1 00:00:01,830 --> 00:00:08,370 Welcome, everybody. I'm going to take this chair for that kind of information. I'm delighted. 2 00:00:08,880 --> 00:00:15,210 It's a genuine personal pleasure to be able to introduce to you Dr. and Mugabe here today. 3 00:00:17,190 --> 00:00:20,580 And when I was thinking how to introduce Almog, 4 00:00:20,940 --> 00:00:31,649 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. 5 00:00:31,650 --> 00:00:35,100 That would take, I think, lecturing for themselves. 6 00:00:35,580 --> 00:00:47,340 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. 7 00:00:48,180 --> 00:00:55,620 He's going to be doing his post-doctoral work in the prestigious Polanski program at the Valley Institute in Jerusalem. 8 00:00:56,160 --> 00:01:01,920 On the topic that carries the same title as this talk today between Hebrew and Arabic, 9 00:01:03,090 --> 00:01:08,310 focusing on the literature of Jews in the 20th century Arab lands or Arab countries. 10 00:01:10,230 --> 00:01:17,430 No, it would be quite impossible to capture all of Dr. Bihar's public activities in a short presentation, 11 00:01:17,430 --> 00:01:26,819 and I would suffice by saying that he has managed to challenge the prevailing socio political discourse in Israel on matters of ethnicity, 12 00:01:26,820 --> 00:01:29,580 tradition, nationalism and social justice. 13 00:01:30,330 --> 00:01:37,799 And he has singlehandedly articulated and sounded a voice that has been largely absent from the Israeli public 14 00:01:37,800 --> 00:01:45,000 sphere and has since been gaining momentum as one of the most important developments in contemporary Israel. 15 00:01:46,110 --> 00:01:56,340 So in terms of the structure of today's seminar, we are going to do slightly different structure. 16 00:01:57,120 --> 00:02:13,860 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. 17 00:02:14,250 --> 00:02:21,329 A short story that won the Hearts Short Story contest and actually made your name for the first time. 18 00:02:21,330 --> 00:02:31,190 And ever since it only grew. The the short story, which then became also the title is titled Enemy Really Good. 19 00:02:31,200 --> 00:02:37,590 And it is also the title of Almog first collection of short stories that was published not not too long ago. 20 00:02:38,310 --> 00:02:47,710 And we going watching the movie. I you. 21 00:02:49,860 --> 00:02:55,739 I think we'll go on from here by first letting Almog say a few words, 22 00:02:55,740 --> 00:03:01,920 maybe put the movie in context, especially the political context in which it emerged. 23 00:03:01,920 --> 00:03:08,160 And then we'll have a conversation. Okay. Well, thanks a lot and happy to be here. 24 00:03:11,250 --> 00:03:14,490 And maybe I'll start to connect it. 25 00:03:15,540 --> 00:03:30,810 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. 26 00:03:31,470 --> 00:03:40,740 So maybe now I'll first read the poem, and from there I'm going again forward in time. 27 00:03:40,770 --> 00:03:45,360 So I'll start from the Hebrew of the poem. 28 00:03:46,230 --> 00:03:55,889 I was virtually limited out of virtually limited Hanukah in Hagel and McAllister thoughts my livelihood similar yes. 29 00:03:55,890 --> 00:04:05,340 Shanab of Iran connection MC Letter NFC Mr. Terror to Me Behnam Chabahar My Holy Tree Cell Every Valley Vitiligo. 30 00:04:05,350 --> 00:04:06,929 Holy [INAUDIBLE]. My thoughts. 31 00:04:06,930 --> 00:04:16,800 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 32 00:04:16,810 --> 00:04:28,830 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 33 00:04:29,160 --> 00:04:39,170 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 34 00:04:39,350 --> 00:04:50,940 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 35 00:04:50,940 --> 00:05:03,089 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 36 00:05:03,090 --> 00:05:15,239 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 37 00:05:15,240 --> 00:05:26,450 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 38 00:05:26,880 --> 00:05:36,530 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. 39 00:05:36,540 --> 00:05:43,649 And by now Iraqi like me how laughable to not hear toon were lathered on Maxwell then come issue full 40 00:05:43,650 --> 00:05:51,320 Canada bottle of boom virat kohli be her all ability her if that the nature will be something Liberia 41 00:05:51,660 --> 00:06:00,299 whatever Missoula as the crown Macaulay to put in on our boy behind Alan Allen mama it should be a more 42 00:06:00,300 --> 00:06:06,990 of a story to or how we attend to share we little bundle more than fairly and I mean Alia who then? 43 00:06:06,990 --> 00:06:19,620 I mean Alia who? Well, he breached this somehow iron and somehow leader via May Arabic is mute, strangled at the throat, 44 00:06:20,280 --> 00:06:27,300 cursing itself without uttering a word, sleeps in the airless shelters of my soul, 45 00:06:27,900 --> 00:06:37,469 hiding from relatives behind the Hebrew blinds and my Hebrew is raging, running between rooms and neighbours, 46 00:06:37,470 --> 00:06:45,960 balconies, making its voice heard in public prophesies in the coming of God and of bulldozers. 47 00:06:46,380 --> 00:06:53,610 And then it holes up in the living room thinking itself, so open in the language of its skin, 48 00:06:54,000 --> 00:07:01,410 so hidden between the pages of its flesh and moment, naked moment later dressed. 49 00:07:01,680 --> 00:07:06,630 It curls up into the armchair and begs itself for forgiveness. 50 00:07:07,170 --> 00:07:16,960 My Arabic is petrified. It quietly pretends to be Hebrew and whispers to friends whenever somebody knocks at her gate. 51 00:07:16,980 --> 00:07:28,350 Alan Allen. Welcome. And whenever a policeman passes it in the street, it produces an I.D. card and points out the protective clause. 52 00:07:28,860 --> 00:07:37,500 And I mean only a hood and I mean only a hood. I am a Jew and my Hebrew is deaf, sometimes very deaf. 53 00:07:40,440 --> 00:07:46,650 So the poem was written a long time ago now. 54 00:07:47,510 --> 00:07:52,490 14 years ago, I think, and. 55 00:07:54,810 --> 00:08:11,700 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. 56 00:08:11,700 --> 00:08:14,910 And from that, the story I like. 57 00:08:16,380 --> 00:08:28,640 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. 58 00:08:29,580 --> 00:08:41,550 And when she was ten years old, the educator from school came home and asked her parents to stop speaking with her in Arabic, 59 00:08:42,780 --> 00:08:57,150 which was the policy like the role the Education Ministry and teachers played in this lingual tragedy. 60 00:08:57,660 --> 00:09:02,780 And they didn't stop speaking with her in Arabic. 