Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Challa

Steven E. Fassberg, Ph.D. (1984) in Semitic Philology, Harvard University, teaches in the Department of Hebrew Language, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has written on Hebrew and Aramaic linguistics including A Grammar of the Palestinian Targum Fragments (Scholars, 1990) and Studies in Biblical Syntax (Magnes, 1994).

"When one arrives at the texts, one encounters a pleasant surprise: the texts [...] are lively and involved tales of life in a country not too unfamiliar and in a time not too long ago—yet a life utterly different than what is familiar to most readers of a book on Neo-Aramaic grammar. [...] In a very impressive feat the original language (most often Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Kurdish, or Turkish) of every lexical item is given, together (occasionally) with a brief reference. [... For scholars used to dealing with a stable grammar, encountering the chaos of Shabbo’s speech is a humbling experience, and Fasberg is to be commended for bringing it to us." Aaron Koller, Review of Biblical Literature,[http://www.bookreviews.org] (2012)