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47-643: As with most Judeo-Arabic communities, there are likely to be few, if any, speakers of the Judeo-Iraqi Arabic dialects who still reside within Iraq. Rather these dialects have been maintained or are facing critical endangerment within respective Judeo-Iraqi diasporas, namely those of Israel and the United States . In 2014, the film Farewell Baghdad ( Arabic : مطير الحمام ; Hebrew : מפריח היונים , lit.   'The Dove Flyer'), which

94-705: A "Scholars’ Forum" ( בימת חוקרים ) on "The Jewish Languages – the Common, the Unique and the Problematic" ( הלשונות היהודיות – המשותף, המיוחד והבעייתי ) with articles from Chaim Menachem Rabin " מה מייחד את הלשונות היהודיות " ('What Distinguishes the Jewish Languages') and Yehoshua Blau " הערבית-היהודית הקלאסית " ('Classical Judeo-Arabic'). This project explicitly sought to describe the Arabic of Jews as

141-623: A common dialect. Baghdad Jewish Arabic is reminiscent of the dialect of Mosul . For example, "I said" is qeltu in the speech of Baghdadi Jews and Christians, as well as in Mosul and Syria, as against Muslim Baghdadi gilit . Some Judeo-Arabic writers, such as Maimonides, were able to switch between varieties of Judeo-Arabic and the Standard Arabic dialect. Like other Jewish languages and dialects, Judeo-Arabic languages contain borrowings from Hebrew and Aramaic . This feature

188-680: A distinct, Jewish language, equating it with Yiddish . According to Esther-Miriam Wagner, the case of Judeo-Arabic reified a Zionist 'Arab vs. Jew' dichotomy. The Arabic spoken by Jewish communities in the Arab world differed from the Arabic of their non-Jewish neighbors. Particularly in its later forms, Judeo-Arabic contains distinctive features and elements of Hebrew and Aramaic, such as grammar, vocabulary, orthography, and style. For example, most Jews in Egypt lived in Cairo and Alexandria and they shared

235-715: A few kharjas with a combination of Hebrew and Arabic. During the 15th century, as Jews, especially in North Africa, gradually began to identify less with Arabs, Judeo-Arabic would undergo significant changes and become Later Judeo-Arabic. This coincided with increased isolation of Jewish communities and involved greater influence of Hebrew and Aramaic features. Some of the most important books of medieval Jewish thought were originally written in medieval Judeo-Arabic, as were certain halakhic works and biblical commentaries. Later they were translated into medieval Hebrew so that they could be read by contemporaries elsewhere in

282-865: A few rare minimal pairs with /lˠ, bˠ/ (e.g. wáḷḷa 'by God! (an oath)' vs. wálla 'he went away', ḅāḅa 'father, dad' vs. bāba 'her door'). In other words, there are velarized segments which cannot be demonstrated to be phonemic, but which cannot be substituted, e.g. ṃāṃa 'mother, mummy'. There is a certain degree of velarization harmony. /r/ is one of the primary distinguishing features of Jewish (as opposed to Muslim, but not Christian) Baghdadi Arabic. Older Arabic /r/ has shifted to /ɣ/ (as in Christian, but not Muslim, Baghdadi Arabic). However /r/ has been re-introduced in non-Arabic loans (e.g. brāxa 'blessing' < Heb. ברכה, qūri 'teapot' < Pers. qūrī ). Modern loan words from other Arabic dialects also have this sound; this sometimes leads to cases where

329-662: A number of religious writings by Saadia Gaon , Maimonides and Judah Halevi , were originally written in Judeo-Arabic, as this was the primary vernacular language of their authors. Jewish use of Arabic in Arabia predates Islam . There is evidence of a Jewish Arabic dialect, similar to general Arabic but including some Hebrew and Aramaic lexemes, called al-Yahūdiyya , predating Islam. Some of these Hebrew and Aramaic words may have passed into general usage, particularly in religion and culture, though this pre-Islamic Judeo-Arabic