61 00:09:02,790 --> 00:09:12,480 They always continued. But from that day, she stopped answering them in Arabic and moved to answering them in Hebrew, 62 00:09:13,140 --> 00:09:19,050 becoming passive in Arabic, understanding it, but never using it. 63 00:09:19,680 --> 00:09:23,130 And that was the situation I was born to. 64 00:09:24,180 --> 00:09:30,860 And it seemed. Natural, in a sense, as a child. 65 00:09:31,220 --> 00:09:33,380 Many things seem natural. 66 00:09:35,300 --> 00:09:50,790 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. 67 00:09:50,810 --> 00:09:58,880 Like every two generations, you know that also, migrant children will have another language and another accent. 68 00:10:00,140 --> 00:10:03,530 And and. 69 00:10:04,160 --> 00:10:20,420 But later on, when I was 17 and in the last half year of my my grandmother from Baghdad, she was the main thing. 70 00:10:20,420 --> 00:10:25,610 And she forgot Hebrew and went back to speak only Arabic. 71 00:10:26,240 --> 00:10:39,620 And then it became clear that it's not just a coincidence or not just something natural, but that outer force, 72 00:10:40,670 --> 00:10:53,910 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. 73 00:10:54,200 --> 00:11:08,360 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. 74 00:11:08,930 --> 00:11:15,020 And we and the children of the younger sisters could not. 75 00:11:16,940 --> 00:11:20,960 And and then later on. 76 00:11:21,050 --> 00:11:32,120 So that was the moment of of understanding the the place or the drama of the languages in a different way. 77 00:11:32,450 --> 00:11:38,420 But it didn't make me do something at that stage. 78 00:11:40,490 --> 00:11:44,390 To ask questions, but not doing something. 79 00:11:45,920 --> 00:11:56,540 Later on, a little later on, when I moved to to Jerusalem at the age of age of 22 or something like that. 80 00:11:58,940 --> 00:12:09,440 And that's something that enters like the movie in a different way than then it enters the the story in. 81 00:12:10,340 --> 00:12:28,100 But the the way or inside the conflict and the violence the times of were like, 82 00:12:28,640 --> 00:12:48,230 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. 83 00:12:48,740 --> 00:13:00,860 So you find, like the language comes back as a language of suspicion in the streets of of Jerusalem. 84 00:13:02,480 --> 00:13:16,310 And and at those moments, you also you imagine, like you want to answer in Arabic like this situation and. 85 00:13:18,480 --> 00:13:29,340 And then like after writing this story, it this poem first it took me a month to understand that the poem. 86 00:13:30,920 --> 00:13:40,910 Like its name is my Arabic is mute. But I understood a few months later that the poem begins in the words my Arabic. 87 00:13:41,210 --> 00:13:48,860 However, virtually that it was for the first time that I could say that the Arabic is is mine. 88 00:13:50,210 --> 00:14:03,170 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. 89 00:14:04,130 --> 00:14:13,010 And, you know, poetry and prose doesn't change the world, but sometimes it changes your life. 90 00:14:13,760 --> 00:14:24,139 It's like the things that you happen to write in the sense that after writing the poem in the story, 91 00:14:24,140 --> 00:14:32,480 I felt that if I will not go now and learn Arabic, I will. 92 00:14:32,480 --> 00:14:42,980 All my life. I will write variations on this poem and this story of like the moment of you 93 00:14:42,980 --> 00:14:56,060 knocking your head at the wall of forgetfulness or of and and and I went. 94 00:14:57,440 --> 00:15:01,790 So I went to learn Arabic. And, you know, 95 00:15:01,790 --> 00:15:19,610 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. 96 00:15:20,250 --> 00:15:24,770 Right. In any other way, it wouldn't be a regret. 97 00:15:25,640 --> 00:15:40,370 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. 98 00:15:40,880 --> 00:15:44,210 And it's of course, also different kinds of Arabic like the. 99 00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:53,030 But did you do Arabic from home and the facade, the literary Arabic from the from I university. 100 00:15:53,630 --> 00:16:05,630 So that was so that was that moment in and later on, like when publishing it into a book, 101 00:16:05,630 --> 00:16:15,830 the poem and later on the story, I couldn't leave them alone in, in Hebrew in the in the book, 102 00:16:16,190 --> 00:16:25,760 but added also the Arabic translation as I felt that both with the poem and the story, 103 00:16:26,300 --> 00:16:34,730 the translation became part of them, of the story itself, and doing something with it. 104 00:16:35,210 --> 00:16:42,900 It's like at that stage, the poem was translated to Arabic by a Palestinian poet. 105 00:16:42,930 --> 00:16:48,610 A remarkable chapter and story by an Egyptian translator, Mohammed onboard. 106 00:16:49,750 --> 00:16:53,590 Hmm. Later on. And. And. 107 00:16:53,690 --> 00:16:54,320 And I'll. 108 00:16:55,950 --> 00:17:15,510 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. 109 00:17:16,890 --> 00:17:22,020 I will read it with no English translation. 110 00:17:22,380 --> 00:17:27,420 I hope some of you know one of the languages, but I'll explain. 111 00:17:27,750 --> 00:17:33,930 It's also like it's a poem that can only live in Hebrew or Arabic. 112 00:17:35,100 --> 00:17:46,230 So Amal Tikva, Iman Tikva, Hayati Elachi or this man simply flashing beans for their thumb. 113 00:17:46,590 --> 00:17:54,090 Levine Those was named seem. Simmons. I've been calling about Billy B Amal here. 114 00:17:54,090 --> 00:17:58,740 Tikva. Hayati here. Haya. Linda Matilda Kelani. 115 00:17:58,890 --> 00:18:05,670 Vanessa Fethiye on film what with mia all the shady the affair about on the part of 116 00:18:05,770 --> 00:18:17,960 me that was like in the first poem that I read and that was translated into Arabic. 117 00:18:17,970 --> 00:18:33,450 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. 118 00:18:33,630 --> 00:18:44,400 And the poem in Arabic, like what was in Hebrew is translated into Arabic, and what was in Arabic is remains in Arabic. 119 00:18:45,480 --> 00:18:54,090 And after going to the Arabic, I understood that just as. 120 00:18:55,770 --> 00:19:05,510 Standing in front of of the Hebrew. I wish to change the Hebrew with the Arabic. 121 00:19:06,440 --> 00:19:13,310 I also wish to change my Arabic with Judeo Arabic and Hebrew. 122 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:17,030 And so so translating myself. 123 00:19:17,310 --> 00:19:23,959 And in this poem I could include the Hebrew inside the Arabic. 