night were called by them demonios.32 A malaise which
Almosnino called by the learned Latin name ínkubus33 was called pezadilya –
literally, a ‘weight’ — by the masses.34 In his text “en romanse” Almosnino noted
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
2004, pp. 193-246. J. Nehama defined Modern Salonika Judezmo roskíta as ‘petite
gimblette’, and alhashú as ‘sorte de nougat fait de biscuit en poudre ou de chapelure
de pain azyme, d’amandes, de noix et autres fruits grillés, d’épices, le tout bien pilé
et cuit dans du miel’ (Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid 1977, pp. 484, 28).
In the present article, citations from Judezmo texts in the Hebrew alphabet are transcribed in italicized romanization. See also footnote 4 above.
“Los ombres ke no son savios komo son komún mente los mas de.los ombres…
rústikos” (M. Almosnino, Sefer Hanhagat ha-Ó ayim … Rejimyento dela Vida, Salonika 1564, f. 147b; in a Hebrew marginal note on the same page Almosnino rendered
ombres rústikos as ➁❽➄❹➂❸❸☎➁❽➍➄⑨❸ [ha’anaß im hahamonim] ‘the common people’).
“Ke no akoste… a.la opinion del vulgo” (ibid., f. 80b).
“El vulgo … komunmente lyaman kruel a.el muy airado” (ibid., f. 88b).
“El vulgo tyenen por mijor ser amados ke amar… Lo ke elyos lyaman onra … lyamo
yo vanigloria” (ibid., f. 118a).
“Sus visios así mesmo tyenen partikolares nombres notos al vulgo i por tanto los desho
de dezir” (ibid., f. 66a).
“Las fantasmas ke algunos pyensan ke se les aparesen de dia o de noche … lyaman
el vulgo demonios” (ibid., f. 140b).
Cf. Latin incubus, Spanish íncubo “an evil spirit believed to descend upon and have
sexual intercourse with sleeping women”.
“Una enfermedad ke.se lyama en latín incubus…i el vulgo lyaman pezadilya, ke
imajina sonyando el ke tyene tal enfermedad ke se le pone alguna koza enriba ke le
peza mucho” (ibid., f. 142b). Cf. Spanish pesadilla ‘nightmare’.
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
that women (mujeres) commonly referred to ‘witches’ by the term ‫( ברוג'אש‬brushas,
or perhaps brujas); 35 but in a Hebrew marginal note which he added to the text,
something not likely to be read by unlearned men, Almosnino took the liberty of
replacing the term mujeres ‘women’ with broader ‫( בני אדם‬bene ’adam) ‘[common]
human beings, people’, which included the men as well. 36
In Almosnino’s work, divergences which must have existed between the language
of the elite minority to which he belonged and that of the much larger popular sector
are not only suggested by his broad references to el vulgo, mujeres and bene ’adam..
The Hispanic component of Almosnino’s language itself included features of morphology, lexicon and other structural levels which put it at variance with that of
more ‘popular’ 16th century works in ladino (as their editors tended to call the language, rather than romance), meant for the everyday reader, such as Šulhan
¦
ha-Panim, Sadiq
¦
ben Yosef Formón’s translation (Istanbul c. 1569) of Bahye
¦ ben
Paquda’s moralistic classic Hovot
¦
ha-Levavot, and to a lesser extent, the women’s
prayerbook Seder Našim edited by Me’ir ben Šemu’el Benveniste 37 and published
in Salonika before 1568. It is the features more characteristic of the popular texts,
rather than those used by Almosnino, which tended to survive into Modern Judezmo.
For example, as in Castilian, Almosnino used the verb ending -amos (recalled above)
as the marker of -ar conjugation first person plural verbs in both the present and
preterite indicative tenses (e.g., deklaramos in the sense of ‘we explained’ [f. 51b],
semezamos
˘
meaning ‘we likened’ [121a]); whereas we find -amos in the present
tense but instances of -emos and perhaps -imos 38 for the preterite in both Seder
Našim (e.g., ordenemos ‘we arranged’ [172], kulpemos ‘we were guilty’ [241], as
well as an additional 20 examples) and in Hovot
¦
ha-Levavot (e.g., tiremos ‘we pulled’
[16b], deklaremos [18a] / deklarimos [17a] ‘we explained’). As noted, these forms
correspond to Modern Judezmo present tense -amos vs. preterite -imos.
For the second person plural marker Almosnino systematically used -V³ ys, analogous to Castilian -V³ is (e.g., Almosnino soys ‘you are’ [134a], darëys ‘you will
give’ [78b]; cf. Castilian sois, darëis), as well as occasional archaic - Vdes, the
older variant in Old Spanish (e.g., oiredes ‘you will hear’ [103b]). But Hovot
¦
ha-Levavot also contains examples with palatalized - V³ sh (< - V³ ys, with regressive
35 “Es loke las mujeres komún mente lyaman brushas” (ibid., f. 142b). Cf. Modern Judezmo
brushas, Old Spanish bruxas, Modern Spanish brujas; perhaps Almosnino’s spelling
‫ ברוג'אש‬indicates that he realized the word as bruzas,
˘ which might be a spelling pronunciation of 17th century Spanish brujas.
36 ‫( קורא']ים[ בני אדם ברוג'אש בלעז‬ibid., f. 142b).
37 On Benveniste see the article by Dov Hakohen in the forthcoming proceedings of the
Thirteenth International Congress of the World Union of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem.
38 It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the vowels Sere,
¦
denoting e, and hiriq,
¦
denoting i, in these poorly printed texts.
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David M. Bunis
of the palatalization of y by s, yielding ß), e.g., sosh, written §➍❹➍ (58a) ‘you are’,
estásh, spelled §➍⑨❼➍❽⑨, (45b) ‘you are, and alternate -V'desh, e.g., devédesh,
written §➍❽❷❽§⑩❽❷ (65b) ‘you should’. These forms are also found in Ladino
translation texts (see below) of the same and later eras, and by the late 16th century
-sh became the predominant second person plural marker.
To create superlative forms of adjectives Almosnino made heavy use of the
suffix -ísimo, as popular in renaissance Spanish and still in use today (e.g.,
desdi‰adísima ‘most unfortunate [lady]’, difikultwozísimo ‘most difficult’ [72a,
85b]). In the 16th century works in more ‘popular’ language this suffix seems to be
lexically restricted to a single word, grandísimo ‘very large’ (e.g., Í ul˙an ha-Panim
10b); in natural Modern Judezmo the -ísimo suffix is in fact non-existent. Paralleling
Caro’s use of the diminutive suffix -ilyo (Spanish -illo) as noted above, Almosnino
seems to have preferred that suffix, which is completely unproductive in Modern
Judezmo (e.g., kazilya ‘little house’ [45a] < kaza, pekadilyo ‘minor sin’ [58a] <
pekado, pezadilya ‘little weight’ [142b] < pezado); in the more ‘popular’ 16th
century works, as in Modern Judezmo, the most productive diminutive suffix was
-iko (Spanish -ico; e.g., pedasiko ‘small piece’ < pedaso, enbolteriko ‘little strip [of
leather]’ < enboltero, avagariko ‘nice and quiet’ < avagar [Í ul˙an ha-Panim 85a,
9b, 23b]) and variant -eziko (e.g., pedrezika ‘pebble’ < pyedra [ibid., 59a]).
It is very possible that the atypical (from the vantage point of Modern Judezmo)
or non-popular forms used by Caro, Almosnino and certain other intellectuals of
the period — forms which were to leave no heirs in later Judezmo — represented
forms used by a small elite group of highly educated, in a sense linguistically
‘Christianized’ Sephardim of the Middle Ages and 16th century, some of whom
were in fact conversos, or former conversos who returned to Judaism in the
Ottoman Empire and Italy. The contemporaneous pre- and post-Expulsion popular
majorities were probably using the other forms. Although not always documented
for the earliest period — since the language of their users tended not to be recorded
in written forms which survived — it is those forms which were the only ones to
endure in Modern Judezmo. It is undoubtedly the language of members of the elite
sector and former crypto-Jews, rather than that of the popular Jewish masses, which
Christian Spanish visitors to Sephardic communities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries praised as being “as good or better than their own”.39
39
E.g., Gonzalo de Illescas wrote of his encounters with Sephardim of the East in Venice:
“Yo conocí en Venecia hartos judíos de Salónica que hablaban castellano con ser bien
mozos, tan bien o mejor que yo” (in his Historia pontifical, Barcelona 1606, p. 106).
Interpreting such comments by Spanish travelers of the period, Rabbi Michael Molho
of Salonika wrote: ‘No cabe duda ninguna que los susodichos viajeros se encontraron
con personas cultas o ex conversos’ (Literatura sefardita de Oriente, Madrid-Barcelona
1960, p. 4).
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
Further support for the plausibility of a gap between the varieties of language
used in medieval and 16th century formal Sephardic chancellery styles, on the one
hand, and everyday speech, on the other, is to be found in the stylistic diversity of
the modern period, which sometimes reaches extreme degrees. For example, the
language of the Hebrew-letter manuscript Libro de Aktas de la Hunta Selekta de
la Komunidad Ebrea de Tánher (dezde 6 Heshvan 5621 ‘asta 29 Iyar 5678), which
includes a preface written in 5678 (1918),40 often more closely resembles Modern
Castilian “legalese” than the popular Hakitia documented by linguists belonging
to the speech community beginning in the 1920s.41 However, despite the linguistic
discrepancies which must have existed between the language of the elite and the
more popular sectors of Iberian Jewry before the Expulsion, it seems possible to
piece together several general features of medieval Jewish Ibero-Romance —
especially those of medieval Jewish Castilian, the medieval progenitor of Modern
Judezmo — from pre-Expulsion sources as well as from apparent reflections of
medieval Jewish Ibero-Romance surviving in documents produced in the Ottoman
Empire and Italy in the 16th century.
3. Hebrew-letter Orthography
For one thing, wherever they lived, the Jews of medieval Iberia preferred to write
their vernacular in the Hebrew alphabet, which all boys learned as part of their basic
religious education.42 This is not to say that there were no Iberian Jews who knew
40 For the language of the Libro de Aktas see S. Pimienta, P. Abensur eds., Indice del
Libro de Actas de la Junta Selecta de la Comunidad Hebrea de Tánger desde 6 Heshván
5621 hasta 29 Iyar 5635, transcrito del aljamiado al español por S. S. Pimienta, Paris
1991; and the analysis by G. Pimienta, ‘Le Registre des Actas (comptes-rendus de
réunions) du premier Comité de la Communauté de Tanger, de 1860 à 1875: analyse
de la langue’, forthcoming in D. M. Bunis, Y. Bentolila and E. Hazan eds., Languages
and Literatures of Sephardic and Oriental Jewry, Jerusalem.
41 On Modern Hakitia see, among others, J. Benoliel Dialecto judeo-hispano-marroquí
o hakitía, published in installments in Boletín de la Real Academia de la Lengua
Española (1926), and as a book in Madrid 1977; A. Bendelac, Los nuestros: sejina,
letuarios, jaquetía y fraja, New York 1987; E. Cohen Aflalo, ‘Lo que yo sé’ (Manual
de Haketía), Madrid 2000.
42 Treatments of traditional Judezmo orthography include: D. M. Bunis, ‘The Historical
Development of Judezmo Orthography: A Brief Sketch’, Working Papers in Yiddish
and East European Jewish Studies 2 (New York 1974), pp. 1-54; ibid., ‘Writing as a
Symbol of Religio-National Identity: On the Historical Development of Judezmo
Spelling’, forthcoming in Pe’amim (in Hebrew); R. Foulché-Delbosc, ‘La transcription
hispano-hébraïque’, Revue Hispanique 1 (1894), pp. 22-33; H. Kohring, ‘Judenspanisch
in hebräischer Schrift’, Neue Romania 12 (1991), pp. 95-170; P. Pascual Recuero,
Ortografía del ladino: Soluciones y evolución, Granada 1988.
