Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.039 June 21, 1993 1) Yehudit (Leonard Prager) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 20 16:24:23 1993 From: LEONARD PRAGER Subject: YEHUDIT Dear Mendelniks: We take pleasure in inviting you to become a founding member of Yehudit - International Association for the Study of Jewish Languages (IASJL).* Enclosed please find 1) the association's statement of purpose and 2) a registration form, which we kindly request that you fill in regardless of whether or not you agree to join the association at this time. Respectfully yours, Joseph Chetrit Leonard Prager *The proposed association succeeds but is not a continuation of the Haifa-based Association for Jewish Languages (ASJL), which ceased to function in 1988. ***** Please circulate. Yehudit: International Association for the Study of Jewish Languages (IASJL) "and they could not speak the language of Judah (i.e. Yehudit)" (Nehemiah 13:24) 1. The Background to Establishing the Association By the end of the twentieth century, the traditional Jewish languages spoken during the past millenium by numerous Jewish communities had undergone a marked decline as living natural communal languages. In the State of Israel, Modern Hebrew took the place of these languages, assuming the roles of both communal and national tongue not only for the young and the native-born, but for innumerable immigrants -- primary speakers of diasporan Jewish languages who settled in the Jewish homeland in the past half century. In the Diaspora, the triumph of secularization and the concomitant spread of general education in Jewish communities, including highly traditional ones, led to the gradual abandonment of Jewish languages and the adoption of the national vernaculars and the modes of speech of the surrounding cultures. Yiddish alone has held on as as a living, natural, multi-generational language in certain communities in Israel, North America and Europe, especially among the ultra-Orthodox. Alongside the gradual decline in the use of Jewish languages has come an increasing academic and research interest in them. A rich scientific literature has grown up, one which probes the inner and outer linguistic history of the Jewish people and related groups. Pioneering work has been done in Yiddish and Judezmo, and we are now seeing promising research in other Jewish languages, Jewish Arabic in particular. This heartening progress notwithstanding, no international academic-scientific body exists to encourage, support and correlate further research in the still largely untapped field of Jewish languages. Nor is there any institution or association devoted to the tasks of publishing research findings or of assisting universities in planning and giving courses in this field. Those in Israel and abroad who are engaged in research in Jewish languages will agree that more can be done by working together than by working in isolation. We need to stimulate academic interest, encourage the establishment of research centers and, most immediately, create a high-level refereed multi-lingual annual, as well as a monograph series. To accomplish the latter goals, we shall canvass a number of reputable publishers and also turn to Jewish cultural and educational bodies in and outside of Israel for financial support. 2. The Association's Aims a. Furthering research in all aspects of Jewish languages -- grammatical, socio-historical, pragmatic, stratificational, historic (inner and outer), semantic, rhetorical and other; informing students of specific Jewish languages of the findings of their colleagues studying other Jewish languages; encouraging the development of a discipline of Jewish linguistics; rescuing from oblivion printed sources, manuscript material and, especially, oral evidence. b. Establishment of a refereed multi-lingual annual. It is proposed that the annual, like the association, be named "Yehudit." While this term in its original biblical sense refers to Hebrew, virtually all subsequent Jewish languages were called "Jewish" and included Hebrew-origin words. c. Encouragement and support of research and teaching of Jewish languages in universities in Israel and abroad through lecture series, conferences and other means. 3. Organization of and Membership in the Association Membership in the IASJL will be open to academic researchers and students of Jewish languages, literatures and cognate fields, as well as to those interested in the cultivation and dissemination of Jewish languages. A General Meeting of the IASJL will be held in Jerusalem once every four years at the time the World Congress of Jewish Studies takes place. The General Meeting will elect a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer, as well as three additional persons, all seven constituting the Executive Committee. They will be elected for four years with the possibility of reelection for a single additional four-year period. The Executive Committe will do all in its power to realize the declared aims of the Association; it will be responsible for the day-to- day running of the Association. If sufficient interest is shown in establishing the Association, a meeting will be called of all founding members. This meeting will be empowered to register the Association as an "amuta" = Ottoman Society|. Until the initial General Meeting takes place, the Association's address will be the University of Haifa. ***** Yehudit - International Association for the Study of Jewish Languages (IASJL) DATE: TO: Prof. Joseph Chetrit / Prof. Leonard Prager Faculty of Humanities University of Haifa 31905 Haifa, Israel Name: Home address: Telephone: Work address: Telephone: Fax: Telex: EMAIL: I would / would not (circle whichever applies) like to become a founding member of Yehudit - International Association for the Study of Jewish Languages (IASJL). My comments and suggestions regarding the proposed association and its aims: SIGNATURE: ***** ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.039