124 00:19:23,960 --> 00:19:32,390 And then also it's like it's correct Hebrew, meaning that like, of course, 125 00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:44,870 accent wise or pronunciation wise, the way we pronounce Hebrew today is like over saying, 126 00:19:45,080 --> 00:20:00,469 like the Egyptian the Iraqi Hebrew accent was equivalent to the Arabic accent in the meaning of the using of the different words, 127 00:20:00,470 --> 00:20:10,970 the difference between 12 and poor, between pa and calf, between vet and wow and so on. 128 00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:26,690 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. 129 00:20:26,720 --> 00:20:38,660 I'll, I'll finish with a short poem, which is, again, untranslatable. 130 00:20:38,870 --> 00:20:53,120 But that's in, in my third poetry book, it's there is a zehner called Truce. 131 00:20:53,120 --> 00:21:01,700 And a truce is woven or interwoven for poems like in the in the Putin, the liturgical poetry. 132 00:21:02,630 --> 00:21:17,810 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. 133 00:21:18,710 --> 00:21:30,830 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. 134 00:21:31,910 --> 00:21:42,620 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. 135 00:21:43,010 --> 00:21:44,990 So there is no translation. 136 00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:57,920 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. 137 00:21:58,790 --> 00:22:07,100 And now, when it's in his book, it's it's a way of saying, you know, my book is for educated people. 138 00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:12,110 Educated people know three languages, Hebrew, arithmetic and Arabic. 139 00:22:12,440 --> 00:22:18,050 If you can read it, close the book and find other books that will suit you. 140 00:22:18,380 --> 00:22:28,730 You're not my reader. So they are like the Middle Ages way of using my prose was elitist in the sense of 141 00:22:29,090 --> 00:22:39,590 playing with language in a way that is only open to multilingual readers later on, 142 00:22:39,590 --> 00:22:45,410 like from 16th century onward in the liturgical poetry. 143 00:22:46,070 --> 00:22:59,240 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 144 00:22:59,810 --> 00:23:12,170 like after the 16th century and you liturgical poetry cannot enter them and the services themselves inside the synagogue, 145 00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:23,690 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. 146 00:23:24,260 --> 00:23:34,700 And the place to write to new liturgical poetry is, is not for the liturgical, but for the part of the liturgical. 147 00:23:34,700 --> 00:23:40,669 It's not for the service in in the synagogue, but it's for the family gathering. 148 00:23:40,670 --> 00:23:47,750 It's for holy days. It was it's for weddings and for breath and so on. 149 00:23:48,980 --> 00:23:59,000 But like earlier, liturgical poets could have imagined that they're writing for the synagogue. 150 00:23:59,090 --> 00:24:10,120 So everyone understand Hebrew or Hebrew and Aramaic, even though, of course, not every community, all people in the synagogue knew. 151 00:24:10,130 --> 00:24:25,280 But. But when this poetry is for family gathering or for other events, it is clear that the majority does not understand Hebrew. 152 00:24:25,370 --> 00:24:28,910 Right, as women were not educated in Hebrew. 153 00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:37,490 And children don't know it. And at least some of the older men don't know it. 154 00:24:37,490 --> 00:24:43,819 So it's. And then like the Montrose, its purpose was inviting. 155 00:24:43,820 --> 00:24:49,040 Like at least you will understand half of the poem and in that sense. 156 00:24:49,370 --> 00:24:56,299 So I don't know if I'm in the inviting or the elitist side. 157 00:24:56,300 --> 00:25:00,500 Yeah. That was the purpose of this opening. 158 00:25:00,500 --> 00:25:04,310 So, so I will read this message to listening. 159 00:25:04,670 --> 00:25:08,930 L.A. Shia. He told the Walla Walla family of family, 160 00:25:08,930 --> 00:25:17,059 many Bedouin southeast of lots me lots of that the one Mark Colby Gumbel there or 161 00:25:17,060 --> 00:25:23,180 Bill Hickok columnar or not totally me men looking at how often was Kevin Hoagland? 162 00:25:23,660 --> 00:25:33,760 How old can a house just smell like to Elizabeth Savitsky at the club walking Wapakoneta where Cliff Lee be been my hot 163 00:25:33,770 --> 00:25:43,820 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. 164 00:25:46,370 --> 00:25:55,370 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, 165 00:25:55,370 --> 00:26:03,130 maybe you can say a few more words about the immediate political implications of this. 166 00:26:03,140 --> 00:26:06,890 I mean, you started you already brought the state into your mother's house. 167 00:26:06,890 --> 00:26:09,740 The state made the break. The state's silence. 168 00:26:10,430 --> 00:26:18,380 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, 169 00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:24,440 which was directed to state policy. 170 00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:26,299 And the question is, 171 00:26:26,300 --> 00:26:36,080 now that you have gone through this personal process and that you present this model of an alternative to the silencing and the erasure. 172 00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:42,590 How do you think how do you see this is tied to politics or do you see this as politics? 173 00:26:42,710 --> 00:26:56,660 Okay. So the erasure of the languages, you know, it's it's a national modernistic trend in the sense and in that sense, 174 00:26:56,660 --> 00:27:09,229 it's not only Israeli like it's, you know, the French nationhood making the Parisian French as this state language and the 175 00:27:09,230 --> 00:27:15,350 provincial in the south and the languages in the north forbidden at schools. 176 00:27:16,130 --> 00:27:26,600 And the fact that the schools are the tool of the central state to to make this change. 177 00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:35,150 And later on, like Spain with Castilian, Spanish over the Catalan and Galician and of course the Basque and so on. 178 00:27:36,410 --> 00:27:41,180 So that's like a modern nation. 179 00:27:41,570 --> 00:27:49,430 And of course, like in Britain, Vice, the Welsh, the Scottish, the Irish and so on. 180 00:27:50,360 --> 00:27:57,970 And this. Perception that nationhood. 181 00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:04,030 Deserves or needs. Only one language. 182 00:28:05,010 --> 00:28:18,420 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. 183 00:28:19,500 --> 00:28:26,460 That's that's an idea that grew in this French, Spanish and so on. 184 00:28:28,460 --> 00:28:41,940 And, and with like 19/20 century, the colonialism and nationalism, Zionist and also Arab nationalism. 