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Looking for a good Jewish/Hebrew/Yiddish/Ladino/Aramaic dictionary?
Okay, quick: name all Jewish languages. Well, there's
Hebrew. And
Yiddish. Oh
yes - Ladino. And
Aramaic qualifies these last 2,000 years or so, though it
wasn't originally a Jewish language. (Rather like English, actually - not a
Jewish language, but one that a plurality of Jews in the world today speak.)
And Jews speak other languages as well. (Amharic, anyone?) If you're trying
to learn a Jewish language, you need a Jewish dictionary. You've come to the
right place. If you're a budding
Bible scholar, you need a few different Jewish
dictionaries - including lexicons and concordances of Hebrew and Aramaic words
in the Jewish Bible. You, too, have come to the right place. If you're a
translator of technical material from Hebrew into English, there are
dictionaries for you here. If you're looking for a children's dictionary of
Hebrew words, with nice pictures, that's here, too. Planning a trip to
Israel?
How about a Hebrew-English phrase book? Learning Amharic (the language that Jews
from Ethiopia speak)? You'll find a dictionary here, along with Ladino
dictionaries of several kinds.
Of course, there are other kinds of Jewish dictionaries besides dictionaries
of languages. There are historical dictionaries of various periods in
Jewish
history, including the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and others. How
about a dictionary of Jewish proverbs? Or a dictionary of Jewish names? Books of
Yiddish phrases that you may hear but don't quite understand? All on this very
page.
On our own bookshelf at home, we have the Alcalay Hebrew-English,
English-Hebrew dictionary in three volumes, plus a few small paperback editions
that we picked up as students but still use in the office today or let the kids
use for schoolwork. We bought our Alcalay years ago from a
sidewalk vendor in Jerusalem. If that's not convenient for you just now, you can
buy it
here. It's our personal favorite, with etymologies and plenty of references
to usage, both modern and biblical.
Here are Jewish dictionaries of all kinds:
Can't find it here? Try a search on Amazon.com:
Jewish dictionaries

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