Further afield
Where else to learn Judeo-Arabic
This site is one slice. The list below is everything we'd send a serious reader to next — lectures, dictionaries, oral histories, songs, and the closest thing to a course in spoken Judeo-Arabic. We've tried these. Where a resource is uneven, we say so.
Start here
If you want one place to start
These sites are the most complete public hubs for Judeo-Arabic learning materials — videos, audio, sample texts, transliteration charts, keyboards, dictionaries.
- Jewish Language Project — Judeo-Arabic page
The single richest public hub. Run by Sarah Bunin Benor (HUC). Sample audio, transliteration charts, a virtual JA keyboard, a JA↔Arabic transliterator, and links to the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages course.
- Endangered Language Alliance — Jewish Languages
NYC-based documentation work with remaining Judeo-Arabic speakers.
- Living Tongues Institute — Jewish Languages overview
Broader survey of endangered Jewish languages, Judeo-Arabic among them.
Video lectures
Scholars on YouTube
Free, English-language lectures. Goldstein's Mandel lecture is the best one-hour starting point.
- Miriam Goldstein — Judeo-Arabic Literature 101 and Toledot Yeshu among Near Eastern JewsVideo · 1 hr
Pearl and Jack Mandel Lecture in Jewish Studies. The best one-hour intro.
- Miriam Goldstein — Speaking, Reading and Writing Arabic: A Revolution in Jewish HistoryVideo · 1 hr
Companion overview talk.
- Miriam Goldstein — Jews and Arabic (full playlist)Video · series
Multi-part series for going deeper.
- Benjamin Hary — The Language of the Jews of IslamVideo
Foundational overview by the late Benjamin Hary, who built the field of modern Judeo-Arabic studies.
- Brad Sabin Hill — Oxford and the Printing of Judeo-ArabicVideo
On the surprising printed corpus of Judeo-Arabic, 18th–20th c.
- Beit Avi Chai — Jews and Arabic seriesVideo · Hebrew
Hebrew-language lectures from Beit Avi Chai's series.
Reading & reference
Books, dictionaries, corpora
- E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (Perseus TEI)
The 19th-century classical-Arabic reference paraphrased for this site's tap-to-define glosses.
- Joshua Blau, Dictionary of Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Texts
The standard dictionary of medieval Judeo-Arabic; consulted for a small set of divergence notes on the Tafsir reader.
- Assaf Bar-Moshe, Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic (UCL Press)Free PDF
Modern Baghdadi dialect — free open-access PDF.
- Jonas Sibony — Moroccan Judeo-Arabic dictionaryFree
The only free online Moroccan JA dictionary.
- Bulbul — Judeo-Arabic corpus
Searchable text corpus of JA religious and secular literature.
- Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society
Digitized Judeo-Arabic manuscripts (registration required).
- Princeton Geniza ProjectFree
Cairo Geniza documents in transcription, many JA.
- University of Michigan — Judeo-Arabic research guide
Annotated bibliography of dictionaries, grammars, literature surveys.
Spoken Judeo-Arabic
Hearing it — the honest answer
There is essentially no Duolingo-style course in spoken Judeo-Arabic. Most living speakers are over 80. The realistic options are oral-history archives (to hear it spoken) and modern Arabic-dialect courses for the underlying vernacular (Iraqi, Moroccan, Yemeni).
- Sephardi VoicesOral history
Filmed oral histories. Audio-visual accounts in Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, and Haquetia alongside the main interviews.
- JIMENA Oral History ProgramOral history
Mizrahi and Sephardic testimonies from MENA Jews.
- TalkInArabic — Iraqi dialect
Closest practical proxy for spoken Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic.
- SpeakMoroccan
Modern Moroccan Darija — the substrate of Moroccan JA.
- NaTakallam — 1-on-1 private tutors
Native tutors in Yemeni, Iraqi, Egyptian, Levantine dialects.
- Yemen Institute for Arabic Language
Yemeni Arabic online — closest to the vernacular of Yemenite Jews.
Music & oral archives
Listen
- A-WA — Habib GalbiMusic
Three Yemenite-Israeli sisters, traditional Yemenite Judeo-Arabic poetry set to contemporary beats.
- Moshe Habusha on Pizmonim.orgMusic
Iraqi-Israeli ḥazzan; piyyutim and JA liturgical recordings.
- Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Sound Archive (Penn)
Major sound archive including Judeo-Arabic and Mizrahi/Sephardi music.
- Diarna — Geo-Museum of Mizrahi Life
The name itself is Judeo-Arabic: "our homes." Photographs, oral histories, mapped to Google Earth.
Podcasts
Audio you can subscribe to
There is no dedicated Judeo-Arabic podcast on Spotify yet. These are the closest things.
- Torah In Motion — Rabbis and Karaites (Goldstein)Podcast
Miriam Goldstein on Karaite-Rabbanite relations.
- Jewish Women's Archive — JIMENA: Mizrahi and Sephardi VoicesPodcast
Episode 63 of Can We Talk?
Know a resource that belongs on this list? We'd love to add it.
Write: freedmaneli@gmail.com.