Welcome, everybody. I'm going to take this chair for that kind of information. I'm delighted. It's a genuine personal pleasure to be able to introduce to you Dr. and Mugabe here today. And when I was thinking how to introduce Almog, I was a bit confused because there are so many ways to to talk about what his work has done to influence the discourse in Israel. That would take, I think, lecturing for themselves.
So I would just say that among other things, for those of you who don't know, Dr. Baha Almog is a poet, a novelist and a literary critic. He's going to be doing his post-doctoral work in the prestigious Polanski program at the Valley Institute in Jerusalem. On the topic that carries the same title as this talk today between Hebrew and Arabic, focusing on the literature of Jews in the 20th century Arab lands or Arab countries.
No, it would be quite impossible to capture all of Dr. Bihar's public activities in a short presentation, and I would suffice by saying that he has managed to challenge the prevailing socio political discourse in Israel on matters of ethnicity, tradition, nationalism and social justice.
And he has singlehandedly articulated and sounded a voice that has been largely absent from the Israeli public sphere and has since been gaining momentum as one of the most important developments in contemporary Israel. So in terms of the structure of today's seminar, we are going to do slightly different structure. We will begin by viewing a movie. A short movie that is based upon the first short story that Almog published way back in 2000 2005.
A short story that won the Hearts Short Story contest and actually made your name for the first time. And ever since it only grew. The the short story, which then became also the title is titled Enemy Really Good. And it is also the title of Almog first collection of short stories that was published not not too long ago. And we going watching the movie. I you.
I think we'll go on from here by first letting Almog say a few words, maybe put the movie in context, especially the political context in which it emerged. And then we'll have a conversation. Okay. Well, thanks a lot and happy to be here. And maybe I'll start to connect it. The movie was based started from a story called Enemy the Lord, and that story was born from a poem called My Arabic is Mute. So maybe now I'll first read the poem, and from there I'm going again forward in time.
So I'll start from the Hebrew of the poem. I was virtually limited out of virtually limited Hanukah in Hagel and McAllister thoughts my livelihood similar yes. Shanab of Iran connection MC Letter NFC Mr. Terror to Me Behnam Chabahar My Holy Tree Cell Every Valley Vitiligo. Holy [INAUDIBLE]. My thoughts.
It's it's been a dream episode of screening machine me our collaborator Beam Man available until Elohim with the poem that allows me to connect to the salon positivity thoughts my glue your the your two idols FATA Olga Sujatha Sujatha been the baby Sara Reagan Obama the Reagan of Russia he meets them same it of course my vacation that's hard labour hours of which really poor credit because Abhishek it lately great village
should love a dream called Africa be sharia alan allen on call should tell available hov surely fit that the hood must be I'll you from a good name and I'm in a hood and nominally Yahoo Valley for Italy for Rashid Lee for me fresh reshet my old Arabia tickle so Russell the symbol Nafisi had do and that of our be Kalima the nam ve Hawaii Malaysia enough Sirhan the stab you may never know Layla had facilitated Liberia well
liberated to assume that the Raqqa Dubai in a coffee washer of it is Iran to smell Saudi Halil Jamali that the NAB Duma law will bulldoze Iran while in that Denzel with for someone to [INAUDIBLE] of enough CIA lawyer rotten by rotten all to have adjusted the more thought and more thought.
And by now Iraqi like me how laughable to not hear toon were lathered on Maxwell then come issue full Canada bottle of boom virat kohli be her all ability her if that the nature will be something Liberia whatever Missoula as the crown Macaulay to put in on our boy behind Alan Allen mama it should be a more of a story to or how we attend to share we little bundle more than fairly and I mean Alia who then?
I mean Alia who? Well, he breached this somehow iron and somehow leader via May Arabic is mute, strangled at the throat, cursing itself without uttering a word, sleeps in the airless shelters of my soul, hiding from relatives behind the Hebrew blinds and my Hebrew is raging, running between rooms and neighbours, balconies, making its voice heard in public prophesies in the coming of God and of bulldozers.
