Languages of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews

Judeo Spanish (Ladino, Judezmo)

Where: The Ottoman Empire, after the expulsion from Spain in 1492: Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans, and today Israel and the Americas.

Built on medieval Spanish, it absorbed Turkish, Greek, French, and Italian words. It was printed in Rashi script and handwritten in a cursive called Solitreo. The Holocaust destroyed many of its communities; Salonica alone had about 50,000 Ladino speakers before World War II.

Haketia

Where: Northern Morocco, including Tetuan and Tangier.

The Judeo Spanish of northern Morocco, full of Arabic and Hebrew words. One early glossary found that more than a third of its entries came from Arabic, like zinzelá, “earthquake.”

Judeo Arabic

Where: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Yemen.

Spoken and written by Jews across the Arabic speaking world for over a thousand years. Great thinkers including Saadia Gaon and Maimonides wrote in it. Today the island of Djerba, Tunisia, is the one place where children still learn it at home.

Judeo Persian and the Jewish dialects of Iran

Where: Iran, and today Israel and California.

Judeo Persian has a literature reaching back centuries; the oldest known Judeo Persian translation of the Torah dates to 1319. Cities such as Isfahan, Hamadan, Kashan, Shiraz, and Yazd also had their own Jewish dialects, now spoken by very few people.

Jewish Neo Aramaic

Where: Kurdistan, in what is now northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey.

A living member of the Aramaic family, the language of the Talmud and the Kaddish prayer. Dialects include Lishana Deni and Lishan Didan. The Israeli band HULAULA performs in it today.

Bukhori (Judeo Tajik)

Where: Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), and today Queens, New York, and Israel.

A Persian family language. Under Soviet rule its alphabet changed from Hebrew to Latin letters and then to Cyrillic, and publishing in Bukhori was banned in 1940.

Juhuri (Judeo Tat)

Where: The Caucasus (Azerbaijan and Dagestan), home of the Mountain Jews.

A Persian family language that became one of Dagestan's official languages in 1938, a rare honor for a Jewish language. Children in Red Town (Qırmızı Qəsəbə), Azerbaijan, still learn it at home.

Judeo Amazigh

Where: The Atlas Mountains and Sous Valley of southern Morocco.

Usually a second language alongside Judeo Arabic, used with Amazigh neighbors and in wedding songs. It is sometimes called Judeo Berber, but many now consider “Berber” an outsider's term.

Before modern Hebrew was revived as an everyday language, Hebrew was the language of the Bible, prayer, and scholarship. Aramaic held a special place too. It is the language of most of the Babylonian Talmud, the Mourner's Kaddish, the Kol Nidre prayer of Yom Kippur, the traditional marriage contract (ketubah), and Passover songs such as “Had Gadya.” Yemenite Jews still read the Aramaic translation of the Torah, the Targum, aloud in synagogue.

Writing in Hebrew letters. Most Jewish languages were written in the Hebrew alphabet, linking everyday speech to Hebrew learning and Jewish books. Ladino was printed in a typeface called Rashi script and handwritten in Solitreo. In the Soviet Union, Bukhori and Juhuri were forced to switch first to Latin and then to Cyrillic letters.

Words from home

Sarah Sassoon, an Iraqi Jewish writer whose family left Iraq in 1951, shares a few Iraqi Judeo Arabic words still used in her family:

• Ashtidek: “bless your hands,” said to thank the cook after a meal
• Ayouni: “my eyes,” a term of affection
• Ashlonak: a greeting that asks how you are

Many families still use words like these even after the language itself is no longer spoken. The Jewish Language Project calls them “heritage words.”

Loss. In the mid twentieth century, most Jews of the Middle East and North Africa left their homelands, many as refugees. In Israel, new immigrants faced strong pressure to adopt Hebrew, and children stopped speaking the languages of their parents. The Holocaust destroyed many Ladino speaking communities, and Soviet policies suppressed Bukhori, Juhuri, and Judeo Georgian. In new countries, families shifted to English, French, Spanish, or Hebrew within a generation or two.

Revival. Today a new generation is reclaiming these languages. Israel created a National Authority for Ladino in 1997, and the Ladino magazine Aki Yerushalayim has been published since 1979. The University of Washington's Sephardic Studies Digital Collection preserves hundreds of Ladino books, documents, and recordings. The Jewish Language Project's Heirloom program pairs learners with speakers, and the Israeli band A‑WA sets Yemenite Judeo Arabic poetry to contemporary music. International Ladino Day was first celebrated in 2013.

Common misconceptions

• “All Sephardic Jews spoke Ladino.” Most Moroccan Jews spoke Judeo Arabic. Iraqi, Iranian, Yemenite, Kurdish, Bukharan, and Mountain Jews never spoke Ladino.
• “Middle Eastern Jews spoke Hebrew.” Hebrew was for prayer and study. Daily life happened in Judeo Arabic, Judeo Persian, Aramaic, and other languages.
• “Neo Aramaic is the language of Jesus.” It belongs to the same family, but it is a modern language, not the Aramaic of the first century.
• “Bukhori and Juhuri are Russian or Turkic.” Both are Persian family languages, even though they are now written in Cyrillic.

In the public school classroom

• Create a “language journey” map tracing how these languages traveled with families from Spain, Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia to new homes.
• Connect to students' own lives: invite them to collect heritage words from their families' languages, in any language.
• Listen to music in Ladino and Judeo Arabic, and discuss how songs keep languages alive.
• Explore language endangerment as a global issue, comparing Jewish languages with Indigenous and other minority languages.
• Discuss prayers such as the Kaddish as texts, without having students recite them.

In Jewish schools and communities

• Use the Sephardi & Mizrahi Education Toolkit's “Beyond the Family Tree” lessons, created with the Jewish Language Project.
• Teach students to write their names in Solitreo or Rashi script.
• Celebrate International Ladino Day, or sing Haggadah passages in Judeo Arabic or Ladino at a model seder.
• Invite grandparents to teach a song, a blessing for the cook, or a proverb.

At home and with family

• Make a family list of heritage words, with their meanings and who used them.
• Record grandparents speaking, singing, or telling a story in their language.
• Label family recipes with their original names.
• Explore the Jewish Language Project's Heirloom program to learn with a mentor.