Joseph (Yossi)Chetrit (born 1941) is Emeritus Professor of the French language and literature department and the Hebrew language department at the University of Haifa, former head of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture in Spain and Muslim Countries, [1] and founder of the Tsfon-Maarav Troupe. [2]
Joseph Chetrit was born in 1941 in Morocco, where he completed his primary studies in Taroudant, and his secondary and education studies in Casablanca. He immigrated in 1963 to Israel, where he received his university education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, then at the Sorbonne, where he prepared a doctorate in French grammar. From October 1972 until his retirement in October 2009, he taught at the University of Haifa French linguistics (at the Department of French Language and Literature) and socio-pragmatics of Judeo-Arabic and contemporary Hebrew (at the Department of Hebrew language). He also taught Hebrew at the Paris Community Center and Jewish Civilization in North Africa at INALCO University in Paris and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At Haifa University, he served as director of the language and French literature, dean of the Faculty of Humanities, vice-rector and member of the management. [3]
His research focuses on the study of Jewish languages and Jewish culture in North Africa in their various aspects - linguistic, socio-discursive, socio-historical, socio-cultural and literary. [4] He published in these different fields several books and dozens of articles and monographs, [5] especially on Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic poetry in North Africa, on traditional and modern Jewish discourse, [6] on modernization and Haskalah in communities, on the language of Jewish women in Morocco and their proverbs, on the linguistic and sociolinguistic specificities of Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Berber and on the musical traditions of the Jewish communities of Morocco. [7]
At the University of Haifa, he was the director of the Center for the Study on Jewish Culture in Spain and Islamic countries and the interdisciplinary project “Mediterranean Civilizations and their significance for our time.” He is also the editor of the book series "MIQQEDEM UMIYYAM" which publishes collections of essays on history and cultural heritage of Jewish communities in Islamic countries and in the Sephardic world. [8]
Throughout his career, Chetrit has advocated for the preservation of the oral traditions and languages of North-African Jews. Between 1978-1981, Chetrit initiated and coordinated a research and education workshop, which took place in the town Shlomi. The project was funded by the Center for the Heritage of Jews from Spain and the East in the Ministry of Education and Culture. The workshop included the audio documentation of oral poetry, proverbs, and tales of the Jewish life in the communities from which Shlomi's residents originated. [9]
Chetrit’s early research work is concerned with the study of French lexicology and syntax. However, his primary research work is related to various fields of North-African Jewry as reflected in his publications as follows:
Chetrit's research includes the characterization and categorization of Judeo-Arabic dialects from North-Africa into four groups based on phonetic and phonological structure: Eqa:l in Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, Wqal in the Atlantic regions of Morocco, Nkal in northern Morocco, and SEkjal in south eastern Morocco. In addition, he described the Berber that was used among the Jews of Moroccan rural communities, the influence of French on Judeo-Arabic dialects, and the linguistic relationships between Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Spanish in Morocco. Furthermore, he described the Hebrew component of the lexical and structural foundations of Judeo-Arabic, including the Jewish secret languages based on Hebrew lexical elements and formulae.
Chetrit's research and publications are also concerned with the Bakashot and Piyutim (liturgic poetry) of Moroccan. He discovered Hebrew poets in Morocco, as well as unique poems which shed light on events and processes that have little or no other documentation including the poets Rabbi Shlomo Haliwa, Rabbi David Elkaim, Rabbi David Bouzaglo, [10] Nissim Naqqab, as well as the unique female Hebrew poet Friha bat Rabbi Avraham ben-Adiba. Through his interest in the affinities between liturgic poetry and Andalusi music and the Arabic Qasida poetry in Morocco, he also described the cultural and practical components that led Jews to collaborate with Muslim musicians throughout the generations.
He has published an essay in literary studies of the trends and patterns of Judeo-Arabic poetry, in addition to other essays concerned with the interpretation of poems of historical or cultural importance for the study of Jewish life in Morocco.
During the fieldwork at Shlomi between 1978-1981, thousands of Judeo-Arabic proverbs and idioms were recorded and documented for research and education purposes. These proverbs were spoken mostly by older women, and in part by men, and were published along with their linguistic and cultural status in several collections.
He wrote a book about the traditional Jewish wedding studies the values, practices, rituals and ceremonies as practiced in Morocco. This research also describes the social-discursive networks which operate and guide the traditions of the Jewish wedding.
