Judeo-French Cultural Exchange in the High Middle Ages
Multilingualism is a manifestation of elite education today as it was in the European Middle Ages. The Jewish diaspora in medieval northern France mastered Hebrew and Aramaic, since their main knowledge resources (Bible, Talmud, and Responsa literature) were written in these languages. However, Old French was their vernacular as it was for the Christian population, and a significant Jewish Francophile group was highly receptive to French culture and literature. This medieval Judeo-French literacy is documented in various literary, scientific, and religious texts dating from the 11th to the 14th centuries. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that the Old French texts were written in Hebrew script. Most relevant is the fact that the Jews augmented commentaries on important religious texts like Bible and Talmud with Old French glosses and collected them in Hebrew-French Bible glossaries.
The overall objective of this project that is set to run for eighteen years is to explore the entanglement of Hebrew-French Jewish culture with the non-Jewish vernacular intellectual environment from the 12th to the 14th centuries.