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David M. Bunis
other alphabets; some certainly did, and, in fact, Jews served as skillful writers and
translators of foreign language material written in several alphabets. However, the
Jews tended to identify the Latin alphabet used by Iberian Christians with the
Catholic Church, just as they connected the Arabic alphabet with Islam, and thus
they tended not to use those alphabets when writing for Jewish readers. This
tradition was maintained in the Sephardic emigré communities in the Ottoman
Empire, North Africa and even parts of Western Europe into the modern period.
For example, in Í ul˙an ha-Panim, Me’ir [ben Íemu’el Benveniste], the 16th
century translator of parts of Yosef Caro’s Í ul˙an ’Arux, referred to the Roman
alphabet as letra de goyim ‘Gentile letters’;43 and in Í e’erit Yosef (Salonika 1568),
Daniel ben Pera˙ya Hakohen of 16th century Salonika described his adaptation, in
the Hebrew alphabet, of a Spanish version of an astronomical work by Avraham
Zakut as being “from Christian script to Hebrew, in the Spanish (or Sephardic)
language”.44
During the same period Íemu’el de Medina (1506-1589) of Salonika referred
to the Hebrew script as “the script in which we members of the [Jewish] covenant
write and know and are familiar with.”45 The graphemic distinctiveness of the Jews,
writing Ibero-Romance in their own alphabet, would have been noticeable to any
non-Jew seeing a sample of such writing, and would also have rendered Jewish
writing illegible to all those unfamiliar with the Hebrew alphabet.
4. Distinctive Lexicon
a. Elements of Hebrew and Aramaic Origin
The medieval Ibero-Romance languages used by Jews were different from those
used by their Christian neighbors not only in their writing systems, but also thanks
to their incorporation of certain distinctive lexical items. Many of these were of
Hebrew origin.46 To judge by some of the pre-Expulsion texts, as well as texts
43 Íul˙ an ha-Panim, Salonika 1568, f. 3b.
44 I.e., ❽❷➌➈➅☎ ➃❹➍➀⑩☎ ❯➒❽§➍➌☎ ⑩➎❿⑩➐☎ ➎❽➌⑩➆➀☎ ➎❽➌➊❹➄☎ ❸⑩❽➎❿➂ (Íe’erit Yosef, Salonika
1568, f. 1a).
45 I.e., ❹➍➋⑩☎⑨➈❹➌❸☎❸❽❸☎➁⑨❹☎❲❲❲☎➒➅➂☎➃❽➂☎➀❿➂➐☎➃❽➌❹❼➈☎⑩➎❿☎❲❲❲☎➒⑨➈❹➌➀➐☎❹➀☎➃➎➄☎❲❲❲☎❾➀➂❸
➁❽⑩➎❹❿☎➎❽➌⑩☎❽➄⑩☎❹➄⑨➍☎⑩➎❿⑩❹☎❽➄➍❸☎⑩➎❿⑩☎➌❿❺❹❸➍☎❹➂❿☎❸❺☎⑩➎❿⑩☎❹➌❽❿❺➂☎❸❽❸☎❾➀➂❸➂
➁❽➌❽❿➂❹☎➁❽➆❷❹❽❹ (Responsa of Maharaßdam, Óoßen Mißpat, Salonika 1596 r. 364)
46
For a historical introduction to the Hebrew and Aramaic elements used by the Sephardim
before and after the Expulsion, as well as for documentation of the lexical items
discussed in this section, see D. M. Bunis, A Lexicon of the Hebrew and Aramaic
Elements in Modern Judezmo, Jerusalem, 1993, pp. 17-19.
[116]
Jewish Ibero-Romance
meant for the popular reader which were produced in the Ottoman Empire and Italy
from the 16th century on, elements of Hebrew origin were probably used quite
liberally in the natural speech of the average medieval Spanish Jew. Such elements
were not likely to be understood if heard by a non-Jew. But if we may judge from
the mundane meanings carried by many of the Hebraisms found in the preExpulsion texts, their use was probably more a habitual part of everyday speaking
and writing as preserved over many generations than a deliberate attempt to
maintain a secret code. Many such Hebraisms were common nouns which can
perhaps be subsumed under the category of ‘religious terminology’, e.g., names of
holidays such as shabad (➎⑩➍) ‘Sabbath’ and pésah (❻➅➈) ‘Passover’, and names
of institutions such as kal (➀❸➋) ‘synagogue; community’ and bed din (➃❽❷☎➎❽⑩)
‘religious court’.47 Hebrew rather than Ibero-Romance was also the preferred
source of personal names, especially for males, as well as some family names. In
written texts, Hebrew letters were used to denote numbers (e.g., §➆ [ain] ‘70’), as
well as abbreviations (e.g., §➌ [ra-/re-/ri(bí)] ‘Rabbi’).48 Perhaps more interestingly,
some texts, such as personal correspondence, business contracts, and communal
regulations such as those set down by the rabbis in Valladolid in 1432,49 include
vocabulary of a more abstract nature, whose connection to Jewish religious practice
is more tenuous, e.g., nouns such as kelal (➀➀❿) ‘rule, principle,’ malhud (➎❹❿➀➂)
‘kingdom’ and aspaká (❸➋➅➈❸) ‘financial stipend’, and adverbs such as afilú
(❹➀❽➈⑨) ‘even’ and (non) baolam (➁➀❹➆⑩) ‘(not) ever’. Periphrastic verbs such as
ser mekabel (➀⑩➋➂) ‘to receive’ and ser midparnés (➅➄➌➈➎➂) ‘to earn one’s living’
were composed of an auxiliary verb of Hispanic origin (e.g., ser ‘to be’, [f]azer
‘to do’, dar ‘to give’), conjugated with Hispanic endings which probably would
have been familiar to non-Jews, but containing a meaning-bearing element of
Hebrew or Aramaic origin, which might remain invariant during conjugation
(unlike its counterpart in some Spanish constructions, e.g., es/son mehuyav ‘is/are
obligated’ [⑩❽❹❻➂] vs. Spanish es//son obligado/-a//obligados/-as), or might receive gender and number markers of Hebrew origin (e.g., alternate es mehuyav/yéved//-yavim/-yavod [➎❹❱❳➁❽❱❳➎❱❳⑩❽❹❻➂]). All of these Hebrew elements would
have been incomprehensible to Gentile Spanish speakers. Hispanic rather than
Hebrew inflectional endings were occasionally used with the Hebrew stems docu-
47 The term kal appears, among others, in the text published by Blasco Orellana in this
volume.
48 The use of Hebrew for names, numbers and abbreviations is amply illustrated in the
Judeo-Aragonese text published in this volume by Blasco Orellana.
49 For a photographic reproduction of the original manuscript as well as a transcription
and transliteration, see Y. Moreno-Koch, ‘The Taqqanot of Valladolid of 1432’, The
American Sephardi 9 (1978), pp. 58-145.
[117]
David M. Bunis
mented for medieval Ibero-Romance: e.g., -s in the plural noun form eskamás
‘rabbinical approbations’ (< haskama [❸➂❿➅❸]) and -es in samaies ‘synagogue
sextons’ (< singular samai < samás < shamash [➍➂➍]);50 the verbalizing affixes
en- -ar in enheremar ‘to excommunicate’ (<˙erem [➁➌❻]); and the adjectival
endings -ado in (wevos) hammados ‘hardboiled (eggs)’ (< ˙am[ín] [➃❽]➂❻]) and
-ana in (feminine) trefana ‘unfit for Jewish consumption’ (< taref [➇➌❼], terefá
[❸➈➌❼]). Thanks to their familiar Hispanic endings, non-Jews hearing such forms
might have been able to identify the parts of speech to which they belonged; but
the actual meanings of the words would have been unfathomable. Out of context,
it would have been impossible for non-Jews in medieval Spain even to determine
the parts of speech represented by nouns such as sibod (➎❹⑩➅) ‘reasons’ and
peratim (➁❽❼➌➈) ‘details’, which bear Hebrew-origin plural markers (feminine
➎❹❱ [-od], masculine ➁❽❱ [-im]) as well as stems.
It should be noted that the Hebraisms documented for Jewish medieval IberoRomance were hardly ephemeral: most of them continued to play a vital role in
Judezmo from the 16th century into the modern period.51 As in some pre-Expulsion
Jewish Ibero-Romance texts, Hebrew elements in 16th century texts in the elitist
style such as that used by Moße Almosnino tend to be few, generally being limited
to terminology having a direct connection to Judaism (e.g., ketubá [❸⑩❹➎❿] ‘religious marriage contract’ [72a]) or to taboo terms (e.g., zoná [❸➄❹❺] ‘prostitute’
[78b]). In the elitist style the use of Hebraisms is also occasionally restricted to a
specifically Jewish context or genre: e.g., in original passages in his text Almosnino
referred to ‘charity’ by the Hispanic term limosna (71a), but when re-constructing
the dialog included in a midrash he portrayed a simple woman as instead using the
Hebraism sedaká (❸➋❷➊) [72a]. Almosnino’s book was written at the request of
a younger member of his own social sector who evidently wished to familiarize
himself with the philosophical ideas treated in the work.52 Writing in the elitist style
which he undoubtedly felt most suited his subject, Almosnino nevertheless seems
to have feared that much of his learned Hispanic-origin vocabulary would in fact
be incomprehensible even to the members of his own social sector. He suggested
50
On plural formation in the language of the Sephardim after the Expulsion, see D. M.
Bunis, ‘Plural Formation in Modern East Judezmo’, J. Sermoneta and I. Benabu eds.,
Jerusalem Studies in Judeo-Romance Languages, Jerusalem 1985, pp. 41-67.
51 The great majority of Hebraisms found in pre-Expulsion Jewish Ibero-Romance texts
are also documented for the modern language in Bunis, A Lexicon, cited in footnote
46 above.
52 Since Hebrew letters were used in this book and in the others in elitist style published
in the Ottoman Empire, it may be assumed that in mid-16th century Salonika, as
probably in pre-Expulsion Spain, even the ‘leading families’ were most comfortable
reading texts in the Hebrew alphabet.
[118]
Jewish Ibero-Romance
that reading his work would help familiarize his protégé with terminology which
would enable him to converse with [Gentile?] scholars who did not know “our most
holy [Hebrew] language” – implying that the author believed his reader would be
familiar with the Hebrew equivalents of such terms, which probably constituted
part of his everyday language.53 To ensure comprehension of the work, Almosnino
provided a glossary (➎❹➀➂❸☎➌❹⑨❽⑩) at the end of Hanhagat ha-Óayim in which the
Hispanic learned words are translated into Hebrew: of the 466 “Hebrew” definitions, the vast majority consist of or incorporate Hebraisms which have constituted
an integral part of Judezmo since his time through the modern period, and probably
had been in wide everyday use among the Jews in Spain. Almosnino’s glossary
acquaints us with words of Hispanic origin which he did not expect his reader to
know, and would also seem to corroborate the everyday use of their Hebrew
correspondents among the members of his social sector, just as they are documented in works meant for more popular readers. The glossary illustrates the
considerably varied semantic fields in which Hebraisms were used in Almosnino’s
time, as in Modern Judezmo. All of the Hebraisms appearing as glosses (here,
within single quotations) for the following words in Almosnino’s list of difficult
words are in fact also documented for Modern Judezmo.54 Among the broad
semantic fields represented by the Hebraisms are:
(a) Abstract thought, argumentation, science: e.g., entilidjénsia 55/
entendimiento/mente [all of which are translated by] ‘séhel’ [➀❿➍ ‘intelligence’],
sapensia ‘hohmá’ [❸➂❿❻ ‘knowledge, wisdom’], sensia ‘dáad’ [➎➆❷ ‘intelligence’], selebro ‘móah’ [❻❹➂ ‘brain’], imajinasión ‘dim[a]yón’ [➃❹❽➂❷ ‘imagination’], opinión ‘sevará’ [⑨➌⑩➅], porpozisión/supozisión [both translated by] ‘hanahá’
[❸❻➄❸ ‘proposition; supposition’], deskripsión ‘róshem’ [➁➍❹➌ ‘description’],
serkonstansias ‘tenaim’ [➁❽⑨➄➎ ‘circumstances’], futuro ‘atid’ [❷❽➎➆ ‘future’],
53 ‘Aún ke mas fásil me fwera eskrivirte en nwestra santísima i fakondísima lengwa, por
ser a.mi mas familiar, ni me kyero eskuzar del travajo de eskrivir en romance komo
me rwegas lo haga, pwes por nwestros pekados son todas nwestras plátikas en lengwa
ajena a nos. I tanbyén ganarás de kamino entender algunos términos ke, entendyéndolos,
avyendo de platikar kon algunos ombres savios no prátikos en nwestra santísima
lengwa, se te segerá grande provecho’ (Hanhagat ha-Ó ayim, f. 13a).
