We are pleased to present the readers with volume 18 of Massorot , published through the cooperation of the Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures and the Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The present volume contains nine articles and a review (with additional notes) of an unpublished Hebrew–Yiddish dictionary. The contributions include work by established authorities in the field of Jewish language research, as well as the fruit of younger researchers who have recently joined their ranks. The diversity of the scholarship in the present volume is to be seen in the wide variety of languages discussed, the varied linguistic and literary topics analyzed, as well as the diverse periods in which the sources studied were produced. In his article, Moshe Bar-Asher analyzes the Romance component in the varieties of Judeo-Arabic spoken in recent generations in Ksar Es-Souk, Morocco. Chava Turniansky focuses on the Hebrew component in literary Yiddish as an indicator of the level of traditional education of the writers incorporating it in works they composed in the second decade of the 18th century. Michal Held examines reflections of spoken Judeo-Spanish woven into the weave of a contemporary Hebrew novel. Ilil Baum analyzes the use of the productive suffix -ad̠a in Judeo-Spanish as compared with the use of its cognates in non-Jewish languages of Ibero-Romance stock. Hanoch Gamliel argues in his article that some of the lĕ‘azim (or Old Judeo-French explanatory elements) adduced in Rashi’s commentary on the Torah should be understood as examples of grammatical categories rather than as lexical correspondents. Two of the articles in the present volume deal with problems of translation. Michael Ryzhik examines how the Hebrew names of birds and fowl appearing in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 were rendered in Judeo-Italian Bible translations from the 15th and 16th centuries. Shay Matsa focuses on the linguistic characteristics of a modern Arabic translation of the Passover Haggadah produced in 2003 by a Jew from Syria, examined in the light of personal observations made to the author by the translator himself. Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald compares the linguistic features of two texts in Ladino composed by the same author, Rabbi Meir Benveniste of mid-16th-century Salonika. Efraim Hazan presents and analyzes a letter of friendship in Hebrew verse from Morocco; the numerical value of the Hebrew letters of each stanza (except one) is 654, corresponding to the Hebrew year ([5]654 = 1894) in which the letter was written. The closing article focuses on an unpublished Hebrew–Yiddish dictionary written by Meir Berger in the 1970s. This article includes an introduction by Berger’s former student, Chava Turniansky, and personal notes by his son, Yitzhaq Berger. These are followed by Yitskhok Niborski’s review of Berger’s dictionary, in which it is compared with the 1960 Hebrew–Yiddish dictionary of Mordechai Tsanin. Niborski’s review was translated from Yiddish into Hebrew by Moshe Taube. The book features article summaries in English.

The book is intended to be used by Hebrew speakers as an updated linguistic introduction for the phonology and morphology of the Hebrew language. It is an enlarged and updated second edition of the "Grammar of Mouth and Ear" that was written and published in 1947 by the same author while kept in a British detention camp for the underground movement in former Palestine. The present edition includes the topics that have been dealt with in the original book, but with modern approach according to progress in linguistics and general science, with new explanations that could appear in modern time.

Cinema is the most democratic form of art, dependent on the taste of millions of viewers. Within the cinematic historical genre in Arab cinema one finds a rich intellectual discourse, in a constant dialogue with state, censorship and audience. The book Back to the Past: Filmed History in Arab Cinema invites the readers to know the Arab cinema industry, mainly the Egyptian one, through the historical genre, and "medieval" films as its core. In films taking place in Middle Ages , the viewers meet warriors and poets, besides the leaders and founders of Islam. These films present also the images of Mongol and Crusaders invaders, slaves and concubines, Mamluks, Christians and Jews. The book surveys also the transition from a situation of Egyptian cinema exported to the Arab world, into the creation of Pan-Arab historical discourse within the satellite channels.

