Conceptualising Hebrew in surveys of small or isolated Jewish populations

• In Event: Hebrew as a Heritage Language: to Whom, How and Where

Abstract

Understandings of what constitutes Hebrew as a “Heritage Language” (HL) of Jewish people are dynamic and diverse, as are approaches to its transmission. The “Hebrew” to which Jewish people feel a connection, are interested in learning and wish to pass onto their children has been found to differ between locales and contexts. Within small Jewish communities, a lack of research makes it difficult to predict which type of Hebrew, such as Textual or Modern, may be important, and indeed what community members are actually talking about when they talk about Hebrew. This means it is also challenging to delineate how Hebrew as a HL may be positioned alongside other elements of Jewish heritage and where Hebrew sits within individuals’ broader linguistic repertoires. A bottom-up approach is thus needed when defining “Hebrew” in studies of these contexts. Such an approach affords a population the agency to define for themselves what they mean when they talk about Hebrew and which dimensions of the language are important to them. By conceptualising this, the status of Hebrew as a HL within small Jewish communities can begin to be revealed.

My research discusses the difficulties in defining Hebrew when surveying small, understudied and isolated Jewish populations, and presents a strategy used to address them in a large-scale survey of Jewish and Israeli parents in New Zealand. For the former group, the broader definition of HLs can be applied whereas the narrow definition may be adopted for the latter. The survey elicits parental ideologies regarding Hebrew, what they think of when they think of Hebrew, how they view the connection between Hebrew and Judaism. It specifically targets how they approach Hebrew learning and usage with their children despite their small local communities and limited access to regular Jewish education. The results will be discussed in relation to findings in other locales (e.g. Avni, 2014; Badder, 2022), the construct of ethnolinguistic repertoires (Benor, 2010), Spolsky’s (2021) centering of the individual within language policy research and the overall status and treatment of Hebrew as a HL within small Jewish populations that lack opportunities for formal Jewish education.

Author

• Annabel Noar