The Shift to Hebrew

Chapter 5 The Shift to Hebrew

Unlike local Palestinian poets and writers,1 most of the Arab-Jewish writers who immigrated to Israel became familiar with Hebrew literature without relinquishing their attachment to Arabic culture.2 Sooner or later, they were confronted with the stark choice of which language they should write and communicate in, that is, whether to adapt to their new cultural surroundings and make the required and conscious shift in their aesthetic preference in the hope of finding a new audience, or whether to continue to write in Arabic, their beloved mother tongue. Hebrew literature by Arab-Jewish writers was known before this: for example, there was the work of Sulaymān Menaḥem Mānī (1850–1924), who even published a story on Sephardic life in Palestine.3 Still, Hebrew writing by Arabized Jews adopting the new poetics of Hebrew literature emerged only in Israel. In the 1950s, for example, Nīr Shohet (1928–2011)4 was already publishing short stories in Hebrew; in 1957, Zakkay Binyāmīn Hārūn (b. 1927) published El Ḥofo shel Ra‘ayon [To the Edge of an Idea], a collection of poems. Shelomo Zamīr (1929–2017)5 published Ha-Kol mi-Ba‘ad la-‘Anaf [The Voice through the Branch] (1960), which earned him the Shlonsky Prize along with Amir Gilboa (1917–1984) and Abba Kovner (1918–1987). In 1964, Shimon Ballas (Sham‘ūn Ballāṣ) (b. 1930)6 published Ha-Ma‘abara [The Immigrant Transit Camp], the first Hebrew novel to be written by an Iraqi émigré.7

1 On the issue of Palestinian writers’ attitudes toward Hebrew literature, see Snir 1990, pp. 257– 265; and Snir 2001, pp. 197–224. 2 Moreh and Hakak 1981, pp. 97–106, 112–115, 116–124‏.‬ On the interactions between Hebrew culture and Arabic literature and the involvement of Iraqi-Jewish writers, see Snir 1998, pp. 177–210. 3 Ha-Tsvi I (1885), pp. 31–34; and Yardeni 1967, pp. 45–53. Most Hebrew literature written in Iraq focused on religious matters (as did liturgical poetry). The beginnings of Hebrew writing in Iraq were mainly in the field of translation (see, for example, Shā’ul 1980, pp. 92–94). On the emergence of modern Hebrew literature in Iraq from 1735 to 1950, see Hakak 2003. 4 On Nīr Shohet, see Ben-Yaacob 1980, pp. 398–400; Bezalel 1982, I, p. 309; and Moreh and ‘Abbāsī 1987, pp. 127–129. 5 On Shelomo Zamīr, see Snir 2005, p. 249. 6 On Shimon Ballas, see Ben-Yaacob 1980, pp. 397–398; Moreh 1981, pp. 187–202; Bezalel 1982, I, p. 283; Moreh and ‘Abbāsī 1987, pp. 31–34; Ramras-Rauch 1989, pp. 184–187; Snir 1991, pp. 153– 173; Clerk and Siegel 1995, pp. 459–466; Berg 1996, pp. 391–394; Snir 1998, pp. 177–210; Snir 1998a, pp. 16–21; Idrīs 2003; Kerbel 2003, pp. 65–66; Abramson 2005, pp. 66–67; Snir 2005, pp. 325–336, 350–351, 360–362; and ʽAlwān 2014. See also the aforementioned documentary film, Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs — The Iraqi Connection. 7 Ballas 1964.

Most of the immigrating Arab-Jewish writers who succeeded in adapting to writing in Hebrew adopted the Zionist narrative in their literary work, with the prominent among them being the aforementioned Sammy Michael. In the early 1950s, when he was still publishing only in Arabic, Michael tried his hand at Hebrew ― he started to write a novel that took place in a ma‘abara, that is, an immigrant transit camp. In 1954, he published a chapter of the novel, entitled “Ḥarīq” (Fire), but only in Arabic translation.8 In the late 1950s, after six years of devoted adherence to Communism, Michael ceased publishing in Arabic. At about the same time, he left the Communist Party ― he could no longer face, he says, the constant self-justification involved in his Communist activi- ties. It was the first step in a long process of adapting himself to mainstream Israeli society. Then came the issue of language: as a Jew writing in Arabic, he was again confronted with the need for self-justification. About his first years in Israel, he says, “I continued to read the world’s literature in English, spoke a broken Hebrew on the street, and bemoaned my fate, silently, in Arabic.” After he had consolidated his position as a writer of the short story in Arabic, the question was whether he should adapt to the new cultural surroundings and make the required shift in his aesthetic “preference” in the hope of finding a new audience, or to continue writing in Arabic in a country where Arabic was now the language of the enemy. In the process of adopting the Hebrew language, he says, the fluency of his Arabic writing was impaired: “I activated a forgetting mechanism.”9 Michael entered a period of silence during which he joined the Israel Hydrological Service in the Ministry of Agriculture, where he worked for twenty-five years surveying water sources located mainly on the Syrian border. He also studied Arabic literature and psychology at the University of Haifa. Ending his literary silence, his first published novel was a Hebrew one, Shavīm ve-Shavīm Yoter [Equal and More Equal] (1974).10 The novel, whose nucleus was the aforementioned chapter entitled “Ḥarīq” (Fire) written in the 1950s, exposed the humiliating attitude of the authorities to immigrants from Arab countries. It raised a storm of protests, bringing to the fore the ethnic question and generating public controversy through its representation of the oppres- sion of Oriental immigrants. It brought to Hebrew literature the motif of the

8 Al-Jadīd, December 1954, pp. 39–43. On this chapter, see Snir 2005, pp. 313–318. Later Michael revealed that he had completed this Hebrew novel, titling it Ge’ūt ha-Naḥal [The Rise of the Stream], and that he had tried to publish it with Am Oved but had been rejected (Ha’aretz [Books — Special Issue], 17 October 2005). 9 See www.haaretz.com, 30 July 2006. On this period in Michael’s life, see Snir 2005, pp. 319–320. 10 Michael 1974.