Aramaic has thrived for some 3,000 years, but now in the 21st century, many of its dialects are dissappearing in front of our eyes. This decline also affects the Jewish dialects, whose speakers came to Israel in the early 1950s. This talk will give an introduction to Jewish Aramaic and its history, drawing from Dorota Molin’s recently published book on a Jewish dialect from north-western Iraq. In what sense can a language such as Aramaic be ‘Jewish’? How did its speakers—various Jewish communities from Iraq and Iran—manage to integrate in the Ashkenazi-dominated young Israeli society? And why is Aramaic declining, despite its status as a sacred Jewish language?

The speaker is Dorota Molin, who currently teaches Ancient Hebrew at the University of Oxford. She also contributes to a project on the history of Aramaic and its relationship to the languages of Christians and Muslims of Iraq, based at the University of Cambridge. She loves languages, history, exploring new places and good food.