Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
brill.com/jjl
Voices Yet to Be Heard:
On Listening to the Last Speakers of Jewish Malayalam
Ophira Gamliel
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract
Jewish history in Kerala, the southernmost state in modern India, goes back to as early as the tenth
century CE. In the mid-twentieth century, Kerala Jews migrated en masse to Israel, leaving behind
but a handful of their community members and remnants of eight communities, synagogues, and
cemeteries. The paper presents a preliminary attempt to describe and analyze the language—so
far left undocumented and unexplored—still spoken by Kerala Jews in Israel, based on a language
documentation project carried out in 2008 and 2009. In light of the data collected and studied so
far, it is clear that the language in question fits nicely into the Jewish languages spectrum, while
at the same time it fits perfectly into the linguistic mosaic of castolects in Kerala. Though the
linguistic database described here reflects a language in its last stages, it affords salvaging the
remnants of a once rich oral heritage and opens new channels for the study of the history, society,
and culture of Kerala Jews.
Keywords
Jewish Malayalam; language documentation; folklore; Malayalam dialects; India; Kerela
In the fall of 2007, a group of Israelis of Kerala origin in their fifties and sixties
and I, an Indologist and philologist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
initiated a Malayalam workshop in Israel. They migrated from Kerala in 1954
before being formally educated in standard Malayalam. I had just returned
from Kerala after a long stay and sought Malayalam speakers to practice spoken, nonstandard Malayalam. This informal workshop had the objective of
a friendly knowledge exchange—the Malayalam script in exchange for the
spoken language. It soon became clear that the Malayalam they spoke was
somewhat different from the language I studied in Kerala, as I had difficulties understanding them. Within a few months, I realized that their speech is
Jewish Malayalam, a Jewish language on the verge of extinction.
One may argue whether Jewish Malayalam is a distinct language at all. On
the one hand, seen from the point of view of Malayalam scholars, it is merely
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013
DOI: 10.1163/22134638-12340004
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one of the many Malayalam language varieties or dialects. For example, it
shares several lexical items and morphological features with Mappila Mala­
yalam, the Muslim dialect of Kerala. On the other hand, Jewish linguists may
argue for its inclusion among other Jewish languages such as Yiddish, Ladino,
and Judeo-Arabic, based on its Hebrew component, archaic retentions of the
host language, and a tradition of verbatim translations (Gamliel 2009a; Hary
2008:12, fn. 20, 23–25, 27). Be it a language or a dialect, Jewish Malayalam is
certainly on the verge of extinction. Therefore, documenting it is an urgent
task regardless of its definition as a distinct Jewish language or a Malayalam
dialect.
Recognizing the importance of documenting the last speakers of Jewish
Malayalam, the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem supported a two-year documentation project. The project was a joint effort of the institute, Kerala Jewish community members in Israel, and organizations and members of the academic
community at the Hebrew University. This paper aims at a brief description of
the data collected during the years 2008 and 2009, as well as a discussion of the
significance of the data. Understanding Jewish Malayalam language patterns is
important not only for Kerala Jewish studies but also for linguistics, anthropology, and other disciplines. Keeping in mind the various needs of the different
research fields involved, the project was aimed at documenting any linguistic data whether solicited or unsolicited, along the lines of similar projects of
documenting small languages/dialects on the verge of extinction elsewhere
(Himmelmann 2006).
Historical Background
A few words about Jewish Malayalam, its speakers and their history are in place.
The first evidence for Jewish presence in Kerala is a signature in Hebrew on
one of the earliest documents in Malayalam, the Kollam Tarissa Paḷḷi inscription (aka Syrian Christian Copper Plates) dated to the mid-ninth century CE
(Narayanan 1972:32–7, 86–92). The beginning of Jewish history in Kerala thus
runs parallel to the beginning of documented Malayalam; both are approximately one-thousand years old.
There is more evidence for Jewish presence along the Malabar Coast during the medieval period. However, it is rather scarce and still in need of thorough historical description and analysis (Gamliel 2009b:7–29; 2013a). As is
evident from the letters of Jewish traders found in the Cairo Geniza, the Jews
in medieval West Asia were acquainted with the Malabar Coast and aware of
Jewish presence there (Goitein 1973:177ff.; Goitein and Friedman 2008; Adler
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137
1907:64–5). After the arrival of the Portuguese in Kerala in the beginning of
the sixteenth century, evidence increases in quantity; however, its reliability
is highly dubious.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, all Jewish communities in
Kerala were settled around central Kerala and under the sovereignty of the
Cochin royal house, except for Parur, which was under the sovereignty of the
Travancore king. However, there are some references to an older settlement in
Calicut in North Kerala (Gagin 1934:18; Johnson 1975:60–1) and some historical
evidence suggesting there were Jewish communities in northern and southern
Kerala during the premodern period. A Malayalam composition dated to the
fifteenth century from northern Kerala, the Payyannūrpāṭṭə, refers to merchant
guilds in which Jews were members (Gundert 1993). The Cairo Geniza contains
letters of a Jewish merchant, Abraham Ben-Yiju, who lived with his family for
twenty years in Mangalore during the twelfth century (Goitein and Friedman
2008:58–9, 644–7). Furthermore, several port cities like Kollam in the south
and Valarpattanam in the north were frequently visited by Jewish traders mentioned in the Geniza letters. The family name ‘Madai’ among Jews from Cochin
suggests a historical connection with Madai in North Malabar, which is also
mentioned in Hebrew chronicles about Kerala Jews from the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Another place name mentioned in the Hebrew chronicles about Kerala Jews and still used as a family name is Muttam of southern
Kerala.
Unlike many other fading languages and dialects in Southeast Asia, Jewish
Malayalam is documented in writing. The oldest documents are handwritten
notebooks from the late nineteenth century containing wedding songs composed and transmitted in the Jewish community since at least the fifteenth
century. Such songs are generally termed by Malayalam scholars as nāṭaṉpāṭṭə
or ‘regional songs’ (where ‘region’ may also refer to social categories, namely
castes), a term designating the literature of different castes and communities
in Kerala, often written in castolects1 different from the standardized literary
language of high-caste Hindus.
Contrary to the practice of transcribing major Jewish languages such as
Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic in the Hebrew script (Hary 2009:19; Benor
2009:249–50), Jewish Malayalam was written in the local Malayalam script. It
is difficult, perhaps even impossible and futile, to assess the period in which
Jewish Malayalam began to be written. Evidence for a tradition of a distinct
language variety exists in manuscripts with approximately two-hundred and
1) The term was suggested to me by the anonymous reviewer, referring to Aslanov, 2008.
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fifty Malayalam songs preserved in writing from the late nineteenth century
onwards (Johnson 2000; Zacharia and Gamliel 2005: Gamliel 2009b). The
oldest songs were possibly composed no later than the fifteenth century,
for their style of composition and generic form mostly resemble Old Mala­
yalam compositions such as the Rāmacaritam (fourteenth century) and the
Payyannūrppāṭṭə (fifteenth century). Linguistic evidence further suggests that
the earliest wedding songs may have been composed in North Kerala (Gamliel
2009b:288–345).
Interestingly, Arabic Malayalam literature, which bears some similarities
with the Jewish Malayalam corpus of wedding songs, is written in the Arabic
script, similar to Urdu and other Muslim languages in South East Asia.2 Syrian
Christians too produced a body of Church manuscripts in Malayalam written
in Garshuni Malayalam (Mengozzi 2007:297–8). The scope of Garshuni Mala­
yalam manuscripts is limited to church documents, and it is unclear whether
Kerala Christians had a distinct Christian castolect, though they too preserved
and transmitted their own literary tradition of Christian nāṭaṉpāṭṭə.
Literacy in medieval Kerala was not exclusively preserved for the elite Hindu
castes but rather served administrative and trade purposes involving the intermediate castes of traders to which Muslims, Christians, and Jews belonged
(Veluthat 2009:174–8). It is highly likely that medieval Kerala Jews were literate in Malayalam so they naturally chose to transmit their wedding songs in
the Malayalam script, while reserving the Hebrew script for Hebrew scriptures
and poems. We can also assume on the basis of some historical evidence that
medieval Kerala Jews had their liturgy preserved and transmitted in Hebrew
(Gamliel 2013a), similar to the practice of Kerala Muslims and Christians of the
time. However, only the Muslims, and only relatively late (mid-seventeenth
century), started using the script of their liturgical language to convey their
spoken Malayalam dialect, namely Arabic Malayalam, for composing their
own literary corpus of nāṭaṉpāṭṭə (Miller 1992:289–91).