And then it holes up in the living room thinking itself, so open in the language of its skin, so hidden between the pages of its flesh and moment, naked moment later dressed. It curls up into the armchair and begs itself for forgiveness. My Arabic is petrified. It quietly pretends to be Hebrew and whispers to friends whenever somebody knocks at her gate. Alan Allen. Welcome. And whenever a policeman passes it in the street, it produces an I.D. card and points out the protective clause.
And I mean only a hood and I mean only a hood. I am a Jew and my Hebrew is deaf, sometimes very deaf. So the poem was written a long time ago now. 14 years ago, I think, and. It was, or like going back or connecting it to to my family or to where, where and why and how the poem was written. And from that, the story I like. My mother was born in Baghdad in the name of some Iraqi dad, and she came to Israel at the age of five at 1950.
And when she was ten years old, the educator from school came home and asked her parents to stop speaking with her in Arabic, which was the policy like the role the Education Ministry and teachers played in this lingual tragedy. And they didn't stop speaking with her in Arabic. They always continued. But from that day, she stopped answering them in Arabic and moved to answering them in Hebrew, becoming passive in Arabic, understanding it, but never using it.
And that was the situation I was born to. And it seemed. Natural, in a sense, as a child. Many things seem natural. The idea that that you don't speak the language of your grandparents or that you don't have the same accent as your grandparents might be. Like every two generations, you know that also, migrant children will have another language and another accent. And and. But later on, when I was 17 and in the last half year of my my grandmother from Baghdad, she was the main thing.
And she forgot Hebrew and went back to speak only Arabic. And then it became clear that it's not just a coincidence or not just something natural, but that outer force, outer to the family entered the family and changed it in a way that we will not be able to say goodbye or at that stage. It also, it was clear, like the two older sisters of my mother continued to speak in Arabic and my cousins from that side could speak with her. And we and the children of the younger sisters could not.
And and then later on. So that was the moment of of understanding the the place or the drama of the languages in a different way. But it didn't make me do something at that stage. To ask questions, but not doing something. Later on, a little later on, when I moved to to Jerusalem at the age of age of 22 or something like that. And that's something that enters like the movie in a different way than then it enters the the story in.
But the the way or inside the conflict and the violence the times of were like, I would say you find out the only place and time that one Mizrahi will speak to another one in Arabic will be as a policeman and a suspect. So you find, like the language comes back as a language of suspicion in the streets of of Jerusalem. And and at those moments, you also you imagine, like you want to answer in Arabic like this situation and.
And then like after writing this story, it this poem first it took me a month to understand that the poem. Like its name is my Arabic is mute. But I understood a few months later that the poem begins in the words my Arabic. However, virtually that it was for the first time that I could say that the Arabic is is mine. And later on, a story was born from me, which is, of course, connected to it, and later on to the movie after the story.
And, you know, poetry and prose doesn't change the world, but sometimes it changes your life. It's like the things that you happen to write in the sense that after writing the poem in the story, I felt that if I will not go now and learn Arabic, I will. All my life. I will write variations on this poem and this story of like the moment of you knocking your head at the wall of forgetfulness or of and and and I went.
So I went to learn Arabic. And, you know, there is the line from Al flying over Layla 1000 nights in a night when Shahrazad is saying that regret only always comes when it's too late. Right. In any other way, it wouldn't be a regret. And it was, of course, like you go to study Arabic after you cannot study Arabic at home and you have to go and study it outside at the university. And it's of course, also different kinds of Arabic like the.
But did you do Arabic from home and the facade, the literary Arabic from the from I university. So that was so that was that moment in and later on, like when publishing it into a book, the poem and later on the story, I couldn't leave them alone in, in Hebrew in the in the book, but added also the Arabic translation as I felt that both with the poem and the story, the translation became part of them, of the story itself, and doing something with it.
It's like at that stage, the poem was translated to Arabic by a Palestinian poet. A remarkable chapter and story by an Egyptian translator, Mohammed onboard. Hmm. Later on. And. And. And I'll. She read like in at the end of of my second book of poetry, I included the first poem that I wrote in Hebrew and translated myself into Arabic. I will read it with no English translation. I hope some of you know one of the languages, but I'll explain.
