Roudy -
Here is a link to some info on Ma'Loula. You might want to make note of this sentence:
"It is known as the last surviving place where Western Aramaic (Aramaic of Jesus) is still spoken."
Ma'loula - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Really? How about you shut the **** up with your ignorance, you illiterate ******* moron? Was the grammar correct there? Ha ha ha!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Jews
Kurdish Jews or Kurdistani Jews (Hebrew: יהודי כורדיסטן*, Yehudei Kurdistan, lit. Jews of Kurdistan; Aramaic: יהודיא, Hozaye; Kurdish: Kurdên cihû) are the ancient Eastern Jewish communities, inhabiting the region known as Kurdistan in northern Mesopotamia, roughly covering parts of Iran, northern Iraq, Syria and eastern Turkey. Their clothing and culture is similar to neighbouring Kurdish Muslims and Christian Assyrians. Until their immigration to Israel in the 1940s and early 1950s, the Jews of Kurdistan lived as closed ethnic communities.
Kurdish Jews largely spoke Aramaic, with some speaking native Kurdish dialects. For example, in Iraqi Kurdistan, they spoke both Aramaic and the Kurmanji dialect. After coming to Israel however, those who spoke Kurmanji switched over to Aramaic. Today, the large majority of Kurdish Jews and their descendants live in Israel.
http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2005/4/kurdisrael1.htm
The passion of Aramaic-Kurdish Jews brought Aramaic to Israel 15.4.2005
By JAY BUSHINSKY
Trying to unravel the mysteries of Aramaic is like embarking on an odyssey across the deserts, mountains and valleys of the Middle East and onwards to Europe and North America.
It is an intellectual adventure that leads to an array of secular scholars, devout clergy and laymen - Jewish and Christian - who are experts in the history of these Semitic languages, which in some places still survive. They tell of Israeli rock groups that sing modern Aramaic songs, of popular radio and TV programs in Aramaic or Syriac broadcast in Canada, the US and Scandinavia and of remote villages in Syria and Iraq, where Aramaic, rather than Arabic, is the local vernacular.
Aramaic is revered by Jews because it alternates with Hebrew in the later books of the Bible, is the Talmud's principal tongue and comprises several of Judaism's most important prayers, including the mourners' kaddish. Christians respect it as the language spoken by Jesus Christ and his apostles, while its eastern version, Syriac, is used in the liturgies of the ancient churches of Iraq and Syria. Kurdish Jews brought Aramaic with them from northern Iraq, Iran and Turkey to Israel, where it is still spoken at home by the older generation, in much the same way Ashkenazi Jews speak Yiddish with their parents or grandparents. But they also regard it as evidence of their being descendants of the "Ten Lost Tribes" who were deported by the Assyrians nearly a century before the two remaining tribes of Judea were expelled by the Babylonians.