376-562: A written Judeo-Arabic that differs from the spoken language and uses Hebrew characters . There is a sizeable published religious literature in the language, including several Bible translations and the Qanūn an-nisā' ( قانون النساء ) of the hakham Yosef Hayyim . The following method of describing the letters of the Hebrew alphabet was used by teachers in Baghdad until quite recently: JB

423-514: Is Arabic , in its formal and vernacular varieties, as it has been used by Jews , and refers to both written forms and spoken dialects. Although Jewish use of Arabic, which predates Islam , has been in some ways distinct from its use by other religious communities, it is not a uniform linguistic entity. Varieties of Arabic formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arab world have been, in modern times, classified as distinct ethnolects . Under

470-589: Is a synonym for " rabbi ". Hakham as an official title is found as early as the first Sanhedrin , after the reconstruction of that body, when the Hadrianic religious persecutions had ceased. In addition to the nasi Simeon ben Gamliel , two other scholars stood at the head of the Sanhedrin, namely Nathan the Babylonian as Av Beit Din and Rabbi Meir as hakham. Another hakham mentioned by name

517-533: Is a term in Judaism meaning a wise or skillful man; it often refers to someone who is a great Torah scholar. It can also refer to any cultured and learned person: "He who says a wise thing is called a Hakham , even if he be not a Jew." Hence, in Talmudic - Midrashic literature, wise gentiles are commonly called hakhmei ummot ha-'olam ("wise men of the nations of the world"). In Sephardic usage, hakham

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564-520: Is accompanied by a hakham, who probably had charge of the religious affairs of the exilarchate; but as this work originated in Palestine, the author probably applied Palestinian conditions to Babylon. The Syrian Aphrahat , who had met only Babylonian Jews, mentions a man "who is called the 'hakkima' of the Jews", but this too may mean "the wise man" of the Jews. The plural, hakhamim , is generally used in

611-561: Is also Judeo-Arabic videos on YouTube . A collection of over 400,000 of Judeo-Arabic documents from the 6th-19th centuries was found in the Cairo Geniza . The movie Farewell Baghdad would be released in 2013 entirely in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic Judeo-Arabic orthography uses a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet called the Judeo-Arabic script. It is written from right to left horizontally like

658-497: Is less marked in translations of the Bible , as the authors clearly took the view that the business of a translator is to translate. Most literature in Judeo-Arabic is of a Jewish nature and is intended for readership by Jewish audiences. There was also widespread translation of Jewish texts from languages like Yiddish and Ladino into Judeo-Arabic, and translation of liturgical texts from Aramaic and Hebrew into Judeo-Arabic. There

705-668: Is of Bedouin origin. Another factor may be the northern origins of the Jewish community of Baghdad after 1258 (see below under History ). Like Northern Mesopotamian and Syrian Arabic, Jewish Baghdadi Arabic shows some signs of an Aramaic substrate. Violette Shamosh records that, at the Passover Seder , she could understand some of the passages in Aramaic but none of the passages in Hebrew. The Mongol invasion wiped out most of

752-562: Is performed mostly in Jewish Baghdadi Arabic dialect, became the first film to be almost completely performed in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. Baghdad Jewish Arabic (and Baghdadi Christian Arabic) resembles North Mesopotamian Arabic , and more distantly Syrian Arabic , rather than the Baghdadi Arabic spoken by Baghdadi Muslims. Muslims speak a gilit dialect (from their pronunciation of the Arabic word for "I said") while

799-572: Is possible that lehakham simply means "to the wise." The surname Hacham is found among both Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, including variations such as Hach , Hachami , Hachamovich , Hachamson . In the Muslim world , a rabbi was often called a ḥākhām because al-Rab is one of the names of God in Islam and may have caused offense due to misunderstanding. Thus the Chief Rabbi of