It's also like it's a poem that can only live in Hebrew or Arabic. So Amal Tikva, Iman Tikva, Hayati Elachi or this man simply flashing beans for their thumb. Levine Those was named seem. Simmons. I've been calling about Billy B Amal here. Tikva. Hayati here. Haya. Linda Matilda Kelani. Vanessa Fethiye on film what with mia all the shady the affair about on the part of me that was like in the first poem that I read and that was translated into Arabic.
If you if some of you followed the Arabic, then, then the poem in Arabic is only in Arabic, like the poem in Hebrew includes Arabic into it. And the poem in Arabic, like what was in Hebrew is translated into Arabic, and what was in Arabic is remains in Arabic. And after going to the Arabic, I understood that just as. Standing in front of of the Hebrew. I wish to change the Hebrew with the Arabic. I also wish to change my Arabic with Judeo Arabic and Hebrew. And so so translating myself.
And in this poem I could include the Hebrew inside the Arabic. And then also it's like it's correct Hebrew, meaning that like, of course, accent wise or pronunciation wise, the way we pronounce Hebrew today is like over saying, like the Egyptian the Iraqi Hebrew accent was equivalent to the Arabic accent in the meaning of the using of the different words, the difference between 12 and poor, between pa and calf, between vet and wow and so on.
So like the Hebrew words Tikva, which like in Hebrew, I can't read the Tikva, but, but in Arabic I can say that was like in a way, a second stage. I'll, I'll finish with a short poem, which is, again, untranslatable. But that's in, in my third poetry book, it's there is a zehner called Truce. And a truce is woven or interwoven for poems like in the in the Putin, the liturgical poetry.
But you find it also in other places in which poems that are half Hebrew and half the Jewish language Arabic or Judeo Spanish or so on. And like, it's, it's, it's also a classical zannier like you can find it like in the book of Muhammad of Alpha received from the 11th century. He has a poem in the book of the Kimani which is like every line is the third in Hebrew, third in Aramaic and third in Arabic. So there is no translation.
It's the sentence itself, like every stanza begins in two words in Hebrew, continuous with two words in our mind and ends in two words in in Arabic. And now, when it's in his book, it's it's a way of saying, you know, my book is for educated people. Educated people know three languages, Hebrew, arithmetic and Arabic. If you can read it, close the book and find other books that will suit you.
You're not my reader. So they are like the Middle Ages way of using my prose was elitist in the sense of playing with language in a way that is only open to multilingual readers later on, like from 16th century onward in the liturgical poetry. The Metro is a place a different role in the sense of if you invite or you dismiss readership in the sense that it was like after the 16th century and you liturgical poetry cannot enter them and the services themselves inside the synagogue,
it's all like it's canonised. And no new poem will replace older poem for the the holy days for Shabbat and so on. And the place to write to new liturgical poetry is, is not for the liturgical, but for the part of the liturgical. It's not for the service in in the synagogue, but it's for the family gathering. It's for holy days. It was it's for weddings and for breath and so on. But like earlier, liturgical poets could have imagined that they're writing for the synagogue.
So everyone understand Hebrew or Hebrew and Aramaic, even though, of course, not every community, all people in the synagogue knew. But. But when this poetry is for family gathering or for other events, it is clear that the majority does not understand Hebrew. Right, as women were not educated in Hebrew. And children don't know it. And at least some of the older men don't know it. So it's. And then like the Montrose, its purpose was inviting.
Like at least you will understand half of the poem and in that sense. So I don't know if I'm in the inviting or the elitist side. Yeah. That was the purpose of this opening. So, so I will read this message to listening. L.A. Shia. He told the Walla Walla family of family, many Bedouin southeast of lots me lots of that the one Mark Colby Gumbel there or Bill Hickok columnar or not totally me men looking at how often was Kevin Hoagland?