The historical reasons for the Muslims to adopt the Arabic script for literary
purposes may be partly due to geopolitical changes following the beginning of
the colonial period in the sixteenth century. Kerala Jews were affected by these
changes differently than Muslims. While the Portuguese, and the Dutch and
British that followed them, persecuted Muslim traders, the Jews at first enjoyed
the protection of the Cochin Royal House and later had good relations with the
2) The term Arabic Malayalam denotes the literary and often archaic Malayalam used in written
documents and compositions used by Kerala Muslims since the seventeenth century. It should
not be confused with Mappila Malayalam which refers to the spoken dialects of Kerala Muslims.
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
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Dutch and British East-Asia Companies. The emergence of Arabic Malayalam
may also be partly due to Kerala being an integral part of the “Arabic cosmopolis” of South and South-East Asia (Ricci 2011:260–7). In contrast, Kerala Jews
were a miniscule minority distanced from the centers of medieval world Jewry.
Thus, it seems that in comparison with the Muslims, Jews in Kerala had neither
the need nor the urge to encode their literature in the Hebrew script.
The need to write Jewish Malayalam in Hebrew script arose only after migration to Israel and after fewer and fewer community members were proficient in
the Malayalam script. The first booklet of Jewish Malayalam songs in Hebrew
script was written, copied, and distributed in 1984 for the purpose of performing the songs in a celebration commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of
migration to Israel (Isenberg et al., 1984). Even today on certain occasions for
performing Jewish Malayalam songs, women transcribe the Malayalam words
into Hebrew script. Previous to migration, there is only one case of Malayalam
words being transcribed into Hebrew (Kastiel 1756) denoting certain wedding
rites that were occasions for performing Jewish Malayalam songs as prescribed
in the book.3 Interestingly, in some notebooks containing Jewish Malayalam
songs, there are Hebrew poems (piyyuṭ) transcribed into Malayalam script,
perhaps in order to aid women who were illiterate in Hebrew to sing the poems
in performance. Some notebooks, it should be added, had sections of Jewish
Malayalam songs in Malayalam script as well as sections of Hebrew poems in
Hebrew script.
The Jewish Malayalam literary corpus contains different historical and
regional layers while fusing Jewish and Keralite literary styles, forms, and
themes.4 Moreover, the corpus portrays larger cultural structures such as weddings and other communal rituals. Arguably, such literary production is evidence for a nonstandard language variety of a distinct speech community that
was mature enough by the fifteenth century to have produced its own distinctive literature.
A major turning point in Kerela Jewish history happened in 1954, with the
mass migration of Kerala Jews to Israel. They resettled in five communities—
three in the Jerusalem area, one in the upper Galilee, and one in the Negev.
Only a few dozen Jews remained in Kerala, until finally most of them joined
3) See Kastiel 1756:39a: ‫ < קאפא‬kaːppǝ, ‘Engagement Feast’; 43b: ‫ < אייני‬aːyaṉi, ‘Bridal Feast’; 66b:
‫ < פליפוגא‬paɭɭipoːga, ‘Synagogue Procession.’ Cf. Walerstein, 1987:95–113.
4) For fifty songs in Malayalam texts and Hebrew translations, see Zacharia and Gamliel 2005:37–
126 [in Malayalam], 27–134 [in Hebrew]. For fifty-three more songs in transliterated, annotated
and translated texts see Gamliel 2009b:416–550.
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their relatives in Israel during the seventies. Today there are but a handful of
Jews in Kerala, with hardly any Jewish community life. Naturally, their language
variety is influenced by standard Malayalam through formal state education
and assimilated with the contemporary spoken Malayalam of their surroundings. In contrast, Kerala Jews in Israel still conduct their community life in their
nonstandard Jewish Malayalam, since they retain some rituals unique to their
community, such as neːrcca ‘vow-taking ritual’ and the feast of the kaːrɳɳorə
‘eldest man’ (see below) that inspire the use of Jewish Malayalam among the
elderly participants. Some old customs and distinctive cultural traits are preserved, often consciously, while others are discarded in favor of Israeli Jewish
identity (Walerstein 1987). It is perhaps due to their resettling in village communities inhabited mostly by Kerala Jews that they were able to retain, at least
to some extent, their mother tongue, Jewish Malayalam. Arguably, despite the
influence of Modern Hebrew on Jewish Malayalam, this Israeli Malayalam variety is the closest to the language variety that Kerala Jews spoke before their
migration to Israel.
A Note on Transliteration
The speech samples in the following sections are given in IPA transliteration
according to the standards set by R. E. Asher and T. C. Kumari (1997), except
for the alveolar consonants: /ṯ/, /ḏ/, /ṉ/, /ṟ/, the fricative dental /ð/, the velar
fricative /x/ and the long vowels /aː/, /iː/ and /uː/. Vowel or consonant omission is signified by /’/. Hebrew etymologies are given in Hebrew script and transcribed in the examples according to their pronunciation by Jewish Malayalam
speakers.5
Jewish Malayalam as a Jewish Language
According to Moshe Bar-Asher (2000:81–8), a Jewish language may include at
least one of the following criteria: verbatim translations of pan-Jewish texts;
5) The abbreviations for grammatical terms used in the following sections are acc = accusative;
asp = aspect; caus = causative; con = concessive; conj = conjunctive; cop = copula; dat = dative;
emp = emphatic; exis = existential verb; f = feminine; fut = future; gen = genitive; hort = hortative;
imp = imperative; inc = inclusive; inf = infinitive; int = intimate; inter = interrogative; interj =
interjection; loc = locative; m = masculine; neg = negation; nom = nominative; nomin = nominalizer; pl = plural; po = polite; pres = present; sg = singular; suff = suffix; voc = vocative; H = Hebrew;
JM = Jewish Malayalam; M = Malayalam; MH = Modern Hebrew; NE = nominal ending; NF = nonfinite; PRP = past relative participle.
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references to pan-Jewish texts in daily speech; Hebrew and/or Aramaic components; and archaic components of the host language. Jewish Malayalam (JM)
adheres to these criteria.
There are only three texts, as far I am aware of, that were printed or hand
written with verbatim translations of Hebrew texts: HaCohen (1877) printed in
Cochin, Hallegua (1892) hand-written by a scribe from Ernakulam, and Anonymous (undated) hand-written verbatim translation of Pirkey Avot, transcribed
by an anonymous scribe possibly by the late nineteenth century.6 There are
also translations of Hebrew paraliturgy in the women’s notebooks; some are
paraphrases, and others are more literal (Gamliel 2013b).
The translation of Pirkey Avot represents an oral tradition called by Kerala
Jews tamsiːr, a term possibly derived from the Judeo-Arabic term tafsir, which
refers to the Arabic translation of the Bible by R. Saʼadia Gaʽon (tenth century).
The tamsiːr was recited along with the sacred Hebrew texts studied by men in
the synagogue study hall (oːttumaːɖam). Pirkey Avot is but one of these texts,
and according to community members the tamsiːr would be recited along with
many other texts, such as the scroll of Esther, Song of Songs, Mishnah and so
forth. JM tamsiːr is similar to translation traditions in other Jewish languages,
as it includes verbatim translations of paraliturgical texts, in which some biblical passages (‫ איכה‬and ‫ )ירמיה‬are inserted.
In contrast to tamsiːr, the translations in the women’s notebooks are called
arttham, ‘meaning,’ and they were meant for performance, rather than recitation and study. These translations are more concerned with aesthetics; they
have tunes and often paraphrase the sources rather than merely translate
them. The tamsiːr and arttham translations differ in morphology and syntax, as
the former incorporates not only direct translation of the Hebrew original but
also archaisms: forms that imitate an archaic language register. For example,
the tamsiːr uses archaic verbal forms with person-number-gender (PNG) markers, e.g. kaikoɳɖaːṉ ‘received’ for ‫( קבל‬Anonymous, undated:1), as opposed to
kaikoɳɖə without PNG marker. The use of such archaisms is quite common in
New Malayalam literature (Ayyar 1993:166). In comparison with the tamsiːr,
6) Daniel Yakov HaCohen founded a publishing house in Cochin, which was active during the
late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Elia Chaim Hallegua was a scribe from
Ernakulam. The verbatim translation of Pirkey Avot is a manuscript recently found in the possession of Sami Koder from Binyamina. Pirkey Avot was studied among Malabari Jews, who would
recite it by heart along with the Malayalam translations. The Language Traditions Archives (‫מפעל‬
‫ )מסורות הלשון‬preserve a recitation of the first two chapters of Pirkey Avot alternating between
the Hebrew source and the Malayalam translation (689 ‫)לח‬. The recitation is by Itzhak Hai
Yoseph (see Forsström 2006).
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the arttham translations are closer to the spoken language. Furthermore, the
tokens tamsiːr and arttham represent divergent literary traditions; the former
is most likely derived from Arabic, while the latter is derived from Sanskrit.
Roughly speaking, these two types of translations represent male-oriented
(tamsiːr) and female-oriented (arttham) translation strategies.
The second criterion in Bar-Asher’s list is references to pan-Jewish texts in
daily speech. Indeed contemporary speakers of JM remember examples of such
references. For example, if somebody were turned away empty handed after
asking for a loan, he might describe the incident using a reference to Grace
after Meals (‫)ברכת המזון‬, underlined here:
avaṉə poðea eð yadexa 3sg.nom
open.pres.part.m
prep.
hand.2sg.m.suff
He told me ‫( פותח את ידך‬you who opens your hand).
celli,
tell.past
Similarly, when referring to a glutton, a pun on the Passover Haggadah is
used:
eːxil-annu
feed.past.3sg.m-1pl.suff
Fed us with the ocean.
eð
prep
aː-yam
def-ocean
The original reference is to the phrase ‫האכילנו את המן‬, [God] fed us with the
man (the mythical food bestowed on the Hebrews in the desert), here replacing man with yam (ocean) to ridicule the gluttonous person.
The third criterion in Bar-Asher’s list, the Hebrew/Aramaic component,
is present in all linguistic registers of JM—from the oldest songs in the notebooks through tamsiːr and arttham to the spoken language and oral literature.
The Aramaic component is much less conspicuous.
In the oldest JM songs, some obscure lexemes may be derived from Hebrew.
There is at least one case in which an Aramaic lexeme is clearly seen, ṟabban,
in the prologue of the Song of Esther (Gamliel 2009b:537). The songs published
by Zacharia and Gamliel (2005) are of a later period, and they contain many
transparent Hebrew lexemes, some of which are found also in contemporary
JM speech. Scaria Zacharia has listed the Hebrew lexemes appearing in this
publication with Malayalam definitions (Zacharia and Gamliel 2005:205–7).
The tamsiːr and arttham translations abound with Hebrew components.
It is important to stress that the arttham translations, which are found in all
the major notebooks, were transmitted and performed by women. Thus, it is
likely that there was not a very significant difference between male-oriented
and female-oriented speech in this regard, as opposed to gender-differentiated
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143
speech reported in other Jewish languages (Henshke 2007:4–5; Chetrit
1992:183–6).
The speech samples collected fifty years after migration and consequently
detached from the host language are a complex of various components. As other
migrants to Israel who still speak their Jewish language, Kerala Jews use two
types of Hebrew lexemes—Old Hebrew lexemes and Modern Hebrew lexemes
(cf. Held 2007; Henshke 2007:3–4). One example of a Modern Hebrew lexeme is
the discourse marker basoːppǝ, ‫בסוף‬. Old Hebrew ‫ בסוף‬means ‘in the end,’ but
in Modern Hebrew it is commonly used as a discourse marker in casual oral
narratives, meaning ‘finally.’ JM speakers in Israel use this word in the latter
sense. The Modern Hebrew lexemes occasionally stand for terms that speakers
of Modern Malayalam would express in English, e.g. xoːppeʃ (‫ )חופש‬for liːvə
(< leave) to denote leave from school or work. Those who migrated later (during the 1970s) prefer the parallel English lexeme—like their fellow Malayalam
speakers in Kerala—rather than the Modern Hebrew term. It is remarkable
that the choices of Modern Hebrew lexemes are noted by JM speakers as foreign to Malayalam, and corrected into the parallel English terms, as if the latter
are part and parcel of Malayalam language. When it comes to the Old Hebrew
component that merged into JM long before migration to Israel, contemporary
speakers of JM retain it as an integral part of their speech, often unaware it is
of Hebrew origin.
Hebrew components, whether Old or Modern, may be inflected, as in:
toːṟaːṉa
Torah.acc
Hebrew components compounded with Malayalam nouns, are usually from
Old Hebrew, as in:
mor-suːṟa, ‘likeness’
face-form (suːṟa < H ‫)צורה‬
miṉiyaːŋ-kuːʈʈalə, ‘Bar Mitzvah’
quorum -join.NE (miṉiyaːŋ < H ‫)מנין‬
Hebrew components compounded with auxiliary verbs may be either Old,
as in:
miṉiyaːŋ-kuːɖi, ‘had his Bar Mitzvah’
quorum-join.past
ʃaːlom-aːyi, ‘died’
peace-be.past ( ʃaːlom < ‫)שלום‬
saːṟa-ppeʈʈə, ‘suffered’
trouble-occur.past (saːṟa < ‫)צרה‬
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Or Modern, as in:
sameax-aːyi, ‘became glad’
glad-be.past (sameax < ‫)שמח‬
It may be difficult to determine whether a certain Hebrew component is
Old or Modern, but since we have JM documented in writing since the latenineteenth century, there is considerable documented data to consult. Additionally, speakers who migrated in the 1970 can still remember whether a certain item was used in Kerala. In cases that have no evidence for a Hebrew word
being used in JM before migration and the Hebrew component is amply used
in Modern Hebrew, we can safely assume that component is borrowed from
Modern Hebrew, as in the last example above.
The fourth criterion presented by Bar-Asher is retentions of archaisms of the
host language, Malayalam in our case. There are quite a few retentions of Old
Malayalam morphology in JM, shared by the Mappila-Malayalam (­Muslim)
dialect. In Classical Malayalam, the dative for nouns or pronouns ending in
–aṉ is –ə, which evolved out of the older dative form –ukkə (Ayyar 1993:27–8;
Sekhar 1951:71–5). In JM the ending is –ikkə, definitely a retention of the Old
Malayalam –ukkə, as in:
avaṉikkə, ‘for him’
he.dat
jiːvaṉikkə, ‘for life’
life.dat
There are examples of the retention of an archaic genitive ending as well,
–a instead of the Classical Malayalam –uɖe or –iṉḏe, as in (cf. Krishnamurti
2003:233):
avaɭa
she.gen
viːʈʈilə, ‘her house’
house.loc
After a vowel, the augment –ṉ may be inserted before the genitive ending –a.
As in:
ummaːṉa, ‘of mother’
mother.gen
Benjamin Hary (2009:15–20) presents seven more characteristics of Jewish language varieties: Hebrew orthography; competing orthographic systems; unintelligibility; adaptations of “non-Jewish” epics into Jewish imagery; displaced
dialectalism; speakers’ awareness of their Jewish language as separate from the
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
145
host language; and a pan-Jewish reservoir of Jewish images, formulations, concepts, and icons. Except for the characteristic Hebrew orthography (see previous section), all other characteristics are found in JM. Since I have treated
each separately elsewhere (Gamliel 2009a), I present below some observations regarding displaced dialectalism as it bears implications in viewing JM in
historical-geographical context.
Migrated or displaced dialectalism is clearly expressed in the spoken Malayalam of Kerala Jews. Even at this initial stage of research, a linguistic link with
North Malabar, an area heavily populated already in medieval times with Muslims and Nairs (a caste of landlords, rulers, and warriors), is apparent, in spite
of the fact that there are no concrete traces left for Jewish settlement in that
area. For example, the phonemic alternation between /ȥ/ and /t/ is associated
with M dialects of the extreme north.7
Historical links with Muslims and Nairs are also suggested by terms for kinship relations, sociopolitical positions, and ritualistic functions. Some kinship
terms are common to Jews and Muslims, like umma ‘mother’; vaːva (Jews)
and baːppa (Muslims) ‘father’; kaːkka ‘elder brother.’ Such kinship terms significantly differ from the Christian and Hindu terms amma, appaṉ/accaṉ, and
ceːʈʈaṉ respectively. Similarly, some sociopolitical terms are shared with Nairs,
like taṟavaːɖə ‘ancestral home’; kaːrɳɳoːrə ‘the eldest male in the community’;
taṟavaːɖicci, ‘the eldest female of the house’ (for the Nair terminology see Logan
1887:131–2; Ayyar 1999:50–3; Narayanan 2006:111–28).
Moreover, the oldest layer of JM literature, found in the women’s notebooks
and estimated to be composed no later than the fifteenth century, is similar
to a few compositions originating in North Malabar, like the Payyannūrpāṭṭə.
This circumstantial evidence for historical links with north Malabar is further
supported by references to Jewish settlements in north Malabar, like Madai,
mentioned in historical documents in Hebrew from the seventeenth century
onwards. Given these examples of migrated dialectalism and the other features discussed above, JM neatly fits into the definition of a Jewish language as
defined by Bar-Asher and Hary.
Contemporary Jewish Malayalam
The documentation and description of JM in this stage, approximately fifty
years after JM speakers left their homeland, must be viewed in consideration
7) See Subramoniam 2006, Izhava-Thiyar, p. 20 (keðakku < kiȥakku, ‘East’), 44 (poða < puȥa,
‘river’). See also idem., Nayar, p. 21 (ketaŋŋu < kiȥaŋŋu, ‘bulb’).
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of the changes it may have undergone since the time of migration and based
on the influence of Modern Hebrew (MH), the current host language. Though
it is too early to offer an exhaustive description, it is nevertheless possible to
present some initial observations and demonstrate the contribution of some
recently collected data to the study of Kerala Jewry on the one hand and to Jewish languages and Malayalam language varieties on the other hand (Gamliel
2009a; 2009b:346–76). This research may contribute to the tiny Keralite niche
in Jewish studies or, alternately, the tiny Jewish niche in Indology, and is relevant to other disciplines too, a point I shall return to later. In what follows,
I present a classification of four categories based on the data collected so far:
linguistic data, speech genres, oral literary genres, and ethnographic data.
Linguistic Data
The following description of morphophonemic, morphological, and lexical
phenomena is crucial for the evaluation of JM as a Jewish language. It further
presents examples of archaic retentions and H elements, which are essential
criteria for the definition of Jewish languages. Furthermore, words occurring in
other castolects in Kerala may assist in comparing JM with other M language
varieties. For example, the word moːlyaːrǝ, ‘rabbi’ (> muðaliyār, ‘leader’), is
comparable with the Mappila Malayalam lexeme moʸlyārə, ‘religious guide,’ in
both usage and etymology.
1. Some distinctive phonological features include replacing /ȥ/ with /ð/ as in
toːȥaṉ (M) ‘friend’ > toːðan (JM) ‘best man.’ It seems that speakers are aware
of this dialectical peculiarity, for it is possible to find hypercorrections in
replacing /ð/ with /ȥ/, as in kaða (M) > kaȥa (JM) ‘a story.’ Examples of the
variation /ȥ/ > /ð/ are copious in JM literature. The hypercorrection /ð/ > /ȥ/,
though less common, is also found in writing, for example udikk- > uðikk- >
uȥikk-, ‘to rise, shine’ (HaCohen 1877:42).
2. Some distinctive morphophonemic features include the relative participle
and infinitive ending –e in JM, instead of the standard M ending –a, as in:
M vann.a > JM vann.e ‘which came’
come.PRP
M nall.a > JM nall.e ‘good’
be good.inf
Interestingly the accusative marker –e in standard M is replaced by –a in JM.
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Meṉṉ.e > JM eṉṉ.a ‘me’
me.acc.
Mavaɭ.e > JM avaɭ.a ‘her’
3sg.f.acc
This morphophonemic peculiarity is profusely attested in written and spoken JM alike.
3. Some distinctive morphological features include the JM usage of the archaic
dative and genitive endings mentioned above. The retention of the archaic
dative ending –ikkǝ after the nominal ending in –aṉ, instead of the standard
M ending –ǝ, may have affected another distinctive morphophonemic feature of JM in the nominative form –ǝ following the ending –aṉ, where the
standard M nominative ending is –ø. As in:
avaṉǝ (JM)
he.m.nom
he
avaṉ
he.m.nom (M)
Another example of morphological data is the JM aspectual usage of the nonfinite –koɳɖǝ, whereas M has –iʈʈǝ, for example:
poyi-koɳɖǝ (JM)
go.NF-receive.NF
having gone
poy’-iʈʈǝ
go.NF-abandon.NF
(M)
Lastly, like many other dialects of central Kerala, JM retains an archaic present
form in –aɳə instead of the standard M –unnu, as in:
maȥa peyy.aɳə
(JM)
rain
rain.pres
The rain is falling.
maȥa rain
peyy.unnu
rain.pres
(M)
4. The Hebrew component was already amply discussed above and elsewhere
(Gamliel 2013c). Some more examples will be pointed out in the speech
samples below.
5. JM includes a number of terms referring to specifically Jewish concepts. For
example:
moːlyaːrǝ <
rabbi tuːʃi <
Torah-finger
oːttumaːɖam <
H study hall muðaliyaːr
leader
suːji needle oːttǝ + maːɖam
sacred recital hall
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
Sometimes the derivation of specifically Jewish terms is uncertain and may be
of a language other than H or M. For example:
ʃiːṟiya-divasam
<
destroy.PRP-day
Ninth of Ab
siːṟu- (Tamil)
destroy
6. Some M words undergo semantic shifts of meaning in JM. For example, the
M antonyms guɳam, ‘good quality,’ and doːȿam, ‘fault, bad quality,’ may
lose their antonymic relation in JM and denote ‘luck’ and ‘character’ respectively. However, this semantic shift is context bound. For example:
avanṟe guɳam
aðǝ
he.gen
luck
this
This is his luck.
avaṉḏe doːȿam
koɭɭaː he.gen
character fit.mod
His character is good.
aðil guɳam
this.loc
quality
This is no good.
að’ eṉḏe this
my
This is my ill faith.
illa
be.neg
kaṟamma-doːȿam
fate-defect
H loanwords too may undergo semantic shifts, like suːṟa ‘form’ (‫)צורה‬, which
may denote ‘beauty’ in JM in certain contexts.
Speech Genres
The term ‘speech genres’ was coined by Bakhtin (1986:87, 90) to denote stylistic speech formations used in the spoken language during casual communication such as rejoinders, greetings, and so forth. There is a great deal of overlap
between the term ‘speech genres’ and the Searlean term ‘speech acts,’ for both
denote speech formations with illocutionary force (Wierzbicka 1991:149). One
more term overlapping ‘speech genres’ and ‘speech acts’ is used in folklore
studies, ‘conversational genres,’ to denote taunts, nicknames, tokens of speech,
idioms, and so forth (Abrahams 1972).
All these terms refer to more or less the same speech phenomena, be they
pragmatic (speech acts), stylistic (speech genres), or folkloric (conversational
genres). Leaving aside terminologies and taxonomies, such speech formations
consist of smaller units of morphemes, lexemes, and particles of a certain language (or dialect) system. For example, in JM the H component may constitute
nicknames and idioms, as we shall see below. As Bakhtin (1986:60–2) argues,
such speech genres have complex relations with longer and more complex
genres ranging from anecdotes to stories and novels.
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
149
For the sake of convenience, I refer to such speech formations by the Bakhtinian term ‘speech genres,’ as it is useful for listing an initial and, in no way
exhaustive, account of the data in JM. In what follows, I survey taunts (1), nicknames (2), and “other” (3). The latter is a general term for several other speech
genres such as greetings and their responses, reproaches, apologies, and so
forth. Surely, in the future and with the preparation of transcripts, the classification and typology of speech genres in JM will sharpen and expand.
1. Taunts in JM are normally addressed by an elder to a junior. For example,
a woman recollected that whenever she would visit one elderly aunt, the
latter would taunt her, saying:
suːṟaː ellaːm
poːyi
beauty
all
go.past
You lost your beauty! (i.e. you became slim and dark)
Another example is an idiomatic taunt against a junior who addresses a
senior disrespectfully:
neṉḏe maɖiː
‘ʳtt’-iʈʈ’ aːɳ.oː
you.gen lap.loc sit.caus.NF-asp.NF cop.inter
Is it in your lap that I received my name?!
peːr-iʈʈ’-aðǝ?
name-put.PRP-nomin
This taunt hints at the role of the godfather during circumcision. I was told
that this taunt is used by other M speech communities in Kerala, for many
communities have similar birth-rites involving the godfather cuddling the
baby in his lap.
Taunts may also be offensive. While the hierarchical relations between
the speaker and hearer in the above-mentioned examples are extra-linguistic and context-bound, there are cases in which the derogative use of the
vocative pronoun eɖaː (m) or eɖiː (f ) is performative in determining superiority. For example:
eɖaː you.m
You are a villain!
meʃummaːɵǝ
villain.nom
Note the Hebrew components suːṟaː and meʃummaːɵǝ and the semantic
shifts they undergo before serving as components for the taunts; suːṟaː in
Hebrew means ‘form’ (< ‫)צורה‬, while here it means ‘beauty,’ and meʃummaːɵǝ
(< ‫ )משומד‬means a ‘convert (out of Judaism),’ while here it is used in the
general sense of ‘villain.’
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
2. Nicknames in JM may apply to individuals, families, and even communities,
as is common in M. Nicknames for a family or community may be regarded
as blason populaires (Koch 1994:19–26). Aside from group names, it is common in Kerala for each individual to have at least two names, an official
name and a ‘pet name’ (oːmaṉa-ppeːr). Interestingly, Israeli JM speakers
define the individual ‘pet name’ by the MH term kiṉuy (< ‫ )כינוי‬and the
family blason populaire by the M term illi-ppeːr, ‘house-name.’
The blason populaires are connected with more complex genres such as
anecdotes and ethnohistories. For example, the Jews hailing from the village Mala (some 30 km from Cochin) are designated by the blason populaire term palaːʃakkuːʈʈam, ‘the Polish folk,’ for it is told that one of their
ancestors was a Polish Jew. The family members of a certain family are still
known by the name paːmbǝ, ‘snake.’ This family was involved in an outrageous scandal sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. The scandal
resulted in the excommunication of the whole family. The illipeːr or ‘house
name’ ‘paːmbǝ’ stands for the H initials of a threefold act comprising the
most severe excommunication: niduy (banishment), ħerem (excommunication) and ʃamataɂ (curse), that is n-ħ-ʃ (‫)נח“ש‬, which reads ‘snake’ in H.
Nicknames are related to personal anecdotes, one’s occupation, peculiar
physical traits, and so forth. For example, siːrkka yoːseppǝ, ‘vinegar Joseph,’
was a vinegar vendor and kaːlan efraːyim, ‘legged Ephraim,’ was exceptionally tall. One moːlyaːrǝ (rabbi) favored veɭɭappam (rice flat bread) over tuition
fees and was nicknamed veɭɭappamoːlyaːrǝ, ‘Rice-bread Rabbi.’ A man once
committed a mistake in the H recitation of the bible reading poːsol instead
of pesel (‫פסל‬, idol). Henceforward everybody called him poːsolaːkka, ‘Big
Brother Posol.’
3. “Other,” as already mentioned above, is a general term for diverse speech
genres. For the sake of brevity, I list but a few types: greetings and their
responses and rebukes. The idioms in JM often involve the usage of the
H component, resulting in expressions that are peculiar to the language
variety. For example, to rebuke someone for being illiterate in H, the idiom
used is:
aːlef.iṉḏe Aleph.gen
vakk’
edge.acc
aṟiyaːṉ know.inf paːɖ’ possibility
illa
exis.neg
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
[He] does not know even the edge of the first letter of the H alphabet.
(C31a, 17:20, 16:58)8
To dismiss something or someone as worthless, the idiom used is:
(xabbuːṟə < ‫)קבורה‬
xabbuːṟ.iṉḏe kaʈʈaŋ-kallǝ grave.gen rough, plain; stone
A rough stone of a grave
(G1)
A greeting is usually conveyed by common M formations such as sugam taṉṉe
alle? ‘All is well, isn’t it?’ and end’ aːyi?, ‘What’s happening?’ One peculiar greeting is the idiom:
tiṉṉ’
oːɳɖ’ eat.NF
asp.NF
[You] have eaten already, right?
all-eː vann-e?
cop.neg-intercome.NF-nomin
(C31a, 52:22, C8*, 10:49)
This peculiar greeting is attributed to Cochin Jews, who are supposedly stingy.
When someone appears at their doorstep, they greet him in this way to avoid
feeding him. In contemporary JM in Israel, this greeting is used as a joke poking
fun at Cochin Jews.9
Some idioms function as replies to greetings, for example:
nal-ut’ okka keːkkaːm
good-nomin
all hear.hort
Let us hear only good things! (G1)
This idiom must be a literal translation of a MH reply to a greeting:
ʃe-niʃmaʕ rak that-hear.1pl.fut
only
Let us hear only good news.10
bsorot news
toḇot
good
Thus, while the above reply to a greeting signifies the influence of MH on JM
speakers, the following signifies the retention of idioms from Kerala:
nell’ uːttiy-aː
unhusked rice.acc husk.NF-cond
If I husk rice grains—rice grains,
ari veycc-aː ari rice grains
coːṟǝ
8) Capital letters followed by a number refer to PDF or Word files in the catalogue of the database. In the case of audio files, the time frame is mentioned (e.g., 07:50). See below in the concluding section.
9) Zippora Daniel, personal communication.
10) The MH phrase is borrowed from Yiddish, ‫לאמיר הערן גוטע בשורות‬.
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
rice grains.acc
cook.NF-cond
cooked rice
If I cook rice grains—boiled rice,
coːṟǝ tinn-aːl uːɳ’ cooked rice.acc
eat.NF-cond
meal.acc
If I eat boiled rice—I have had my meal.
‘aːȥicci
eat.past
(G1)
This idiom means that all is well and in good order. Such an idiom can make
sense only to M speakers who are acquainted with the different phases of rice
preparation. Note the colloquial variations in JM for standard M forms:
uːttiyaː > M kuttiyaːl
veyccaː > M veccaːl
aːȥicci > M kaȥiccu
The significance of the above examples lies in their expression of the unique
cultural entity of Kerala Jews. They express the assimilation of Jewish categories with the speech behavior typical of Malayalam language varieties. They
are also evidence for the creative linguistic competence of Kerala Jews still
maintained in Israel some fifty-odd years after migration. Documenting and
parsing such speech genres is important for a more comprehensive linguistic
analysis of JM—spoken and written. Furthermore, the incorporation of units
of the abstract categories such as H components, archaisms, semantic shifts,
and colloquialisms into JM speech genres is telling. These three phenomena—
assimilation, creative competence and the incorporation of smaller units into
larger utterances—are crucial for the understanding of JM as a distinctive language system.
Oral Literary Genres
Among the oral literary genres documented so far, there are short forms such as
collǝ (M paȥañcollə), ‘proverbs,’ muʈʈukaða (M, kaɖaŋkaðha), ‘riddles,’ tamaːʃa,
‘jokes’ and longer forms such as nursery rhymes, maːssa (> H ‫ מעשייה‬or ‫)מעשה‬,
a Jewish folktale, and kaða (> M kaðha), ‘a story.’ Note that JM has its own
generic definitions, or ethnogenres denoting oral literary forms, as part of its
peculiar lexicon.
Interestingly, there is an unconscious ‘division of labor’ among the most
competent speakers of JM. Each speaker is competent in performing a certain
distinct oral literary genre (cf. Messineo 2008:278–9), except for jokes, jests,
and anecdotes that many speakers can still perform with ease. Yosi Oren and
Zippora Daniel are the main sources for proverbs, Sara Moshe remembers riddles, and Miriam Dekel favors nursery rhymes. Concerning longer and more
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
153
complex oral literary forms, other individuals are competent. Bezalel Eliyahoo
and Tamar Abraham narrated folktales (kaða). Yokheved Elias and Esther
Abraham told Jewish folktales (maːssa); the latter could also recite small portions of oral verbatim translations for H scriptures (tamsiːr).
Each of these speakers may remember other literary forms or speech genres
too, but to a lesser extent. It happens every so often that such competent speakers stimulate the memory of less competent speakers so that they too recollect
the same example for a certain speech genre, often in a variation.
Proverbs
Only a few proverbs in the JM database are exclusively or uniquely Jewish and
are unknown in contemporary M. See for example the proverb:
kaːlaṉ.ḏe
peːṟe poːy-aːlum demon.gen
behind go.NF-conc
Better follow a demon rather than a Jew. juːðaṉ.ḏe
Jew.gen
peːṟe poːv-alleː
behind go.imp-neg
(C31a, 58:55; C10*, 06:50)
This proverb is uttered whenever a member of the community is involved in
deceit or cheating. None of the contemporary M speakers in Kerala that I asked
remembered such a proverb. Another proverb that JM speakers still use while
contemporary M speakers do not recognize is:
paːṟu-kuɲɲə puli-kkuɲɲə saveːli varumba vaḷi-kkuɲɲə
Parur-child tiger-child
assembly.loc come-when
fart-child
A lad from Parur is a tiger cub, when reaching an assembly, [he’s] a little fart.
(C31a, 53:12)
Though this proverb is hardly known to contemporary M speakers in Kerala,
elderly people from Parur, where a relatively large Jewish community prospered until the time of migration to Israel, still remembered a slightly different
version of this proverb:
paːṟu-kuɲɲə puli-kkuɲɲə sabeːl varumba eli-kkuɲɲə
Parur-child
tiger-child
assembly
come-when
rat-child
nom
nom
loc
FRP-adv
nom
A lad from Parur is a tiger cub; when reaching an assembly, [he’s] a rat pup.11
11) Venugopala Panicker, personal communication.
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
These two proverbs express internal communal tensions; the first expresses
the self-image of Jews in Kerala as shrewd traders, and the latter is based on the
self-image of Parur people being haughty and proud.
Many proverbs in the JM database are not particularly Jewish as they are
used by contemporary M speakers and published in standard M proverb collections. Nevertheless, they betray some colloquial peculiarities of contemporary JM. See for example a proverb used to scold someone who tries to divert
attention from one’s own misconduct by pointing out the faults of someone
else:
ceːʈʈaṉ
koðiyeṉǝ elder brother.nom
eager.m.nom
Elder brother is eager.
avaṉ ela koɳɖoːraːṉ poːy’-irikkaɳǝ
he banana leaf
receive-come.inf go-asp.pres
He just went to fetch a banana leaf.
eṉikkǝ iviɖe
taṉṉe veɭambǝ
me.dat
here
emph
serve food.imp.int.
Serve my [food] right here. (G1)
The same proverb appears in a publication of proverbs in standard M:
ceːʈʈaṉ koðiyaṉ ilaykku
poyi,
elder brother
eager
banana leaf.dat
go.past
eṉikku
nilattu
viɭambiyeːre
me.dat
floor.loc
serve food.imp.po
The eager elder brother went for a banana leaf, please serve my food on the floor.
The colloquial features of JM can be seen in the nominative ending –ǝ (see
above) in koðiyeṉǝ and in the present ending -aɳǝ (< M –unnu) in irikkaɳǝ.
Such colloquial features are shared with contemporary dialects in Kerala. For
example the variation /i/ > /e/ in an initial syllable before a second syllable
with the vowel /a/, e.g. ila, ‘banana leaf ’ > ela and viɭambǝ, ‘serve rice’ < veɭambǝ
(cf. Krishnamurti 2003:101–3).
Riddles
Like the proverbs, the riddles (muʈʈukaða) in the JM database are typical M
riddles with a flavor of JM colloquial features. See for example the riddle:
or’ umma veːʸṟṟe orupaːɖǝ one
mother.nom
born.PRP
many
There are many children born to one mother.
makkaɭ children
uɳɖǝ
exist.fut
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avarikkǝ ekkattiṉ-um they.dat all-coṉj
All of them have a hat. toppi
hat.nom
155
(D10, 06:18)
The answer, in Sara Moshe’s words, is:
namm.uɖe naːʈʈile teːŋŋakkǝ We.gen
homeland.loc
coconut.dat
In our homeland (Kerala), coconuts have a hat.
toppi hat.nom
oɳɖǝ
exist.fut
The solution for the riddle is based on the metaphoric relations between a
plant as a mother and its fruits as children. The word toppi denotes both the
cap-like formation on the husk of the fruit and a hat.
The opening of the riddle above is common in M as a riddling formula:
or’ amma peṟṟa makkaɭ one mother.nom born.PRP children
All the children born to one mother.
ellaːm
all
A variation most similar to the JM riddle is:
or’ ammay.uɖe makkaɭ ellaːm one
mother .gen
children
all
All the children of one mother are hat-wearers.
toppikkaːrǝ
hat-persons
But here, the expected answer is aɖakka, ‘betel-nuts’ (Jose and Kumar 2008:13).
Note how the riddling formula is slightly altered in JM, where the kinship term
umma, ‘mother’ (Jews and Muslims) replaces amma (Hindus and Christians),
and the JM quantifier ekkattiṉum replaces the standard M quantifier ellāṃ, and
may very well be an Old M retention (< okkam, rather than okke). It is also noteworthy that the word toppi is used by Sara Moshe to denote the Jewish skullcap,
while Malayalis understand it as a hat. The solution teŋŋa does not make sense
unless one imagines a skullcap, smaller than the average hat, better fitting to
the solution aɖakka, a smaller fruit with a cap-like formation proportionately
larger than that of the coconut.
Another riddle told by Sara Moshe clarifies an enigmatic perplexing ‘proverb’ told by several JM speakers. The riddle, like many riddles in M, is in the
form of a statement, where the interrogative is implicit rather than explicit:
iʈʈaː poʈʈum iŋgliːʃ-moʈʈa
put.NF-cond
burst.fut
English-egg.nom
If [you] add [it], the English egg (possibly suggesting a gun bullet) explodes.
(D10, 10:36)
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
The answer is gaɖukǝ, ‘mustard seeds,’ used in the seasoning of many Kerala
dishes by frying them in deep oil until they pop and produce explosion sounds.
Community members remembered the speech formation, but they forgot its
generic function as a riddle and quoted it as if it was a proverb:
kaɖugǝ iʈʈ-aː poʈʈum mustard seed.acc
put.NF.cond
burst.fut
If [you] put mustard seed, the English-egg bursts.
iŋgliːʃ-moʈʈa
English-egg.nom
Until the meeting with Sara Moshe, no one could explain the meaning of this
enigmatic ‘proverb’ to me. This confusion may be the result of the structural
and stylistic relations between proverbs and riddles (Green and Pepicello 1986;
Abrahams 1972:197).
Jokes
Many JM jokes in the database originated in anecdotal stories that only some
speakers could fully recall. Such ‘anecdotal’ jokes often stretch to absurdity
the linguistic tension between M and H or, in some cases, English as well. For
example, it is told that once an elderly JM speaker asked a young woman for
her name, which happened to be Ariela (H ‫)אריאלה‬, resembling the colloquial
negative habitual aṟiyeːla (M aṟiyilla), ‘don’t/doesn’t know’:
moːɭeː, peːr end’ aːɳǝ, moːɭeː?
daughter.voc name.nom
what.nom
cop
daughter.voc
eṉḏe peːr
aṟiyeːla.
1sg.gen
name.nom
Ariela-nom
end’ aṟiyeːla,
moːɭeː?
what.nom
know.fut-neg daughter.voc
aðǝ . . . moːɭeː . . . appaṉṉa enikk’
aṟiyaː-loː!
this.nom
daughter.voc father.acc 1sg.dat
know.fut-emp
oː! eṉḏe peːr aṟiyeːla!!!
interj
me.gen
name.nom
Ariela
endǝ niː paṟayaɳǝ . . . what.nom
2sg.int.nom
say.pres
‘Daughter, what is your name?’
‘My name is Ariela’ (or: I don’t know my name).
‘What don’t you know, daughter? That . . . daughter . . . I know your father!’
‘Oh! My name is Ariela!!!’
‘What are you saying . . .’
(G1)
This joke ridicules the difficulties of the older generation of JM speakers to converse in Hebrew. It also reveals the linguistic interaction between the elderly JM
speakers and their H speaking children and grandchildren. In fact, it is thanks
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
157
to their difficulties in conversing in H that the youngsters, today in their fifties
and sixties, were forced to converse in JM with them and retain competence in
JM. The linguistic tension between Malayalam and Hebrew produced similar
jokes and jests even before migration, as there are several such jokes attributed
to incidents in Kerala (Gamliel, 2009b:374–5).
Miriam Dekel often recalls how her grandmother told her stories in JM.
She remembers only fragments of a few stories but can recollect the nursery
rhymes she heard from her in early childhood. Here is, for example, one of the
nursery rhymes in her repertoire:
iʈi kuɖuŋŋaɳǝ maȥa peyyaɳǝ
thunder.nom
roar.pres
rain
rain.pres
maːmmikkaːkkaːɖe moːɭǝ
kuɭikkaɳǝ
Muhamed-big brother.gen
daughter.nom
bathe.pres
endilǝ kuɭikkaɳǝ? cembil kuɭikkaɳǝ.
what.loc
bathe.pres
pot.loc
bathe.pres
endilǝ
toːrttaɳǝ? paʈʈ’-’oːɳɖǝ
toːrttaɳǝ.
what.loc
dry.pres
silk.acc-rceive.NF
dry.pres
paʈʈaːɳi vann’-’oːɳɖǝ
taʈʈi-koɳɖ’-’oːyi!
Pattani.nom
come.NF-receive.NF touch.NF-receive.NF-go.past
Thunder is roaring. Rain is falling.
The daughter of Mammikkakka is bathing.
What does she bathe with? She bathes with a brass pot.
What does she use for a towel? She uses a silk cloth.
A Pattani came and kidnapped her!
(G1)
This nursery rhyme is didactic and instructive, implying the sexuality of a girl
on the verge of puberty by referring to thunderstorm and rainfall while the
girl is bathing. The song proceeds through a syntactic formula of question and
answer common in M folksongs. It is situated in a Muslim environment, as
suggested by the kinship term kaːkka, ‘elder brother’ (also in JM), the name
Maːmmi (< Muhammad), and the Muslim caste name paʈʈaːɳi (from Urdu).
The latter term has intimidating connotations in the song, perhaps due to its
denotation of a caste of foreign Muslims.
Like the other examples of speech and literary genres, this example too
depicts colloquial features like the present ending –aɳǝ (< –unnu) and the
replacement of the aspectual non-finite –iʈʈǝ by oːɳɖǝ (< koɳɖǝ).
Another nursery rhyme recollected by Yosi Oren and by many other JM
speakers is distinctively Jewish, for it renders a verbatim translation of a biblical passage (Proverbs, 1:8) into song:
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
ʃema
ben-i hear.imp
son-1sg.suff
eṉḏe
maganeː
niː
keːɭǝ
1sg.gen
son.voc
2sg.int.nom
hear.imp.int
musar-ʾaḇixa morals-father.2sg.suff
neṉḏe vaːvaːɖe siʈʈa
2sg.int.gen
father.gen
ethics.acc
ve-ʾal titoʃ
torat- imexa
conj-neg abandon.fut teaching-mother.2sg.suff
neṉḏe
ummaːṉa toːṟaːṉa kaiviɖalle
2sg.int.gen
mother.gen
Torah.acc
abandon.fut.neg
ʃaːðay
caːcci-kkoː moːṉeː
God
sleep-ref.imp son.voc
Hear, my son, your father’s morals.
Do not forsake your mother’s teachings.
Sleep with God, my son.
(C27, 39:44)
Once reminded, many people recalled how in childhood their JM speaking
mothers would lull them to sleep with these lines. This is not merely a nursery rhyme, but rather a fragment of arttham, ‘translation,’ the genre in written
JM literature of female-oriented compositions based on H poems (see above;
Gamliel 2013b).
Stories
The following section contains synopses of three of the many stories found in
the database. Since the transcription of the data is still in progress, I am obliged
to leave out detailed transcripts and parsing of the more complex forms for
future publications.
The term maːssa denotes stories that focus on Jewish themes, differentiating them from stories not necessarily about Jews. Thus, it seems that in JM the
ethnogeneric term maːssa stands for a Jewish oicotype (Noy 1971:171–6). Of the
several stories termed by their tellers maːssa, some present a conflict between
a rabbi (ṟabbǝ, moːlyaːrǝ) and a king (raːjaːvǝ) or a minister (mantri) as their
point of departure. A short maːssa told by the late Yokheved Elias is a good
example of this oral genre in JM.
In a certain place where Jews lived (juːðaṉmaːre stalattǝ), they were working hard for little
salary without receiving their due days off (xoppeʃǝ) for Saturdays and holidays. Nevertheless, they were taking leave on Saturdays, as Jews are strictly prohibited from working during the holy day. This angered the local king (accaṉ raːjaːvǝ). He asked the rabbi (ṟabbǝ) for
the reason for their stubbornness and the nature of their faith. The rabbi answered with
a sermon-like narration about the Jewish God, and how he, the rabbi, turned to him for
strength and wisdom to govern his people. The king became suspicious and asked whether
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
159
the rabbi wished to take over his throne (raːjastaːṉam). The rabbi said he had no need for
that and explained that the Jews were created for helping others and that their God created
everything, so that they were not allowed to harm others. Finally, the king asked the rabbi
to show him the Jewish God. The rabbi replied that this was impossible and forbidden. The
king angrily insisted, until the rabbi was left with no choice. He cried and prayed, until he
saw a vision (xaːlom kaɳɖǝ, ‘saw ‫)’חלום‬. In his vision, God ordered him to construct a bridge
over the ocean and tell the king to come over and see Him. The rabbi told the king to build
a bridge over the ocean. Once the bridge was built, the king and his friends and companions
all gathered on the bridge. A thunderstorm erupted, a fierce wind stroke them, and they all
fell into the ocean and died.
(C28a, 20:10)
This story is a typical Jewish tale-oicotype recognized by folklorists as “the desecrator’s punishment” (tale-type AT*771). At the same time, it depicts some
noteworthy and peculiar features of Kerala Jewry. The vice of the king is his
unwillingness to allow the Jews leave from work during their holidays, something that Kerala Jews took for granted, as the norm in Kerala was, and still is,
to be considerate towards the rituals and holidays of the different castes and
communities. Underlying the story is the misunderstanding of the Jewish faith,
which has no concrete image to worship, unlike the Hindus. The Hindu king
demands to see the Jewish God, for which he is punished severely.
The motif of building a bridge over the ocean is another peculiar feature.
For one, bridges and large bodies of water are a distinctive mark of the Kerala
landscape. Moreover, the motif of a bridge may be read as an intercultural
bridge; the king was unable to allow his Jewish subjects the religious autonomy
entitled to them, or, in other words, to establish interfaith harmony (which is
another distinctive mark of Kerala in the eyes of contemporary JM speakers).
His punishment was death on a surrealistic bridge built over the ocean.
Elias’ narration alternates between JM and MH and, accordingly, between
the traditional and the contemporary story elements that she interweaves into
narration. Through the speech of the rabbi, she sees an occasion to deliver a
sermon-like narration in MH, possibly addressing the modern audience. She
narrates her own views concerning the role of God, His relation towards creation in general and towards the Jews in particular. She stresses the role of the
rabbi as a mediator between God and the community on the one hand, and
between the king and the community on the other hand. The image of the
rabbi in her story is of a submissive agent of divine power seeking wisdom and
strength from God to govern his subjects, whom Elias alternately terms talmidim (H ‘disciples’) and kuʈʈigaɭǝ (M ‘children’). In this way, the story undergoes a secondary process of oicotypification, as many other Jewish oicotypes
undergo once told in the context of post-migration modern Israeli society
(Bar-Itzhak, 1993:130–2).
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
The term kaða refers to different types of folktales and stories that are not
particularly Jewish. For demonstrating such stories, I select one story told by a
man, Bezalel Eliyahu, and one story told by a woman, Tamar Abraham, both in
their late seventies. Eliyahu told a story about a drunkard toddy-tapper,12 coːṉ
(< coːgaṉ < ceːgavaṉ = iːȥavaṉ), and Abraham told a story about a she-parrot,
tattamma. Below are the synopses of the stories with some noteworthy lexical
items in parentheses.13
One toddy-taper, before climbing a coconut tree, inserted some rice-flakes (poːkkoːṟeṉ
< popcorn, malǝṟǝ < malarǝ) into a fold in his loincloth (muɳɖǝ). While climbing the tree,
he was munching on the flakes, singing songs and drinking toddy. At some point, the flakes
were exhausted. He searched for more, looking inside his loincloth. He was saying to himself, “why, I put so many flakes! Where are they all gone?” He untied his loincloth, and
searched, and saw a hernia (H kiːle) protruding through his abdomen. He turned to his
testicles and said, “Now I got it! You devoured my flakes!” He took his knife and angrily cut
his own testicles (D8, 02:20).
This story is male-oriented, depicting subconscious fears of castration. It is
probably a story typical of a certain farmer milieu in Kerala (Eliyahu is a farmer
still in touch with agrarian Kerala). While narrating the story, Eliyahu used the
word ‘popcorn’ for rice-flakes, trying to familiarize the audience with the story.
However, seeing the confusion on his listeners’ faces, he corrected the term to
the M word maləṟǝ, ‘rice-flakes.’ The generic term he used for his stories was
veṟuðe kaða, ‘silly story,’ somewhat apologizing for their crude nature. Similar
stories circulate among JM speakers today for amusement during social gatherings over drinks and snacks. They are usually told by men.
Tamar Abraham told a story that is female-oriented, as its subject is a parrot,
an icon of femininity in the wedding songs of Kerala Jews, possibly also in the
larger frame of M folk literature (cf. Gamliel 2009b:259).
A she-parrot lived in a certain land (raːjyattǝ). In the rainy season, she would search for a
warm place. In the hot season, she would search for a rainy place. In this way, she spent her
life (aŋŋaṉe xaːyyim, ‘such ‫)’חיים‬. She went to live in a banyan tree (aːlmaram). Someone
asked her, “Where are you coming from?” “I am coming from the banyan tree.” “If the banyan is cut, what will you do?” “I will go and live in a hole in the bilva tree (kuːvalam).” “If the
bilva tree is cut, what will you do?” “I will go to live on a sandal tree (candaṉam).” “If the
sandal tree is cut, what will you do?” “I will go to my father’s (accaṉ, appaṉ) lap and laugh.”
“If your father dies, what will you do?” “I will go to my mother’s (amma) lap and cry.” “If your
12) Toddy-tapper is the English term for the Iȥava (or Thiyyar) caste of people who climb up
coconut trees to pluck out coconuts and who prepare toddy (an alcoholic beverage) from the
fresh coconut water.
13) The stories were told to language workers involved in the documentation project with varying
degrees of proficiency in M and in JM.
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
161
mother dies, what will you do?” “I will fly to the sky.” “When the sky falls, what will you do?”
“Then, that will be my fate (kaṟamma doːȿam, M ‘bad karma,’ goːṟaːl, H ‘fate’).” (D29, 08:16)
This story is an adaptation of a folk song well known in Kerala (Ayappadas
2008:31). It undergoes generic transformation to become a story in Abraham’s
repertoire. Despite the generic transformation, the story maintains its adherence to the Hindu milieu in Kerala. It is marked by Hindu kinship terms, accaṉ
(JM vaːva or appaṉ) and amma (JM umma). The banyan tree, bilva tree and
sandal tree, suggestive of temple worship, are also markers of the Hindu milieu.