185 00:28:43,890 --> 00:28:48,480 It this idea was accepted or promoted by them. 186 00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:55,800 Now, of course, each situation is is different in its lingual situations. 187 00:28:55,830 --> 00:29:08,730 So in in the in the Israeli case, the Hebrew was also a question of revival language as a spoken language and less. 188 00:29:09,630 --> 00:29:13,050 Late 19th century. Early 20th century. 189 00:29:13,890 --> 00:29:30,430 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, 190 00:29:30,460 --> 00:29:33,480 national nationhood. 191 00:29:34,620 --> 00:29:38,069 And that had different stages. 192 00:29:38,070 --> 00:29:52,050 Like in the early stage, Yiddish was the big enemy, as it was the language of the politicians making or enforcing this. 193 00:29:52,680 --> 00:30:06,960 And their attitude towards Yiddish was like they in a way, committed suicide to their mother tongue in themselves in order to change it. 194 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:14,940 Like there is like two interesting quotes about the one is like 100 years ago 195 00:30:14,940 --> 00:30:21,480 there was this famous lecture on on Yiddish culture and language in New York. 196 00:30:23,340 --> 00:30:35,970 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. 197 00:30:36,330 --> 00:30:42,809 Right. That was the word used in the sense in a modernistic sense that, you know, 198 00:30:42,810 --> 00:30:48,660 as jargon is something that you shouldn't teach at schools, at universities. 199 00:30:48,690 --> 00:30:51,929 Language is the thing you teach. 200 00:30:51,930 --> 00:30:57,390 I hope today it's not as such. 201 00:30:57,810 --> 00:31:06,120 And he gave this one hour lecture and someone from the audience in Yiddish told him, like, 202 00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:13,110 you know, you told us a long story about why here this is a language and not the jargon. 203 00:31:13,500 --> 00:31:21,000 But let me tell you in a sentence, you don't need all that language is the jargon with an army. 204 00:31:22,830 --> 00:31:38,160 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, 205 00:31:38,700 --> 00:31:42,690 army, sometimes universities, education ministry. 206 00:31:43,140 --> 00:32:03,750 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 207 00:32:03,750 --> 00:32:17,550 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. 208 00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:27,510 Now, of course, and many professors set army to prove how languages are pure and jargons are impure. 209 00:32:27,510 --> 00:32:42,419 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. 210 00:32:42,420 --> 00:32:51,480 And and also of course about the question what's so wrong about this interrelation between languages. 211 00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:58,470 Now with an end to the Israeli case in specific like. 212 00:32:58,940 --> 00:33:13,370 In 1943, there was like there was a came a refugee from one of the camps in Europe that she succeeded in escaping. 213 00:33:13,370 --> 00:33:22,610 And she came to Tel Aviv and gave a testimony about what's happening now in Europe, in the concentration camps. 214 00:33:22,940 --> 00:33:26,830 And she gave this talk, of course, in Yiddish. 215 00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:31,070 She didn't know any other language to give the testimony in. 216 00:33:31,580 --> 00:33:35,180 And Ben-Gurion was the first one to speak after her. 217 00:33:35,630 --> 00:33:46,880 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, 218 00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:59,450 where we just heard a foreign and an awkward language, a foreign and an awkward language repeated it twice. 219 00:33:59,990 --> 00:34:05,840 Yeah. So it's a foreign language. His mother tongue is foreign and it's awkward. 220 00:34:06,690 --> 00:34:11,870 It's and it's a fuzzy rabbit to limit his words. 221 00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:32,720 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, 222 00:34:33,470 --> 00:34:43,550 like it 1948, 1 million Jews spoke Arabic as their mother tongue and coming to Israel. 223 00:34:44,940 --> 00:34:57,950 Their language was perceived as like in the general perception of like languages of the exile that should be negated, 224 00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:08,210 but also specifically as the enemy's language and also specifically like in colonial terms, as an inferior language. 225 00:35:08,700 --> 00:35:13,610 Right. So it's a jargon because it's Judeo Arabic. 226 00:35:14,300 --> 00:35:25,130 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. 227 00:35:26,330 --> 00:35:36,740 So of course the attitude towards it was quite harsh and, and, and didn't end. 228 00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:52,980 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. 229 00:35:53,000 --> 00:36:00,079 It was in a way, committing suicide to your own mother tongue with Arabic. 230 00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:05,510 It was a murder. It was someone else coming and murdering your your mother tongue. 231 00:36:05,540 --> 00:36:17,810 So, of course, like the emotional connection to whether you committed suicide or was murdered is is different. 232 00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:24,980 The second difference is the way that it continues into the present. 233 00:36:25,490 --> 00:36:39,230 It's something that never ended in the sense that this war against the Arabic language, against Arabic culture is continuing. 234 00:36:39,740 --> 00:36:47,540 And the language is is used in derogatory connections. 235 00:36:47,540 --> 00:36:51,799 Until now. Every. Every time. 236 00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:56,460 Every. In different contexts. 237 00:36:56,480 --> 00:37:04,160 But but in that sense, it is a continuing situation now about the changes. 238 00:37:05,500 --> 00:37:18,890 Yeah. It's like I do think that like the, the early ideals of negation of the diaspora and, 239 00:37:19,070 --> 00:37:26,720 and like the ideal of the Sabra, like the one who was born in Israel and is a real Israel and so on. 240 00:37:28,100 --> 00:37:33,770 We're like myth that we're very central in the fifties and sixties, but, 241 00:37:34,610 --> 00:37:40,970 but from the seventies, eighties, nineties, they are quite weaker in a sense that, 242 00:37:41,030 --> 00:37:50,420 you know, my parents weren't born in Israel and they had to imitate or to to they wish 243 00:37:51,410 --> 00:37:56,990 to be as if they were born in Israel and they had to imitate someone else. 244 00:37:58,190 --> 00:38:08,450 Our generation, when you were already born, like you didn't have a specific someone to to aspire to as as a model. 