Speech Therapy

Writing in a secular Jewish publication about the way frum people speak guarantees lots of curious readers, but it has its risks, too. That much is evident from a recent article at Tablet making a wrongheaded, albeit well-intentioned, argument that “for the sake of Jewry, the Orthodox should give up their private dialect.”

The reference is to “Yeshivish,” which academic socio-linguists describe as “an Aramaic/Yiddish/Hebrew-infused dialect of English used by many Orthodox Americans” (although a certain renowned Toronto-based musico-linguist simply calls it “ah gevaldige zach”).

Over the years, I’ve read a number of articles in the general Jewish media that try to portray how frum Jews speak. They invariably fail, and this latest attempt is, unfortunately, no exception. Reading such pieces, I take no delight in noting that these pieces are off the mark.

The Tablet article, for example, opens with the author sharing his experience at a two-week seminar at Yale with around 35 Modern Orthodox peers, when he was not yet religious. He writes how happy he was