Please note: Applications for all OSRJL classes during the 2021-22 academic year are now closed. To apply for classes taking place in the 2022-23 academic year, please check back here at the end of the summer.
Begun in October 2021, the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL) of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (OCHJS), in collaboration with other institutions across Europe and beyond including ILARA, offers a range of free online language classes on twelve vernacular languages, spoken and/or written by Jews from the Middle Ages until today, taught by leading academics at universities in Europe and elsewhere.
Languages taught and their teachers through OSRJL include the following. Click on the language name for class descriptions and more information.
Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic (Dr Assaf Bar Moshe)
Classical Judeo-Arabic (Friederike Schmidt)
Judeo-French (Dr Sandra Hajek)
Judeo-Greek (Dr Julia G. Krivoruchko)
Judeo-Italian (Dr Marilena Colasuonno)
Judeo-Neo-Aramaic (Dr Dorota Molin)
Judeo-Persian (Dr Ofir Haim)
Judeo-Tat (Prof Gilles Authier & Dr Murad Suleymanov)
Judeo-Turkish (Prof Laurent Mignon)
Karaim (Prof Henryk Jankowski)
Ladino (Dr Ilil Baum & Dr Carlos Yebra López)
Yiddish (Dr Beruriah Wiegand)
*Special Music Course Offering (Trinity Term 2022):*
Between Synagogue and Court: Jewish Music from Renaissance and Baroque (Dr Diana Matut)
Please note that this course is no longer taking applications.
Examples of extremely important, immaterial Jewish heritage, some of these Jewish languages are in danger of extinction while others are already dead, known only from early writing. Therefore, OSRJL responds to a real need: European academia offers very few learning opportunities for most of these rare Jewish languages, whereas new research programmes stress their fragility and immense role in Jewish life and culture.
The OSRJL is the first online school of its kind. By offering free, online teaching of rare Jewish languages and their cultural and historical contexts, along with public lectures and an academic blog, The Jewish Languages Bookshelf, on the same topics, OSRJL aims to preserve, spark interest in, enable access to, and reflect on the nature and role of Jewish languages as rich linguistics facets of Jewish life and history.
Applying
Student places are available by application only and are offered at no cost to all their students. Spaces are limited and priority will be given to current university students, attending any university globally yet especially those studying disciplines related to Jewish languages; however, other members of the public are welcome to apply. All those individuals accepted into the programme will be eligible for certificates of participation subject to attendance requirements (missing no more than the equivalent of 2 classes per term of the course[s] taken).
If you have any queries or comments, please email the Interim OSRJL Administrator, Ms Celeste Pan, or OCHJS Academic Registrar & OSRJL Coordinator, Ms Madeleine Trivasse, at osrjl@ochjs.ac.uk.