Linguistic Choices: “The Lady and her Handmaiden”

Jews who spoke Arabic every day had a unique relationship with Hebrew, the language of their prayers and Scriptures. We’ll see how Arabic opened new ways of understanding the Bible, and how some writers even imagined the two languages in rivalry with one another. We’ll read Hebrew poems composed in the language of the Bible, but shaped by Arabic style and images, and we will follow the story of how, in the later medieval period, Jewish scholars – even those who were bilingual – gradually shifted from Judeo-Arabic back toward Hebrew. 

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