Jewish Languages and Book Culture : Bodleian Library : 9781851246328 : 1851246320 : 04 Jul 2024 : From Cairo Genizah to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, the spread of books in Jewish vernacular languages and Hebrew characters offers us an extraordinary insight into the linguistic richness of Jewish life. For over two millennia, Jewish communities have used languages other than Hebrew for daily oral communication, including Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-French, Judeo-Italian, Yiddish and Ladino. They used the Hebrew alphabet to write these languages down and developed sophisticated systems to transmit texts in them. Many of these vernacular languages became also languages of book culture. Produced and sold cheaply, using the tools of the book cultures of host societies, these publications reached a wide audience. The Bodleian Libraries' collections host an unparalleled collection of texts in Judeo-languages, giving us a picture of the works created and of the specific ways in