54 See Bunis, A Lexicon, cited in footnote 46 above.
55 In the romanization of Almosnino’s Hebrew-letter orthography no attempt has been
made here to distinguish between sin and samex (both being transcribed s), since his
spellings lead one to believe that he realized both as s (e.g., ➍⑨❽➅➄⑨❼➅➄❹➋➌❽➅
serkonstansias ‘circumstances’). However, prevocalic he will be transcribed as h, and
lamed + yod (yod) as ly, which may have been their realization, if they were not realized
as zero and y, respectively, as in later Judezmo.
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David M. Bunis
plural ‘leshón rabim’ [➁❽⑩➌☎ ➃❹➍➀], fakto ‘peulá’ [❸➀❹➆➈ ‘fact; action’], falasia
‘taud’ [➎❹➆❼ ‘falacy’], silensio ‘shetiká’ [❸➋❽➎➍ ‘silence’], kosteasión ‘maarahá’
[❸❿➌➆➂ ‘constellation’], signos o sinyos ‘mazalod’ [➎❹➀❺➂ ‘signs of the zodiac’],
kaprikorno ‘gedí’ [❽❷❶ ‘capricorn’]);
(b) Work, vocations, commerce: e.g., arte ‘melahá’ [❸❿⑨➀➂ ‘work’], artifises
‘baalé melahá’ [❸❿⑨➀➂☎ ❽➀➆⑩ ‘workmen’], restituisiones ‘tashlumín’ [➃❽➂❹➀➍➎
‘monetary restitution’], uzura ‘ribid’ [➎❽⑩➌ ‘usury’]);
(c) Government and administration: e.g., ministros ‘mesharetim’ [➁❽➎➌➍➂
‘ministers’], pretor ‘shofet’ [❼➈❹➍ ‘judge’]), presebtor ‘nagid [umsavé leomim]’
[❷❽❶➄ (➁❽➂❹⑨➀☎❸➊➂❹) ‘noble, leader’];
(d) Positive concepts: e.g., próspero ‘muslah’ [❻➀➊❹➂ ‘prosperous, successful’], trankilidad ‘menuhá’ [❸❻❹➄➂ ‘tranquility’], virtudes ‘maalod’ [➎❹➀➆➂ ‘virtues’], familiar ‘ben báyid’ [➎❽⑩☎➃⑩ ‘member of a household, frequent guest’];
(e) Negative concepts and behavior, euphemisms, taboo: e.g., adulasión
‘hanupá’ [❸➈❹➄❻ ‘flattery’], ingrato ‘kafuy tová’ [❸⑩❹❼☎❽❹➈❿ ‘ingrate’], ipókritas
‘sevuim’ [➁❽➆❹⑩➊ ‘hypocrites]’, omisídio ‘shefihud damim’ [➁❽➂❷☎➎❽❿❽➈➍ ‘homicide’], suplisio ‘yisurín’ [➃❽➌❹➅❽❽ ‘torture’], pésimo ‘rashá[h]’ [➆➍➌ ‘vile’],
paupérimos ‘aniyim (ve)dalim (meod)’ [◗❷⑨➂❘☎➁❽➀❷ (❹) (➁❽❽➄➆) ‘abject paupers’],
vaga ‘batel’ [➀❼⑩ ‘idle’], defektwozo ‘báal mum’ [➁❹➂☎➀➆⑩ ‘defective’], lidjondjero
‘hanef’ [➇➄❻ ‘flatterer’], defonto ‘med, niftar (min haolam)’ [➃➂❘☎ ❯➌❼➈➄☎ ❯➎➂
◗➁➀❹➆❸], veneno ‘sam hamáved’ [➎❹➂❸☎➁➅ ‘poison’], violensia ‘hehréah (ve)ones’
[➅➄❹⑨◗❹❘☎❻➌❿❸ ‘force, compulsion’].
Almosnino did not hesitate to use Hispanisms even to denote concepts in Jewish
religion and scholarship which were expressed in 16th century works of a more
popular nature by the Hebraisms offered in his word-list as glosses; e.g., presebto
‘misvá’ [❸❹➊➂ ‘precept’], providensia ‘hashgahá’ [❸❻❶➍❸ ‘(Divine) Providence’],
komentador ‘mefaresh’ [➍➌➈➂ ‘commentator’], premios ‘sahar’ [➌❿➍ ‘reward’],
esplikar ‘perush (u)beur’ [➌❹⑨❽⑩◗❹❘☎➍❹➌❽➈ ‘commentary’], subdjekto ‘nosé’ [⑨➍❹➄
‘subject’], prólogo ‘hakdamá’ [❸➂❷➋❸ ‘preface’], pedrikamento ‘maamar’ [➌➂⑨➂
‘rabbinical essay’], modernos ‘aharonim’ [➁❽➄❹➌❻⑨ ‘later rabbinical authorities’],
poeta ‘meshorer’ [➌➌❹➍➂ ‘poet’], relidjozos ‘nezirim (ve)adukim’ [➁❽➋❹❷⑨◗❹❘☎➁❽➌❽❺➄
‘Nazarites, ascetics’], and the titles of biblical books such as el Ekleziastes ‘Séfer
Kohéled’ [➎➀❸➋☎➌➈➅ ‘Ecclesiastes’]), Lamentasiones ‘Kinod’ [➎❹➄❽➋ ‘Lamentations’], Pesalterio ‘Séfer Tehilim’ [➁❽➀❽❸➎☎➌➈➅ ‘Psalms’], Krónikas ‘Séfer Divré
Hayamim’ [➁❽➂❽❸☎❽➌⑩❷☎➌➈➅ ‘Chronicles’]. In Almosnino’s Hanhagat ha-Óayim
and in its glossary of difficult words one finds terms which may have carried some
Christological or Church-related overtones in the language of Christians (although
not necessarily in Almosnino’s own language); it is noteworthy that other forms
of the Hispanic-origin words, or entirely different words (viz., the words of Hebrew
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
origin he offers as glosses), are used to convey the same concepts in the more popular
16th century Judezmo works, as in the modern language. For instance, Almosnino’s
glossary includes redemsión ‘pidyón’ [‫‘ פדיון‬redemption’] (as opposed to the more
typical ‘Jewish’ form reg-/rekmisyón [e.g., in Šulhan
¦ ha-Panim 129b]); konfisión
‘[hodaá ve]viduy' [‫‘ )הודאה ו(ודוי‬confession’], resureisión ‘tehiad hametim’ [‫תחית‬
‫‘ המתים‬resurrection of the dead’], martirios ‘yisurín’ [‫‘ ייסורין‬martyrdom, torture’],
inmakulada ‘temimá’ [‫‘ תמימה‬immaculate, innocent’]), nunsio ‘shalíah’ [‫שליח‬
‘messenger (in Christianity, ‘apostle’)], legos ‘amé haares’ [‫‘ עמי הארץ‬lay people,
ignoramuses’].
As in the communal regulations of Valladolid and other linguistically more ‘Jewish’ texts surviving from medieval Spain, 16th century Judezmo works in non-elitist,
popular style freely incorporate hundreds of Hebraisms which must have been in
common use at the time, free of semantic or contextual restrictions. These include
typical derivatives fusing Hebrew stems and Hispanic derivational morphemes such
as darsar ‘to preach’ (<‫ש‬-‫ר‬-‫[ ד‬d-r-š] + -ar, Hovot
¦
ha-Levavot 23b no darses) and
¦
badkar ‘to ritually inspect (slaughtered cattle)’ (<‫ק‬-‫ד‬-‫[ ב‬b-d-q] + -ar, Šulhan
ha-Panim 80a), which were generally absent in the elitist style such as that used by
Almosnino.
b. Jewish Greek and Jewish Arabic Substrata
Another source of distinctive vocabulary in the language of medieval Iberia’s Jews
was the Jewish Greek which once had been spoken by the community’s ancestors,
some elements of which were preserved when the Jews adopted Ibero-Romance
languages, e.g., meldar (< Latin meletare < Greek meletao)
¯ ‘to contemplate or study
sacred texts’. 56 Although meldar occurs in Christian sources as well, the context is
always Jewish. 57 In 16th century works in the elitist style such as that used by
Almosnino, ‘reading’ was ordinarily denoted by the Castilian verb leer; but in
restricted, ‘Jewish’ contexts such as the relating of a midrash, Almosnino also used
meldar. In popular 16th century works such as Hovot
¦
ha-Levavot, on the other hand,
meldar was used much more freely, often as a synonym of leer.
A quantitatively more significant source of borrowings in the unique Jewish lexicon was Arabic, especially the Jewish Arabic which many of the community’s
56 For treatment of (Old Jewish) Greek elements in Jewish languages of Romance stock,
see D. S. Blondheim, Les parlers judéo-romans et la Vetus Latina, Paris 1925; P. Wexler,
The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews (see footnote 10 above).
57 See for example J. Corominas and J. A. Pascual, Diccionario crítico etimológico
castellano e hispánico, Madrid 1985, vol. 4, p. 20.
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David M. Bunis
ancestors began to speak following the occupation of parts of Iberia by the Muslim
Moors from 711. The language of Christian Spaniards under Muslim domination
underwent enrichment through borrowings from Arabic,58 and many of the same
Arabisms were incorporated in the Ibero-Romance adopted or re-adopted by the
Jews in areas re-taken by the Christians during the Reconquista. But the Jews’
Ibero-Romance also contained some Arabisms absent from, or absorbed differently
in, the language of Christian Spaniards.59 Among these were elements which had
been used in Iberian Judeo-Arabic, and which came to acquire a certain Jewish
significance. For example, in their Ibero-Romance the Jews continued to call
‘Sunday’ alhad, from the North African Arabic form al-˙add, literally meaning
‘first (day)’, so as to avoid using Castilian domingo (from Latin [dies] dominicus)
meaning ‘[day of the] Lord,’ which they understood as a reference to Jesus.60 To
this day, among many Sephardim of the Mediterranean region, the special bag in
which prayer articles are held is called talega, from Arabic ta‘liqa ‘bag’. The
Jewish community tax on kosher foods such as meat, cheese and wine, collected
from the dealers to enable the payment of communal expenses, is called gabela,
from Arabic qabåla ‘bail; contract; receipt; rent, etc.’ The ceremonial turban worn
by senior rabbis in Turkey is called mema (from earlier lamema, from alamema,
the elements a and la later reinterpreted as the separate Hispanic-origin words a
‘to’ and la ‘the’ and thus dropped), from Arabic al-‘imåma ‘turban.’ A ritual visit
to the tombs of major rabbis and relatives before Jewish holidays and at other fixed
times, locally and in Erets Yisrael, is called ziara, from Arabic ziyåra ‘visit’. The
word karraya, from Arabic q-r-’ ‘reading’, is used to denote the glass bowl —
partly filled with water and partly with olive oil, on the surface of which is floated
a burning wick – used as a memorial candle and kindled to usher in the Sabbath
and sacred festivals (perhaps it is so called because originally such lamps were used
to provide light for reading during sacred study sessions). After the Expulsion, the
term adafina (< Arabic ad-dafina ‘hidden treasure’ < dafana ‘to hide; bury’) was
58
On the Arabic contribution to Castilian see, among others, R. Lapesa, Historia de la
lengua española, 9th cor. ed., Madrid 1981, pp. 129-156; R. J. Penny, A History of
the Spanish Language, pp. 217-223; J.M. Sola-Solé, Sobre árabes, judíos y marranos
y su impacto en la lengua y literatura española, Barcelona 1983.
