New ancient Aramaic literature alert: Judith Kagan’s Hebrew-language Jewish fantasy novel חרשתא (‘sorceress’) features Aramaic-speaking shedim (demons). Her husband, an accomplished researcher in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic and the translator of the Aramaic elements of the book, writes:
The book contains a fair amount of Aramaic – not just in the title and certain key terms, there are entire dialogues written in Aramaic. There is even some dialectological sophistication, for the ten people in the world who will appreciate it: the high-ranking shedim speak a classical Aramaic, which resembles Targum Onkelos, while the lower-ranking shedim speak a conversational Babylonian Aramaic.
(Itai Kagan, personal communication, cited with permission; translation mine)
Hard copies ship exclusively to Israel (see the author’s website), while the ebook is available worldwide.
Benjamin Suchard 
Leave a comment