Jews in linguistics
Yesterday in “Neuroscience of Language”, a woman in the front row was identified by the lecturer as Efrat, a post-graduate student. The guy next to me felt the need to point out (by way of name, accent, appearance) that she might be Israeli. I told him after the class that I wasn’t surprised: I estimate that about a quarter of the class is Jewish, a common phenomenon in linguistic circles.
It seems Jews are just fascinated with language. One web site lists 64 Jews (by broad definition) who have made significant contributions to the field of linguistics (also there a broad definition). Some of the most mentioned linguists of the 20th century are included: Noam Chomsky ([xɔmski]?), famous language universalist and social activist; William Labov, sociolinguistic pioneer; Zellig Harris, initiator of discourse analysis… Linguistics courses are littered with Jewish names and Israeli institutions. I would like to suggest that there are two major factors in drawing Jews to linguistics: one is academic, and the other sociological.
Rabbinic Judaism has long had a love of books and of words. The first is illustrated in the phenomenon within the Orthodox community whereby it is common to enter another’s home as a guest and begin by examining the contents of the bookshelf. Even weren’t this the case, literacy and torah education have been central to Jewish society for many centuries. And the study has often been highly language-focussed. Jewish bible interpretation has historically been very interested in a close reading of the text, its words and language used, to determine (whether or not correctly by modern linguistic standards) word and sentence meanings. Basic readers of the bible text are given numerous examples of folk etymologies, a few cases of dialectology (such as the famous sibboleth of the Ephraimites, see Judges 12), examples of taboo and euphemism in keri/ketiv pairs (such as שגל and שכב) and elsewhere, and of course an explanation of the dispersion of tongues in Genesis. A good student might follow commentators disagreeing in cases of syntactic ambiguity, watch Ibn Ezra or Saadya Gaon pick at phonology and morphological particulars, and analyse the meanings resolved from the chiastic structures of biblical poetry. Besides this, all students will encounter both Hebrew and Aramaic. The author of the aforementioned list also identifies this long-term addiction to text and philology as a clear influence for Jewish study in the field of language.
And on the other hand we have less-recognised but highly significant sociological catalysts for Jewish study in the field. Most of those who have been of major influence in linguistics during the 20th century were members of an immigrant Jewish community, usually 1st or 2nd-generation migrants to the USA. Many would grow up in societies where their parents spoke a different language to their own first, or where they had a language or dialect littered with Jewish influence; and they would watch as the melting pot of New York City absorbed Yiddish words and expressions, as shmucks, shpiels and shemozzles spread the world over. And they would then learn another language or two as part of Hebrew school education. If they were looking for linguistic variation and richness, all they needed to do was look around them. Chomsky, according to Wikipedia, had Yiddish-speaking parents but the language was taboo in his family; his neighbourhood in Philadelphia was split between the Yiddish side and Hebrew side. Many linguists are wholly devoted to the idea of Jewish languages, their formation and distinction: from Yiddish and Ladino to Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Jewish Aramaic, Yeshivish and Modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is in itself an interesting concept: Jews of the world watched as a language was revived from literary to vernacular use, an act of language creation, at the same time acting as a symbol of ideology that aided in the death and decay of other Jewish languages. Over the last couple of centuries, Jewish individuals have simply been brought up in societies where a curiosity in language is hard to avoid.
And then there might also be a desire to compete with Noam Chomsky whom many Jews have decided by default they don’t like…
All in all, after encountering multiple Jewish members in the Department of Linguistics and in course readings back home, I am not surprised to find so many Jewish students in linguistics classes here. I wonder, though, how much this linguistic fascination will remain in the next generation farther removed from the tongue-twists of immigration.