59 For discussion of the distinctive Arabic component of pre-Expulsion Jewish IberoRomance, see Marcus, ‘A-t-il existé en Espagne un dialecte judéo-espagnol?’, cited in
footnote 10 above; M. L. Wagner, ‘Judenspanisch-Arabisches’, Zeitschrift für
romanische Philologie 40 (1920), pp. 543-549; Wexler, The Non-Jewish Origins of the
Sephardic Jews (see footnote 10 above).
60 Alhad is documented in the Judeo-Aragonese text published in this volume by Quintana.
It also occurs in the pre-Expulsion woman’s prayerbook published by Lazar as Siddur
Tefilot (288a).
[122]
Jewish Ibero-Romance
retained among the Sephardim of Morocco to designate a unique Sabbath lunch
dish, cooked on Friday and kept warm overnight, for which no Ibero-Romance
equivalent existed.61
During the Muslim occupation of Spain, Hispano-Arabic al-˙abáqa ‘basil’ (<
Arabic al-˙ábaq) and al-˙aßú ‘a kind of sweet’ (< Arabic al- ˙-ß-w ‘to stuff’) were
borrowed into the Romance spoken by Christians and Jews. In the language of
Christians the words took various phonological forms, all of them seemingly
distinct from the Arabic etyma (cf. Castilian albahaca, Portuguese alfavaca,
Catalan alfàbega, etc.; 62 Old/Modern Castilian alfaxor/-jor, alaxur, alajú, alejur,
etc.63) — perhaps symptoms of a phonological “problem” caused by the Arabic
phoneme ˙, which evidently did not exist in the Christian Spanish phoneme
inventory. As already noted, the language used among the Jews included numerous
Hebraisms containing reflections of ˙, and thus it is not surprising that in Jewish
speech the Arabic etyma were preserved relatively intact. The first word is documented, in the Semitic consonantal spelling ⑨❑➋⑩❻➀⑨ (i.e., [al˙a'vaka], or perhaps
[alχa'vaka]), in Yosef Caro’s Bet Yosef,64 and with matres lectionis as more usual
in Judezmo, as ❸➋⑨§⑩⑨❻➀⑨, in Í ul˙an ha-Panim;65 it has survived into the modern
period, both in the Ottoman Empire (as [alχa'vaka])66 and North Africa (as
[al˙a'βaka]).67 As already noted, the second word is documented as alhashú in
Caro’s Bet Yosef and Í ul˙an ’Arux, and in Í ul˙an ha-Panim,68 and it also continues
to be used today. Furthermore, to the present day, the Sephardim of North Africa
and the former Ottoman regions use Hispano-Arabic-origin personal names (especially those of women, e.g., Djamila < jamila ‘beautiful’, Sultana < sul†åna
‘sultaness’) and family names (e.g., Altabé[v] < al-†abib ‘the physician’, Habib <
habib ‘beloved’, and surnames derived from Arabic forms of Iberian toponyms
such as Saragosi < Zaragoza, Algranti < Granada) not found among Christian
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
Adafina continues to survive in the Hakitía or ‘Judeo-Spanish’ of the Jews in North
Africa, just as a cognate term is used among North African speakers of Judeo-Arabic;
but in the Ottoman Empire the same concept is denoted instead by hamín, documented
for example in Íul˙ an ha-Panim (Salonika 1568, 48b; cf. Mishnaic Hebrew/Aramaic
➃❽➂❻ [˙ amín] ‘warm [water, etc.]’).
E.g., see Corominas and Pascual, Diccionario crítico, vol. 1, p. 112.
Ibid., p. 145.
⑨§➋⑩❻➀⑨☎➃❹❶❿☎➍❷❻➎➂❸☎⑩➍➆ (’Ora˙ Ó ayim, p. 225, 1).
“Nargís, ke es alhavaka i ay kyen dize ke es liryo” (Íul˙ an ha-Panim, Salonika 1568,
f. 40b).
J. Nehama, Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, p. 28.
J. Benoliel, Dialecto judeo-hispano-marroquí o hakitía, p. 171.
See footnotes 20 and 21 above.
[123]
David M. Bunis
speakers of Ibero-Romance. 69 To this day, the word for surname used by the descendants of the Spanish Jews is alkunya, from Arabic al-kunya, denoting a matronymic or patronymic; Modern Castilian contains a derivative which is both realized
differently, alcurnia (although alcuña was also known in older stages of the language), and carries a different sense, ‘title of quality, noble lineage’. In 16th century
works in elitist style such as Almosnino’s Hanhagat ha-Hayim,
¦
Arabisms are used
minimally, and are generally restricted to those also accepted in the contemporaneous
Castilian of non-Jews (e.g., meskino ‘miserable person, pauper’ [67b; < Arabic
misk¯™n], djasmines ‘jasmines’ [135b; indirectly from Arabic yasam
¯
¯™n]). On the other
hand, 16th century works in more popular style make liberal use of Arabisms, including some not used in the Spanish of Christians (e.g., alhad ‘Sunday’ [Šulhan
¦
ha-Panim 13a]) and others used in a sense different from that known in Christian
texts (e.g., hazino [< Arabic haz
¦ ™¯n ‘sad’]), used in the sense of ‘ill’ in Hovot
¦
ha-Levavot [29b], as in Modern Judezmo, as opposed to Old Castilian hacino ‘miserable’). 70 Once an Arabic element had been incorporated in Jewish
Hispano-Romance it could serve as the basis of derivatives formed through the
addition of Hispanic affixes. For instance, hazino yielded hazinura, hazindad,
hazineamyento ‘illness’, hazinento, hazimyento, enhazineado ‘sickly’, and
(en)hazin(e)arse ‘to grow ill’ in the post-Expulsion language of the Jews, but analogous forms do not seem to be known in the language of Christians.
5. Distinctive Phonology
Hearing Jews speak their natural variety of ‘Castilian’, their non-Jewish interlocutors
might have sensed that their speech was somewhat ‘strange’, not only because of
its distinctive lexical items, but also because of some phonological and grammatical
peculiarities it exhibited when compared with their own language. 71 Some
69 The Judeo-Aragonese text published in this volume by Blasco Orellana exhibits
Arabic-origin surnames such as ‘Abad and Alcalahorrí’.
70 Note that Almosnino preferred to denote ‘ill’ by Hispanic-origin dolyente (95a) and
enfermo (45b). For Castilian hacino see Corominas and Pascual, Diccionario crítico, 3,
p. 301.
71 On the basis of distinctive intonation patterns and articulatory features used by some
Jewish speakers of English in the United States and Britain and of French in France
today, it would perhaps not be too bold to suggest that medieval Jewish Ibero-Romance
might have had a unique articulation; but of course this is merely a matter of conjecture,
as no documentation of such features exist – just as the distinctive articulations of Modern
‘Jewish’ English and French are familiar only to those who have heard them, but have
no written documentation.
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
phonemes which, albeit, existed in the language of both Jews and Gentiles occasionally occurred in Jewish speech in positions in which they were never met in
Christian Castilian, e.g., final -m in the words (non) baolam ‘never’ and peratim
‘details’ already mentioned. Jewish speech contained some phones which probably
did not exist at all in the language of Christians, e.g., the velar (or perhaps
pharyngeal) fricative h (phonetically [χ], [˙]?) in lexemes cited above such as the
Hebraisms pésah, mehuyav, enheremar, hammados and in the Arabism alhad, and
perhaps the pharyngeal fricative [‘] possibly denoted by the letter ➆ in the surname
Mas‘ud (❷❹➆➅➂ cf. Arabic mas‘¥d ‘happy; lucky’). Even some Romance elements
used by the Jews differed in form and/or meaning from their Christian counterparts:
for example, ‘God’ was referred to as El Dyo rather than the more conservative,
Church-influenced form Dios preferred by Christians, its final -s corresponding to
Latin nominative -s in fact a rarity in Romance languages.72 The name used for the
group itself, djudyós ‘Jews’, exhibits final rather than penultimate stress, as opposed to the penult form judíos which became standard in Castilian. Although 16th
century Jewish texts in the elitist style such as Almosnino’s Hanhagat ha-Óayim
were in many respects closer to ‘polite’ Christian Castilian of the period than to
the language of more popular Jewish texts of the time such as Í ul˙an ha-Panim,
even the Hispanic components of such texts had their ‘Jewish boundaries’ beyond
which the authors were unwilling to venture; thus Almosnino too used the forms
el Dyo (f. 32b) and djudyós (spelled ➍❹❽❽❷❹§❶ [76a]) rather than Dios and judíos.
6. Calque-Translation Language
If the Jews’ natural language contained some features which their Christian neighbors
might have found unusual, the highly literal variety of language which they used,
for educational and ritual purposes, to translate sacred Hebrew texts into the
vernacular would have struck them as extremely odd.73 It included some elements
of grammar and lexicon which were archaic for the time, especially by the fifteenth
century, and other elements which were highly innovative. Out of a conscious effort
to mirror-image the sanctified Hebrew texts themselves, the syntactic structures
72 For some distinctive grammatical features of the Hispanic component of JudeoAragonese, see the article by Quintana in the present volume.
73 For a pioneering study of a Bible translation displaying features characteristic of that
variety, see L. Wiener, ‘The Ferrara Bible’, Modern Language Notes 10 (1895), pp. 8185; 11 (1896), pp. 24-42, 84-105; a major contribution to the study of the Ladino
calque-translation language is H. V. Sephiha, Le ladino, Judéo-espagnol calque,
Deutéronome, Paris 1973, 1979, 2 vols.
[125]
David M. Bunis
used throughout such translations much more closely resembled those of the
original Hebrew text than anything used naturally in Ibero-Romance.
a. Legal Aspects of the Ceremonial Reading of the
Book of Esther in Jewish Castilian
The validity of translating Hebrew sacred texts into Jewish Ibero-Romance for the
purpose of educating children seems never to have been questioned by the Iberian
rabbis. On the other hand, the apparent lack of consensus among the scholars of
the Talmud and the ‘early rabbis’ (rißonim) of the Middle Ages regarding the
halakhic legitimacy of ritually reading sacred texts in translation is reflected in
divergent opinions among the Ibero-Romance-speaking rabbis on the use of such
texts.
From the writings of Na˙manides,74 Nisim ben Re’uven Gerondi,75 Yis.˙aq Bar
Sheshet Perfet,76 Yosef Caro, David ben Zimra77 and others, we know that during
Purim the Book of Esther was publicly read in ‘[Jewish Castilian] Romance’ (❺➆➀
[la‘az]) in numerous Iberian communities, notably those in Castile, Catalonia and
Aragon, to enable women ‘Romance speakers’ (➎❹❺➆❹➀ [lo‘azot]) who did not
understand the original Hebrew text to fulfill the commandment of “reading the
Scroll” (❸➀❽❶➂☎⑨➌➋➂). For halakhic reasons Gerondi, one of the most important
of the Spanish Talmudists, objected to the practice and had it annulled in Barcelona.78 When his student Yis.˙aq Bar Sheshet arrived in Zaragoza, he sent Gerondi
a query on the validity of the custom of ‘reading the Scroll of Esther to women in
Romance, from a scroll written in Romance’79 – a custom which, he was told, had
been current in Zaragoza for some 30 years.80 Basing himself on opinions in the
Palestinian Talmud and on decisions of Na˙manides, Íelomo ben Avraham Adret,81
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
Moshe ben Na˙man, b. Gerona 1194, d. Eres.Yisrael 1270. Cf. ❹➌➂⑨☎❽➂➄☎❸❼❹➅☎§➅➂⑩❹
⑨➊❹❽☎❹➄❽⑨☎❺➆➀❹☎➎❽➌❹➍⑨☎⑩➎❿☎➆❷❹❽☎❸❽❸☎➌➎➅⑨☎➎➀❶➂☎❽➌❸☎❸❽❿➌⑩☎§➌☎⑩❽➎❸☎❽➂➀➍❹➌❽⑩
❸❺⑩☎➃❽➆❹❼☎❷➌➈➅⑩☎➎❹➂❹➋➂☎➎➊➋➂☎➍❽❹☎❺➆➀⑩☎❸⑩☎⑨➊❹❽☎❺➆❹➀❹☎➎❽➌❹➍⑨☎⑨➀⑨☎❸⑩ (Ó iduß e
haRamban ‘al Masexet Megila, Salonika 1780, f. 17a, col. 1, in which are cited the
opinions of Talmudic scholars as well as those of Rashi [Íelomo Yis. ˙aqi, 1040-1105]
and Maimonides [b. Cordoba 1135, d. Eres. Yisrael or Egypt 1204]).
