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Romeo and Juliet in European Culture
Edited by Juan F. Cerdá, Dirk Delabastita and Keith Gregor
[Shakespeare in European Culture 1] 2017
► pp. 119–138

Chapter 6
Judaisation in the first Hebrew translation of Romeo and Juliet

| University College London

Ram and Jael (Salkinson 1878), the earliest Hebrew version of Romeo and Juliet, is a highly domesticating translation containing numerous Jewish cultural elements. This is attributable to the fact that the translation formed part of an ideologically loaded Jewish Enlightenment initiative to establish a European-style literary canon in Hebrew and reflecting Jewish values at a time when the language was still almost solely a written medium prior to its late nineteenth-century re-vernacularisation in Palestine. This chapter discusses the unusual sociolinguistic background to Ram and Jael and analyses its main Judaising features, which include the treatment of non-Jewish names; holidays and rituals; establishments; oaths and expressions; mythological figures; and foreign languages, as well as the insertion of biblical verses.

Keywords: Hebrew, Jewish, Enlightenment, Haskalah, domesticating, translation, Judaism, biblical, Maskilic, Eastern Europe, Isaac Salkinson
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Names
  • Christian holidays and rituals
  • Christian establishments
  • Oaths and expressions
  • Mythological figures
  • Foreign language
  • Shibbuṣ
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.1.07kah
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