ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an approach to analyzing Hebrew that goes beyond the liturgical and canonical textual experiences of religious praxis. It offers a semiotics of Hebrew that takes into account the ways in which Hebrew materiality constructs new meanings and identifications for American Jews. The Hebrew Indeed, in the highly multilingual palette of American society, Hebrew is not a commonly spoken language, nor is it widely taught to American children. The chapter also explores and theorizes the complex nature of the circulation of language in the linguistic landscape and its involvement in the construction of different social spaces and social identities. Hebrew materiality is not limited to a strict graphic or referential representation. Instead, these materializations include words written in Hebrew letters, English words that mimic Hebrew orthography, multilingual and homophonic puns, and word games. The chapter analyzes how Hebrew enters into a complex constitutive relation with other categories of social meaning and materializes new and creative constructions of Jewishness.
