Hebrew Words in Jewish Languages

List Hebrew/Yiddish words children already use (challah, mensch, kvell, shalom).

Children wonder and discover; you facilitate more than you lecture.

• How are Jewish people connected linguistically across time and place?
• How am I connected to Jewish languages?

Across the world, Jews have woven Hebrew into their everyday languages — from Judeo-Arabic to Jewish English. Children already use many such words without realizing it.

• Mensch — a good person
• Kvell — to burst with pride
• Mazal — luck

“Are these words ‘real’ Hebrew?”

They come from Hebrew and Yiddish and live on in how Jews talk today — you speak a Jewish language!

• Children learn Jews everywhere used Hebrew words in daily speech, with diverse pronunciations.
• Children recognize Hebrew words in their own (Jewish) English and add new ones.

Validate every family’s words and pronunciations — Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi alike.

Folktale. How ‘Mensch’ Crossed the Ocean (Yiddish) — the journey of a single Jewish word into everyday English.

Changemaker. Aaron Lansky — started collecting Yiddish books nobody wanted at twenty-three and rescued over a million of them, because a language dies when the last person stops reading it.

Whose words are the Jewish words I already use without realizing it?

“We found Hebrew words we already use! Try at home: notice the Jewish words your family says.”