Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Language Socialization in Jewish Communities

Sites of Religious, Cultural, and National Identities

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Language Socialization

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Language and Education ((ELE))

  • 307 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter focuses on language socialization (Ochs and Schieffelin 1984) in American Jewish communities, as an example of a minority community that has historically experienced migration and displacement. It opens with a bird’s-eye view of the broader field of Jewish languages, exploring how varying Jewish languages have defined and maintained Jewish practices in diasporic conditions. It then turns to research on language socialization in American Jewish communities, highlighting recent studies that reflect the differing ways in which membership in Jewish communities is negotiated through languages and linguistic practices for individuals. This synthesis of scholarship reflects the diversity of types of Jewish communities, and how first and second language socialization intersects with cultural, national, and religious Jewish identification across contexts of home, school, and informal events. It also explores the various ways that identity is negotiated and constructed through diverse language practices. Collectively, these studies provide a taste of the complexity of what it means to be defined as a speaker of Jewish culture/religion in American society. This chapter concludes with some ideas about future directions for those interested in studying the role of language(s) in Jewish life both in the United States and beyond, and what the subfield of language socialization in Jewish communities can contribute to broader discussions of language socialization and religious life.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Anderson, B. R. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Avineri, N. (2012). Heritage language socialization practices in secular Yiddish educational contexts: The creation of a metalinguistic community. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Avineri, N. (2014a). Yiddish: A Jewish language in the diaspora. In T. G. Wiley, J. Kreeft Peyton, D. Christian, S. C. Moore, & N. Liu (Eds.), Handbook of heritage, community, and native American languages in the United States: Research, policy, and educational practice (pp. 263–271). New York/London: Routledge Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Avineri, N. (2014b). Yiddish endangerment as phenomenological reality and discursive strategy: Crossing into the past and crossing out the present. In N. Avineri & P. V. Kroskrity (Eds.), Reconceptualizing endangered language communities: Crossing borders and constructing boundaries. [special issue], Language and communication (Vol. 38, pp. 18–32).

    Google Scholar 

  • Avineri, N. (2015). Yiddish language socialization across communities: Religion, ideologies, and variation. Language & Communication, 42, 135–140.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avineri, N. (forthcoming). Conflicted stance practices in the Yiddish metalinguistic community. In I. L. Bleaman & B.D Joseph (Eds), Jewish language variation and contact: Fifty years after Uriel Weinreich (1926–1967). [Special Issue]. Journal of Jewish Languages.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aviv, C. S., & Shneer, D. (2005). New Jews: The end of the Jewish diaspora. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Avni, S. (2011). Toward an understanding of Hebrew language education: Ideologies, emotions, and identity. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 208, 53–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Avni, S. (2012a). Hebrew as heritage: The work of language in religious and communal continuity. Linguistics and Education, 23, 323–333.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avni, S. (2012b). Hebrew-only language policy in religious education. Language Policy, 11, 169–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avni, S. (2012c). Translation as a site of language policy negotiation in Jewish day school education. Current Issues in Language Planning, 13(2), 76–104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avni, S. (2013). Becoming a people of the book: Interactional positioning of community in bible discourse. Journal of Jewish Education, 79(1), 4–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avni, S. (2014). Homeland tour guide narratives and the discursive construction of the diasporic. Narrative Inquiry, 23(2), 227–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baquedano-López, S. P. (1998). Language socialization of Mexican children in a Los Angeles Catholic parish. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benor, S. B. (2009). Do American Jews speak a “Jewish language”? A model of Jewish linguistic distinctiveness. The Jewish Quarterly Review, 99, 230–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benor, S. B. (2012). Becoming frum: How newcomers learn the language and culture of Orthodox Judaism. Rutgers: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benor, S. B., & Avineri, N. (forthcoming). Beyond language proficiency: Fostering metalinguistic communities in Jewish educational settings. In J. Levisohn & A. Kelman (Eds.), Beyond Jewish identity: Rethinking concepts and imagining alternatives. Brighton: Academic Studies Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benor, S. B., Krasner, J., Avni, S. (2015). “Ruach in the chadar” or “Ivrit bamachaneh”: Competing ideologies of Hebrew pedagogy at American Jewish summer camps. In Network for research on Jewish education conference presentation. New York: Hebrew Union College.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). Dinner talk: Cultural patterns of sociability and socialization in family discourse. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bortnick, R. A. (2001). The internet and Judeo-Spanish: Impact and implications of a virtual community. In H. Pomeroy & M. Alpert (Eds.), Proceedings of the twelfth British conference on Judeo-Spanish studies (pp. 4–11). Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyarin, J. (1989). Voices around the text: The ethnography of reading at Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem. Cultural Anthropology, 4(4), 399–421.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyarin, J., & Boyarin, D. (2002). Powers of diaspora: Two essays on the relevance of Jewish culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, S. M. & Benor, S. B. (2009, October). Survey of American Jewish language and identity. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). Retrieved May 28, 2012, from www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=3874