B. Barcelona 1310?, d. 1375?
B. Barcelona 1326, d. Algiers 1408.
1479-1573.
Molho, Literatura sefardita de Oriente, p. 185.
❺➆➀⑩☎ ❸⑩❹➎❿❸☎ ❸➀❶➂⑩☎ ❺➆➀⑩☎ ➁❽➍➄➀☎ ❸➀❽❶➂❸☎ ➎⑨❽➌➋ (Íe’elot utß uvot [Yis˙. aq] Bar
Íeß et [Perfet], Jerusalem 1975, sec. 388).
❺➆➀⑩☎❸⑩❹➎❿❹☎❺➆➀⑩☎❸➀❶➂❸☎➁❽➍➄➀☎⑨❹➌➋➀☎➁❽❶❸❹➄☎❸➄➍☎➁❽➍❹➀➍☎❹➂❿☎❸❺➂ (ibid.)
B. Barcelona 1235, d. c. 1310.
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
Vidal Yom Tov of Tolosa82 and Gerondi himself, Bar Sheshet too refuted the
practice, writing ‘I told them that it is incorrect to do so’.83 His objection was
founded primarily on a Talmudic-based argument to the effect that if, as was
generally the case, the man who read the Megillah in the vernacular himself knew
both Hebrew and the vernacular, he could only fulfill his halakhic obligation to read
the Megillah in Hebrew. Since, while reading the Megillah in translation, he did
not meet his own obligations, his reading did not enable the women who heard him
to fulfill their religious duty either.84 Bar Sheshet argued that the women could, and
should, fulfill their obligation by hearing the reading in Hebrew, even if they did
not understand it, as had been the custom during the Talmudic period.85
Bar Sheshet’s opinion was opposed in Zaragoza by local notables whom he
referred to as Yosef ben David and Don Ezra livne Elazar. They argued that since
the reading of the Megillah in Romance was a long-standing custom in their city,
as well as a practice prevalent in other places (as noted by Na˙manides), the custom
should not be revoked. Bar Sheshet attempted to strengthen his case by counterarguing that the (Jewish Castilian) translation customarily offered for the textual
phrase ➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨❸ (➁❽❿➂➌❸☎❽➄⑩) (ha’a˙aßteranim [bene haramaxim]) in Esther
8:10 and 14,86 namely ‘los potros [fijos delas [y]egwas]’87 — literally, ‘the colts
[born to the breeding mares]’88 — was questionable, since even the rabbis of the
Talmud considered the original Hebrew phrase semantically enigmatic.89 In his
reply to the query, Nisim Gerondi informed Bar Sheshet that, according to various
sources he consulted, the term ’a˙aßteranim denoted ‘mules’ (➁❽❷➌➈), and that the
phrase bene haramaxim was added to specify that their mothers were female horses
82 Second half of the 14th century.
83 ➃❿☎➎❹➍➆➀☎➃❹❿➄☎⑨➀☎❽❿☎➁❸➀☎❽➎➌➂⑨ (ibid.)
84 ➎➌⑩➅❿☎⑨❽❸❸☎❸⑨❽➌➋⑩☎⑨❽➊❹➂☎❹➄❽⑨☎❹➂➊➆➀❹☎❺➆➀☎➆❷❹❽❹☎➎❽➌❹➍⑨☎➆❷❹❽☎❸➎❹⑨☎⑨➌❹➋❸
❹❸⑩⑨☎❽⑩➌➐☎§⑨☎§➀❸☎⑩§➈☎❸➀❽❶➂❘☎❽➂➀➍❹➌❽⑩☎➌⑨❹⑩➂➍☎❹➂❿☎➁❽➍➄❸☎⑨❽➊❹❽☎⑨➀☎➃❿❹☎➀§❺☎➃§⑩➂➌❸
➆❷❹❽☎❺➆➀⑩☎❸⑩☎⑨➊❹❽☎❺➆➀⑩☎➎❽➌❹➍⑨☎❸⑩☎⑨➊❹❽☎❺➆➀☎➆❷❹❽❹☎➎❽➌❹➍⑨☎➆❷❹❽☎➌❺➆➀⑨☎§➌☎➁➍⑩
◗➒❺➆➀⑩☎➁❽➌❻⑨☎➎⑨☎⑨❽➊❹❽➍☎❹❸➂☎❺➆➀☎➆❷❹❽❹☎➎❽➌❹➍⑨ (ibid.)
85 ❹➌➂⑨➍☎❸➂➂☎❸⑨➌➄➍☎❹➂❿☎➍❷❹➋❸☎➃❹➍➀⑩☎➁❽➍➄➀☎➁❽⑨➌❹➋☎❹❽❸➍☎➀§❺☎❹➄➂❿❻☎❶❸➄➂❿☎❹➍➆➎
⑨❷❻☎⑨❸☎➉➌⑨❸☎❽➂➆❹☎➁❽➍➄⑨☎❸❹❸❷☎❽❷❽➂☎◗➁➍❘ (ibid.)
86 The expression is translated into English as ‘the swift horses (bred from stud mares)’
in The Holy Scriptures (English text revised and edited by H. Fisch), Jerusalem, 1986,
p. 893.
87 Cf. Old Spanish los potros fijos de las yeguas.
88 Íe’elot utß uvot [Yis˙. aq] Bar Íeß et [Perfet], Jerusalem 1975, sec. 388.
89 ➍§❹❶❽➈☎➍§❹➌❼❹➈☎➍❹➀☎➁❽❿➂➌❸☎❽➄⑩☎➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨❸☎❺➆❹➀☎⑨➌❹➋❸➍☎➎❹➆❼⑩☎➁❿➀➍☎❶❸➄➂❸
➃➎❹⑨☎❺➆➀☎❹❸❺➍☎➁❿➀☎❷❽❶❸❹☎⑨➎⑨❹☎⑨➀❽➆➀☎➋❽➀➅☎➃⑨➂❹☎❸➀❶➂⑩☎⑩❹➎❿☎➃❿❹☎➍§⑨❹❶❽⑨☎➍⑨➀❷
➃➄➌➂⑨➋☎❽⑨➂☎➃➄❽➆❷❽☎❽➂☎➁❽❿➂➌❸☎❽➄⑩☎➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨❸☎❹❼⑨☎◗❻§❽☎❸➀❽❶➂❘☎❹➌➂⑨☎➀§❺❻❹☎➎❹⑩➎❸
➁❽➌➅❻➂☎➁➎⑨☎❽➌❸☎➃❿☎➁⑨❹☎❹❸➄❽⑩❽☎⑨➀➍☎❽➂☎➇⑨☎➍❷➋❸☎➃❹➍➀⑩☎➃❽⑨➊❹❽➍☎❸❺➂☎❹❻❽❿❹❸❹
❸⑨❽➌➋❸☎➀❿☎➁➎❷⑩⑨❹☎❸➎⑨❽➌➋➂☎➎❹⑩➎❸☎➃➎❹⑨ (ibid).
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David M. Bunis
rather than inferior she-asses.90 Repeating a procedure used among rabbis of the
talmudic period when attempting to determine the significance of Hebrew and
Aramaic words forgotten by the scholars,91 Gerondi went to the “masters of the
language” — its everyday users — and asked them if potros (cf. Sp. potro ‘colt’)
was employed to denote ‘mules’. Since they answered in the negative, stating that
the word only applied to ‘young horses’ (➁❽➂❽❸☎❽➀❹➆☎➁❽➅❹➅❸), Gerondi concluded
that the Romance translation was flawed and thus its reading was invalid.92 He
concurred with Bar Sheshet that the surest, safest way for women to fulfill their
obligation was by hearing the Megillah read in Hebrew, even if they did not
understand it (just as men did not necessarily understand the phrase ha’asaß˙teranim
[bene haramaxim] but nevertheless met their religious responsibility by hearing it
said).93
Born in Spain and brought to the Ottoman Empire with the Expulsion, Yosef
Caro in his Bet Yosef noted that at first he had approved of reading the Romance
Megillah to women, a practice he acknowledged was common in many places.94
This decision was based on an understanding of the pertinent discussion by
Maimonides and Rashi according to which the Megillah could legitimately be read
in any language so long as the hearer understood it, and it was read from a text
written in that language.95 Caro suggested that the complication caused by the
90
❸➌❹➂❻☎➁➂⑨➍☎➁❸➂❹☎⑨❽➅❹➅☎➁➂⑨➍☎➁❸➂☎➍❽➍☎❽➄➈➂❹☎➁❽❷➌➈❸☎➁❸☎❲❲❲☎➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨❸
❱❱☎ ➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨❸☎ ➁❸➍☎ ➎❹❽➅❹➅☎ ❽➄⑩☎ ➌➂❹➀❿☎ ➁❽❿➂➌❸☎ ❽➄⑩☎ ➌➂⑨ (ibid., sec. 390). Cf.
commentary of Avraham ben Ezra (Esther 8:10):➃❿❹☎➎❹❽➅❹➅❸☎➃❸☎❱☎➁❽❿➂➌❸☎❞➁❽❷➌➈❸
➎❹➄❹➎⑨❸☎❽➄⑩➂☎➁❽➋❺❻☎➎❹❽➅❹➅❸☎❽➄⑩❹☎❲❲❲☎➀⑨➆➂➍❽☎➃❹➍➀⑩ ➒➁❽➌➂❹➐⑨§➒➍➐❽☎➌➎❹❽☎➁❽⑩❹➍❻
91
For examples, see the midrashim in Genesis Rabba 79:7 and Palestinian Talmud,
Megillah 2:2, 73a, cited in H. N. Bialik and Y. H. Ravnitzky eds., The Book of Legends:
Sefer Ha-Aggadah, tr. W. G. Braude, New York 1992, pp. 374-375, secs. 7-8.
❹➀➈❽☎⑨➀☎❽❿☎➃❽⑨☎❹➌➂⑨❹☎➍§❹➌❼❹➈☎➁❽❷➌➈➀☎➃❽➌❹➋☎➁❸☎➁⑨☎⑨❹❸❸☎➃❹➍➀❸☎❽➀➆⑩➀☎❽➎➀⑨➍❹
⑨❹❸☎ ⑨❹❸❸☎ ❺➆➀❸➍☎ ➋➈➅☎ ➃❽⑨☎ ❸➎➆➂❹☎ ➁❽➂❽❸☎ ❽➀❹➆☎ ➁❽➅❹➅❸☎ ➀➆☎ ⑨➀⑨☎ ⑨❹❸❸☎ ❸➀❽➂➀
❽➌➂❶➀☎❸⑨❽➌➋❸☎➀➅❹➈❹☎➍⑩❹➍➂ (ibid., sec. 390).
93 ➋➈➅☎ ➁❹➍☎ ➃❽⑨➍☎ ➒➍❷❹➐➋§❸☎ ➃❹➍➐➀⑩☎ ➁❽➍➄❸☎ ⑨❽➊❹❸➀☎ ❻❹❹➌➂☎ ❾➌❷☎ ❹➄❽➄➈➀☎ ➍❽➍☎ ➃❹❽❿
⑨❹❸➍☎❽➂☎❽§➆☎❺➆➀⑩☎➁❽➍➄❸☎⑨❽➊❹❸➀❹☎➋➈➅☎❽❷❽➀☎❹➄➂➊➆☎➅❽➄❿➄➍☎❽❹⑨➌☎➃❽⑨☎❹⑩☎➎❹⑨➊❹❽➍
➎❽➌❹➍⑨☎➆❷❹❽ (ibid.).