846-815: Is relatively conservative in preserving Classical Arabic phonemes. Classical Arabic /q/ has remained as a uvular (or post-velar) stop, like Christian Baghdad Arabic, but unlike in Muslim Baghdad Arabic where it is pronounced as [ɡ] . /k/ is retained as [k] , like in Christian Baghdadi, but unlike the Muslim dialect where it is sometimes [tʃ] . Classical Arabic interdental /ð, θ, ðˠ/ are preserved, like in Muslim Baghdadi Arabic (Christian Baghdadi Arabic merges them into /d, t, dˤ/ ). /dˤ/ has merged into /ðˠ/ . There are

893-426: Is usually on the ultimate or penultimate syllable, but sometimes on the antipenultimate (mostly in loans or compound words). Judeo-Arabic dialects Judeo-Arabic ( Judeo-Arabic : ערביה יהודיה , romanized: ‘Arabiya Yahūdiya ; Arabic : عربية يهودية , romanized :  ʿArabiya Yahūdiya (listen) ; Hebrew : ערבית יהודית , romanized :  ‘Aravít Yehudít (listen) )

940-496: The ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Egyptian Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud). Judeo-Arabic, particularly in its later forms, contains distinctive features and elements of Hebrew and Aramaic. Many significant Jewish works, including

987-735: The Ottoman Empire was called the Hakham Bashi (Hahambaşı حاخامباشی ). Although the word ḥākhām is derived from the common Semitic root Ḥ - K - M , the second consonant is generally spelled with a ḫāʾ ⟨ خ ⟩ in Arabic and in languages that use Arabic alphabet to reflect the Hebrew pronunciation: حاخام . The term is cognate to the Arabic words حاكم ḥākim (ruler/lord) and حكيم ḥakīm (wise man). In Karaite Judaism , spiritual leaders are called hakham to distinguish them from their Rabbinic (i.e. non-Karaite) counterparts. Since Karaite theology

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1034-481: The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain such as Judah Halevi , composed poetry with Arabic. The muwaššaḥ , an Andalusi genre of strophic poetry, typically included kharjas , or closing lines often in a different language. About half of the corpus of the more than 250 known muwaššaḥāt in Hebrew have kharjas in Arabic, compared to roughly 50 with Hebrew kharjas , and about 25 with Romance. There are also

1081-489: The leb-hakam or "skilled craftsmen" of Exodus 35 make the Tabernacle , it's lamps and oil, the anointing oil , the altar of burnt offering and its bronze gate, its utensils (all of them), and the woven vestments of Aaron and his sons. Frankel thinks that Joshua ben Hananiah (early 2nd century) was the first hakham. He does not sufficiently support this assertion. The office seems to have existed in Palestine as long as

1128-463: The 1940s and 1960s, Israel came to hold the single largest linguistic community of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic speakers. With successive generations being born and raised in Israel, it is mainly the older people who still actively or passively speak Judeo-Baghdadi and other forms of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. Israelis of Iraqi descent in turn are largely unilingual Modern Hebrew speakers. The Jews of Baghdad also have

1175-644: The Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza . Shohat identifies linguist Yehoshua Blau as a key figure in the development of the notion of Judeo-Arabic, within what she describes as a Zionist linguistic project invested in prioritizing the uniqueness and separateness of isolatable ' Jewish languages '. Shohat cites the first issue of the Israeli journal Pe'amim , which featured

1222-413: The Arabic used by the dominant Muslim communities had also been commonplace. With waves of persecution and thus emigration, the dialect has been carried to and until recently used within respective Judeo-Iraqi diaspora communities, spanning Bombay , Calcutta , Singapore , Hong Kong , Manchester and numerous other international urban hubs. After the mass emigration of Jews from Iraq to Israel between

1269-604: The Hebrew alphabet. By around 800 CE, most Jews within the Islamic Empire (90% of the world's Jews at the time) were native speakers of Arabic like the populations around them. This led to the development of early Judeo-Arabic. The language quickly became the central language of Jewish scholarship and communication, enabling Jews to participate in the greater epicenter of learning at the time, which meant that they could be active participants in secular scholarship and civilization. The widespread usage of Arabic not only unified

