This page will be a list of distinctive words - mostly from Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic - that are used in the speech and/or writing of English-speaking Jews. Many of these words appear in one or more of the published dictionaries (see list below), but many are recorded here for the first time.

Started as a class project for Dr. Sarah Bunin Benor's Hebrew Union College course "American Jewish Language and Identity in Historical Context," this lexicon is in its early phase. Ideally, it will be a searchable database designed by professional programmers and updated regularly by a team of volunteers. If you are interested in participating in this exciting project by collecting data, editing the lexicon, or contributing financially, please e-mail Dr. Benor: sbenor @ huc.edu (remove the spaces).





Dictionaries, listed here with the nicknames used in the database:

Glinert: Lewis Glinert, The Joys of Hebrew (New York, 1992).
Weiser: Chaim Weiser, Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish, (Northvale, 1995).
JPS: Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic, The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words (Philadelphia, 2001).
Steinmetz: Sol Steinmetz, Dictionary of Jewish Usage: A Popular Guide to the Use of Jewish Terms (Lanham, MD, 2005).
Yiddish: Sol Steinmetz, Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America. (Tuscaloosa, 1986).