Diglossia is about groups, not individuals, and so it does not matter if some Jews had little or no Hebrew knowledge. The culture as a whole was diglossic because certain functions were associated with Hebrew and others with the vernacular. In a similar way, medieval Christian culture has often been termed diglossic, with the high variety Latin and the low variety the local vernacular. It does not matter that many, if not most, Christians were illiterate or that even “as the age of print neared, many peasants, burghers, and even aristocrats remained essentially within oral-aural culture,” as Brian Stock observes.80 Literacy was not a prerequisite for inclusion in the Latin-language community, which, following Stock, refers to the textual community formed by Christians, both litterati and illiterati, who lived lives centered around Latin texts or literate interpreters of them.81 Diglossia is not bilingualism.82
Scholars seem to agree that most Jewish men in late medieval Europe, and specifically twelfth- to thirteenth-century northern France, learned to read and write Hebrew to varying degrees.83 Of course, the ability to read texts did not entail the ability to write them. One could learn to read Hebrew well and sign one’s name without learning to write it fluently, a skill that Sirat identifies with certain professions, such as those in law and education. Jewish boys in France were initiated into the study of Hebrew and Torah, and hence into the male sphere, as early as age five or six.84 Prior to this they spent most of their time in the care of their mothers and other women.85 The association between maleness and learning was made clear in a number of early childhood rituals, beginning with naming and circumcision in infancy, and culminating with a boy’s initiation into schooling.86 In England, literacy among male Jews appears to have been similarly common.87
Jewish communities sometimes assumed the responsibility of paying for the education of boys from poor families through charity, but not universally.88 Ephraim Kanarfogel has demonstrated that the education of poor children did sometimes suffer as a result of the financial situation of their parents. In the region roughly corresponding to today’s Germany and northern France, teaching was generally done by a melammed (tutor), hired by the child’s father or a group of fathers. In the absence of money to hire a melammed, a child had to rely on charity, which was not always available, or on his own father, who was not always willing or able to teach him.89 Similarly, Irving Agus, drawing on responsa literature, has argued that in Germany, Jews living in “small and isolated communities,” of which there were many in France as well,90 were less likely to attain high learning.91
Jewish girls and women were exposed to Hebrew and learned Hebrew prayers, but their education was generally a practical one not involving formal study of Hebrew or Hebrew texts.92 Exposure to prayer in Hebrew may have helped them develop a basic familiarity with the language, but it would not have enabled them to become proficient. Unlike Jewish men, women were not obligated to study the Law, and it is specified in the Talmud that a Torah scroll, tefillin, or mezuzot copied by women are pesulim, or invalid.93 Most evidence for a lack of Hebrew proficiency among Jewish women is indirect. The Mishnah allows the translation of certain religious texts and prayers into the vernacular for the benefit of those who do not know Hebrew, and religious authorities of many places and periods have reiterated this, including Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi (eleventh century), Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) in Hilkhot Tefillah (Laws of prayer), Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi (c. 1200– 1263), Isaiah ben Elijah di Trani (d. c. 1280), Asher ben Jehiel (c. 1250–1327), and his son, Jacob ben Asher (d. 1340).94 One rabbi who put this into action was Solomon Ha-Qadosh of Dreux or Rouen (twelfth to thirteenth century),95 who is said to have recited the Passover Haggadah in French (bela‘az)—only up to the end of the four questions—so that even women would understand.96 Another is Jacob ben Judah of London, author of Ets Ḥayyim (Tree of life; c. 1286), who is said to have translated the entire Haggadah into the vernacular, presumably French, again so that women and children would understand.97 At Passover, on the seventh day, it was customary, according to the Maḥzor Vitry, to translate the Parashah and the Haftarah readings in the synagogue into the vernacular; however, women are not specifically mentioned there as benefiting from this practice.98 The aforementioned Spanish scholar Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi observed that in his own time, Jewish women everywhere, including in France, prayed in the vernacular rather than Hebrew.99 It is possible to be proficient in Hebrew and yet choose to pray in another language. However, the custom among women of praying in the vernacular rather than Hebrew, even in the synagogue, is more readily understood if they were less proficient in reading and understanding Hebrew than were Jewish men.
In various places, Jewish women’s lives and educations reflected trends found in the larger, non-Jewish milieu. Many Christian women of medieval Europe became famous as writers, and while their numbers were smaller and their fame less, a few exceptional medieval Jewish women from the Rhineland and probably also France left writings as well, as Sirat shows. A women named Hannah copied a manuscript of Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil’s Sefer Mitsvot Qatan (Small book of commandments) in the late fourteenth century, probably in or near Cologne. A Bible copied in France or the Rhineland in the twelfth or thirteenth century bears the signature of a female owner, Sarah, as well as corrections and notes in her hand that demonstrate a profound understanding of biblical grammar.100 Finally, many Jewish women in medieval France must have had basic record-keeping and arithmetic skills in order to engage in financial pursuits, such as moneylending, as a significant number of medieval Jewish women in northern France are known to have done.101
We have seen that in the multidimensional linguistic environment of Tsarefat, the linguistic point of contact between Christians and Jews was French. French was the mother tongue of Christians and Jews in the communities treated here. It was acquired by children, whereas Latin and Hebrew had to be learned. But what French? All languages are dynamic systems, and in the next chapter we explore how medieval Jews might have used French in different social contexts, and what French might have meant for them.
CHAPTER 1
Language and Identity
“I am a Hebrew”
Near the end of the first millennium, it is told, a Jewish apostate from Blois named Seḥoq ben Esther Israeli made his way to a city on the edge of Tsarefat, where he hid his apostasy, married, and pursued all manner of wickedness.1 Not satisfied with being “ruler and judge” in his wife’s home,2 Seḥoq plotted to take over the property of a pious Jew who lived nearby, hiring twelve Gentile men to kill him. The chain of events that ensued nearly destroyed the Jewish community.
If this “terrible tale” (ma‘aseh nora’), as Abraham Berliner calls it, reports historical truth, it is a truth obscured by literary symbols and conventions. Kenneth Stow analyzes the evil protagonist’s name as a reminder of the ambiguities and dangers of converts: “He is seḥoq [sic], joke, or even a gamble; ben esther, the fictionalized heroine, but one who had to deny her Jewishness to play the role—and whose identity, therefore, remained and still remains always in doubt; yisraeli, perhaps a play on the much debated question of Verus Israel. Did that title belong to the Jew or the Christian? Seḥoq obviously tried to be both.”3 (We might also translate Seḥoq as “Laughter” or “Laughingstock”; Verus Israel refers here to the Christian church’s claim of being the new and only true Israel.)4
The name of the protagonist is unvocalized in the manuscript, and intriguingly enough, its spelling (
