The languages of the Jews of Tsarfat

Medieval France, which included the Norman French-speaking Jewish community of medieval England, illustrates what Fishman has defined as diglossia, for all the evidence suggests that the Jews spoke a variety of French and wrote Hebrew. There is a dispute about the existence of Judeo-French, some arguing that “there never existed a Judeo-French dialect with specific Jewish traits, but they did speak Old French as mother tongue and within the community as well as in intercommunity relations”. Others argue that the Jews there switched regularly between Hebrew and French.

The evidence for the high level of Hebrew knowledge among Jewish scholars is in the continuing significance of biblical and Talmudic commentaries written at the time. When one is studying the Torah nowadays, the first and most important commentary is that written by Rashi; and, when one is studying a page of Talmud, the major commentaries on the left and right of the Talmudic text are those by Rashi and what are called “Tosafot”, which are “additional” commentaries that expand on or contradict Rashi and are mainly written by Rashi’s children, grandchildren, and pupils in France – although, showing the close relationship of Tsarfat (northern France) and Loter (Germany), also by other Tosafists living in Germany. Without these commentaries from medieval France, the task of studying these fundamental Jewish texts would be significantly more difficult.