1316-446: The Hebrew script and also like the Hebrew script some letters contain final versions, used only when that letter is at the end of a word. It also uses the letters alef and waw or yodh to mark long or short vowels respectively. The order of the letters varies between alphabets. Hakham Hakham (or Chakam(i), Haham(i), Hacham(i), Hach ; Hebrew : חכם , romanized :  ḥāḵām , lit.   'Wise')

1363-467: The Jewish community located throughout the Islamic Empire but also facilitated greater communication with other ethnic and religious groups, which led to important manuscripts of polemic, like the Toledot Yeshu , being written or published in Arabic or Judeo-Arabic. By the 10th century Judeo-Arabic would transition from Early to Classical Judeo-Arabic. In al-Andalus , Jewish poets associated with

1410-514: The Jewish world, and by others who were literate in Hebrew. These include: Sharch ( šarḥ , pl. šurūḥ , šarḥanim ) is a literary genre consisting of the translation of sacred texts, such as Bible translations into Arabic , the Talmud or siddurim , which were composed in Hebrew and Aramaic, into Judeo-Arabic, prevalent starting in the 15th century, and exhibiting a number of mixed elements. The term sharḥ sometimes came to mean "Judeo-Arabic" in

1457-714: The Pentateuch. This period includes a wide array of literary works. Scholars assume that Jewish communities in Arabia spoke Arabic as their vernacular language, and some write that there is evidence of the presence of Hebrew and Aramaic words in their speech, as such words appear in the Quran and might have come from contact with these Arabic-speaking Jewish communities. Before the spread of Islam, Jewish communities in Mesopotamia and Syria spoke Aramaic, while those to

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1504-545: The Talmud, and also by the Tannaim , to designate the majority of scholars as against a single authority. The Aramean equivalent is "rabbanan." Among Sephardic Jews , particularly Spanish and Portuguese Jews , hakham is the official title of the local rabbi, but it is not known how old the title is. Shlomo ibn Aderet addresses some of his responsa to people with lehakham Rabbi... , others again with "larab Rabbi...", but it

1551-650: The West spoke Romance and Berber . With the Early Muslim conquests , areas including Mesopotamia and the eastern and southern Mediterranean underwent Arabization , most rapidly in urban centers. Some isolated Jewish communities continued to speak Aramaic until the 10th century, and some communities never adopted Arabic as a vernacular language at all. Although urban Jewish communities were using Arabic as their spoken language, Jews kept Hebrew and Aramaic, traditional rabbinic languages, as their languages of writing during

1598-485: The academy of the nasi . An amora of the fourth century recounts the following rule of etiquette, still observed in his time: "When the hakham appears in the academy everyone present must rise as soon as he comes within four ells of him, and must remain standing until he has gone four ells beyond". It is hardly possible that the office of hakham existed in Talmudic academies in Babylonia ( Lower Mesopotamia ). where

1645-577: The director of a school ( bet midrash ), for in addition to the Great Sanhedrin , which later came to take the place of an academy, there were also private academies under the direction of eminent scholars. The origin of the office of hakham is as doubtful as its duration. In the Hebrew Bible , the "wise man" was mostly depicted as a practical figure in varied contexts. In Isaiah 40:20 a "wise craftsman" (haras hakam) builds an idol. Similarly,

1692-517: The entire group of Judeo-Arabic dialects being considered endangered languages . There remain small populations of speakers in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, the United States, and Israel. Cultural critic Ella Shohat notes that Jewish speakers of Arabic did not refer to their language as 'Judeo-Arabic' but simply as 'Arabic'. In the period of ' massive dislocation ' from

1739-550: The first three centuries of Muslim rule, perhaps due to the presence of the Sura and Pumbedita yeshivas in rural areas where people spoke Aramaic. Jews in Arabic, Muslim majority countries wrote—sometimes in their dialects, sometimes in a more classical style—in a mildly adapted Hebrew alphabet rather than using the Arabic script , often including consonant dots from the Arabic alphabet to accommodate phonemes that did not exist in