94 ➎❹➂❹➋➂☎❸⑩➌❸⑩☎❸⑩☎➎❹➌➋➀☎➁❽❶❸❹➄☎❹❽❸☎❲❲❲☎❺➆➀☎➃❹➍➀⑩☎❸⑩❹➎❿❸☎❸➀❽❶➂ (Íe’elot utß uvot
92
’Avqat Roxel, sec. 55).
95
§❹❿❹☎➃❹➍➀❸☎❹➎❹⑨⑩☎❸⑩❹➎❿☎⑨❸➎➍❹☎➃❹➍➀❸☎❹➎❹⑨☎➃❽⑩❽➍☎❷⑩➀⑩❹☎➃❹➍➀☎➀❿⑩☎➎⑨➌➋➄☎❸➀❽❶➂
⑨➊❽☎➎❽➌❹➍⑨☎➆➂➍➍☎☎❺➆❹➀❸❹☎❺➆➀⑩☎➎❹❺➆❹➀➀☎❸➎❹⑨☎➃❽➌❹➋☎❲❲❲ (Bet Yosef, ’Ora˙ Ó ayim,
sec. 690). Caro noted that the comment did not mean that the non-Hebrew-language
text from which the Megillah was read had to be written in a non-Hebrew alphabet, as
some might interpret from the statement, but simply that it could not be written in one
language and extemporaneously translated into another (➃❹➍➀☎ ❹➎❹⑨⑩☎ ❸⑩❹➎❿➍☎ ➀❿☎
➌❻⑨☎⑩➎❿⑩☎❸⑩❹➎❿➍☎➒❽➐➈§➒➀➐➆➒➇➐⑨[ibid.]); thus there need be no objection to the Jewish
Romance translation written in the Hebrew alphabet.
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
phrase ha’a˙aßteranim (bene haramaxim) cited in the Talmud as of uncertain
meaning, could be avoided by reading the entire text in Romance except for that
phrase, which could be read in the original Hebrew.96 But after writing this decision,
Caro added, he read the deliberations on the matter by Gerondi and Bar Sheshet,
and noted that Gerondi had offered no way to correct the problem and thus had
protested against the custom.97 Acquiescing to Gerondi’s argument, in his later
work, Í ul˙an ’Arux, Caro too registered a protest against reading the Megillah in
Romance.98 It is interesting to note, however, that in Í ul˙an ha-Panim (Salonika
1568), the abridged vernacular version of Caro’s Í ul˙an ’Arux published during
his own lifetime, various laws concerning the reading of the Megillah are translated
(f. 91a-b), but Caro’s objection to reading it in Romance is omitted. Perhaps this
was because the translator believed it would have been counterproductive to
present the custom, which was in fact a widely accepted popular practice at the
time, as invalid in a law code meant for the popular reader.99 Spanish-born David
➍§⑨➀❽❷☎ ➍§❹❶❽➈☎ ➍§❹➌❼❹➈☎ ➍❹➀☎ ➁❽❺➆❹➀☎ ❹➄⑨➍☎ ❽➈☎ ➀➆☎ ➇⑨☎ ❲❲❲☎ ➁❽❿➂➌❸☎ ❽➄⑩☎ ➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨
❽❷❽☎❸⑩☎➋❽➈➄☎❽➊➂☎➌❽➈➍❷☎➒❸⑨➌➐➄§➒❽➐➀❹☎❲❲❲☎❹➀➀❸☎➎❹⑩❽➎☎➀➍☎❺➆➀☎❸❺➍☎➆❹❷❽☎➃❽⑨☎➍§⑨❹❶❽❽
➃➎❹⑨➀☎ ➆❽❶❽➍❿❹☎ ❺➆➀☎ ➃❹➍➀⑩☎ ⑩❹➎❿❸☎ ⑩➎❿❸☎ ❾❹➎➂☎ ❺➆➀⑩☎ ❸➀❹❿☎ ❸➄⑨➌➋❽❹☎ ❸⑩☎ ❸❽➎⑩❹❻
➆➂❹➍❸➍☎➒❽➐➈§➒➀➐➆➒➇➐⑨❹☎➁❽❿➂➌❸☎❽➄⑩☎➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨❸☎⑨➌➋➂❸☎➃❹➍➀⑩☎➁➌➂⑨❽☎➎❹⑩❽➎❸
⑨➀☎➎❹➄❹➍➀☎§⑩⑩☎❸⑨➌➋➍☎⑨➊➂➄➍☎❽➈☎➀➆☎➇⑨❹☎❾❹➂➅⑩❷❿☎⑨➊❽☎➍❷❹➋❸☎➒➃❹➍➐§➀☎➌❽❿➂☎❹➄❽⑨
➃❸☎ ❹➀❽➈⑨☎ ❸➀❽❶➂⑩☎ ❹➀➀❸☎ ➎❹⑩❽➎☎ ➎⑩❽➎❿☎ ➃❽➄➆➀❹☎ ❾❿⑩☎ ❸➀❽❶➂☎ ⑨➌➋➂☎ ➀➅➈❽➍☎ ➃❻❿➍⑨
➃⑨➌➋❹☎➁❽➋❹➅➈☎❹⑨☎➎❹❽➎❹⑨☎➌➈❹➅❸☎❸⑩☎❼❽➂➍❸➂☎➆➌❶☎⑨➀❷☎❸⑩☎➃➀☎➎❽➀☎❺➆➀⑩☎➎❹⑩❹➎❿
⑨➊❽❷☎❸➈☎➀➆☎⑨➌❹➋❸ (Bet Yosef, ’Ora˙ Ó ayim, sec. 690).
97 ⑩➎❿❹☎➒❸➐❺§➒➀➐➆☎➒➊➍☎§❽➅☎➍§⑩❽➌❸☎➎§❹➍➐☎➍§⑩❽➌❸➀☎➃§➌❸☎➎⑩❹➍➎☎❽➎❽⑨➌☎❸❺☎❽➎⑩➎❿➍☎➌❻⑨
➌❽❿❺❸☎⑨➀❹☎❿§➆☎❽➌➂❶➀☎❸⑨❽➌➋❸☎➀➅❹➈❹☎➍⑩❹➍➂☎⑨❹❸❸☎❺➆➀❸☎❽❿☎➋➈➅☎➃❽⑨☎❹❽➌⑩❷☎➇❹➅⑩
❺➆➀⑩☎➁❽➍➄➀☎❸➎❹➌➋➀➂☎➎❹❻➂➀☎⑩➎❿☎❾❹➂➅⑩☎⑨⑩❽➍☎➁➆❼❸➂☎➁❶❹☎❲❲❲☎➌⑩❷⑩☎➃❹➋❽➎☎➁❹➍
➎❹➍➆➀☎❽❹⑨➌☎➃❿❹ (ibid.).
98 ❺➆➀☎ ➃❹➍➀⑩☎ ❸⑩❹➎❿➍☎ ➈§➆⑨☎ ❯❺➆➀☎ ➃❹➍➀⑩☎ ❸➀❽❶➂❸☎ ➁❽➍➄➀☎ ➁❽⑨➌❹➋❸☎ ❷❽⑩☎ ➎❹❻➂➀☎ ➍❽❹
96
(Íul˙ an ’Arux, ’Ora˙ Ó ayim, sec. 690, p. 11).
99 In his Judezmo summary of Jewish law in rhymed verse, Avraham ben Yis. ˙aq Asa
cited the objection to reading the Megillah in Ladino to women, even on the second
day of the holiday: “Afilú yom shení ke non melden ladino a.las mujeres, vos atorgo
(Raaba’h [=Rabbi Eliyahu ben Óayim])” (Sefer S.orxe S.ibur, Constantinople 1733, f.
164b). In his Íul˙ an ha-Melex, a more comprehensive prose adaptation of the Íul˙ an
’Arux, ’Ora˙ Ó ayim published in Constantinople, 1749, Asa included a literal translation of Caro’s objection to the reading the Megillah in Romance: “Es por defender
a.los ke meldan la megilá en ladino a.las mujeres, aún ke es eskrita en ladino (Agá:
Afilú los ke meldan megilá 2 dias es asur meldarla en ladino)” (f. 320b). But all
reference to the objection is excluded from the popular Judezmo legal compilation Sefer
Dameseq ’Eli‘ezer [volume one] published in Belgrade, 1862 by Eliezer ben Shem Tov
Papo of Sarajevo, which alludes to a separate reading of the Megillah to women,
presumably in Ladino, although this is not stated overtly: “El ki melda migilá … si
akavidi a.mildar el la migilá bitsibur i dispwés ki.la meldi a.las mujeris” (f. 127b).
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David M. Bunis
ben Zimra of Egypt cited the argument of Maimonides that, according to the Law,
if the reader and the listener understood the foreign-language Megillah text, both
fulfilled their obligation through its reading; thus Ben Zimra seemingly approved
the recitation of the Megillah in the vernacular.100 Despite the halakhic controversies surrounding it, the reading of the Ladino Megillah to women continued to be
a widely accepted practice among the Ottoman Sephardim into the modern era.101
Following the Expulsion, if not before, the ceremonial reading of post-Biblical
works such as the Passover Haggadah and Ethics of the Fathers102 in Ladino was
also practiced widely.103
100 However, he too suggested that, in actual practice, only through hearing the Hebrew
version, read from a text written in Hebrew, did the listener fulfill his religious duty:
❸❺☎❲❲❲☎⑨➊❽☎➆➂❹➍❸☎➁❶☎❹➎⑩❹❻☎❽❷❽☎⑨➊❹❽❹☎❽➄❹❽☎➃❹➍➀☎➃❽⑩➂☎⑨➌❹➋❸➍☎➃❹❽❿☎❸➀❶➂❸☎➃❽➄➆➀
❸➀❶➂❸☎ ➆➂➍☎ ➒➃➐❿§➒➁➐⑨➒⑨➀➐⑨☎ ➆➂❹➍❸☎ ⑨➊❽☎ ⑨➀☎ ❸➍➆➂➀☎ ➀⑩⑨☎ ❸❿➀❸➀☎ ➒❽➐➀§➒❸⑨➌➐➄
➁❽➌➂❹⑨☎ ➁❸☎ ❸➂☎ ➆❷❹❽☎ ❹➄❽⑨➍☎ ➒❽➐➈§➒➀➐➆➒➇➐⑨☎ ➍❷➋❸☎ ⑩➎❿⑩❹☎ ➍❷➋❸☎ ➃❹➍➀⑩☎ ❸⑩❹➎❿❸
(Íe’elot utß uvot Radba’z, vol. 5, sec. 498 [125]). Cf. also ➆❷❹❽➍☎➈§➆⑨➍☎❹➄❽⑩➌☎➎➆❷
❸⑩❹➎❿☎⑨❽❸➍☎➃❹❶❿☎➂§➄❸☎❹➎⑩❹❻☎❽❷❽☎❸⑩☎⑨➊❹❽☎❺➆➀⑩☎❸➎❹➌➋➀☎❸➊➌☎❹➀⑨☎❺➆➀☎➆❷❹❽❹☎❽➌❹➍⑨
➃❹➍➀☎❹➎❹⑨☎⑩➎❿⑩❹☎❺➆➀⑩ (ibid., sec. 499 [126]). As opposed to Caro, who argued that
the vernacular text could be written in the Hebrew alphabet (as was the common
practice; see footnote 89 above), ben Zimra interpreted Maimonides’ stipulation, ⑨❽❸➍
➃❹➍➀☎❹➎❹⑨☎⑩➎❿⑩❹☎❺➆➀⑩☎❸⑩❹➎❿, as meaning that the foreign-language text must be
written in the alphabet ordinarily used to write it [by non-Jews]. On this basis, and
running counter to the popular Jewish graphemic practice throughout the world before
the modern period, ben Zimra disqualified a Megillah in Egypt which was in [Jewish]
Arabic written in the Hebrew alphabet: ❸➎❽❸➍☎ ❸➀❶➂⑩☎ ➁❽➌➊➂⑩☎ ❸➍➆➂☎ ❸❽❸☎ ➌⑩❿❹
➃❿☎❹➄➋❷➋❷❹☎❸➈☎➀➆☎⑨➌❹➋❿☎⑨❹❸➍☎❽➈➀☎❸❹➄➀➅➈❹☎❽⑩➌➆☎➃❹➍➀❸❹☎❽➌❹➍⑨☎⑩➎❿⑩☎❸⑩❹➎❿
⑩➌❸☎➃❹➍➀➂ (ibid., sec. 499 [126]).
