ABSTRACT
Among Jews in general and more especially among those disposed to lernen, the significance of words cannot be minimized. For them, "language is not a reflection of life, but the mirror itself," refracting the character and content of matters Jewish. Those Jews of Europe who in the early years of the emancipation and Jewish enlightenment sought or learned to speak the non-Jewish languages of the area were also the ones most likely to cease lernen as part of their disengagement from most active involvement with religious or parochial matters. As in poetry, the words associated with lernen have the power to transform the speakers and listeners, to sweep them away from their normal way of speaking into another realm of syntax, semantics, and sound. The crossroads of lernen and language, where saying, doing, and being mingle with one another, stands at the end of a long road of oral tradition.
