Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on the Contributors -- Introduction / Lily Kahn -- Jewish Languages and Sacred Texts -- The Aramaic of the Zohar: The Status Quaestionis* ** / Alinda Damsma -- Translation of the Tanakh into Crimean Karaim: History, Manuscripts, and Language / Henryk Jankowski -- Jewish Languages in Contact -- Single-Script Mixed-Code Literary Sources from the Cairo Genizah and Their Sociolinguistic Context* / Meira Polliack -- Yiddish in the Hungarian Setting / Szonja Ráhel Komoróczy -- Jewish Vernacular Traditions -- Jewish Berber: A Brief Linguistic Sketch / Rachid Ridouane -- Modern Judeo-Italian in the Light of Italian Dialectology and Jewish Interlinguistics through Three Case Studies: Judeo-Mantuan, Judeo-Venetian, and Judeo-Livornese / Maria Maddalena Colasuonno -- The Status of Jewish Languages in the Twenty-First Century -- Mind the Gap! The Schism between Perceptions of the Yiddish Language and Yiddish Cultural Realities / Helen Beer -- Ladino: Past and Present* / Hilary Pomeroy -- Theoretical Approaches to Jewish Languages -- Judeo-Arabic Language or Jewish Arabic Sociolect? Linguistic Terminology between Linguistics and Ideology / Esther-Miriam Wagner -- Jewish Languages and Their Typology: Issues and Models / Frank Alvarez-Pereyre -- Back Matter -- Index.

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Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective is devoted to the diverse array of spoken and written language varieties that have been employed by Jews in the Diaspora from antiquity until the twenty-first century. It focuses on the following five key themes: Jewish languages in dialogue with sacred Jewish texts, Jewish languages in contact with the co-territorial non-Jewish languages, Jewish vernacular traditions, the status of Jewish languages in the twenty-first century, and theoretical issues relating to Jewish language research. This volume includes case studies on a wide range of Jewish languages both historical and modern and devotes attention to lesser known varieties such as Jewish Berber, Judeo-Italian and Karaim in addition to the more familiar Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino.