Language as Connection: A Tapestry of Jewish Culture, History and Community

By Jackie Krentzman

When UC Berkeley junior history major Chloe Zitsow saw that the Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) offered courses in the Yiddish language, she leapt at the opportunity to learn the language her grandparents spoke at home.

“I found the language to be a great way to connect with both my culture and grandparents,” says Zitsow, a Jewish Studies minor from Los Angeles. “When my Bubbie and Zayde found out I could converse with them in Yiddish, they were so thrilled!”

Yiddish is one of three Jewish languages offered at Berkeley’s Center for Jewish Studies. Through partnerships with multiple departments, the Center offers courses in Hebrew, Yiddish and the ancient Judeo-Spanish language of Ladino. In Spring 2025, 49 students enrolled in one of these language courses. 

“We believe the tremendous interest in these Jewish languages reflects a growing interest in Jewish culture, by Jewish and non-Jewish students, at Berkeley,” says CJS faculty director Ethan Katz. “The growth of our course offerings and the level of engagement in the classrooms we are hearing about from the professors is exciting to see.”

Hebrew: A Cornerstone Language

The Center offers three Hebrew language courses, elementary, intermediate, and biblical Hebrew. They are taught in partnership with Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC). MELC Chair Christine Philliou says that the department is in growth mode, as it will soon be hiring a modern Hebrew language lecturer who will teach five courses per year — beginning, intermediate/advanced and an advanced course in Hebrew literature.

Katz calls Hebrew the cornerstone of the Jewish studies language classes.

“Hebrew is the mother tongue of Jewish history and culture, both in terms of sacred texts and the revival of modern Hebrew in the 19th and 20th centuries,” he says.

Yiddish: Tradition Meets Contemporary Resonance

During the current academic year, 23 students took a Yiddish class, the traditional vernacular language of Ashkenazi Central and Eastern European Jews. The Center taught elementary and intermediate Yiddish, along with a course on the history of Yiddish Culture in English, all offered in conjunction with the Department of German. 

In addition, the Center offered for the first time this past year Yiddish Linguistics, taught by one of the leading Yiddish linguistics scholars in the world, Linguistics assistant professor Isaac Bleaman.

Zitsow discovered that the Yiddish language has some unexpected resonance today. “I took it to connect more with my culture, but then I learned Yiddish can be a connecting force for people in general,” she says. “There is a resurgence of interest in the language among younger people, especially gender queer people who see it as an intersectional language of sorts. Yiddish is an amalgamation of German, Slavic, and Hebrew characters, so they see it as a language that connects lots of different types of people.”

Katz says that Yiddish is crucial to 1,000 years of Jewish history and culture, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe, the heartlands of Ashkenazic Jews.

“Yiddish has historically been more widely spoken than Hebrew, with 11 million speakers at its height in Eastern and Central Europe and Russia into the 20th century," says Katz. "The language is intertwined with Jewish culture, so we are thrilled to be able to offer not only language courses but Yiddish cultural and civilization courses as well."

Ladino: Reviving an Endangered Language

In recent years, as interest has grown in a broader swathe of the Jewish experience, a few universities, including Berkeley, have begun teaching the endangered language of Ladino.

Ladino, sometimes known as Judeo-Spanish, is the language of the Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. It shares characteristics with a host of languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, and Aragonese and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic. As the language’s speakers migrated throughout the Mediterranean, and especially to the Ottoman Empire, it evolved further, borrowing vocabulary from Turkish, Greek, Italian, and French, among other languages.

Last year, for the first time, the Center for Jewish Studies offered an undergraduate course in Ladino, titled “Elementary Judeo-Spanish.” The course not only covered the rudiments of the language but also examined the way Ladino was used in Sephardic culture, including poetry, Moroccan balladry, liturgical texts in Amsterdam, Ottoman-era memoir, and holocaust testimony from the Balkans. 

Course instructor Adam Mahler, a Harvard University doctoral candidate and a visiting lecturer in Jewish Studies at UC Berkeley, credits a university-wide resurgence of interest in Jewish culture for its success. 

“Interest in the language has increased in recent years as students became more interested in engaging with Jewish cultures and literatures in their specificity, rather than centering Ashkenazi perspectives and cultural artefacts,” he says. “In recent years, Berkeley has developed a critical mass of scholars, students, and advocates for Ladino. Further, for many students, Ladino is deeply personal; they enrolled in my course to reconnect with their Sephardi heritage, read family documents written in the language, or engage academically with the rich archives of Judeo-Spanish communities.”

One of Mahler’s students, Junior Brooke Taylor, is conversant in Spanish and teaches Hebrew school to fifth graders in Aptos, California. She says learning Ladino has helped improve her skills in both languages.

“Plus, it is cool to tell people I take this language no one ever heard of!” she says. “My non-Jewish friends are very interested to learn about the history of the Ladino speaking Jewish Sephardic exiles who spread out across the globe, and my Hebrew school students and parents are always asking me questions about it as well. It is wonderful to be able to share this knowledge of not only this language, but the history and culture as well.”