PREFACE

The living languages, Judeo-German (Yiddish in English) and Judeo-Spanish (Spaniolit, Judezmo, Judyo, Jidyo or Spaniol) are two remnants of the ancient language forms from which they are derived (Middle High German, on the one hand, and 15th century Spanish on the other). Both have two forms, one of which is a calque and is not spoken (used essentially for liturgical and pedagogical purposes, mainly in books for children and women) and the other, the vernacular, which is spoken.

As is the case for all the Jewish languages, the calque emerged for pedagogical reasons, while the vernacular developed as the result of a historical situation. This usually meant a separation from the host population, which was often hostile to the Jews, followed by either their ghettoization or their being expelled and migrating elsewhere. Judeo-German and Judeo-Spanish have had parallel fates, suffering expulsions and migrations, while maintaining the pedagogical calques - Humech Taytch and Ladino - and the vernacular languages in their ancient forms, hence their archaic character. Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish are a sort of living museum for the language of origin, just as Canadian French is for the French of the 16th and 17th centuries.

These two Jewish languages have given rise to a vast liturgical and vernacular literature, although the natural development of Judeo-Spanish was stifled by the mania for gallicization at the end of the 19th century. Even then, philologists were studying these two languages which reflect their speakers' parallel histories, usages and customs. Both were bled dry by the Holocaust and its genocide and emerged from this as orphans of the symbolic centres of Vilna in Lithuania and Salonika in Greece. Both became the subject of active nostalgia, and renewed interest in them brought protection for that which was on the verge of disappearing forever. The burgeoning number of centres and associations seeking to consolidate and reactivate these endangered languages and cultures has been so successful that these languages are now taught in many universities in Europe and throughout the world, and books, records and videos concerning them abound. The overriding desire is to ensure that the physical genocide is not accompanied by a cultural genocide.

Yes, these two languages, cultures and Weltanschauungen have survived and will rise out of the ashes of the tragic history of a soon-to-be-united Europe in search of its values - a multi- cultural and multi-ethnic Europe, an enriched Europe that is at peace and desirous of spreading peace.

Nathan Weinstock and Haïm Vidal Sephiha