How old can a house just smell like to Elizabeth Savitsky at the club walking Wapakoneta where Cliff Lee be been my hot dog your meme a him a yam but Wheeler wasn't an omission in him cave fantasy to listen if Carl and the CIA he told the. Thank you. Thank you so much. I wasn't warming it for a discussion and I'm going to use the whatever privilege I have to just suggest that first, maybe you can say a few more words about the immediate political implications of this.
I mean, you started you already brought the state into your mother's house. The state made the break. The state's silence. One of the greatest tragedies that happened in Israel and is rarely mentioned is the erasure of so many Jewish languages in the Jewish state, which was directed to state policy. And the question is, now that you have gone through this personal process and that you present this model of an alternative to the silencing and the erasure.
How do you think how do you see this is tied to politics or do you see this as politics? Okay. So the erasure of the languages, you know, it's it's a national modernistic trend in the sense and in that sense, it's not only Israeli like it's, you know, the French nationhood making the Parisian French as this state language and the provincial in the south and the languages in the north forbidden at schools. And the fact that the schools are the tool of the central state to to make this change.
And later on, like Spain with Castilian, Spanish over the Catalan and Galician and of course the Basque and so on. So that's like a modern nation. And of course, like in Britain, Vice, the Welsh, the Scottish, the Irish and so on. And this. Perception that nationhood. Deserves or needs. Only one language. There is one national language in all other languages need to be banned in order for the nation to expand to its political borders and so on.
That's that's an idea that grew in this French, Spanish and so on. And, and with like 19/20 century, the colonialism and nationalism, Zionist and also Arab nationalism. It this idea was accepted or promoted by them. Now, of course, each situation is is different in its lingual situations. So in in the in the Israeli case, the Hebrew was also a question of revival language as a spoken language and less. Late 19th century. Early 20th century.
And the, of course, Jewish languages were perceived as a threat to the ability to create a national language and through it and national imagination, national nationhood. And that had different stages. Like in the early stage, Yiddish was the big enemy, as it was the language of the politicians making or enforcing this. And their attitude towards Yiddish was like they in a way, committed suicide to their mother tongue in themselves in order to change it.
Like there is like two interesting quotes about the one is like 100 years ago there was this famous lecture on on Yiddish culture and language in New York. Oh, I remember in the second the lecture, but he spoke about like he tried to justify that Yiddish is the language and not the jargon. Right. That was the word used in the sense in a modernistic sense that, you know, as jargon is something that you shouldn't teach at schools, at universities. Language is the thing you teach.
I hope today it's not as such. And he gave this one hour lecture and someone from the audience in Yiddish told him, like, you know, you told us a long story about why here this is a language and not the jargon. But let me tell you in a sentence, you don't need all that language is the jargon with an army. Right. In the sense that the decision who decides what, what is a dialect and what is a real language is the state tools of sovereignty, army, sometimes universities, education ministry.
So on that make it into a language and any in that that's of course like them like this modernistic precepts and also that that jargon is a problem because it's a lower language or infected language or a language that is not pure because it's combined out of different languages. Now, of course, and many professors set army to prove how languages are pure and jargons are impure.
And today it will seem some of those research is quite ridiculous in the sense that of course all languages are inter related to other languages. And and also of course about the question what's so wrong about this interrelation between languages. Now with an end to the Israeli case in specific like. In 1943, there was like there was a came a refugee from one of the camps in Europe that she succeeded in escaping.
And she came to Tel Aviv and gave a testimony about what's happening now in Europe, in the concentration camps. And she gave this talk, of course, in Yiddish. She didn't know any other language to give the testimony in. And Ben-Gurion was the first one to speak after her.
And the first thing he had to say after hearing this testimony from inside the camps for the first time and in his first words, where we just heard a foreign and an awkward language, a foreign and an awkward language repeated it twice. Yeah. So it's a foreign language. His mother tongue is foreign and it's awkward. It's and it's a fuzzy rabbit to limit his words.
And now with with the Arabic inside it, like after 48 and after the majority of the Jews of the Arab world came to Israel between 48 and 1970, like it 1948, 1 million Jews spoke Arabic as their mother tongue and coming to Israel. Their language was perceived as like in the general perception of like languages of the exile that should be negated, but also specifically as the enemy's language and also specifically like in colonial terms, as an inferior language.
