Limmud Toronto 2021

Until fairly recently, the majority of Jews spoke, thought and wrote in more than one language. Since the late nineteenth century, the development of modern Jewish literature, especially in Hebrew and Yiddish, was in many ways defined by multilingual tensions. Today, however, Jews are increasingly monolingual, and rely on translation to gain access to Jewish heritage languages. So what does it mean to raise a multilingual Jewish child today? In this lecture, literary history intersects with personal anecdotes to explore the past, present and future of Jewish multilingualism.