245 00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:15,770 So that the thing that was strong loosened up in a sense. 246 00:38:17,930 --> 00:38:28,400 It's also that like the generational process in the sense that the moment of complete loss came. 247 00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:37,790 And that's frightening. Like as children, ten year old after immigration, going out of your language, 248 00:38:37,790 --> 00:38:43,639 to the language in which you would be able to become part of society and so on. 249 00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:50,750 That's something, of course, very natural that happens in many cases of of immigration and so on. 250 00:38:51,830 --> 00:39:00,140 But at the third generation, what you get, you understand that soon the language will die. 251 00:39:00,170 --> 00:39:12,380 It's not just that that personally your your adopting another language is it's that your communities, 252 00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:18,440 the community language will will disappear from the world will die. 253 00:39:19,070 --> 00:39:33,200 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. 254 00:39:33,710 --> 00:39:44,090 So I think that like in in music, there were large changes in the sense of like younger generation. 255 00:39:44,510 --> 00:39:54,260 Going back to singing and recording in Arabic, and there are many examples to it. 256 00:39:55,220 --> 00:40:04,610 I think that like in literature, it's harder because they're adopting that first, 257 00:40:04,610 --> 00:40:10,700 because I think that, you know, music is something that is like harder to to embrace. 258 00:40:10,700 --> 00:40:20,530 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. 259 00:40:20,540 --> 00:40:23,720 It's, of course, a longer process. 260 00:40:24,740 --> 00:40:42,570 I think that technology also made many of the change is possible in the sense that between 1949 and 1967, the borders were closed. 261 00:40:42,860 --> 00:40:48,650 Like people who immigrated only read you passed the borders. 262 00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:57,450 There were no newspapers passing, of course, no television, no books, nothing you couldn't call. 263 00:40:57,470 --> 00:41:02,870 There were no phones between Israel and the Arab world. 264 00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:13,280 It was only radio. After 67, some of the borders were open and to transmission between them. 265 00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:18,079 But from the nineties you got, of course, 266 00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:29,209 all the satellite TV and later on Internet and and in the last ten years or more specifically through YouTube and Facebook, 267 00:41:29,210 --> 00:41:47,540 which are like areas in which reconnecting between people from Israel and people from the original countries and specifically Iraq, 268 00:41:47,540 --> 00:41:54,750 but in many other cases as well, are in a way flourishing. 269 00:41:54,800 --> 00:42:04,970 Like it's not a majority that is connected to it, but it is something that is happening in in wide and wider scales. 270 00:42:05,390 --> 00:42:08,810 So those things make it possible. 271 00:42:08,810 --> 00:42:23,299 Now, I think looking at the future like maybe something personal and something more general and and continue from there. 272 00:42:23,300 --> 00:42:26,480 But like personally, I, of course, 273 00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:35,660 I understood after my children were born that all that project of teaching yourself 274 00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:44,809 the language is like it's it's not enough in any way that like you yourself, 275 00:42:44,810 --> 00:42:54,830 like, so you understand at the age of 22 and you do the effort and as one person personally, something that can be changed. 276 00:42:55,550 --> 00:43:03,050 But in order for your children to learn the language, you need to change the entire society like you need to. 277 00:43:03,140 --> 00:43:06,310 To make Arabic is mandatory in the schools. 278 00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:13,309 It's it it's not something that will work on the inside the family because the 279 00:43:13,310 --> 00:43:19,600 street and the culture in the state are again powerful enough to suppress it. 280 00:43:20,180 --> 00:43:33,720 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. 281 00:43:33,740 --> 00:43:46,670 So that's like one perspective that changed and raised again, other questions about it and it to do inside the future. 282 00:43:46,670 --> 00:44:00,140 Like I think that like for Judea Arabic culture or Mizrahi culture and, and so on, like them, 283 00:44:00,300 --> 00:44:07,160 the prospects for the future are connected to the synagogues and the Palestinians like in 284 00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:15,379 the sense that the synagogues are the place that that some of the tradition and music and 285 00:44:15,380 --> 00:44:25,250 accent were preserved or continued for because they have their place as like they became 286 00:44:25,250 --> 00:44:35,470 part of the holy and as something that we need to to give from generation to generation. 287 00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:43,720 So. So the synagogues are one part of of this of the longer memory and the ability to. 288 00:44:43,980 --> 00:44:52,050 SCHRIEVER And the second is, of course, like, you know, the distance between Baghdad and Jerusalem is not that big. 289 00:44:52,380 --> 00:44:56,070 And Jerusalem is a bilingual city. 290 00:44:56,550 --> 00:45:00,960 And it's it's not wishing to be bilingual, but it is. 291 00:45:00,970 --> 00:45:02,970 And Israel is bilingual. 292 00:45:03,330 --> 00:45:12,790 And in that sense, of course, like going back to study, the Arabic is, of course, connected to the connection to the Palestinians there. 293 00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:20,490 They're like, ironically enough, like if in 1948, there were 1 million Jews speak in Arabic. 294 00:45:20,610 --> 00:45:25,140 Today there are 1 million Palestinian citizens of Israel speaking Hebrew. 295 00:45:25,650 --> 00:45:38,370 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, 296 00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:48,990 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. 297 00:45:49,630 --> 00:45:55,810 That's wonderful. Thank you. Let's open for questions and cover the discussion. 298 00:45:56,500 --> 00:46:01,780 Jeb Bush Well, I have a question, but I don't want to be the first, you know, the first. 299 00:46:02,830 --> 00:46:16,090 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. 