I am pretty sure the aramaic sections of davening were written in aramaic because it was considered necessary for people to understand what they were saying. If this is true, why don't we say those sections in languages that more people understand today, like English or Hebrew?
EDIT: The Metzudah siddur says that Uva Letzion has Aramaic in it so people could understand it and the Koren siddur says, similarly, that it is there because the kaddish section is an "act of study" and says that "Aramaic was for a long time the language of study" (the bold is mine). I did not find anything related to this issue in the Artscroll.
Answer
I don't mean to open a can of worms here, but I believe that the answer I am about to provide is the truth.
Let's take a step back for a second and a re-think this question of languages in general.
There are vaguely, three reasons why we pray in Hebrew rather than the language we are born into.
- 1a. It's the Language of Gd and the supernatural.
- 2a. It's the historical language of the Jewish people. Thereby allowing any Jew from any country to communicate with us, and thus keep us unified.
- 3a. It's the language the prayer was written in.
Then we have the question as to why some prayers are not in Hebrew. For this, we also have 3 general answers.
- 1b. Angels only understand Hebrew, so this way we ensure our prayers go only to Gd.
- 2b. So that the average person can understand it.
- 3b. It's the language the prayer was originally written in.
When it comes to prayers not said in Hebrew, our common practice seems to be inconsistent. If the reason for saying a prayer is 2b, then there is no common practice to change any particular prayer into the language that most of the congregation speaks. Nobody in America says Kaddish in English, and nobody in Israel says Brich Shmei in Hebrew. However, if the reason for the prayers is 1b, then again we find many inconsistencies, with many extra prayers not said in Aramaic (for example, Barchu)
The explanations of 3a and 3b, also are not very satisfactory, because this just pushes the question back one step and asks why prayer X was written in language A instead of language B.
To me, this leaves only the following options for why a prayer is said in one language over an other.
- 1a. It's the Language of Gd and the supernatural.
- 1b. Angels only understand Hebrew, so this way we ensure our prayers go only to Gd.
- 2a: It's the historical language of the Jewish people. Thereby allowing any Jew from any country to communicate with us, and thus keep us unified.
However, this question is only asking about prayers said in Aramaic and not prayers said in Hebrew or English, so we are left with only 2a as a valid answer.
The truth is, that Aramaic might have developed for an unknown number of reasons, and it may have died out as a spoken language on a regular basis. However, many of our texts and indeed our prayers, are writing in Aramaic. Aramaic was not only the language of Babylon, it was also the language of Israel, and all Jews come from families that at one point or another spoke Aramaic. Aramaic has as much a connection to the Jewish people as Hebrew does. If over the many centuries in Galut, we ditched Aramaic for the languages in which we were born, then many prayers would not be able to be said by any Jew passing through said foreign country. The unity of the Jewish people would be jeopardized. It's not the case that Aramaic only was the language of study, it still is. The Gemorah is and parts of Tanach are written in Aramaic and the language is needed to be part of the long history of Jewish life and learning.
The basic premise that Aramaic is not as important as Hebrew to the Jewish people both culturally and for the purpose of education, is in my opinion, a flawed premise. And you can see the falsehood of that premise in the manner in which Aramaic has been kept in both our Prayers and our most holy of Books.
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