101 Cf. Molho, Literatura sefardita de Oriente, p. 185.
102 On post-Expulsion Ladino versions of this text see O. Schwarzwald, Targume haladino
lePirke ’Avot, Jerusalem 1989.
103 Íul˙ an ha-Panim (Salonika 1568, f. 72b) explicitly approves the reading of the
Haggadah in Ladino, ‘as found in the women’s prayer book’, for anyone who does not
understand Hebrew: ‘Kyen no entyende el leshón hakódesh para afirmar esta misvá
podrá dezir la agadá en ladino por el sidur ke está ordenada para las mujeres’.
However, this is apparently an original insertion which does not seem to reflect any
corresponding text in Caro’s Íul˙ an ’Arux. The ‘women’s prayer book’ alluded to is
perhaps that published by the editor/translator of Íul˙ an ha-Panim himself under the
name Seder Naß im ◗➁❽➍➄☎ ➌❷➅). He had also published a collection of laws for the
‘women’s cantors’ entitled ➎❹⑨⑩❹➊❸☎➎❹⑨➌➂ in Hebrew and Espejo de las mujeres in
the vernacular. He recommended that householders teach their daughters the Hebrew
alphabet and soletreo spelling rules so that they themselves could read basic Jewish
works in the vernacular: ‘El livro de dinim ke ordené para los hazanim delas mujeres
el kwal lyamé en leshón hakódesh Marod Hasoveod [➎❹⑨⑩❹➊❸☎➎❹⑨➌➂] i en ladino
Espejo de las mujeres… I kwan bweno seria ke kada uno hizyese saver alo menos a.su
hija las letras i el soletriar para ke elya misma depwés de suyo dicho libro sepa
meldarse i savria loke le kunple… Muy pokas son las tefilod ke elyas [=las mujeres]
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
b. Distinctiveness of the Translation Language
Aside from its having incorporated the phrase criticized by Bar Sheshet, we do not
know exactly which Romance translation of Esther was read in Iberian Jewish
communities before the Expulsion. However, many post-Expulsion versions are
documented, most of them archaizing, and those used before 1492 were probably
not very different from them. In fact, despite Bar Sheshet’s objection, the translation of ha’a˙aßteranim (bene haramaxim) in Esther 8:10 continued to reflect the
customary pre-Expulsion Jewish Castilian los potros (fijos delas [y]egwas), which
seemingly had been used in diverse regions of Spain, in the Ladino editions of the
Scroll of Esther published from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. For
example, the anonymous Ladino Bible glossary Sefer Óeßeq Í elomo published by
Gedalya [ben Moße] Cordovero in Venice, 1588 glosses ha’a˙aßteranim as los
potros (➍❹➌❼❹➈☎➍❹➀) [f. 29a].104 The same translation is offered for ha’a˙aßteranim
in Bibles with marginal Ladino glosses published in Italian cities such as Venice
(e.g., 1739) and Pisa (e.g., 1785), while bene haramaxim is translated as innovative
➍⑨❽❽➀⑨§⑩⑨➋☎ ➍⑨➀ (las kavayas), evidently meant to denote ‘female horses’, in
accord with rabbinical exegesis.105 The translation los potros ijos de las yegwas
(with the more ‘modern’ Istanbul variant ijo replacing older fijo) is also offered in
Óameß Megilot … en ladino (Constantinople 1744, f. 99a), edited by Avraham ben
Yis.˙aq Asa, as well as in the adaptation of it published by Yisrael ben Óayim of
Belgrade in Sefer ’Arba‘a ve‘esrim … ˙eleq ßeni … megilot unvi’im rißonim …
vetargum ladino, Vienna 1814 (f. 54a). The booklet Megilat ’Ester ‘im targum
ladino (Vienna c. 1900), containing the vocalized Ladino text of the Megillah as
well as the Hebrew text, seems to offer alternative responses to the criticism by
Gerondi and Bar Sheshet, translating the phrase ha’a˙aßteranim bene haramaxim
as los mulos (potros) ijos de las yegwas (kavayas) [p. 26].106
son ovligadas de modo ke las deprenderán presto… estando eskritas en ladino, ke kon
konoser las letras i los puntos o el soletrear les basta. I kyen las kera las halyará juntas
kon kwanto a.elyas kunple para todo el anyo en un sidur ke ordené para elyas i lyamé
Seder Naß im [➁❽➍➄☎➌❷➅] (Íul˙ an ha-Panim, f. 3a-b)
104 Interestingly, haramaxim is glossed there as los mulos ◗➍❹➀❹➂☎ ➍❹➀) ‘the mules’,
seemingly taking into consideration the criticism of the traditional gloss, [fijos de]las
yegwas, to which Nisim Gerondi and Bar Sheshet objected. See also note 106 below.
105 Note that in Spanish, caballa has been used in the sense of the fish ‘mackerel’ from
at least 1599 (Corominas and Pascual, Diccionario crítico, 1, p. 708).
106 Mulos was also cited as a translation of a˙ aß teranim by the rabbi and physician
Ya‘aqov Lombroso of 17th century Venice in his Bible commentary, ‘Melo xaf na˙at’,
published in Ó amiß a ˙ umeß e tora unvi’im riß onim ve’a˙ aronim uxtuvim, ‘im peruß
hamilot ‘al pi hadiqduq, Venice 1639, cf. ➌❹➂❻❸➂☎➁❽❷➀❹➄☎➁❸➍☎❹➌➂⑨☎❝➁❽➄➌➎➍❻⑨❸❹
➁❽➀➋☎➁❸❹☎§❸❽➀➆☎⑩❹❿➌➀☎❹➅➄☎⑨➀➍☎➁❽➌❹❻⑩☎➁❽➅❹➅☎➁❸☎➁❽➌➂❹⑨☎➍❽❹☎➍§❹➀❹➂☎❸§⑨➅❹➅❹
➎❹❽❽➅❹➅❸☎➁❸☎❝➁❽❿➂➌❸☎❽➄⑩☎❝❷⑨➂ See also note 104 above.
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David M. Bunis
The distinctiveness of the Jewish calque-translation language which must already have been fully developed in medieval Iberia becomes apparent even from
an examination of a few verses from Esther published in post-Expulsion editions,
especially when these are compared with the corresponding translations produced
by former conversos and Christians. For one thing, the problematic phrase
ha’a˙aßteranim (bene haramaxim) is translated differently: for example in the
Ferrara Bible, published in 1553 by ex-conversos returned to Judaism in a variety
of language constituting a compromise between the traditional Jewish translation
and non-Jewish literary Castilian of the period, the phrase is rendered los mulos
(hijos de las yeguas) [p. 400]. That is, unlike the more traditional, Judaized Óeßeq
Í elomo, it completely omits the word potros, but on the other hand seems to reflect
the rabbinic interpretation of a˙aßteranim as ‘mules’, cited by Gerondi. In the
Rashi-letter pseudo-Ladino translations published in Constantinople by Christian
missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the phrase from the Ferrara
Bible is adopted: mulos, ijos de yegwas.107 The totally distinct translation caballos
veloces (procedentes de los repastos reales) ‘swift horses (proceeding from the
royal repasts)’ in La Santa Biblia (p. 489) — distributed by the Christian “United
Bible Society” of New York in 1960, based on the version of Casiodoro de Reina
(1569) and the revision by Cipriano de Valera (1602) — bears no relation whatever
to the traditional Jewish translation.108
The differences between the varieties of language used by Jews and non-Jews
to translate the Bible become even more apparent when we examine whole sentences of text. For example, in the Hebrew-letter Ladino version of the Book of
Esther published by Asa in Constantinople 1744 as part of the Five Scrolls [in
Hebrew] with Ladino translation, chapter 2, verses 1-2 are rendered as: Despwés
de las palavras las estas, komo akedarse sanya de el rey Ahashverosh, membró a
107 E.g., in El livro de la ley, los profetas, i las eskrituras, trazladado en la lingwa espanyol,
Constantinople 1873, p. 468.
108 Neither does the translation veloces corceles de las caballerizas reales ‘swift steeds
from the royal stables’, which is offered in La Biblia: hebreo-español, a Modern
Castilian translation by M. Katznelson, published in Tel-Aviv 1991 (p. 1198). Although
generally speaking that edition bears a somewhat closer resemblance to the Ladino
version than the non-Jewish texts, since it reflects rabbinic interpretations, it has no
direct connection to the Sephardic Ladino tradition; linguistically, in fact, it shares
much with the Christian Bible Society text. In the 13th century Christian Spanish Bible
translation known as Biblia Romanceada I.I.8, there is no reflection of the Hebrew
verse containing the problematic phrase (M.G. Littlefield ed., Biblia Romanceada I.I.8,
The 13th-Century Spanish Bible Contained in Escorial MS. I.I.8, Madison, 1983, p.
272).
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
Vashtí, i a loke izo, i a loke fwe setensyado sovre eya. I disheron mosos del rey sus
sirvyentes, “Bushken para el rey mosas eskosas bwenas de vista.”109
In the already mentioned La Santa Biblia distributed by the United Bible
Society, the same verses read: Pasadas estas cosas, sosegada ya la ira del rey
Asuero, se acordó de Vasti y de lo que ella había hecho, y de la sentencia contra
ella. Y dijeron los criados del rey, sus cortesanos: “Busquen para el rey jóvenes
vírgenes de buen parecer”.110
A more archaic language is used in the 13th-century text known as Biblia
Romanceada I.I.8, contained in Escorial MS. I.I.8: Passadas estas cosas, depues
de la sanna del rey, Assuero, amembrosse de Vasti, lo que auia fecho & que auie
passado, & dixieron sus priuados & sus ombres: “Sean catadas mancebas virgines
& fermosas pora nuestro sennor.”111
Comparing the three translations one notes that the original Hebrew personal
names Ahashverosh and Vashtí are preserved in the Jewish version but assume the
forms As(s)uero and Vasti in the non-Jewish texts. The Jewish version incorporates
characteristic Ladino calque or loan-translation phrases such as sovre eya ‘against
(literally, ‘upon’) her (cf. Hebrew ❸❽➀➆)’ (vs. La Santa Biblia contra ella) and
bwenas de vista ‘fair (literally, ‘good of sight’) (❸⑨➌➂☎➎❹⑩❹❼)’ (vs. La Santa Biblia
de hermoso parecer / Biblia Romanceada I.I.8 fermosas). By means of further
calques, the entire syntax of the Jewish translation is made to conform strictly to
that of the Hebrew original. This is especially noticeable in:
(a) the demonstrative construction las palavras las estas (literally, ‘the words
the these’), in imitation of ❸➀⑨❸☎➁❽➌⑩❷❸ (vs. non-Jewish tales/estas cosas, which
uses the native word order, in an interpretive rather than literal translation of the
Hebrew);
109 Ó ameß Megilot … en ladino, ed. A. ben Y. Asa, Constantinople 1744. The Hebrew
original reads: ➎⑨❹☎❽➎➍❹❱➎⑨☎➌❿❺☎➍❹➌❹➍❻⑨☎❾➀➂❸☎➎➂❻☎❾➍❿☎❸➀⑨❸☎➁❽➌⑩❷❸☎➌❻⑨
➎❹➌➆➄☎❾➀➂➀☎❹➍➋⑩❽☎❹❽➎➌➍➂☎❾➀➂❸❱❽➌➆➄☎❹➌➂⑨❽❹☎❲❸❽➀➆☎➌❺❶➄❱➌➍⑨☎➎⑨❹☎❸➎➍➆❱➌➍⑨
❸⑨➌➂☎➎❹⑩❹❼☎➎❹➀❹➎⑩ In The Holy Scriptures published in Jerusalem 1986 by Koren,
this is rendered in English as “After these things, when the wrath of King Ahashverosh
was appeased, he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed
against her. Then the king’s servants who ministered to him said, ‘Let fair young virgins
be sought for the king’”.