Right. So it's a jargon because it's Judeo Arabic. It's so it's not a real language. It's an auxiliary language is an inferior language, and it's the enemy's language. So of course the attitude towards it was quite harsh and, and, and didn't end. And I think like. So like in a sense, like the loss of Arabic wasn't like the it with relation to the Yiddish for the first like generations. It was in a way, committing suicide to your own mother tongue with Arabic.
It was a murder. It was someone else coming and murdering your your mother tongue. So, of course, like the emotional connection to whether you committed suicide or was murdered is is different. The second difference is the way that it continues into the present. It's something that never ended in the sense that this war against the Arabic language, against Arabic culture is continuing. And the language is is used in derogatory connections.
Until now. Every. Every time. Every. In different contexts. But but in that sense, it is a continuing situation now about the changes. Yeah. It's like I do think that like the, the early ideals of negation of the diaspora and, and like the ideal of the Sabra, like the one who was born in Israel and is a real Israel and so on.
We're like myth that we're very central in the fifties and sixties, but, but from the seventies, eighties, nineties, they are quite weaker in a sense that, you know, my parents weren't born in Israel and they had to imitate or to to they wish to be as if they were born in Israel and they had to imitate someone else. Our generation, when you were already born, like you didn't have a specific someone to to aspire to as as a model. So that the thing that was strong loosened up in a sense.
It's also that like the generational process in the sense that the moment of complete loss came. And that's frightening. Like as children, ten year old after immigration, going out of your language, to the language in which you would be able to become part of society and so on. That's something, of course, very natural that happens in many cases of of immigration and so on. But at the third generation, what you get, you understand that soon the language will die.
It's not just that that personally your your adopting another language is it's that your communities, the community language will will disappear from the world will die. And I think that that fear, which is also connected to a specific time frame, is also something that drives at least the wish for a change. So I think that like in in music, there were large changes in the sense of like younger generation. Going back to singing and recording in Arabic, and there are many examples to it.
I think that like in literature, it's harder because they're adopting that first, because I think that, you know, music is something that is like harder to to embrace. It's still language that you heard and that you can go back to and studying a language to speak and to read, to write. It's, of course, a longer process. I think that technology also made many of the change is possible in the sense that between 1949 and 1967, the borders were closed.
Like people who immigrated only read you passed the borders. There were no newspapers passing, of course, no television, no books, nothing you couldn't call. There were no phones between Israel and the Arab world. It was only radio. After 67, some of the borders were open and to transmission between them.
But from the nineties you got, of course, all the satellite TV and later on Internet and and in the last ten years or more specifically through YouTube and Facebook, which are like areas in which reconnecting between people from Israel and people from the original countries and specifically Iraq, but in many other cases as well, are in a way flourishing. Like it's not a majority that is connected to it, but it is something that is happening in in wide and wider scales.
So those things make it possible. Now, I think looking at the future like maybe something personal and something more general and and continue from there. But like personally, I, of course, I understood after my children were born that all that project of teaching yourself the language is like it's it's not enough in any way that like you yourself, like, so you understand at the age of 22 and you do the effort and as one person personally, something that can be changed.
But in order for your children to learn the language, you need to change the entire society like you need to. To make Arabic is mandatory in the schools. It's it it's not something that will work on the inside the family because the street and the culture in the state are again powerful enough to suppress it. And in that sense, like, you're afraid that again, like your children will have to go to the age of 22 to discover the the erasure.
So that's like one perspective that changed and raised again, other questions about it and it to do inside the future.
Like I think that like for Judea Arabic culture or Mizrahi culture and, and so on, like them, the prospects for the future are connected to the synagogues and the Palestinians like in the sense that the synagogues are the place that that some of the tradition and music and accent were preserved or continued for because they have their place as like they became part of the holy and as something that we need to to give from generation to generation.