The final line of the story is a narrative device to enact the generic transformation. In the M folksong, there is a series of migrations of the bird from tree to
tree expressed in a chain of questions and answers. There is no need to end
the chain reaction of question-answer that can be expanded according to the
performer’s will. But a story must conclude in a framing formula. The way out
of the question-answer chain reaction is the expression kaṟumma doːȿam,
‘bad karma,’ which Abraham translates into the H goːṟaːl, ‘fate,’ after which no
further questions can be asked.
This brief survey of oral literary data found in the JM database reveals the
richness of the materials collected during the past two years; Hindu, Muslim,
agrarian, feminine, masculine and, of course, Jewish and Israeli cultural traits
coexist and intermingle with the heritage of JM oral literature. The oral literary
forms depict an interesting linguistic interaction between colloquial M, modern H, and traditional H that compose the contemporary JM language variety.
Even though the documentation project comes during a very late stage in the
life of JM, a careful analysis of the oral literary forms may be useful for understanding the cultural history of the community before migration. Such an analysis may certainly contribute also to our understanding of the sociocultural
processes of adaptation into Israeli society after migration.
Ethnographic Data
Ethnographic data are currently stored in three major formats: audio files, picture files, and document files. The ethnographic data in the audio files are of
diverse contents, and are scattered among the digital recordings. In virtually
every recording session there are ethnographic materials ranging from arbitrary comments about Kerala Jewish life before and after migration to family
and community ethnohistories.
Currently, the ethnographic materials recorded and documented in the
database are broad enough to sustain quite a few studies in areas much beyond
the reach of a single researcher. There is ample room for ethnomusicologists,
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
historians, folklorists, anthropologists, and possibly researchers in other disciplines such as contemporary Judaism, gender studies, material culture, and
more. To demonstrate the potential embedded in the database, I conclude this
section with some examples of ethnographic materials regarding Kerala Jews
not yet described by researchers of Kerala Jewry: the kaːrɳɳoːrə feast, the personal neːrcca, a burial costume, and the festive toppi, ‘skullcap.’
The Kaːrɳɳoːrə Feast
The Simhat Torah holiday is especially favored by Kerala Jews ( Johnson
1975:147–54; Walerstein 1987:126–53). By the end of the holiday, instead of the
community members leaving the synagogue for their homes as in other Jewish communities, everybody gathers in the house of the eldest male member
of the community, called oṉṉaːŋ-kaːrɳɳoːrǝ, ‘the first elder.’ The family of the
oṉṉaːŋ-kaːrɳɳoːrǝ serves liquor and snacks (palaːram) to all the guests, while
everybody engages in singing H paraliturgy in honor of the oṉṉaːŋ-kaːrɳɳoːrǝ.
This celebration is suggestive of historical kinship relations reminiscent of
matrilineal communities in Kerala such as the Nair community, where the
eldest male member (kaːraɳɳavaṉ) of an extended family (taṟavaːɖǝ) held the
position of a leader for the whole family or tribe. This function is documented
in files A2–A4, E1, and E7.
The Neːrcca Feast
A ritual feast commemorating a saint is called neːrcca, ‘vow.’ Kerala Jews used
to perform an annual neːrcca on the memorial day of the sixteenth-century
Jewish saint, Namya Mutta, whose burial site still exists in Cochin. Apparently,
a neːrcca may also refer to a ritual feast for acquiring merit to ward off personal
calamities. Kerala Jews use this term parallel to the H term ‫( סעודת מצוה‬Merit
Feast), which they perform during the holiday of Lag BaOmer in the spring. In
a personal neːrcca, one family serves food to the participants, who sing H para­
liturgy and pray for warding off calamity. Though hardly performed in the past
decades, two researchers and I managed to participate in a personal neːrcca
and document it in pictures and audio recordings. The same term is used by
Kerala Muslims with almost identical connotations, such as mosque festivals
and meritorious donation (neːrcca peʈʈi, ‘donation box,’ at the entrance of
Keralite mosques).
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
163
Burial Customs
Jews bury their dead clad in white cloth (‫)תכריכים‬. In a casual M conversation
after a funeral, one woman complained that the dressing up of the deceased
woman was improper. Upon my inquiry, she explained that deceased Kerala
Jewish women are dressed up in a suit consisting of eighteen parts—from
socks to gloves—and men are dressed up in a suit of sixteen parts. This custom is analogous to the burial customs of Kerala Christians, who are also very
particular about the costume of the deceased upon burial.
The Skullcap Toppi
The skullcap of Kerala Jewish men is a round cap called toppi. Nowadays,
Kerala Jewish men in Israel wear a skullcap of smaller size that conforms to
the standards of modern Jews in Israel. However, during the Jewish festivals
and holidays, many of them wear the traditional colorful toppi, which covers a
larger part of the head. There is a particular toppi for each occasion; white for
Atonement Day, black and white for mourning, green for Sukkot, variegated
colors for Simhat Torah, and so forth. The women too dress in similar color
combinations for the different occasions.
Ethnographic data of Kerala Jewry appear in several publications. However,
their scope and depth are limited as they represent mainly English speaking informants. Important concepts and categories that can be transmitted
only in JM were left out and almost doomed to oblivion. Moreover, a certain
sense of intimacy that can only be achieved by conversations and interviews
in one’s native language is absent from such ethnographic accounts. The JM
language documentation project can certainly supplement the existing ethnographic accounts of Kerala Jewry and compensate for their lack of intimate
communication.
Conclusion
Much has been written about the intriguing community of Kerala Jews, but
due to the lack of unmediated data in JM, the study of Kerala Jewry suffers from
misconceptions and unfortunate generalizations. The JM database, now available in digital format, may help in revising these understandings and reevaluate the language variety of this unique speech community.
The JM language documentation project bears implications for the study
of other speech communities in Kerala and in Israel. For one, the linguistic
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O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
diversity of Malayalam speaking communities on the one hand and Jewish languages on the other is rapidly fading away. The Jewish Malayalam database
offers a comparative view to linguists, folklorists, and anthropologists studying
Malayalam language varieties or Jewish languages.
In this section I present a brief description of the JM database with the goal
of evoking interest in the speech community of Kerala Jews in Israel.14 I wish
to stress that the JM database is an open archive easily accessible to scholars
at any time. Our aim is to enable the addition of new materials, yet to be collected in Israel and in Kerala. Scholars are invited to receive copies in digital
format and use them according to their scholarly interests. We hope they will
help in producing transcriptions in IPA or in Malayalam script for inclusion in
the database.
The database includes the following files:15
A1—A10: audio files: recordings of H chants and recitals in the synagogue or at other public
events
B1—B8: audio files: recordings of individuals reciting H scriptures (elicited)
C1—C43: audio files: recordings of public community meetings, in particular the Malayalam
workshop
D1—D46b: audio files: recordings of couples or individuals in domestic spaces
E1—E8: photo files: documentation of public rituals, portraits of individuals, and photos of
artifacts in Israel
F1—F4: photo files: documentation of public and domestic rituals of Jews and Jewish sites
in Kerala
G1—G5: document files: PDF or Word files of written notes during earlier fieldwork and of
documents written by Malayalam speaking Jews.
The catalogue includes metadata that specifies the materials in each file,
including audio position of contents in minutes and seconds, so that phoneticians, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and other scholars may conveniently
find the materials relevant for their studies. In this paper, I mainly focused on
a rather limited linguistic and literary scope of the database. However, as one
may deduce from the brief description of the catalogue, other scholars may
find the database useful for their own purposes.
The JM language documentation project was carried out with a sense of
urgency considering the fact that JM is rapidly fading out of use. This paper
was aimed above all to establish the Malayalam variety spoken by Kerala Jews
14) In this, I take up the good advice of my tutor and predecessor in the field of Jewish Malayalam,
Scaria Zacharia.
15) The catalogue is available upon request from the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem ([email protected]
.il), or from the author ([email protected]).
O. Gamliel / Journal of Jewish Languages 1 (2013) 135–167
165
as a Jewish language and as a Malayalam variety on the verge of extinction. JM
language, which has so far been under-researched, may open a new window to
a unique Jewish community with a thousand-year history under Hindu rulers
in a tolerant multicultural environment. It is not too late to listen to the voices
of JM speakers.
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Ophira Gamliel was born in Israel in 1968. She has a PhD in Jewish Malayalam literature
from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She teaches Sanskrit and Malayalam at the
Hebrew University and Indian philosophy at Bar-Ilan University. She is the author of a Modern Malayalam grammar book and several papers on Sanskrit literature and on the language,
literature, and history of Kerala Jews. She also translated and published selected stories from
Sanskrit mythology and epics in Hebrew.

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Guidelines for Submission of Local Market Rate (LMR

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Shema for June :july 2014

resume - MichaelDworkis.com

Madame Director General, Dear Ambassadors, My dear friend, H.E

CERTIFICATE TO PROVE NATIVITY FOR KERALITES