300 00:46:16,660 --> 00:46:17,139 Theoretically, 301 00:46:17,140 --> 00:46:29,049 you learn right through how how he used to incorporate speaking and writing in relation to your thinking about your linguistic heritage reflections. 302 00:46:29,050 --> 00:46:33,870 And you know, I read to Iraqi air. Yes. Arabic. And is is that debate difficult? 303 00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:41,320 Is it easy? Is it something that concerns you? Yeah, it from the end it concerns and it's not easy. 304 00:46:42,010 --> 00:46:51,010 And now going back to the beginning of the of the questions is, as you all know or some of you know. 305 00:46:51,010 --> 00:46:54,580 Right. Like that Arabic is not one language. 306 00:46:55,390 --> 00:47:04,030 Right. And it's mainly separated between the literary first half Arabic and the spoken amir, 307 00:47:04,420 --> 00:47:11,200 which is, of course, different in different parts of the Arab world and into it. 308 00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:22,899 What is Judeo Arabic? Right. And like when we use the term Judeo Arabic, which is a modern term, like usually, you know, 309 00:47:22,900 --> 00:47:30,850 Jews, when they spoke to one another at the community, they just called their language Arabic. 310 00:47:31,930 --> 00:47:38,590 And when they spoke to non-Jewish Arabs, they called the language Jewish. 311 00:47:39,430 --> 00:47:45,920 And only when they met someone who is neither Jewish nor Arab did they call into their Arabic. 312 00:47:45,940 --> 00:47:53,500 Right. So it's it's a name that is wasn't used that much because you need it only when you speak 313 00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:59,200 totally out of the context of your language to someone who doesn't know anything about it. 314 00:48:02,110 --> 00:48:08,439 And so but when we speak about Jew are Arabic, we speak about two or three different things. 315 00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:17,840 Like you have classical Jew, they are big, which is like the way from, let's say, ten, ten century Saudi ago. 316 00:48:17,890 --> 00:48:25,720 And who translated the the Bible, the field. 317 00:48:27,190 --> 00:48:40,000 He he wrote it in an Arabic that is close to the first half, to the classical later Arabic in Hebrew characters. 318 00:48:40,570 --> 00:48:46,690 And in, of course, like the nature of this classical Jew, they are big. 319 00:48:46,700 --> 00:48:55,870 It's close to first habit. It has one letter, less than four signs that have 28 letters, 27. 320 00:48:56,260 --> 00:49:06,940 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. 321 00:49:06,940 --> 00:49:10,480 Like, you don't translate them, you don't explain them. 322 00:49:11,770 --> 00:49:15,339 That's like the classical sense of what is today. 323 00:49:15,340 --> 00:49:25,930 Arabic, modern or late Judeo Arabic was written today are big that is closer to the spoken dialects. 324 00:49:26,170 --> 00:49:32,590 That was like post 16th century Judeo Arabic written to their Arabic. 325 00:49:32,980 --> 00:49:37,660 And that's of course not one language like Judeo classical Jew. 326 00:49:37,660 --> 00:49:47,080 The Arabic is one was one from Iraq to Morocco and envelopes from Holland to to Yemen. 327 00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:57,190 Um, modern written Judeo Arabic was separated to the areas of of the Arab world. 328 00:49:57,190 --> 00:50:05,860 So between the Maastricht, the Arab East, Yemen, Egypt and the Maghreb, the Arab West, North Africa. 329 00:50:07,570 --> 00:50:17,410 And so and the third meaning is, of course, the spoken Judeo Arabic, which was separated to many dialects, 330 00:50:17,410 --> 00:50:25,030 not just to for like four groups, but in each one of them, of course, different dialects. 331 00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:32,740 So now today, like in a sense, 332 00:50:33,130 --> 00:50:41,830 a will may be connected also to a program for be a we started this year of they are big 333 00:50:41,830 --> 00:50:51,670 cultural studies the University of Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva and like to teach the. 334 00:50:51,720 --> 00:50:58,530 Students like we first send them to study first. 335 00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:04,780 Why? First rate. It's cheaper. 336 00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:15,540 It's already a course in the university teaching first how and to create and complete alternative that from the starts start teachers. 337 00:51:15,810 --> 00:51:19,860 They are big, will be very expensive and will take us time to develop. 338 00:51:21,240 --> 00:51:36,479 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. 339 00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:45,810 They are big that is imagine li disconnected to the first and then general Arabic culture. 340 00:51:46,230 --> 00:51:50,560 Right. So it's, it's clear that the need for this, huh? 341 00:51:51,180 --> 00:51:54,959 Because like, at least like in the classical Jew, they are big. 342 00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:58,830 Of course, the writers of Jew, they are big read first, huh? 343 00:51:59,220 --> 00:52:07,680 Right. And of course you have examples from the Jahangir time, the time before the Islam, some in the Middle Ages, 344 00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:14,510 in many the modern times of the Jews of the Arab world who moved to write in first half. 345 00:52:14,550 --> 00:52:21,360 So that's also like one of the options of the literature of Jews of the Arab world. 346 00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:25,799 Some of it was written originally in first hand, not injured. 347 00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:30,930 They are big. So that's of course also arisen from there. 348 00:52:31,500 --> 00:52:37,200 You can move easily enough to classical Jew. 349 00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:47,490 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. 350 00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:55,919 Modern Jew. They are big in the meaning of modern written to they are big and modern spoken to. 351 00:52:55,920 --> 00:53:06,390 They are Arabic. That's of course harder in the sense that you need seven different forces for four different dialects and so on. 352 00:53:06,870 --> 00:53:14,819 So that's something that I'm not sure we would be able to suggest at each time. 353 00:53:14,820 --> 00:53:19,770 The complete variety of different kinds of of Jew they are. 354 00:53:19,780 --> 00:53:32,790 But there it, it should be through cooperation between different universities or different years in order 355 00:53:33,010 --> 00:53:41,850 to to make it possible to switch between the different dialects a long periods of time. 356 00:53:43,830 --> 00:53:51,430 So. So that's a part or of a solution, let's say. 357 00:53:51,430 --> 00:53:55,620 But nothing solves nothing but in general. 