This book, stemming from a PhD dissertation under the advising of Prof. Moshe Bar Asher, offers a description of the traditional Hebrew of the Jews of southern Yemen. The description is based on a lengthy and intensive field work consisting of recording their reading of biblical, rabbinic, and liturgical literature. As S. Morag's The Hebrew Language Tradition of the Yemenite Jews (Jerusalem, 1963) focuses mainly on central Yemen, especially the city of Sanaa, the study of the southern Yemen phonological tradition remained a desideratum, which the current book aims at fulfilling. Thus, the first part of the book includes addenda et corrigenda to the description of the southern Yemen phonological system. One major innovation in this regard is the different pronunciations of the holam, along with several phonological matters missing in Morag's book, such as the principles of the mobile shewa and the primary and secondary accents (the ga'aya). The second part consists of a description of the traditional reading of the Mishna in southern Yemen, including a very meticulous comparison to the mainstream tradition of central Yemen, and to some other non Yemenite traditions. In chapter 2, some phonological matters concerning the Tiberian Hebrew are discussed, such as the conditions for gemination (doubling), different issues related to the gutturals, and the principles of the dagesh lene in the bgdkpt consonants. The largest chapter of this book, chapter 3, consists of a detailed description of over 1200 Mishnaic nominal forms as realized traditionally. Organized alphabetically, this list includes post-biblical nouns, biblical nouns pronounced differently in their Mishnaic occurrence, and inflections of biblical nominal forms not attested in the Bible. The entries offer oral information based on six main informants and vocalized manuscripts from southern Yemen. Every entry has been compared to the data available from reliable informants, existing recordings, vocalized manuscripts and printed editions from central Yemen, along with other circumstantial. evidence. The material was systematically compared to other linguistic traditions, such as the Babylonian, and to almost all the vocalized manuscripts and printed editions ever used in southern Yemen. In chapter 4, several topics are discussed with regard to the traditional reading of the Mishnah: Various participle forms, the punctuation of relative ש, pausal forms, the definition of nominal forms, ketiv and qere in Mishnaic reading, and the like. The database analysis reveals that the southern Yemen tradition is certainly a Yemenite one, correlating very well with the central Yemen tradition. Yet, in some details it rather correlates with ancient traditions of Mishnaic Hebrew on the one hand, and with vocalized printed editions, including mistakes and inconsistency, on the other. A fundamental outcome of this work is that the Yemenite Rabbinic Hebrew tradition should be examined within its regional backdrop and variations. Needless to say, that this work has been a rescue mission of a tradition not extensively recorded and of which the number of individuals familiar with is rapidly decreasing. This work, based on recordings and vocalized manuscripts from southern Yemen, ensures that the memory of this tradition is perpetuated for future generations. Introduction The Research on the Language Traditions The Research on the Yemenite Tradition The Research on the Southern Yemenite Tradition The Communities in this Paper Shar'ab Aden The Jews of Southern Yemen and the Printed Books Research Methods The Corpus The Informants Presentation of the Results and an Analysis Phonology in the Reading of the Bible Preface The Sound System The Consonants The Vowels Stress in the Reading of the Bible Primary Stress Secondary Stress Secondary Stress in Closed Syllables Gemination Furtive Patah Phonology in the Reading of the Mishnah Gemination ר Gemination in אהח"ע Gemination in In shva and in מ in shva י Gemination in מה Gemination after Gemination of Dehik The Influence of the Gutturals The Vocalization of a Prefix before a Guttural The Gutteral Vowel Furtive Patah Changes in Verbs with Gutturals The Vocalization of Definiteness before Gutturals and before ר Fricative and Plosive בגדכפ"ת Letters Plosive בגדכפ"ת Letters Not Following the Tiberian Tradition Fricative בגדכפ"ת Not Following the Tiberian Tradition Analysis and Conclusions Stress in the Reading of the Mishna The Noun in the Tradition of Mishnaic Hebrew Some Participial Forms The Vocalization of the Relative Pronoun ש The Vocalization of ובכ"ל in Pretonic Position Pausal Forms Participles with First Person Pronouns Feminine Participles with Object Suffixes Absolute Forms in Construct State Construct Forms in Absolute State Joining של to the Following World Second Person Suffixes Definiteness of Nouns Ketiv and Qere in the Reading of the Mishna The Southern Yemenite Tradition – A Summary Phonetics The Reading Tradition of Mishnaic Hebrew Some Notes on Noun Morphology Characteristics of the Southern Yemenite Tradition Insights on the Central Yemenite Traditions Conclusive Remarks Bibliography and Abbreviations Index of Words

The articles in this volume: Ilan Eldar Language Nationalism, Language Revival, and Language Planning Miri Bar-Ziv Levy The Cinematic Representation of Hebrew Speech in the 1930s Ariel Gabbay פּועֶֹלֶת or פּועָֹלֶת ? Feminine Participle Forms in Pausal Inflection in the 1644 Constantinople Edition of the Mishna Mitka Ratzaby Golub Ethnic Characteristics in Theophoric Personal Names Found in Archaeological Excavations in the Land of Israel during the First Temple Period Einat Gonen Grammatical Variation in Israeli Hebrew in the Light of the Formation of Early Modern Hebrew Ephraim Bezalel Halivni Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar in the Light of the Aleppo and Leningrad Codices Ohad Cohen The Syntactic Status of Verbal Forms Ending with Final Nun in First Temple Prose Chava Farstey “Reverse Calques” and Languages in Contact Rivka Shemesh-Raiskin From Biblical Hebrew to Mishnaic Hebrew: The Use of an Inner Object Forward and contents can be seen in PDF form, just press "SAMPLE PAGES".

When the speaker has "no words" she may utilize silence to communicate (opposed to stillness, pauses, the unsaid, empty-speech or silencing). Such silence speaks alongside words composing language structures. Our book studies (eloquent) silence: its functions and forms, as it emerges in Hebrew texts and genres aural and written (from the Bible, literary works, commercials, psychotherapy discourse, personal and public).

MS Zurich, Jeselsohn 5, is the first half of a Sefardi Masoretic Bible completed by Moshe Ibn Zabara in 1477, which was later heavily glossed, especially in the Pentateuch, by Menahem de Lonzano. The other half of the manuscript is preserved in MS Sassoon 1209. This study first examines Zabara’s work in the manuscript, in comparison with his other manuscripts. The main part of this study is devoted to Menahem de Lonzano: his biography and bibliography, his wide-ranging text critical work, and his detailed work on the Zabara Bible. The volume is illustrated with approximately 150 color photos, with a concentration of 32 photographs in appendix 1 of folios in MS Jeselsohn 5 with micrography. Two other appendices by specialists are devoted to the decoration program and to the palaeography and codicology of MS Jeselsohn 5; the former by Andreina Contessa, the latter by Tamar Leiter and Shlomo Zucker.