He described the discursive strategies and content of the traditional communal discourse, which was conducted according to the teachings and writings of rabbis. He also described the changes that took place in the discourse in the end of the 19th century, and more specifically, the new linguistic uses in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, which led to the formation of a new middle Judeo-Arabic in Tunis. In another study, Chetrit characterized the dual culture of Moroccan Jews. This duality included, on the one hand, the learned rabbinic culture and on the other hand, the mixed popular culture. This popular culture includes core values derived from practical Halacha and Jewish tradition and ceremonies, practices, and forms of life that deviated at times from the purely Halachic canon, for example, the beliefs in magic, demons, fortune, evil eye, and so forth. The folk communities that practiced such beliefs did not view them as contradictory to the basic beliefs that define their distinct Jewish identity, but as an existential need that cures their physical and mental ailments, due to the lack of medicine and physicians as they operate today. Chetrit sees this duality between learned rabbinic culture and syncretic folk culture as the core which granted them the mental strength and stable Jewish identity that enabled their survival despite the persecutions under Islam.
Chetrit has focused his research on additional aspects of the development of Jewish culture in North-Africa and beyond this region. Thus, he studied the Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic enlightenment movements that developed during the second half of the 19th century in North-Africa. These movements were influenced by the Hebrew harmonious enlightenment movement of Eastern Europe that sought to integrate rabbinic tradition and biblical culture with the European values of enlightenment. His studies illuminated the characters of the enlightenment movements' leaders, such as Rabbi Shalom Flaḥ, Rabbi David Elkaim, Isaac ben Yaish Ha-Levy, Rabbi Baruch Mitrani, and more, and described their positions, struggles, and literary and journalistic creation.
Another field of research illuminates various issues in the history of Moroccan Jews through special poems written by poets who experienced the historical events and described them through the perspective of their community members. These poems are frequently the primary documentation preserved relating to the matter.
Chetrit examined a document from the middle-ages that described an alleged growth, power, and destruction of the old Jewish community of Darca in south Morocco which had a supposedly powerful army. He showed that the document was written by Muslim scholars at the end of the 13th century, and not by Jews. The erudite authors fabricated this Jewish history in order to retroactively legitimize the extermination of the Jewish community of Darca in 1145 or 1146 by the Almohad Caliphate. Another research is dedicated to Morocco's Jewish communities during WWII.
Additional research is dedicated to Morocco's Jewish communities during WWII.
Chetrit established an academic unit in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Haifa, dedicated to the legacy of Sephardic and Eastern Jews. As part of this unit, he established new courses in various university departments, with partial funding from the Centre for Sephardic and Eastern Heritage. The academic unit has operated for more than twenty years. In addition, he initiated and organized dozens of seminars, national, and international conferences.
In addition, In 1998, he established in the University of Haifa's Research Authority the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture in Spain and Muslim Countries and was its head until December 2018.
Chetrit initiated and edited the monograph Miqqedem U-Miyyam (Hebrew), which its nine volumes were all dedicated to the study of various aspects in the history and cultural heritage of Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa. [11]
Chetrit established the Tsfon Ma'arav ensemble in 1979, and he manages and guides it to this day. The ensemble aims to raise the Israeli audience's awareness to the various musical traditions and poetic creation of North-African Jewry in general and Moroccan Jewry in particular, in the two original languages of the various communities - Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic. The ensemble's material originates in Chetrit's research about the literary creation and linguistic and musical traditions of North-African Jews. The concerts include presentations of the Jewish life in Morocco in sayings, sounds, acting, dancing, singing, and music, as well as sets of liturgical poems and Andalusi music and poetry
The band is the only one in Israel and abroad to integrate women in the performance of the liturgic poetry of Moroccan Jews.
The ensemble has recorded so far four sets of tapes, CDs and DVDs. [12]
Saʿadia ben Yosef Gaon was a prominent rabbi, gaon, Jewish philosopher, and exegete who was active in the Abbasid Caliphate.
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.
Judeo-Arabic dialects are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arab world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Egyptian Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud).
Mizrahi Jews, also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) or Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי) and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach, are a grouping of Jewish communities that lived in the Muslim World.
Judeo-Berber or Judeo-Amazigh is any of several hybrid Berber varieties traditionally spoken as a second language in Berber Jewish communities of central and southern Morocco, and perhaps earlier in Algeria. Judeo-Berber is a contact language; the first language of speakers was Judeo-Arabic. Speakers immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. While mutually comprehensible with the Tamazight spoken by most inhabitants of the area, these varieties are distinguished by the use of Hebrew loanwords and the pronunciation of š as s.
Arab Jews is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world. The term is politically contested, often by Zionists or by Jews with roots in the Arab world who prefer to be identified as Mizrahi Jews. Many left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades following the founding of Israel in 1948, and took up residence in Israel, Western Europe, the United States and Latin America.
Baghdad Jewish Arabic or autonymhaki mal yihud or el-haki malna is the variety of Arabic spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Lower Mesopotamia in Iraq. This dialect differs from the North Mesopotamian Arabic spoken by Jews in Upper Mesopotamian cities such as Mosul and Anah. Baghdadi and Northern Mesopotamian are subvarieties of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.