So. So the synagogues are one part of of this of the longer memory and the ability to. SCHRIEVER And the second is, of course, like, you know, the distance between Baghdad and Jerusalem is not that big. And Jerusalem is a bilingual city. And it's it's not wishing to be bilingual, but it is. And Israel is bilingual. And in that sense, of course, like going back to study, the Arabic is, of course, connected to the connection to the Palestinians there.
They're like, ironically enough, like if in 1948, there were 1 million Jews speak in Arabic. Today there are 1 million Palestinian citizens of Israel speaking Hebrew. So this in-between situation between the languages and the ability to make it not just as two communities that are marginalised in the story, the Jews of the Arab and Muslim world and the Palestinian citizens of Israel, but making it a prospect or an opportunity for the future.
That's wonderful. Thank you. Let's open for questions and cover the discussion. Jeb Bush Well, I have a question, but I don't want to be the first, you know, the first. Yes. So this is sort of obtuse, I suppose, but sort of in terms of of sort of playing to going to learn Arabic intentionally in an academic space. Theoretically, you learn right through how how he used to incorporate speaking and writing in relation to your thinking about your linguistic heritage reflections.
And you know, I read to Iraqi air. Yes. Arabic. And is is that debate difficult? Is it easy? Is it something that concerns you? Yeah, it from the end it concerns and it's not easy. And now going back to the beginning of the of the questions is, as you all know or some of you know. Right. Like that Arabic is not one language. Right. And it's mainly separated between the literary first half Arabic and the spoken amir, which is, of course, different in different parts of the Arab world and into it.
What is Judeo Arabic? Right. And like when we use the term Judeo Arabic, which is a modern term, like usually, you know, Jews, when they spoke to one another at the community, they just called their language Arabic. And when they spoke to non-Jewish Arabs, they called the language Jewish. And only when they met someone who is neither Jewish nor Arab did they call into their Arabic.
Right. So it's it's a name that is wasn't used that much because you need it only when you speak totally out of the context of your language to someone who doesn't know anything about it. And so but when we speak about Jew are Arabic, we speak about two or three different things. Like you have classical Jew, they are big, which is like the way from, let's say, ten, ten century Saudi ago. And who translated the the Bible, the field.
He he wrote it in an Arabic that is close to the first half, to the classical later Arabic in Hebrew characters. And in, of course, like the nature of this classical Jew, they are big. It's close to first habit. It has one letter, less than four signs that have 28 letters, 27. It is written in Hebrew alphabet. And when you enter into it words or expression in Hebrew or Aramaic, there are just part of the text. Like, you don't translate them, you don't explain them.
That's like the classical sense of what is today. Arabic, modern or late Judeo Arabic was written today are big that is closer to the spoken dialects. That was like post 16th century Judeo Arabic written to their Arabic. And that's of course not one language like Judeo classical Jew. The Arabic is one was one from Iraq to Morocco and envelopes from Holland to to Yemen. Um, modern written Judeo Arabic was separated to the areas of of the Arab world.
So between the Maastricht, the Arab East, Yemen, Egypt and the Maghreb, the Arab West, North Africa. And so and the third meaning is, of course, the spoken Judeo Arabic, which was separated to many dialects, not just to for like four groups, but in each one of them, of course, different dialects. So now today, like in a sense, a will may be connected also to a program for be a we started this year of they are big cultural studies the University of Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva and like to teach the.
Students like we first send them to study first. Why? First rate. It's cheaper. It's already a course in the university teaching first how and to create and complete alternative that from the starts start teachers. They are big, will be very expensive and will take us time to develop. That's a good reason. The second reason is, of course, that we want them not only to like to not only to be inside and hermetic world of ju.
They are big that is imagine li disconnected to the first and then general Arabic culture. Right. So it's, it's clear that the need for this, huh? Because like, at least like in the classical Jew, they are big. Of course, the writers of Jew, they are big read first, huh? Right. And of course you have examples from the Jahangir time, the time before the Islam, some in the Middle Ages, in many the modern times of the Jews of the Arab world who moved to write in first half.
