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Fudeman, Kirsten. 2010. Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Com- munities. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 240 pp.

Fudeman’s book is about language, history, and sociology—among other subjects. It con- sists of an introduction, four numbered chapters, and two appendixes, which deal with all these issues.

Introduction What is the vernacular examined in Vernacular Voices? Is it Old or ? Is it Judeo-French? Are there examples of both? Is there indeed a Judeo- or dia- lect? Kirsten Fudeman does not offer a definitive answer. She writes, “In this volume I use the term ‘Hebraico-French’ to refer to Old and Middle French texts written in Hebrew let- ters . . . Except in discussions of earlier scholarship, I avoid using the term ‘Judeo-French’ to describe texts” (5).

Chapter 1: Language and Identity Despite avoiding the term “Judeo-French,” Fudeman does say, “Medieval Jewish texts in French were written for and by in Hebrew letters, and they contain distinctive lexi- cal items, most of them from Hebrew” (35). Jewish languages and identity can be touchy subjects, and she cites Menachem Banitt (1963) at some length, pointing out the following: “Banitt, whose published remarks suggest that he looked on with scorn, argued that the Jews’ medieval French was pure and downplayed ways in which it differed from that of non-Jews” (29). She relates Banitt’s views on Yiddish with those of Friedrich Engels, who thought Yiddish was simply bad German and said “What a German!” and went on to talk of “peddler Jews, their lice and their dirt” (31). Fudeman agrees that “Banitt was right to reject the idea of a monolithic Jewish French that spanned regions and centuries” (58), but then no scholar of Jewish languages has ever suggested that these languages have no regional variation and don’t change with time. She then recognizes that in effect there may well have been a Judeo-French: “To say that the Jews spoke the same language as their non- Jewish neighbors is not to say that they spoke it in an identical way” (58). When did speakers of Jewish languages or become aware that their speech dif- fered from the speech of their neighbors? We don’t know. We do know that in 842 C.E., speak- ers of knew that they were not speaking , since the Oaths of Strasbourg, the first document in a Romance language, were administered at that time. The same oaths were also taken at that time in a dialect of . This simultaneous occurrence showed that Old French and Old German were both acknowledged as languages. Were all dialects considered equal? The first evidence that one dialect was respected more than the others took place in 1635, when the Académie française, which standardized the French language, was established by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. In 1596, two centuries after the final expulsion of Jews from that had taken place in 1394, a visitor from Switzerland to Avignon named Thomas Platter described what he felt was a Jewish dialect. Avignon, where the lived from 1305 to 1378, and the surrounding

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/22134638-12340007 174 Book Reviews / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 169–176 area of the were part of the Papal States until the French Revolution, and Jews there had not been affected by the expulsions from France. Fudeman informs us that Platter wrote, “A blind preaches there to women, in bad Hebrew, for the dialect of the Jews of Avignon is mixed with Languedocean words.” She goes on to explain that this dialect “was not Hebrew at all but rather ( Judeo-Occitan), a Romance language with many Hebrew ” (43). If Shuadit, also known as Judeo-Provençal, was not identified until 1596, can it be that Judeo- French had not yet developed before the expulsion of Jews from France? However, we do know that a prayer book for women in Provençal written in the existed before the Soncino family set up its Hebrew printing press in 1483. Was this prayer book—which is found in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds, (Cecil Roth Manuscript 32)—written in Shuadit or in Provençal? We know it includes the word goya, meaning “gentile woman” (Jochnowitz 1981). Does it matter? Were the docu- ments described by Fudeman written in Judeo-French? She informs us, “Medieval Jewish texts in French were written for and by Jews in Hebrew letters, and they contain distinctive lexical items, most of them from Hebrew” (35). That information tells us what we need to know about the language of the texts, whether or not French Jews or French Christians at the time they were written thought of them as examples of a Jewish language.

Chapter 2: Speech and Silence, Male and Female in Jewish-Christian Relations In the city of Blois in the year 1171, a Christian servant saw something that he thought was part of a child’s corpse. The corpse was never found and probably never existed. The ser- vant reported what he saw—or thought he saw—and 32 Jews were burned alive. One of the victims was a Jewish woman named Pucelline who was thought to be the lover of Count Thibault V of Blois. Pucelline may have been a money lender, which, as Fudeman explains, was “a profession that many Jewish women, particularly widows, pursued” (66). The Count accepted the testimony of the witness. Had his relationship with Pucelline turned sour? Many possibilities and documents are mentioned in the chapter, none of which explain why this tragedy happened.

Chapter 3: Texts of Two Colors Some of the texts analyzed by Fudeman are religious commentaries. Others were meant to be read aloud. Whatever their purpose, they provide a wealth of information. Did French Jews have a name for the language of these texts? (Rabbi Shlomo Yitsḥaqi) glossed Hebrew words into what he called la’az. Did he mean French or Judeo-French? Rashi’s dates are 1040 ̶1105, but Fudeman tells us that “the earliest Jewish glosses in Old French originated sometime before Rashi, although we do not know precisely when” (103). Did Rashi think that there was a distinctive Jewish way of speaking French? He may have, but he never wrote anything to indicate that this was the case. Phonological information provided by some of the Hebraico-French texts supports evi- .[is used for the sound [s ש dence that the sound [ ʃ ] did not exist in Old French. The letter The French spelling ch at the time .(116) שון Thus, the French word son (his, her) is written as ,(47–46) ק¯ or (117) צי was probably pronounced [tʃ ] or [ts]. In Hebraico-French we find