Shalom Shabazi was the son of Yosef ben Avigad, of the family of Mashtā, also commonly known as Abba Sholem Shabazi or Saalem al-Shabazi. He was a Jewish rabbi and poet who lived in 17th century Yemen, often referred to as the arch-poet of Yemen.
Judeo-Moroccan Arabic is the variety or the varieties of the Moroccan vernacular Arabic spoken by Jews living or formerly living in Morocco. Historically, the majority of Moroccan Jews spoke Moroccan vernacular Arabic, or Darija, as their first language, even in Amazigh areas, which was facilitated by their literacy in Hebrew script. The Darija spoken by Moroccan Jews, which they referred to as al-‘arabiya diyalna as opposed to ‘arabiya diyal l-məslimīn, typically had distinct features, such as š>s and ž>z "lisping," some lexical borrowings from Hebrew, and in some regions Hispanic features from the migration of Sephardi Jews following the Alhambra Decree. The Jewish dialects of Darija spoken in different parts of Morocco had more in common with the local Moroccan Arabic dialects than they did with each other.
Judeo-Tunisian Arabic, also known as Judeo-Tunisian, is a variety of Tunisian Arabic mainly spoken by Jews living or formerly living in Tunisia. Speakers are older adults, and the younger generation has only a passive knowledge of the language.
Moroccan Jews are Jews who live in or are from Morocco. Moroccan Jews constitute an ancient community dating to Roman times. Jews began immigrating to the region as early as 70 CE. They were later met by a second wave of migrants from the Iberian peninsula in the period which immediately preceded and followed the issuing of the 1492 Alhambra Decree, when Jews were expelled from Spain, and soon afterward, from Portugal. This second wave of immigrants changed Moroccan Jewry, which largely embraced the Andalusian Sephardic liturgy, to switch to a mostly Sephardic identity.
Joseph Yahalom is a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 1983, he has been a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.
Sami Shalom Chetrit is a Moroccan-born Hebrew poet an inter-disciplinary scholar and teacher, and Israeli social and peace activist.
Moshe Bar-Asher is an Israeli linguist and the former president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem.
The golden age of Jewish poetry in Al-Andalus developed in the literary courts of the various taifas. Like its Arabic counterpart, its production diminished in the 12th century under the rule of the Almoravids and Almohads. In the last part of the 10th century, Dunash ben Labrat revolutionized Jewish poetry in Al-Andalus by bringing Arabic meter and monorhyme into Hebrew writing. Jewish poets employed Arabic poetic themes, writing bacchic poetry, garden poetry, and love poetry.
Yemenite Jewish poetry, often referred to as "paraliturgical poetry" because of its religious nature, has been an integral part of Yemenite Jewish culture since time immemorial. The Jews of Yemen have preserved a well-defined singing arrangement which not only includes the very poetic creation itself, but also involves a vocal and dance performance, accompanied in certain villages outside Sana'a by drumming on an empty tin-can (tanakeh) or a copper tray. The Jews of Yemen, maintaining strict adherence to Talmudic and Maimonidean halakha, observed the gezeirah which prohibited playing musical instruments, and "instead of developing the playing of musical instruments, they perfected singing and rhythm." This arrangement was integrated into the walks of life familiar to the Jews of Yemen. The texts used in the arrangement were put down in writing and later included in separate song collections (dīwāns). The social strictures and norms in Yemenite Jewish culture provide for separate settings for men and for women, where the sexes are never mixed. Men’s song usually expressed the national aspirations of the Jewish people, and it was far removed from the singing associated with the Muslim environment, whereas folk songs of Jewish women were sung by rote memory and expressed the happiness and sorrows inherent in their daily life and was, as a rule, closer to that of Muslim women.
Yaron Tsur, an historian of the Jews in the Muslim lands in the modern era, is amongst the founders of the Open University of Israel, a professor in the department of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University and a former chairperson of its graduate school of Jewish studies. He is a pioneer in the field of Digital Humanities in Israel and the founder of the "Historical jewish press" website.
Moshe"Moses" Lugassy was a Moroccan born British-Jewish businessman, a social activist and a Zionist leader. He was part of the Jewish circle of public influencers called "The Enlighted Hebrews" that had taken place in Morocco.
Yaakov Bentolila is an Israeli philologist, a professor of Hebrew language at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, and a member of the Hebrew Language Academy since 2004.
The Jewish community of Constantine dates back to the 2nd century AD though legends say it goes back the second temple period. The Jewish community of Constantine thrived under Muslim rule and reached prominence from the 15th to 18th centuries, with several prominent figures and a Jewish quarter. After French colonization in 1837 and citizenship grants in 1870, tensions between Muslims and Jews led to the 1934 Constantine riots. After Algerian gained independence in 1962, most Jews left for France due to Francophilia and a lack of Zionism, leaving only a few families by the late 1960s. Rabbi Yosef ben David Renassia's preservation efforts ensured the legacy of Constantine's Jewish heritage through religious texts and language preservation.
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