110 P. 485. In the Modern Castilian translation by M. Katznelson (see footnote 108 above)
this is translated: Después de tales cosas, cuando se calmó la ira del rey Asuero, se
acordó de Vasti y de lo que había hecho y de lo que había sido decretado contra ella.
Entonces dijeron los servidores del rey que le asistían: ‘Búsquense para el rey jóvenes
vírgenes de hermoso parecer’ (vol. 2, p. 1197).
111 Biblia Romanceada I.I.8, p. 268.
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David M. Bunis
(b) the adverbial construction komo akedarse sanya del rey, a calque of ❾➍❿
❾➀➂❸☎➎➂❻ rendering the verb in the infinitive (vs. non-Jewish non-literal cuando
se calmó la ira del rey / depues de la sanna del rey, with a finite verb);
(c) the uniform rendition of the past-tense verbs ➌❺❶➄☎ ❯❲❲❲☎ ❸➎➍➆☎ ❯❲❲❲☎ ➌❿❺ as
preterite-tense membró …, izo …, fwe setensyado (vs. the logical sequence of tenses
indicated by non-Jewish preterite se acordó … / amembrosse ‘he remembered,’ but
pluperfect había hecho … / auia fecho ‘she had done…,’ había sido decretado
‘what had been decreed’ [and more interpretive Biblia Romanceada auie passado
‘had passed’]);
(d) the nominal phrases sanya del rey and mosos del rey, with the definite article
omitted before sanya and mosos in imitation of the Hebrew construct forms ➎➂❻
❾➀➂❸ and ❾➀➂❸❱❽➌➆➄ (vs. non-Jewish definite la ira / la sanna del rey, los
servidores del rey [possessive sus priuados in Biblia Romanceada]).
Additional distinctive features emerge in Asa’s edition of the translation of
chapter 2, verses 5 and 7112: Varón djudyó era en Shushán el palasyo i su nombre
Mordohay ijo de Yair… I fwe krián a Adasá, eya Ester, ija de su tiyo ke non a.eya
padre i madre i la mosa ermoza de forma i bwena de vista i en morir su padre i
su madre tomola Mordohay para el por ija.
Again, the idiosyncrasies of the Jewish translation style are particularly outstanding when compared with the non-Jewish translations:
La Santa Biblia — Había un judío en Susán la capital llamado Mardoqueo hijo
de Jaír…Y él crió a Hadasa, o sea Ester, hija de un tío suyo, porque ella no tenía
padre ni madre, y la muchacha era de hermosa presencia y bello semblante.
Cuando murieron su padre y su madre, Mardoqueo la tomó por hija suya.
Biblia Romanceada I.I.8 – Auia vn judio en Susa que auia nombre Mardocheo
fide Jahir … Aquel crio vna su sobrina Edissa, fija de su hermano, que por otro
nombre era llamada Ester – et non auia padre nin madre biuos – muy fermosa et
apuesta; qoando sus padres fueron muertos, Mardocheo recibiola por fija.
The existential construction expressed in the initial phrase ❸❽❸☎❽❷❹❸❽☎➍❽⑨ by
the verb ➎❹❽❸➀ ‘to be’ is translated literally, by means of the imperfect form of the
verb ser ‘to be’: era (vs. ‘non-Jewish’ había/auia < haber ‘to exist, have’). To
express possession Hebrew uses the construction ❱➀☎➍❽ ‘there is to + possessor’;
112 Hebrew ❸➅❷❸❱➎⑨☎➃➂⑨☎❽❸❽❹☎❲❲❲☎➌❽⑨❽☎➃⑩☎❽❿❷➌➂☎❹➂➍❹☎❸➌❽⑩❸☎➃➍❹➍⑩☎❸❽❸☎❽❷❹❸❽☎➍❽⑨
❸❽⑩⑨☎➎❹➂⑩❹☎❸⑨➌➂☎➎⑩❹❼❹☎➌⑨➎❱➎➈❽☎❸➌➆➄❸❹☎➁⑨❹☎⑩⑨☎❸➀☎➃❽⑨☎❽❿☎❹❷❷❱➎⑩☎➌➎➅⑨☎⑨❽❸
➎⑩➀☎❹➀☎❽❿❷➌➂☎❸❻➋➀☎❸➂⑨❹ English ‘Now in Shushan the capital there was a certain
Jew, whose name was Mordekhay, the son of Ya’ir… And he brought up Hadassa, that
is, Ester, his uncle’s daughter; for she had neither father nor mother, and the girl was
fair and beautiful; and when her father and mother were dead, Mordekhay took her for
his own daughter’.
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it occurs in verse 7 in the negative form ❱➀☎➃❽⑨ ‘[there is] not to,’ i.e., ⑩⑨☎❸➀☎➃❽⑨
➁⑨❹ ‘she had neither father nor mother’ (literally, ‘[there is] not to her father and
mother’). In the ‘Jewish’ translation this is rendered literally as non a.eya padre
i madre (vs. La Santa Biblia tener / Biblia Romanceada auer ‘to have’: ella no tenia
padre ni madre / non auia padre nin madre).
Also rendered literally in Asa’s edition are constructions such as the possessive
(❲❲❲☎ ❽❷❹❸❽☎ ➍❽⑨) ❹➂➍❹ ‘(a certain Jew…) whose name [was] (literally, ‘[Jewish
man…] and his name’)’: (varón djudyó…) i su nombre (vs. La Santa Biblia [un
judío …] nombrado ‘named’ / Biblia Romanceada [vn judio…] que auia nombre
‘who had the name’); the nouns in apposition ➌➎➅⑨☎⑨❽❸☎❸➅❷❸ ‘Hadassa, that is
(literally, ‘she’), Ester’: Adasá, eya Ester (vs. La Santa Biblia Hadasa, o sea Ester
‘Hadassah, or Esther’ / Biblia Romanceada Edissa … que por otro nombre era
llamada Ester ‘Hadassah, who by another name was called Esther’); the adverbial
phrase ❸➂⑨❹☎❸❽⑩⑨☎➎❹➂⑩❹ ‘and when her father and mother were dead (literally,
‘and in dying her father and her mother’) expressed by the preposition en +
infinitive: i en morir su padre i su madre (vs. finite verb phrases in the non-Jewish
texts: cuando murieron su padre y su madre / qoando sus padres fueron muertos);
and the verb phrase ➎⑩➀☎❹➀☎❽❿❷➌➂☎❸❻➋➀ ‘Mordekhay took her for his own daughter
(literally, ‘took her Mordekhay for/to him for/to daughter’): tomola Mordohay para
el por ija (vs. La Santa Biblia Mardoqueo la tomó por hija suya ‘… for his
daughter’ [Biblia Romanceada interpretive Mardocheo recibiola por fija ‘Mordekhay
received her for a daughter’). The order of elements (verb + object) in the Hebrew
verb phrase ❸❻➋➀ (“took her”) is preserved in Asa’s tomola (as in Biblia
Romanceada, vs. La Santa Biblia object + verb: la tomó “her took”).
The present participle ➃➂⑨ (❽❸❽❹) ‘[and he] brought up (literally, ‘[and he was]
bringing up’)’ is translated by the archaic apocopated present participle (fwe) krián
(cf. Old Spanish crián; vs. non-Jewish preterite crió). Elements ordinarily required
by Castilian syntax but which are not expressed overtly in the Hebrew text are left
without translation: thus the indefinite article is omitted before (varón) djudyó, in
imitation of ❽❷❹❸❽☎ ➍❽⑨ ‘a certain Jew (literally, ‘man Jew’; vs. non-Jewish un
judío); and the copula is omitted in the translation of the nominal clause ❸➌➆➄❸❹
➌⑨➎❱➎➈❽ ‘and the girl was fair and beautiful (literally, ‘and the girl beautiful of
appearance’): i la mosa ermoza de forma (vs. addition of the copula era ‘was’ in
La Santa Biblia y la muchacha era de hermosa presencia).
Even in 16th century works in elitist style such as Almosnino’s Hanhagat ha˙ayim, sacred Hebrew passages were translated into the vernacular in the distinctively archaizing and literal Ladino calque style. One can imagine the surprise of
any Castilian who happened to overhear the recitation of such phrases which,
although composed almost entirely of elements obviously belonging to his own
language, are yet so oddly constructed.
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David M. Bunis
III. Gentile Cognizance of Jewish Linguistic Distinctiveness
It is likely that most Christian Spaniards were unfamiliar with the characteristic
lexemes and the distinctive phonological, grammatical and stylistic features which
constituted integral parts of the spoken and literary language of their Jewish
neighbors, who lived in separate quarters known as the aljama or judería.113
Nevertheless, there were Christians — some of them, of course, formerly Jewish
‘New Christian’ proselytes — who had knowledge of the language and lifestyle of
the Jews, and occasionally even referred to characteristic Jewish lexemes in their
written works. Numerous ‘Jewish’ terms and references to Jewish practices are
found, for example, in the Cancionero de Baena, from around the middle of the
late 15th century.114 In the medieval passion work Danza de la muerte, perhaps from
the beginning of the fifteenth century, Death tells the character referred to as the
‘rabbi’: “Venit vos rrabí, acá meldaredes” ‘Come rabbi, here you will study’. The
word rabí (Modern Judezmo ribí) derives from Hebrew rabi (❽⑩➌), and meldar
derives from the Jewish Greek verb already cited. It was undoubtedly through the
mediation of Christians having some acquaintance with Jewish terminology that
terms such as malsín ‘informer’ (< Hebrew ➃❽➍➀➂ [malßin]) and desmazalado
‘unfortunate > weak, depressed, careless in dress, etc.’ (➀❺➂ [mazal] ‘fortune’) were
for a time used in the language of non-Jewish Spaniards as well.115
113 The terms aljama (< Arabic al-jamå‘a ‘group of people, community’) and judería
appear in the text published by Blasco Orellana in this volume. The former term was
used in Castilian primarily to denote ‘Jewish quarter, ghetto; synagogue; gathering of
Jews’ (cf. Arabic jamå‘at al-yah¥ d), but it also came to signify ‘Muslim quarter;
mosque; gathering of Moors’. This underscores the fact that, in certain respects, the
Iberian Jews — many of whom spoke (Judeo-)Arabic in areas under Muslim domination — and the Muslims were grouped together in the Christian Spanish conception.
114 P. J. Pidal, ed., Cancionero de Baena, Madrid 1851.
115 Usually, Hebraisms which chanced to enter the speech of Christians were nevertheless
considered Hebrew rather than Romance by the Jews, as illustrated in the text published
in this volume by Blasco Orellana: malsín ‘informer’, although occurring also in
Christian Ibero-Romance, is not spelled phonemically, with all vowels indicated, as
characteristic of elements perceived by the Jews to be of Romance origin, but retains
its consonantal Hebrew spelling ➃❽➍➀➂. In Almosnino’s Hanhagat ha-Ó ayim, however, the word is in fact spelled ➃❽➍➀⑨➂ [f. 39a], as if it were of Hispanic origin. In
the text published in this volume by Blasco Orellana, the Hebraism rabí also receives
phonemic rather than consonantal spelling (❽⑩⑨➌, not ❽⑩➌), perhaps implying its
perception by the writer as Romance – possibly as opposed to more natural native
variants such as ri-/re-/rubí.
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Jewish Ibero-Romance
IV. Importance of New Documentation
Our knowledge of Ibero-Romance as used by the Jews of the Middle Ages
continues to be hampered by the relative paucity of representative documents.
Particularly glaring is the absence of texts reflecting the everyday speech or even
writing of ordinary members — i.e., the majority — of the socially stratified Iberian
Jewish communities. The publication and analysis of each new Jewish IberoRomance text which emerges can shed important light on this question. The present
volume, bringing to the fore two previously unknown manuscripts,116 will undoubtedly make a contribution toward this end.
116 See the articles by Quintana and Blasco Orellana in this volume.
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