Hebrew in New Zealand

Hello

Having grown up in New Zealand's small Jewish community, I am incredibly passionate about generating a deeper understanding of how our unique context influences how we identify Jewishly. My linguistics training at undergraduate and Master's level inspired me to investigate how our community views and uses Hebrew, leading to the formulation of my PhD research project. 

My Previous Work

Language maintenance, family values and imagined futures

Journal article

Building off a framework developed by Michal Tannenbaum in 2012, this research looks at how immigrant parents’ language transmission efforts are formulated in relation to “imagined futures” they desire for their children.
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Heritage language maintenance in New Zealand: The case of Hebrew

Master's thesis

Through a lens called "Family Language Policy," this thesis looked at how Jewish-Israeli immigrants in New Zealand maintain Hebrew with their children and to what extent this was connected to their conceptualisation of Jewishness. 
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My PhD Research

My PhD research looks at how Jewish families in New Zealand use, transmit and evaluate Hebrew, other Jewish languages and ways of speaking within the wider context of their family values system. The results are expected to not only deepen understandings of New Zealand Jewry but also provide insights applicable to other minority language transmission contexts. 
My project needs YOUR help. Your experiences and beliefs are an intrinsic component of my research. Anyone who has lived in New Zealand for at least one year, is over the age of 18 and identifies Jewishly in some way can participate in the first phase - click below to get started!

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