Hebrew Influences and Self-Identity in the Judeo-Georgian Language and in the Caucasus “Mountain of Tongues”

The Caucasus region has been called the “Mountain of Tongues”. History writers from Herodotus, 2,500 years ago, until present time have given different numbers of languages, e.g. the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (64 BCE- 21 CE) claimed more than 70 tribes speaking different languages, Pliny stated that the Romans used 130 interpreters when trading. At present more than 50 languages are spoken in the Caucasus (Catford 1977: 283).

Hebrew is the ancient original language for all the twelve tribes of Israel, also after the division of the Land of Israel in 927 BCE into the Northern Kingdom, Israel, with ten of the tribes and the Southern Kingdom, Juda, with two tribes. The Israelites got exiled by the Assyrian Kings, e.g. Shalmaneser in 722 BCE. These ten tribes soon lost their language and identity. The southern tribes, Juda, got exiled by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, between 606-586 BCE, who destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem (586 BCE). Nevertheless, the Judeans (Jews) did keep the hope of return to Zion and kept their language, faith and identity. Having to learn Chaldean, Akkadian, Aramaic and soon other local languages in the 127 nations in the Babylonian Empire, they continued speaking and writing also in Hebrew for generations to come. Aramaic, as a common language also for the unlearned “Amcha”- Jews in the diaspora became the lingua franqua. Rabbis among the exiled Jews, who also translated the Tanach (the Bible), called the Targum (= the Translation). The remaining (around 10%) Israelites and Jews still living in Israel, continued to use the Hebrew language as their language the “local” dialect in the Land of Israel.

Nonetheless, Hebrew continued to be the prayer language for all Jews in the world and is now fully revived in Israel. In the diaspora, Jews spoke the local languages, but among themselves these languages became mixed with Hebrew expressions. According to Kahn & Rubin (2015), these “Jewish languages”, e.g. Judezmo, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and later Yiddish etc., all with the presence of Hebrew lexical elements and morphological and syntactic characteristics differing from the local non-Jewish language (Kahn & Rubin 2015: 3-4).

The Georgian Jews and the Judeo-Georgian language

The official Georgian Jews once numbered more than 100,000, but today the number is estimated to be 13,000 remaining in Georgia (Sloame 2020). The earliest history of the Georgian Jews is uncertain, but the Bible gives a clue by telling that Israelite tribes passed and even stayed in the Caucasian border areas of the Assyrian Empire, especially in the area of the Medes, where many stayed after being exiled by the Assyrian Kings, (e.g. Shalmaneser in 722 BCE). The Georgian historian Leonti Mroveli says and other researchers, that the first Jews only came to Georgia after the Babylonian exile of Judea, by King Nebuchadnezzar (Lerner 2004: 60, Krikheli 2017: 288, Sloame 2020) .

The earliest archaeological evidence of Jewish life that has been found near the ancient capital city, Mtskheta. Tombstones from the 3rd - 5th centuries CE bear inscriptions both in Hebrew and in Aramaic (Ben Oren 2017, Lerner 2017). New Jewish refugees arrived in waves due to persecutions. In Georgia Jews became serfs and became often traders, craftsmen and peasants. When Georgia became a Christian nation (officially in 326 CE), the Georgian Jews were not forced to convert to Christianity opposite to the case in the Roman Catholic world. Many Jews converted voluntarily and were called huria-kopili - “a former Jew” (Mamistvalishvili, 2014:132-133). Even in Georgia, most of the converted Jews knew their Jewish roots. The common Georgian family name Ebreilidze (Jewish son), indicates that Georgians with this name are likely to have Jewish origin (Ben Oren 2003, Sloame 2020). The officially Jews were called Uria or Huria in Georgian, but in the 19th century the term was replaced by Ebraeli, as the term Uria became pejorative for Jews. The Jews refer to themselves also as Israelebi (Ben Oren 2015, Mamistvalishvili 2014:38, Sloame 2020). According to Ben-Oren & Moskovich (1982:19), the Georgian Jews refer to their speech as normal Georgian, while Enoch (2015) says that Jews refers to their speech as cveneburul-i from the Georgian word cvenebur-i, meaning ‘ours’, ‘our own’ (Enoch 2015:180) and that is a way for the Georgian Jews to express their “self-identity”, depending on if they will stress their belonging to the Georgian society or emphasizing their Jewish identity.

Ch. Rabin claims that the definition of a Jewish language is “one which is used in diglossia with Hebrew” (Moskovich & Ben-Oren 1982:19). Hebrew has been the written prayer language (high variety) for the Jews living in Georgia. In particular Jewish traders developed the dialect, Qivruli (vernacular, low variety) consisting of many Hebrew words and many call it a Georgian dialect, and is also considered to be the Judeo-Georgian language (Ben Oren 2003, Sloame 2020). Not many publications exist in Judeo-Georgian. Mainly the older Jewish generations are keen on maintaining Jewish languages (Haarmann 1986:79).

