The fall of Bashar Assad’s regime on Sunday, after years of civil war and opposition unrest, has brought a new focus on Syria’s cultural heritage. Among the many stories resurfacing in the wake of this historical moment is that of Judeo-Syrian Arabic, a nearly extinct dialect central to Aleppo and Damascus’s Jewish communities.
Judeo-Syrian Arabic is a linguistic relic of Syria’s Jewish past, blending the Levantine Arabic spoken by the majority population with Hebrew and Aramaic elements. For centuries, it was no one’s communication but lands of cultural and religious identity for Syrian Jewry.
The Jewish community of Syria has ancient roots, tracing back to the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE. Over time, Jews adapted the Arabic dialects of their neighbors, but Judeo-Syrian Arabic stood apart due to its incorporation of Hebrew and Aramaic.
“This language was a reflection of the dual identity of Syrian Jews—deeply rooted in their Jewish heritage while fully immersed in Arabic-speaking society,” explains Dr. Benjamin Hary in his 2018 work Judeo-Arabic in the Arabic-Speaking World.
One of the community’s most notable linguistic traditions was the sharḥ, a translation of Hebrew scripture into Judeo-Syrian Arabic, used to teach Torah. Haim Blanc’s seminal 1964 study, Studies in Judeo-Arabic Dialects, highlights this practice as a cornerstone of religious education in Aleppo and Damascus.
Exile and language decline
The 20th century saw the Syrian Jewish population dwindle due to waves of emigration. Political instability, persecution, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led many Jews to flee to Israel, the United States, and other countries.
In these new settings, the use of Judeo-Syrian Arabic quickly diminished. “The younger generations, particularly in Israel, were encouraged to adopt Hebrew, while in the United States, English dominated,” notes Dr. Moshe Bar-Asher in an interview with The Times of Israel (2017). The stigma surrounding Arabic as a language associated with conflict further accelerated the loss of this dialect.
Today, Judeo-Syrian Arabic exists primarily in fragments—songs, prayers, and oral histories passed down by elder member diaspora member organizations such as the Endangered Language Alliance and the American Sephardi Federation have launched initiatives to document and preserve what remains of this unique linguistic heritage.
“These recordings are about more than just words; they capture the spirit of a community that survived through centuries of change,” says Dr. Sarah Benor, author of Languages in Jewish Communities in 2020.
A renewed interest
Assad’s fall marks a turning point not only in Syrian history but also in the way the world engages with its cultural narratives. For the first time in decades, the story of Syria’s Jewish communities and their linguistic contributions resurfaces in reflection on what was lost and what will be preserved.
“Every lost language is a lost world,” wrote Blanc. With the fall of Assad’s regime, perhaps the world will take a closer look at Judeo-Syrian Arabic before it is silenced forever.
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