1786-500: The inhabitants of Mesopotamia. Later, the original qeltu Baghdadi dialect became extinct as a result of massive Bedouin immigrations to Lower Mesopotamia and was replaced by the Bedouin influenced gilit dialect. The Jews of Baghdad are a largely indigenous population and they also preserve the pre-Mongol invasion dialect of Baghdad in its Jewish form, which is similar but a bit different from the general pre-Mongol Baghdadi dialect due to

1833-529: The late 1940s through the 1960s, Jewish speakers of Arabic in diaspora and their descendants gradually adopted the term 'Judeo-Arabic' and its equivalents in French and Hebrew. The 19th century rediscovery of the Cairo Geniza gave the study of Judeo-Arabic prominence within Judaic Studies , leading to publications such as Shelomo Dov Goitein's series A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of

1880-595: The linguistic influences of Hebrew and Judeo-Babylonian Aramaic, instead of the general Babylonian Aramaic that existed before the Islamic invasion. As with other respective religious and ethnic communities coexisting in Baghdad, the Jewish community had spoken as well as written almost exclusively in their distinctive dialect, largely drawing their linguistic influences from Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic languages as well as from languages such as Sumerian , Akkadian , Persian , and Turkic . Simultaneous fluency and literacy in

1927-414: The others are qeltu dialects. Another resemblance between Baghdad Jewish Arabic and North Mesopotamian Arabic is the pronunciation of ra as a uvular . This peculiarity goes back centuries: in medieval Iraqi Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts the letters ra and ghayn are frequently interchanged. It is thought that the qeltu dialects represent the older Arabic dialect of Mesopotamia while the gilit dialect

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1974-542: The relation of the exilarch to the heads of the academy was entirely different from that existing in Talmudic academies in Syria Palaestina between the latter and the nasi . Here, hakham was merely the term for a Jewish scholar who studied chiefly oral traditions. The terms sofer "scribe" and qārāʾ "reciter, reader" were applied to Bible scholars. In the Seder Olam Zutta , every exilarch

2021-524: The results, to present the matter for discussion. It is more probable, however, that the office of hakham was created in order to secure a majority in cases of difference of opinion between the nasi and the Av Beit Din in the affairs of the Sanhedrin; one of the most eminent scholars was always chosen for the post. A baraita in Moed Kattan 22b leads to the inference that the hakham was always

2068-634: The same way that "Targum" was sometimes used to mean the Aramaic language . The texts of the sharh are based on and dependent on Hebrew. The significant emigration of Judeo-Arabic speakers in the 1940s and 1950s to Israel, France, and North America has led to endangerment or near-extinction of the ethnolects. Judeo-Arabic was viewed negatively in Israel as all Arabic was viewed as an "enemy language". Their distinct Arabic dialects in turn did not thrive, and most of their descendants now speak French or Modern Hebrew almost exclusively; thus resulting in

2115-452: The same word may have two forms depending on context, e.g. ʿáskaġ 'army' vs. ḥākəm ʿáskari 'martial law'. There are many instances where this alternation leads to a subtle change in meaning, e.g. faġġ 'he poured, served food' vs. farr 'he threw'. The consonants /p, ɡ, tʃ/ were originally of foreign origin, but have pervaded the language to the extent that native speakers do not perceive or even realize their non-native origin. Stress

2162-458: Was Simon, the son of Judah ha-Nasi , who after the death of his father officiated as hakham, with his elder brother the nasi . The exact functions of the hakham are not clear. Rapoport's suggestion that he was the arbiter in matters of ritual prohibition and permission is highly improbable. Zecharias Frankel looks upon the hakham as a presiding officer whose duty it was to examine a case in question from all points of view, and, having summed up

2209-671: Was not the basis of a literature. There were Jewish Pre-Islamic Arabic poets , such as al-Samawʾal ibn ʿĀdiyā , though surviving written records of such Jewish poets do not indicate anything that distinguishes their use of Arabic from non-Jewish use of it, and their work according to Geoffrey Khan is generally not referred to as Judeo-Arabic. This work is similar to and tends to follow Classical Arabic, and Benjamin Hary, who calls it Classical Judeo-Arabic, notes it still includes some dialectal features, such as in Saadia Gaon 's translation of

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