The Judeo-Georgian language is a typical Jewish language, yet rather similar to the standard Georgian speech despite of numerous Hebrew and Aramaic elements. Although, the syntax in Georgian and in Hebrew largely differs and Hebrew pattern of morphology and syntax are rare in Judeo-Georgian. One can find Hebrew words mainly within religion and in Bible translation, in vocabulary of everyday life and in the jargon. The jargon of Jewish traders includes much Hebrew vocabulary and became unintelligible to Georgians. There are even components and archaic from Old Georgian, which are preserved only in Judeo-Georgian speech (Ben-Oren & Moskovich 1982:19, 23, Enoch 2015:190). Yet, other elements in modern Georgian are used with a different meaning in Judeo-Georgian. Moreover, a need to express a Jewish way of life, religion, tradition and identity has created another additional Judeo-Georgian vocabulary. For example, the verb gakasreba means ‘to make kosher, ritually pure’ and is derived from the Hebrew word שר ḳašer (Ben-Oren & Moskovich 1982:22-23, 1987: 104, 107).

Finally, new lexical items have been created mainly by adding Georgian prefixes and suffixes to Hebrew words, like Hebrew loanwords ending with the Georgian noun marker -i are; ḳaleb-i, ‘dog’, derived from the Hebrew noun כלב ḳelev (Enoch 2013: 407), gadol-i ‘big’ from גדול gadol, ḥatan-i ‘bridegroom’ (חתן ḥatan ) and ḳaṭani ‘small’ (קתן qaṭan). There are examples of Hebrew words, which have undergone semantic changes, e.g. the Hebrew ספר sefer means ‘book’ but in Judeo-Georgian also ‘document’, ‘ticket’ ‘passport’. (Ben Oren & Moskovich 1982: 22, 1987: 113). In Hebrew זקן zaqen means ‘old-aged’, but in in the speech of Georgian Jews zaq̣eni means ‘bad’ (Enoch 2015:189).

Judeo-Tat language of the Mountain Jews

The mountain Jews are called “горские евреев” gorskie evreev in Russian, mainly residing in Daghestan and also in Azerbaijan. They call themselves “^uhur” meaning ‘Jew’ in Judeo-Tat. (Danila, 2014:171, Shalem 2018: 313). The Judeo-tat language (Juhuri) is considered to be an Iranian language derived from New Persian with influences of Azeri Turkic languages. The name of the language Judeo-Tat, indicates the relationship with the Tat language, spoken in the same region by the Muslim group Tat of Iranian origin (Shapira 2006: 586, Shalem 2018: 313). In a similar way as with the Judeo-Georgian language, the Judeo-Tat coexisted with Hebrew in a diglossic system. The Mountain Jews also used a secret code-language to prevent others, “gentiles” from understanding conversations between Jews. Hebrew and also Aramaic are used as sources for the vocabulary, however according to Shalem, the number of Hebrew loanwords are not numerous, while function words (pronouns, morphology, syntax) came from the vernacular language (Shalem 2018: 326-327)

As examples, some words related to everyday life are ʃylħan derived from the Hebrew שולחן šulḥan meaning ‘small table’ and ħovir חבר ḥaver means ‘friend’. The Judeo-Tat word pošut means ‘simple’ and the Hebrew word פשות pašuṭ has the same meaning. The word ħoχmo from Hebrew חכמה ḥoḵmā means ‘mind’, ‘wisdom’, but could even be used in the meaning of a ‘fool’, an ‘idiot’. Giro ‘money’ is taken from Biblical Hebrew גרה gerāh meaning ‘20th part of a shekel’. Related to ethnicity the Judeo-Tat word ʕoril is used when speaking about an ’Christian’, derived from the Biblical ערל ʕārel ‘uncircumcised’ (Shalem 2018:328, 342).

Israelites and Jews in other parts of the Caucasus

Through history, in the Caucasus Jews have been forcibly converted to both Christianity and later to Islam. In 737 CE the Muslim hero Abu Salim began to convert Jews with force to Islam, something that Jews experienced different years to come (Avichail 2012:187). Several scholars (Kasdai, Altschuler and others) believe many of the Caucasian peoples Ossetians, Chechens, Mingrelians, Lezgins and others are descendants from the Israelite ten tribes from the time of the first exile. Today, according to Avichail many of these descendants do not keep any traditions from their Israeli origin (Avichail 2012:188). In Armenia, the vast majority in earlier times were Israelites. Although all of them, escaping from persecution and forced assimilation, migrated northwards to Georgia, the North Caucasus, Dagestan, and southwards and south-east to Persia and Azerbaijan (David 1989:67)

Traces of Hebrew loanwords in other East-Caucasian languages

Certainly, a written language tradition helps to preserve a language. Early Bible translations also serve as ancient witnesses to otherwise lost forms of languages. In early Soviet years, new alphabets were created for many indigenous Caucasian languages who lacked written forms following the Soviet “nativization” policy of ethnic groups. Several of the Daghestanian languages are endangered and some of them did not have any written tradition until the 1990s (e.g. Andi, Bezhta), when efforts were made to create alphabets and translate some parts of the Bible (Ataev 2015: 212). The East-Caucasian or Nakh-Daghestanian language family is indigenous in the mountain regions of the Caucasus. Nichols among others, argues that the many loanwords from ancient Mesopotamia entered early into these languages (Nichols 1997). Many loanwords have entered e.g. from Arabic (through Islam), Turkic languages and Persian, and the neighboring languages Georgian and Ossetic have also influenced on the North Caucasian languages (Gamkrelidze & Gudova 2016).