So that's also like one of the options of the literature of Jews of the Arab world. Some of it was written originally in first hand, not injured. They are big. So that's of course also arisen from there. You can move easily enough to classical Jew. They are Arabic. When you have the first hand, you have Hebrew, you are quite near and of course in one year will get you there. Modern Jew. They are big in the meaning of modern written to they are big and modern spoken to.
They are Arabic. That's of course harder in the sense that you need seven different forces for four different dialects and so on. So that's something that I'm not sure we would be able to suggest at each time. The complete variety of different kinds of of Jew they are. But there it, it should be through cooperation between different universities or different years in order to to make it possible to switch between the different dialects a long periods of time.
So. So that's a part or of a solution, let's say. But nothing solves nothing but in general. But again, like of course, of course it's you know, you always do things to late, like personally and culturally. So there are things that that can you can like there is a limit for the possibility to to change, like to go back to and there are things that are that are really lost, right? So like today they are centres of recording in the languages and so on.
So it's almost too late but they do records and, and you have also like out of the universities programs, courses for specific dialects like for Yemenite Arabic and for Moroccan Arabic and for Iraqi Arabic. It's something that there is public that that wants to, to do it like not only at the age of this of the students, but other generations who who have already some of the dialect from home. But they want to try and and go back to it.
So so as a general process, there are also like there are other things happening at the same time that are that are going going there. Yeah. Not sure I answered fully. I'll try to think. Yeah. I said to and I said, if I have one question without a question, I would only try one or two. I noticed that actually do more significance to this because in a lot of what he was saying, the person who was still busy, he kept on saying, I know many of you who I have not met.
You know that ten doesn't exist in narrative, but now it is here. I know Delhi. Oh I know you media who listen me from that you know why is that term introduced by obosi by juju who translated that form which means from the Jews from the Jewish population. Wants to see. Yeah I know. Jewish temple, my Hebrew you know. Yeah. But how does that he is somebody who, who wants to say I'm not Jewish. Well he says it would and not up who say that.
And therefore a Jew trying to say that you would think back and you say and I mean I do you know you okay. Okay. So first it is possible in Arabic to say it. It's not the most natural way, as you said, like an A who the Messiah, who would be will be the most popular or the most weak and says But but there is a possibility of saying it in in this way. Mostly, of course you say geographically like and in Arabic, I don't mean in Maghreb on and so on.
That's like this way or this expression is more with geography than with community or religion. But I felt that, again, it is something that was there and and that I could hear. But also it's it's of course, like Arabic at the moment that you don't completely know Arabic. Okay. Like the place of the character in and in the story or in the place. My place in the poem was. Was connected to. To this moment in which. You know. The shadow of Arabic. You don't really know the language.
Right. So. So that's also an expression. That is the way you invent your Arabic. From. From some memory and. And shadow of what you thought is Arabic. And you invent it. So I think there's. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's a subconscious level where it answers in Bali over which in the Zionist discourse is so central to the Palestinian cause, though he's now trying to. They didn't pass the quite the conscious or the restructuring. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Any more questions?
It's kind of interesting that ethnic identity means so you use the word Mizrahi in the story. There is this ambiguity around me. You hear the you and. And what does it all mean? So I was just wondering, can we talk a bit about that tension between those two? Mm hmm. Okay. So, like Mizrahi identity, I think it's not an inclusive thing.
Like, it's a new, a very late concept which begins as a derogatory term towards Jews from Muslim lands, in the sense that when like in in Israel, they were called prior to 48 and also later a daughter means like the word adult has no real translation, like communities will make it nice. But it was in a context in which the word that like there was like a separation ist kind of thing, like a separation inside the nation that is not accepted kindly, so on.
So they were called youths and it's sort of Islam, those who came from the eastern countries or in the communities of the east. So their original name had in mind that it's different communities. It's not one, but there is a one. Mizrahi one east. Right. And it got that like from the colonial imagination in the sense that it's you know, it's geographically, of course, incorrect. And Morocco is not in any east.
Yes, but but everything that is outside of Europe, that to say, Africa and Asia is the east in that imagination. So it can be one unit. So in that imagination, they come from the same place, like Asia and Africa is one great east, and there are small communities who came from different places there. And for first generation, people did not accept this term. It was clear to them, identity wise and ethnically wise, that they are Iraqis, they are Egyptians, they are Tunisian.
