יעצט איז די צייט פאר די לינגוויסטן צו אנאלאזירן די קניידל אפעיר.
What would you have done if you had been a contestant and gotten “knaidel”?As a linguist, I would have given ten possible spellings, explained what various spellings indicate about the people who write them, and then protested the English spelling bee’s use of loanwords from a language that does not use Latin script. Clearly, I would have lost. But I gained something out of this situation – a story about the relationship between language and identity, one that will most likely find its way into my next book.
Sarah Bunin Benor is Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism and the creator of the Jewish English Lexicon.