358 00:53:58,380 --> 00:54:09,780 But again, like of course, of course it's you know, you always do things to late, like personally and culturally. 359 00:54:10,320 --> 00:54:20,250 So there are things that that can you can like there is a limit for the possibility to to change, 360 00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:28,250 like to go back to and there are things that are that are really lost, right? 361 00:54:28,260 --> 00:54:39,959 So like today they are centres of recording in the languages and so on. 362 00:54:39,960 --> 00:54:52,140 So it's almost too late but they do records and, and you have also like out of the universities programs, 363 00:54:52,140 --> 00:54:59,970 courses for specific dialects like for Yemenite Arabic and for Moroccan Arabic and for Iraqi Arabic. 364 00:55:00,210 --> 00:55:14,160 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, 365 00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:21,389 but other generations who who have already some of the dialect from home. 366 00:55:21,390 --> 00:55:24,959 But they want to try and and go back to it. 367 00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:38,610 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. 368 00:55:39,790 --> 00:55:44,440 Yeah. Not sure I answered fully. I'll try to think. 369 00:55:44,740 --> 00:55:57,280 Yeah. I said to and I said, if I have one question without a question, I would only try one or two. 370 00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:08,260 I noticed that actually do more significance to this because in a lot of what he was saying, 371 00:56:08,950 --> 00:56:16,170 the person who was still busy, he kept on saying, I know many of you who I have not met. 372 00:56:16,180 --> 00:56:24,130 You know that ten doesn't exist in narrative, but now it is here. 373 00:56:24,490 --> 00:56:36,430 I know Delhi. Oh I know you media who listen me from that you know why is that term introduced by obosi 374 00:56:36,430 --> 00:56:45,360 by juju who translated that form which means from the Jews from the Jewish population. 375 00:56:45,530 --> 00:56:49,900 Wants to see. Yeah I know. Jewish temple, my Hebrew you know. 376 00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:59,230 Yeah. But how does that he is somebody who, who wants to say I'm not Jewish. 377 00:57:00,940 --> 00:57:05,470 Well he says it would and not up who say that. 378 00:57:05,500 --> 00:57:16,000 And therefore a Jew trying to say that you would think back and you say and I mean I do you know you okay. 379 00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:23,890 Okay. So first it is possible in Arabic to say it. 380 00:57:24,730 --> 00:57:32,559 It's not the most natural way, as you said, like an A who the Messiah, 381 00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:51,220 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. 382 00:57:52,390 --> 00:58:00,750 Mostly, of course you say geographically like and in Arabic, I don't mean in Maghreb on and so on. 383 00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:12,160 That's like this way or this expression is more with geography than with community or religion. 384 00:58:14,470 --> 00:58:24,280 But I felt that, again, it is something that was there and and that I could hear. 385 00:58:25,450 --> 00:58:39,100 But also it's it's of course, like Arabic at the moment that you don't completely know Arabic. 386 00:58:40,190 --> 00:58:50,480 Okay. Like the place of the character in and in the story or in the place. 387 00:58:51,470 --> 00:58:56,180 My place in the poem was. 388 00:58:56,750 --> 00:59:01,670 Was connected to. To this moment in which. 389 00:59:02,210 --> 00:59:09,620 You know. The shadow of Arabic. You don't really know the language. 390 00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:13,830 Right. So. So that's also an expression. 391 00:59:13,850 --> 00:59:20,660 That is the way you invent your Arabic. 392 00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:24,670 From. From some memory and. 393 00:59:24,670 --> 00:59:28,710 And shadow of what you thought is Arabic. 394 00:59:29,160 --> 00:59:35,950 And you invent it. So I think there's. 395 00:59:36,390 --> 00:59:38,520 And correct me if I'm wrong, 396 00:59:38,520 --> 00:59:47,520 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, 397 00:59:47,550 --> 00:59:56,790 though he's now trying to. They didn't pass the quite the conscious or the restructuring. 398 00:59:58,170 --> 01:00:01,650 That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Any more questions? 399 01:00:04,750 --> 01:00:15,000 It's kind of interesting that ethnic identity means so you use the word Mizrahi in the story. 400 01:00:15,010 --> 01:00:20,190 There is this ambiguity around me. You hear the you and. 401 01:00:20,530 --> 01:00:28,540 And what does it all mean? So I was just wondering, can we talk a bit about that tension between those two? 402 01:00:28,900 --> 01:00:38,800 Mm hmm. Okay. So, like Mizrahi identity, I think it's not an inclusive thing. 403 01:00:40,240 --> 01:01:04,840 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, 404 01:01:04,840 --> 01:01:19,900 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. 405 01:01:21,190 --> 01:01:30,280 But it was in a context in which the word that like there was like a separation ist kind of thing, 406 01:01:30,280 --> 01:01:36,320 like a separation inside the nation that is not accepted kindly, so on. 407 01:01:37,900 --> 01:01:49,660 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. 408 01:01:50,470 --> 01:01:56,870 So their original name had in mind that it's different communities. 409 01:01:56,890 --> 01:02:02,049 It's not one, but there is a one. 410 01:02:02,050 --> 01:02:04,560 Mizrahi one east. Right. 411 01:02:05,770 --> 01:02:16,420 And it got that like from the colonial imagination in the sense that it's you know, it's geographically, of course, incorrect. 412 01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:20,410 And Morocco is not in any east. 413 01:02:20,500 --> 01:02:32,770 Yes, but but everything that is outside of Europe, that to say, Africa and Asia is the east in that imagination. 414 01:02:32,770 --> 01:02:44,680 So it can be one unit. So in that imagination, they come from the same place, like Asia and Africa is one great east, 415 01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:49,930 and there are small communities who came from different places there. 