And that was the term the first generation used and only used that they never accepted the. They are a daughter, Mizrahi. They are the communities of the East because. And they were right, of course. Right. And like Jewish, Iraqi identity is ethnicity in a way. It's one community that has its ethnic history and so on and culture. The different communities of Jews in the Arab and Muslim world. Where in one community. Right. They have we can tell like of shared histories, shared culture.
But but it's, of course, mainly in retrospect when we look from our point in history back that we see it. But for them, prior to immigration, they didn't feel like every community was connected to specific different communities. Like in that sense, like the Jews of Iraq were connected to the Jews of Syria in many ways, to the Jews of Kurdistan, to the Jews of Iran. Of course, Turkey that was like the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
So that was a centre and to some extent like the communities in in the land of Israel, Jerusalem specifically and so on. So there were those connections, but they didn't imagine it as as one community. And they did. And take into account in that story like that. Yemen is part of their larger community or imagined about Tunisia and so on. There were those were far away places that weren't in in the nearby imagination from the seventies.
The term Mizrahi was, in a way used or appropriated by Jews of the Muslim world in Israel, mainly like already second generation who did it like their experience was their oppression in Israel. Not. Focusing on the shared culture. But sharing the same oppression economic, geographical, cultural, educational oppression in Israel. And in that sense, they accepted the term of the music to the east.
They took this derogatory term or what was perceived as derogatory in Hebrew at the time and said, Yes, we are mizrahim. They changed the name in the sense that it's not it's not a daughter of Israel. It's not the communities of the east, but it's the eastern, right? So it's making it into one group. It's like, you know, in other like with Levantine identity, there was also like a tribe or like the use of gay as a appropriation of a derogatory term to to have it as an empowering term.
So it was at that time and it was connected already to second generation to the time of the Black Panthers in Israel, to the demonstrations against the oppression. So people who were born later, like after the seventies, it became more and more a natural term, not always a term that you would like to use. I think still, like it can be said that like I'm not sure that the majority of Mizrahim, the majority of Jews of the Muslim world would like to use the term like it is.
It was very clear until ten years ago, and I think it changed in a way, but I'm not sure that with the majority of people like, of course, that the majority of people wanted to be considered Israelis. Right. Like like other situations. Your dream is to aspire to get the majority's consent that you are part of the majority's identity. Right. But I think that different people have different chances of really becoming like of being identified from the outside with the general term.
Right. So. So I think that like the dream and how the dream is broken again and again is that many people aspire to have just the what is considered like the general neutral term of Israelis who is which is which used to be like a more. More connected to Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. But some people like could be like be considered as just Israelis. But many people, of course, find the moment in life in which they are not identified, like they are identified from the outside as mizrahim.
And then, of course, they have to ask themselves what what to do like. And again, many times what you do is you, you know, you you live with it. So in ethnic profiling of the police, you are Mizrahi. And in some places or you know in children's in like in and you see in the culture how Israeli culture considers the East, the Arab culture, the Mizrahi culture. But you you can you can leave.
I think many people leave with this duplicate or it's not duplicate like Pitzl with this a cut of between themselves in the sense that they try as much as they can to pass as Israelis. And sometimes it doesn't work. But they they know that still it might be more beneficial for them, for their children and so on to act as if. So, maybe their children will pass and. In the right way. Right. And so that's look, I think the changes like in the moment. Is is in the sense that, of course, like.
I do think that in the last 20 years, like more people will be ready to connect themselves to the definition of Mizrahi identity and Mizrahi culture. It's not that easy to connect themselves to do. They are big. Or Arab culture like. So with Mizrahi identity, you have a large scale change in the last 20 years. With you there are big in Arabic in general you have like one step ahead, one step back. Like it's not there are changes, but it's not a change.
A clear one. Thank you. I think we should conclude here. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for this fascinating talk with as you know, as wonderful as always. Thank you so much. Thank you.