Towards a New Understanding of Jewish Language in the Twenty-First Century

This article outlines some debates and issues in the field of Jewish linguistics and offers a research agenda for comparative analysis of Jewish languages. This agenda builds on previous research, especially on Yiddish and Judezmo (Judeo‐Spanish), but also incorporates data on the language of contemporary Jews (especially Jewish English), as well as theories and methods from variationist sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Based on a new understanding of Jewish language as a distinctively Jewish repertoire rather than a separate system, this research agenda aims to provide a more nuanced and unified understanding of the phenomenon of Jewish language.