Homophony in Multilingual Jewish Cultures

One of the distinctive features of multilingual Jewish cultures is the interpretation of a sacred Hebrew signifier by its phonic identity or proximity to a signifier in another language. This essay demonstrates the cultural creativity that might inhere in such “mistakes,” providing examples from three different periods—rabbinic, Hebrew-Yiddish European culture, and modern Israeli Hebrew. I n the following i will describe an often-underappreciated feature of multilingual Jewish cultures: the interpretation of a sacred Hebrew signifier by its phonic identity or proximity to a signifier in another language. My discussion draws on three cultural environments: the Talmudic and Midrashic culture, the Ashkenazi traditional one, and modern Hebrew literature. One of the effects of the multilingualism prevalent in Jewish traditional cultures was the signification of a Hebrew signifier by a phonic proximity or identity to a signifier in another language. Early evidence can be found in the Midrash. Thus, for instance, the phrase Ben lizkunaw (Gen. 21:2), which reads literally “A son in his old age,” was interpreted by its phonic proximity to the Greek word ikonion: “a son in his old age [Ben lizkunaw] from which we are to understand that his face [Greek: ikonion] resembles his own” (Bereshit Raba 53:6).1 The interpretation of verses by their phonic proximity to words in other languages is only one way by which the Midrash interprets scripture. Indeed, it was part of a wider interpretive practice which Isaak Heinemann has characterized as “the neglect of the logos.” “[L]imiting the referential scope of the parts of the text by the logos,” as Heinemann explains, “means imposing the reign of the mind upon the matter, and it is this reign that the organic thinking opposes, and 1 Cited in Jonah Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-Agadah ve-ha-Midrash (Givatayim: Yad la-talmud, 1991), 116. dibur literary journal Issue 1, Fall 2015 Spoken Word, Written Word: Rethinking the Representation of Speech in Literature