416 01:02:50,740 --> 01:02:58,270 And for first generation, people did not accept this term. 417 01:02:58,660 --> 01:03:10,780 It was clear to them, identity wise and ethnically wise, that they are Iraqis, they are Egyptians, they are Tunisian. 418 01:03:11,500 --> 01:03:20,709 And that was the term the first generation used and only used that they never accepted the. 419 01:03:20,710 --> 01:03:26,170 They are a daughter, Mizrahi. They are the communities of the East because. 420 01:03:28,420 --> 01:03:37,510 And they were right, of course. Right. And like Jewish, Iraqi identity is ethnicity in a way. 421 01:03:37,600 --> 01:03:45,010 It's one community that has its ethnic history and so on and culture. 422 01:03:46,840 --> 01:03:51,540 The different communities of Jews in the Arab and Muslim world. 423 01:03:51,550 --> 01:03:54,670 Where in one community. Right. 424 01:03:54,760 --> 01:04:03,640 They have we can tell like of shared histories, shared culture. 425 01:04:05,320 --> 01:04:14,890 But but it's, of course, mainly in retrospect when we look from our point in history back that we see it. 426 01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:29,620 But for them, prior to immigration, they didn't feel like every community was connected to specific different communities. 427 01:04:31,600 --> 01:04:42,340 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. 428 01:04:42,670 --> 01:04:48,069 Of course, Turkey that was like the capital of the Ottoman Empire. 429 01:04:48,070 --> 01:04:56,110 So that was a centre and to some extent like the communities in in the land of Israel, Jerusalem specifically and so on. 430 01:04:56,470 --> 01:05:02,590 So there were those connections, but they didn't imagine it as as one community. 431 01:05:02,890 --> 01:05:07,080 And they did. And take into account in that story like that. 432 01:05:07,080 --> 01:05:13,030 Yemen is part of their larger community or imagined about Tunisia and so on. 433 01:05:13,050 --> 01:05:22,950 There were those were far away places that weren't in in the nearby imagination from the seventies. 434 01:05:25,780 --> 01:05:42,460 The term Mizrahi was, in a way used or appropriated by Jews of the Muslim world in Israel, 435 01:05:42,910 --> 01:05:54,670 mainly like already second generation who did it like their experience was their oppression in Israel. 436 01:05:56,210 --> 01:06:02,910 Not. Focusing on the shared culture. 437 01:06:04,540 --> 01:06:13,870 But sharing the same oppression economic, geographical, cultural, educational oppression in Israel. 438 01:06:14,530 --> 01:06:21,430 And in that sense, they accepted the term of the music to the east. 439 01:06:21,790 --> 01:06:32,560 They took this derogatory term or what was perceived as derogatory in Hebrew at the time and said, Yes, we are mizrahim. 440 01:06:33,310 --> 01:06:38,710 They changed the name in the sense that it's not it's not a daughter of Israel. 441 01:06:38,800 --> 01:06:43,820 It's not the communities of the east, but it's the eastern, right? 442 01:06:43,870 --> 01:06:47,230 So it's making it into one group. 443 01:06:48,930 --> 01:06:56,440 It's like, you know, in other like with Levantine identity, 444 01:06:56,440 --> 01:07:09,220 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. 445 01:07:09,850 --> 01:07:20,169 So it was at that time and it was connected already to second generation to the time of the Black Panthers in Israel, 446 01:07:20,170 --> 01:07:24,850 to the demonstrations against the oppression. 447 01:07:25,960 --> 01:07:39,410 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. 448 01:07:39,430 --> 01:07:50,020 I think still, like it can be said that like I'm not sure that the majority of Mizrahim, 449 01:07:50,020 --> 01:07:57,220 the majority of Jews of the Muslim world would like to use the term like it is. 450 01:07:58,100 --> 01:08:10,059 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, 451 01:08:10,060 --> 01:08:16,360 of course, that the majority of people wanted to be considered Israelis. 452 01:08:16,990 --> 01:08:20,620 Right. Like like other situations. 453 01:08:21,550 --> 01:08:36,010 Your dream is to aspire to get the majority's consent that you are part of the majority's identity. 454 01:08:36,460 --> 01:08:53,590 Right. But I think that different people have different chances of really becoming like of being identified from the outside with the general term. 455 01:08:54,400 --> 01:09:04,750 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 456 01:09:04,900 --> 01:09:18,100 the what is considered like the general neutral term of Israelis who is which is which used to be like a more. 457 01:09:18,590 --> 01:09:30,400 More connected to Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. But some people like could be like be considered as just Israelis. 458 01:09:30,790 --> 01:09:43,030 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. 459 01:09:43,660 --> 01:09:49,210 And then, of course, they have to ask themselves what what to do like. 460 01:09:49,690 --> 01:09:55,900 And again, many times what you do is you, you know, you you live with it. 461 01:09:56,050 --> 01:10:01,330 So in ethnic profiling of the police, you are Mizrahi. 462 01:10:01,750 --> 01:10:19,420 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, 463 01:10:20,320 --> 01:10:27,190 the Arab culture, the Mizrahi culture. But you you can you can leave. 464 01:10:27,190 --> 01:10:38,649 I think many people leave with this duplicate or it's not duplicate like Pitzl with this a 465 01:10:38,650 --> 01:10:46,390 cut of between themselves in the sense that they try as much as they can to pass as Israelis. 466 01:10:46,870 --> 01:10:59,260 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. 467 01:10:59,800 --> 01:11:03,130 So, maybe their children will pass and. 468 01:11:03,230 --> 01:11:12,800 In the right way. Right. And so that's look, I think the changes like in the moment. 469 01:11:13,460 --> 01:11:19,370 Is is in the sense that, of course, like. 470 01:11:20,060 --> 01:11:36,710 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. 471 01:11:37,490 --> 01:11:43,069 It's not that easy to connect themselves to do. 472 01:11:43,070 --> 01:11:52,670 They are big. Or Arab culture like. So with Mizrahi identity, you have a large scale change in the last 20 years. 473 01:11:53,060 --> 01:11:59,540 With you there are big in Arabic in general you have like one step ahead, one step back. 474 01:12:00,050 --> 01:12:05,330 Like it's not there are changes, but it's not a change. 475 01:12:05,930 --> 01:12:09,499 A clear one. Thank you. I think we should conclude here. 476 01:12:09,500 --> 01:12:16,040 Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for this fascinating talk with as you know, as wonderful as always. 477 01:12:16,400 --> 01:12:18,170 Thank you so much. Thank you.