  • Fader, A. (2001). Literacy, bilingualism, and gender in a Hasidic community. Linguistics and Education, 12(3), 261–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fader, A. (2006). Learning faith: Language socialization in a community of Hasidic Jews. Language in Society, 35(02), 205–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fader, A. (2007). Reclaiming sacred sparks: Linguistic syncretism and gendered language shift among Hasidic Jews in New York. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 17(1), 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fader, A. (2008). Reading Jewish signs: The socialization of multilingual literacies among Hasidic women and girls in Brooklyn, New York. Text & Talk: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies, 28(5), 621–641.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fader, A. (2009). Mitzvah girls: Bringing up the next generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fader, A. (2012). Language and morality. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 322–340). London: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fader, A. (2013). Nonliberal Jewish women’s audiocassette lectures in Brooklyn: A crisis of faith and the morality of media. American Anthropologist, 115(1), 72–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fader, A. (2015). The treatment of doubt: Ultra-Orthodox Jews, crises of faith, and therapy. New York: CUNY Graduate Center.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fishman, J. A. (1980). Attracting a following to high-culture functions for a language of everyday life: The role of the Tshernovits language conference in the ‘rise of Yiddish’. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 24, 43–74.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fishman, J. A. (1985). The sociology of Jewish languages from a general sociolinguistic point of view. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages (pp. 3–21). Leiden: E. J. Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fishman, J. A. (1994). The truth about language and culture (and a note about its relevance to the Jewish case). International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 109(1), 83–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garrett, P. B., & Baquedano-López, P. (2002). Language socialization: Reproduction and continuity, transformation and change. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 339–361.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gold, D. (1985). Jewish English. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages (pp. 280–298). Leiden: E.J. Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, C. (2013). The co-operative, transformative organization of human action and knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics, 46(1): 8–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hadda, J. (1999). Yiddish in contemporary American culture. In G. Estraikh & M. Krutikov (Eds.), Yiddish in the contemporary world: Papers of the first Mendel Friedman international conference on Yiddish (pp. 93–105). Oxford: Legenda.

    Google Scholar 

  • He, A. W. (2008). Heritage language learning and socialization. In P. A. Duff & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education volume 8 language socialization (pp. 201–216). New York: Springer Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heilman, S. C. (2001). The people of the book: Drama, fellowship, and religion. New York: Transaction Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kattan, S. (2009). ‘Because she doesn’t speak real Hebrew’: Accent and the socialization of authenticity among Israeli Shlichim. Crossroads of Language, Interaction, and Culture, 7, 65–94.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kattan, S. (2010). Language socialization and linguistic ideologies among Israeli emissaries in the United States. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kayam, O., & Hirsch, T. (2014). Socialization of language through family language policy: A case study. Psychology of Language and Communication, 18(1), 53–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelman, A. Y. (2009). Station identification: A cultural history of Yiddish radio in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kopeliovich, S. (2010). Family language policy: A case study of a Russian-Hebrew bilingual family: Toward a theoretical framework. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education: Studies of Migration, Integration, Equity, and Cultural Survival, 4(3), 162–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kushner Bishop, J. (2004). More than a language, a travel agency: Ideology and performance in the Israeli Judeo-Spanish revitalization movement. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann, B. E. (2012). Space and place in Jewish studies (Vol. 2). New Brunswich: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Modan, G., & Shuman, A. (2010). Narratives of reputation: Layerings of social and spatial identities. In D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina, A. Nylund, & A. (Eds.), Telling stories: Language, narrative, and social life (pp. 83–94). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories and their implications. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion (pp. 276–320). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ochs, E., & Taylor, C. (1996). ‘The father knows best’ dynamic in family dinner narratives. In K. Hall (Ed.), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self (pp. 97–121). New York: Routledge Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peltz, R. (1997). From immigrant to ethnic culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peltz, R. (2010). Diasporic languages: The Jewish world. In J. A. Fishman & O. Garcia (Eds.), Handbook of language and ethnic identity (pp. 135–152). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prell, R. E. (1989). Prayer and community: The havurah in American Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sadan, T. (2011). Yiddish on the internet. Language & Communication, 31, 99–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shandler, J. (2008). Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular language & culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soldat-Jaffe, T. (2012). Twenty-first century Yiddishism: Language, identity, and the new Jewish studies. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spolsky, B. (1986). Teaching Hebrew in the diaspora: Rationale and goals. Jewish Education, 54(3), 11–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spolsky, B., & Shohamy, E. (1999). Language in Israeli society and education. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 137, 93–114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tannen, D. (1984). Jewish argument as sociability. Language in Society, 13(3), 311–335.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), Monterey, CA, USA

    Netta Avineri

  2. City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA

    Sharon Avni

Authors
  1. Netta Avineri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sharon Avni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Netta Avineri .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Patricia A. Duff

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, School of Critic, Auckland, New Zealand

    Stephen May

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this entry

Cite this entry

Avineri, N., Avni, S. (2017). Language Socialization in Jewish Communities. In: Duff, P., May, S. (eds) Language Socialization. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02327-4_23-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02327-4_23-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02327-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02327-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation