Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. Thank you for coming up for this last meeting of Hillary two.
I'm honoured and delighted to present today to introduce today my friend and colleague Dr. Yuval every who's coming to us today from us.
Dr. Every every, every is a sociologist and a cultural researcher who focuses on the political,
intellectual history of the land of Israel Palestine at the turn of the 20th century.
Dr. Evans Research has deepened and enlightened our understanding of the past and present of the Middle East at large.
And he offers viable parts in which we may progress in the future.
I would say, if we wish to overcome some of the misfortunate predicaments and grave injustices of the current situation in the region.
The title of this talk, Today's Andalusian legacy is the role of Andalusia Forward in the Political and Cultural History of Israel Palestine.
Thank you for coming. Thank you very much, Echo for the introduction and for the invitation.
I'm really happy to be here and I need to say something maybe about the my surname, about every Iraqi just to be Arab.
And my family changes when they immigrate to Israel.
And I thought that it's a it's a legend. But when I moved to London, I realised it was some a Jewish name, surname, Arab.
There's energy Arab. I don't know if you know what it's like, but there is few Jewish Iraqi that their surname is Arab.
So my, my, my name originally is Arab now I'm called every is very of Hebrew is precise name and very Israeli and new Jewish name in many,
many ways I've been to we tend to the to the altar.
And I think in many ways it's connected to the things that I'm I'm dealing with in the last ten years in my research,
the connection between Hebrew and Arabic and what I'm going to do today, it's a mixture of a few things that interested me in the last ten years.
One of them is the Arab-Jewish intellectual thought in the turn of the 20th century.
The second is the dam, the permanent rule of al-Andalus safeguards for God and as a of course, is as a legacy, as a symbol, as a research object,
as a poetic symbol or poetic genre in the in the turn of the 20th century to to
Palestine in general and to the connection between Jews and Muslims in that time.
So what I'm going to talk today, it's it's a combination of few, few things that I'm interested in.
And so let's start how can we write the Arab-Jewish intellectual history in the post partition?
And how can we re-imagine its historical and geographical folds full scope after more than a century of physical,
social and cultural and political displacement, marginalisation and negation?
Post partition in this context applies not only to the partition of Palestine,
but also to the separation of disciplines, traditions, histories and languages between Hebrew and Arabic,
between and between Hebrew literature and Arabic literature, between Judaism and Islam,
Zionism and Arab nationalism, Jewish and Arab ness, and between Sephardi and al-Andalus.
In this post partition environment, it is not surprising that the boundary become so crucial in the research of Arab Jewish Sephardi literature.
What are the field's boundary lines in terms of language, temporality and space place?
For instance, what is the linguistic scope Arabic, Hebrew, Judeo Arabic, Ladino, French or English?
And is it a division of larger Jewish literary field?
Should it be considered as part of Hebrew, Arabic to the Muslim, Spanish or postcolonial literary framework?
What should be the field's point of departure? Medieval al-Andalus or modern time or post 1948, 1492 or 1882?
Nada or Hebrew Scholar. What should be the framework of the imagined geography?
Middle East, Ottoman Empire, Muslim World or Jewish World?
Israel, Palestine or Arab countries, diaspora or homeland?
al-Andalus or ossified. Most of the scholarly work in this field today are already navigating in a narrow and limited scope,
adapting into the post, partitioned, fragmented academic landscape and reality.
Can we explore and understand the Arab Jewish intellectual world in its fullness and complexity through the existent,
partitioned academic fields and terminology? Can we transcend the geographical, historical and disciplinary boundaries?
And we integrate the fragmented pieces into one? Field and one history.
In my short talk today,
I won't be able to address all these important questions that were investigated in several important scholarly work in the past decades.
And I should say one break in walks and Arab-Jewish cultural history through the lens of the partition past and present,
including her more recent work on the invention of the Judaic Arabic.
Without doubt the most important and influential ones, and were followed by others.
Important works by lookalike Ellenberg and Gil Angela.
I want to suggest a different entrance to these questions through the representation and visions of al-Andalus around the turn of the 20th century,
exploring its crucial role in the creation of modern Jewish studies and in the separation
of Arabic and Hebrew Muslims in Jewish intellectual traditions and histories.
Shifting the focus to the prior partition era or more precisely to them,
early stages of the partitioning process enable us not only to trace back the cultural and political options that were materialised,
but also reveal options that emerged at the time but were negated, marginalised and forgotten.
My research in the last decade focussed on Arab Jewish SAFA, the intellectual network during the formative.
During this formative period, the turn of the 20th century by exploring the cultural visions and activities of this network.
I seek not only to reveal marginalised voices, but also to expose exposed,
unexplored political options that aim to transform and reshape social and cultural realities at a formative moment in the history of Israeli,
Palestinian, Israeli Palestinian conflict. This is also a opportunity to challenge the institutionalised nationalist geographies,
as well as the disciplinary and political divisions that dominate our reading of the past and present.
From early stages of my work, I have identified the importance of al-Andalus offered in their intellectual work,
as well as their political and cultural vision.
It echoes implicitly and explicitly through their throughout their writings and activities in different ways and forms.
It is important to clarify here that I investigate al-Andalus not simply as a medieval object or phenomena,
but rather as an active and powerful modern representation.
Instead of imagining the explore and exploring the Andalusian past and heritage as being entire fixed in one history or experience.
I am looking at the different and often contested visions of al-Andalus offered in the
modern Jewish discourse in general and in the Arab Jewish discourse in particular.
Therefore, I am investigating al-Andalus as a travelling concept, focusing on its transformation in translations through a movement of languages,
texts, poetic models and philosophy, philosophical ideas between time and space.
Yeah. Okay. Now, I would like to introduce the network in more details and situate them in a wider social and cultural context.
The member of the Sephardi network includes Yosef Mucarsel-powell, Abdallah, Yousef, Shlomi, Huda, Davida Lin, a real mention Shimon Majali.
Similar rule is still Azali Moyal end of Ramadan Malia to name only few.
Most of them were born in Palestine in the second turn of the 19th century in the local Sephardi community.
The traumatic transformation that occurred in the second half of the 20th of the 19th century in
the Ottoman Empire in Palestine particular had a formative role in their intellectual development.
They were part of a growing circles of local scholars who were engaged in a variety of intellectual activities ethnographic research, translation,
literary interpretation, journalism,
philology and induction in their in these scholarly circles were active Muslims and Christians from the local Arab Palestinians.
Community figures like Dr. Tawfik, Anon, Stefan,
Stephan and Halil to tackle this emerging local Palestinian scholarly community was shaped in the mixture of imperial,
religious and national discourses that operated together in the public spheres.
This notion of fluidity and mobility between different national collective collective
affiliations shaped then influenced the political and cultural visions of these intellectuals.
During this period. Towards the end of the Ottoman era, some of the Sephardic intellectuals were members of both Hebrew Renaissance and Movement,
the Scala and the Nahda, the Arab Renaissance movement at the time when the two were not yet seen to be contradictory.
The involvement of these intellectuals in both Hebrew and Arabic revival movement helped them to articulate a different
approach towards revival of Hebrew language and culture from that of the mainstream ashkenazim as Quilliam in Palestine.
In this context, they view the period as Andalusian moment, a moment of reunion of Jews and Muslims,
Arabs and Hebrews in a shared homeland Palestine like it was in al-Andalus before the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from the land.
Like insofar that this moment of opportunity for establishing a joint Hebrew and Arabic culture.
Moment of new encounters and promises of shared future.
Best of revival of the great Jew, the Arabic Andalusian heritage of operating.
In this notion of Andalusian moment, we can identify two main strains in their intellectual activities.
The first strain focussed mainly on the representation interpretation of the Andalusian
narratives in the modern Jewish discourse vis a vis Hebrew and Jewish modernity,
modernisation and the creation of Jewish national community in Palestine.
I don't I wouldn't have enough time to get into it,
but the that was really important symbol since I think the early enlightenment cycle Jewish from Mendelssohn on onward and to of course the
Zionist movement and Bialik and others that went back to Shiraz Fradkin to the poetry of Spain as there is a national and Western image.
And to that too, I will talk a little bit about this dispute with them, but this is more focus in my Ph.D.
The second trend focussed on the recreation and creating of a new Hebrew Arabic literature literary tradition through translations,
literature and literary research based on Arabic poetic models and traditions.
The question of the representation of the Fatherland.
Those was in the centre of the dialogue with European Jewish scholars and political activists of the time.
Some of them were also engaged in fierce disputes with leading European Jewish
scholars and Zionist leaders over the modernisation process of Hebrew and Arabic,
of Hebrew and Jewish culture, and its effect on the Jewish political and social life in Palestine,
critical of the tendency of the Jewish scholars in Europe and later also in Palestine,
to define the Jewish and Hebrew modernisation as a process of westernisation or end your presentation.
They emphasise the importance of returning to the Andalusian Judeo Muslim tradition into the Arab culture that had developed over the centuries.
In that sense, they were also influenced by the return to Andalusia in the Arab Kannada movement as a model of glorious our past.
To be revived in the heart of these disputes, we can identified one common issue,
which they share a clear and consistence view about the separation between Hebrew and Arabic languages and literary traditions.
They have all identified quite early the process of isolating the research of one Andalusian, Jewish and Hebrew little.
From its Arabic context,
this trend was manifested both explicitly and implicitly in some of the research work of the physics of the student on their sense of Judaism.
In Judaism circles, leading Jewish scholars in this circles emphasises emphasise the Western character
of Judaism while ignoring or playing down its is to inculcate a mystics,
including the prominent role of Arabic language and culture in the Jewish Andalucian heritage.
Critical of this tendency, shall Abdallah Joseph, the violin of Shalom Yehuda,
emphasise the importance of the knowledge of Arabic language and the poetic style
in their development of their research of SHU ratified the poetry of Spain,
the Hebrew Poetry of Spain.
They also pointed out the importance of the comparative approach that binds together the research of Arabic and Hebrew poetry of Andalusia.
In these disputes, Avraham Shalom Yehuda had a leading role,
mainly due to his unique intellectual biography and prominent position vis a vis the European Jewish scholars.
Yehuda was a prolific researcher, translator and manuscript collectors whose intellectual activity spread over many geographical areas,
including Jerusalem, Frankford, Heidelberg, Berlin, London, New York and Madrid.
In intellectual disciplines. Philology Jewish History. A winter studies biblical criticism and Islamic studies.
His work was influenced by the main modern Jewish intellectual trends that scholar the visions of the You Do Come circles and Hebrew revivalism.
Yet at the same time, he was not less inspired by the Arab Ennahda movement, the Ottoman political and cultural reformation,
the Tanzim, and in the Sephardic intellectual circles of his time as a researcher,
he was trained in the German Orientalist system is which is research focussed on the intertwined Judeo Muslim world and on the Hebrew,
Arabic, linguistic and cultural connections. Yoder was a unique figure in the German or interlaced circles of his time.
A Palestinian native with the Baghdadi background and with a strong Jerusalemite and Sephardic affiliation,
Yehuda was critical of the European Jewish Orientalist approach towards Jewish
cultural and in general and towards the Andalusian culture in particular.
His main criticism was pointed towards the Jewish scholars who were engaged in republishing scholarly editions of Hebrew,
Andalusian poets, as well as encouraging research and study a of the field.
Yoder criticised the lack of relation in affiliation to Arabic language and culture in their research,
which was for him not just a subject for historical study,
but also integral part of contemporary Jewish existence and of the future of the Jewish people in Palestine.
For him, the the dispute on al-Andalus how you need to re return to the Andalusian heritage.
The Jewish is connected to the Arab question Palestine very closely.
I won't get into it here, but I wrote about it in different places.
And in one of his crucial articles,
Yehuda point points out the lack of knowledge of Arabic within the Jewish researchers, and I quote Our will theory.
He means the European Jewish scholars are biased against our big literature literary heritage from the Middle Ages.
No one will dare to write about Philo without knowing Greek or about Spinoza, without Latin or about Mendelssohn, without a without the German.
But except for a select few, nearly all writes about our medieval literature.
Literature takes no interest in studying the language that gave them most of their methods and ideas, even with regard to their Arabic books,
most of them satisfied with understanding them using the Hebrew translations,
which in themselves are influenced by the Arabic language and cannot be fully comprehended without the knowledge of Arabic.
Contrary to dispatch, Yehuda emphasised the deep interconnection between the Jewish and Arabic traditions.
Reconnecting Judaism to the East and to the Judeo Muslim tradition was for him, the crucial step in modernisation of Jewish culture.
Yehuda began to articulate this political and cultural vision in his earliest days in Europe,
as he wrote to his cousin the violin in a letter in 1889 1899.
Sorry, but in the land of Israel it is possible then they, the European Jews,
will return to their Eastern ism in the East and open their hearts to Eastern and Arabic literatures.
And by doing so, they will shed light on the life of our people of the past before they changed their nature.
Nature from the east and becoming too close to foreign people.
A line alien to their spirit.
But the people of the East left us many books and scriptures that may give us an idea of their way of life,
their intellectual properties, and the vast Arabic literature would provide us with sufficient material for our needs.
Similar views and criticism we can find in the field disputes that.
Another member of the network, Soul Abdullah Baghdadi,
a Baghdadi merchant and scholar that raised a resided in Hong Kong head with the science of Judaism scholars in Europe.
Only Yosef spent most of his adult life in the Baghdadi diaspora in Southeast Asia.
He settled with his family in the British colony of Hong Kong, where he established a brokerage house at the Stock Exchange.
Alongside his business training, Youssef was autodidact, autodidact,
well studied Hebrew and Arabic literature in particular, read in particular the Jewish works of al-Andalus.
He corresponded with Jewish intellectuals in Europe and in Arab lands within the Baghdadi diaspora.
Joseph was active in the Arabic newspaper in Hebrew letters, Arabic in Hebrew letters,
the Jew to Arabic epitaph in Majid Macharia publish in Calcutta.
Those intellectual circles comprise of Jews from Baghdad, the diaspora in Southeast Asia, Baghdad, Aleppo and Basra and in Jerusalem in other places.
And from his own congregation,
Yusef was greatly interested in the work of the scholars circles in Europe and was a member of some of their research association, mainly them in.
He did the. It did not belong to a recognised Jewish centre and had no formal higher education or by medical training.
He also represented different, often contradictory worlds.
He tried to bring the Baghdadi Jewish intellectual circus closer to the world of the Scala,
while simultaneously disputing with European scholars about the foundation of the Jewish and Sephardi heritage.
In one of his letters, the violin.
He criticised the European scholar's approach to the Arab Jewish poetry of al-Andalus, and I quote, I have done all I can to enlighten our colleagues,
wise men of our skin as to the fact that the Arab Jewish poetry is not like European poetry,
what a Biafran Berliner and a BLR country have generally conceded the point I have written to them.
They remain incapable of removing their European spectacles from their eyes.
In another occasion evoked in different article By my word,
this is an attempt by Westerners to interpret and interpret the words of an Eastern poet using the Western aesthetic.
And from reading it, you are given to understanding the taboo you deliver.
The Safadi actually spoke with Ashkenazi accent and used European images and phrases.
And so what about as if for me it was a great discovery and there's less and there's no a lot of writing about it,
but it was had a long, long disputes with it and think in many ways.
Before we as, let's say the intel, we had the great critique of Europe position of Jewish culture and Arab culture.
He was often referred as the hammer Baghdadi, the Baghdadi scholar, despite having left Baghdadi at the young age,
spending most of his life as trader and then British subject in the British colonies,
the intellectual world of the 11 season was also rich and varied.
Benson was born in Jerusalem in 1880 and was involved in the Sephardic Kabbalistic circles of the of the Bechtel Seminary,
of which his father was a member.
He later travelled to Germany, where he studied in four universities and completed his doctoral thesis in University of Bern, Switzerland.
Benson was also involved in the Hebrew revival movement in Palestine.
His academic activity in Europe and the Zionist activism connected him with the German, Orientalist and Zionist leaders.
He was also influenced by the pan-Asian thinkers and was in touch with the Indian put to go.
Thus, multiple association influence and influences in the world of Yehuda,
Yosef and Keynesian, as well as their movement between different geographical,
disciplinary and political locations, represent also the complex and dynamic intellectual horizons of other members of the network.
Other fierce disputing in other soil and other fields dispute regarding the separation between Hebrew and Arabic developed in Palestine.
In the early stages of the Zionist settlement in the beginning of the 20th century,
Sephardic intellectuals identified the similar approach of negating Arabic language and
history in the separate separatist and arrogant attitudes of the European Jewish settlers.
So it's the Palestinian Arabs which had the crucial effect on the creation of the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine.
Native Palestinians, Jews like and similar to Leicester, Azaria,
Mujahed and Shimon will criticise the refusal of Zionist settlers to learn Arabic and
their dismissiveness and racism towards the local population during this dispute.
They emphasise the Andalucian heritage as a political and cultural model that the Jew,
the Jewish settlers needs to adopt in the process of integrating with the local Arab society.
It seems that their fierce and clear objection to the separation of Arabic and
Hebrew represented something bigger than a scientific or political dispute.
It affected the essence of their identity and their and social existence,
threatening to destroy the best basis of their historical tradition intellectual world.
They indentified the danger of the logic of partition from its early stages and tried to prevent it.
Now I'm going to the second strand. The second major intellectual project that this is safeguarding the network
involved in was manifested in their translation works during the late Ottoman era.
They were active members in both Hebrew and Arabic throughout the movement.
While the increasing hostility between Jews and Arabs opened a linguistic rupture between Hebrew and Arabic, their insistence on holding the both,
holding on to both languages positioned themselves in the borderlands between them, and using translation as a political and cultural tool.
They published hundreds of essays, political commentaries, translations, short stories and poems,
mostly in local Hebrew and Arabic newspapers and journals marking the first modern phenomena
of Arabic Hebrew literary bilingualism since the great Arab-Jewish poets of al-Andalus.
The prominent role of translation in their intellectual work was largely a result of direct and indirect affiliation with a seemingly,
seemingly lost world. Islamic al-Andalus was the parade of the 10 to 12 centuries.
This was the famous golden age of Jewish intellectual life.
The age of great, great thinkers and and poets such as Maimonides, Moses, Ebenezer.
I knew the Olivia who were intimately,
intimately linked to the Arabic poetry and Islamic philosophy while advancing the study of Jewish law and Hebrew philology and poetry.
In light of this intertwined cultural heritage,
the Arab Jewish intellectuals tried to revive this medieval vision as a social and political platform for modern Jewish,
Arab shared life in Palestine. By adapting this cultural model to the context of Palestine.
This work promoted this network promoted translation from Arabic as a fundamental instrument in the Hebrew National and Cultural Revival.
Out of their large corpus of translation, I want to present to you in briefly a full of their major translation project with them and want
to start working on them next year in more details and a translation from Arabic to Hebrew.
The first one is The Elderly Love Children of Arabia,
a collection of biblical tales from the Arab Palestinian oral tradition by Yosef Mucus, published in 1927.
Michel of Tales of the Arabs, a comprehensive collection of Arabic proverb by its characters new media Huda published in 1932.
Carlo Dimona a Cleveland Dimona, a famous collection of animal fables that were translated from Sanskrit to Persian, Arabic into Hebrew by Iman Malek,
published in 1927, in middle of summer in a man who bananas king of a man and his sons section from the Thousand and one nights.
That was translated translated by the video in 1930.
You have some of these covers of these books here. Yeah.
Calling them nice, beautiful Arabic is the illusion of Arabic and Hebrew here.
It's the mixture of that. They breed of it. It's on the cover.
These translations stand out because they do not belong to a uniform, religious, national, a geographical, linguistic tradition.
There's no one source. There's no original source to this this text, these cross languages, time,
space and culture providing unique case study of translation without original written sources in
Yehuda and mucous example is even stronger because you don't have any source written source.
It's based on oral traditions.
So you have a unique case study of transition with that original in the time of national time with all, everyone is obsessed by originals.
Of course the biblical original into it they combine oral and written tradition.
This blurring the distinction between author and translators, original and copy.
They present a unique linguistic mix of Hebrew and Arabic, which challenge the national distinction,
offering exceptional evidence of modern Hebrew, Arabic, hybridity, all these texts of combining Arabic into Hebrew and vice versa.
These translations are not merely literary exercises.
They embody inattentive political possibility of shared Hebrew Arabic culture against the mainstream Zionist separatist approach.
My research of this translation has three axes text textual analysis focusing on linguistic,
structural and automatic aspects that reflect the turbulent Palestinian politics of 1920 1930.
You have to think about the times that this transition was published before 1929.
But in all the old the 1920s are times of violent and yeah.
And clashes between Jews and Arabs in the land and their public reception compared to other literary projects in Hebrew and Arabic circles.
In the broader political context and implications, the translation strategy, selection of text and translator,
culture and translators, cultural and political motivation as stated in the processes, interviews and private correspondence.
Conclusion How can we re-engage with the work of those Arab-Jewish thinkers and
writers without reducing their literary and cultural vision to our reality?
How the different images of al-Andalus can contribute to our understanding of our Jewish cultural history and present.
We engaging with this Andalusian vision of this Arab-Jewish network enable us much more
than simply revealing missing voices or missing figures in the Jewish is still goofy.
It offered us an opportunity to develop new perspectives and theoretical frameworks and to rearrange the research fields itself.
In that way, it challenges and matters as some of the basic assumptions,
categorisations and terminology that organise the institutionalised knowledge on Jewish studies in Hebrew Arabic literatures.
It also can help us reveal inconsistencies and contradiction and contradictions in the official and knowledge production,
as well as the its ideological and political mechanisms.
It also provides new ways of exploring historical events for multiple approaches and prisms during multiple geographies and localities,
most specifically in the context of the Arab Jewish literature,
it enables us to transcend the existing disciplinary division that limits and bizarreness
to a movement in the frame that is framed within the modern Jewish National Project,
informed by Westernisation new appreciation instead plasticity within a landscape of multiple locations,
realities and collectives and collectivity, embodying broad and complex spiritual, cultural and historical context.
The members of this network. This is a very important point.
The member of this network should not sin as barriers or preservers of traditions facing collapse and extinction.
And this is something that some of these people would wear in Delta quite shortly.
But there always seems to be as there's a big giant the trying to preserve oral
tradition I think it's it's it's the wrong approach to them they should be
instead be viewed as an active participants in renewing and reforming and
reformulating these traditions as both scholars and creators in their visions.
They lived in Andalusian moment. That was also their moment.
It's a Farideh moment in which their hurt and in which the heads and successor of the great Andalusian poets,
philosophers and translators will re-establish the Jew the Arabic tradition.
We integrate the fragmented history of the Arab Jewish scholarly world.
In this process, Andalusians and the Arad served as a political and cultural.
Model and inspiration for should Arab and Jewish future in Palestine.
In many ways, this moment was taken from them by the national movement that was divided along the single language line in national canons.
That was contradictory, contrary to the spirit of alarm.
We should read this Andalusian moment as part of a larger cultural impact.
So as part of culture,
a large cultural and political phenomena in which the image and the representation of al-Andalus offered not only as a place appeared,
but mainly as a social and cultural model is used as allegory or symbol in the formation of contact.
Contested political and cultural vision for Palestine-Israel, not only in the Arab-Jewish choir and the Jewish and the Hebrew it.
Same with Palestinian and and how they thought in general throughout the last century.
al-Andalus serves as a combat concept where where by terms are used to advance competing religious and political programs
which are separated from their historical referents and lack any fixed or ethical meanings each represent different.
al-Andalus represent different and sometimes contradictory visions, memories and legacies, homeland and exile,
beginning and in end shed intertwined cultural or into religious life, while at the same time in explosion, expulsions and religious conflicts.
Time of glory and achievement. And time of catastrophe and tragedies.
The Allegory of Palestine in al-Andalus that was a crucial factor in the Arab-Jewish intellectual
work during the early 20th century was also prominent in more recent Palestinian writings,
such as, let's say, AIDS and Muhammad the Jewish. In their writings, al-Andalus has evolved into an image of Lost Garden,
which symbolised an idealised society of intellectual achievement and cultural hybridity, as well as an historical moment of loss and exile.
I would like to finish with the words of Darwish and to read a segment from his
poem 11 Stars of Andalusia that he wrote in 1992 after his first visit to Granada,
Spain, around the commemoration of 500 years of the Castilian Christian conquest and the ending of the Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula.
In this poem, the story of the conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Muslims from al-Andalus serves as an allegory
to the story of the Nakba and the conquest of Palestine and the displacement of the Palestinians.
Who wants to. To read? Yeah.
Huh? Avi, can I ask you.
And we'll finish with it. Can you say I was on.
I was on TV all this time. On our last leave.
Neve Eve on Marla. The title is on our last evening on this land on our last evening on this land we chop our days from our young trees.
Car thieves will take with us and the reefs we will leave behind.
On the last evening, we bid nothing farewell nor find the time to end.
Everything remains as it is. It is the place that changes our dreams and its visitors.
Suddenly we are incapable of army. This land will now post atoms of dust here.
On our last evening we look closely at the mountain besieging the clouds, the conquest, an account of conquest,
and an all time handing this new time the keys to our doors and conclusion so into our houses,
conquerors and drink the wine of militarists move show us Russia once more shot in Russia We are the night at midnight.
And so horsemen will bring dark will bring dawn from the sanctuary of the last call to
prayer Artie's green and halt Drink it Our pistachios are fridge Eat them the bits of green
see the full on them Following this long siege Lie down on the feathers of our dreams The
sheets are crisp perfumes so ready by the door and there are plenty of mirrors into them.
So we may exit complex completely soon.
We will search in the margins of our history in distant countries for what was once our history.
And in the end we will ask ourselves, Was Andalusia here or there on the land or in the poem?
Thank you. Maybe that's okay.
Thank you. You're thinking. Common questions.
Yeah. And it was an understanding that, you know, it's a mixture of a Spanish and a Hebrew and just Spanish, pure heritage.
Okay. It's a good question, because most of the time, the Andalusian time was a Jew Arabic mostly.
But with the Christian conquest into other parts of Spain.
So the Jews became more and more under Christian and Castilian rule, and they started to adopt the Spanish.
But this, the Judas Spanish became a Jewish language as a collective only after the expulsion.
Only in the in the diaspora. In the Ottoman Empire.
And that's the time. When did you then a Spanish became a language of culture in itself for poetry,
for for stories, for correspondents, correspondence for a biblical writings for.
But before that, there are, of course, was the many language Arabic in Hebrew letters.
So in that sense, when we're talking about Ladino, we're talking already about a different time of Andalusia.
Andalusia, outside of of of the real land.
In that sense, it's a memory. So there's a great story.
In the end of the 19th century, a lot of Spanish historians and intellectuals were starting to be really attracted to Jews, the Jewish past of Spain.
And they went to their to look for to the to this, you know,
to this diaspora of Jewish Sephardic Jews that still keeps the language and still keep their there, their culture, even 400 years after the expulsion.
And we don't any connection. And he went one of them went to Belgrade.
In the end, he met a lady and he spoke Spanish and she said oh to a has been a look he speaks Judaism all he speaks Jewish must Judaism it's a Jewish.
She didn't even know that Spanish Jew. Their Spanish is connected to Spain to a land that is outside for there.
It's Judaism, it's a it's a Jewish language. So the connection between Jewish, Ladino, the Jew, Judith, Spanish,
dismal to Spain is interesting in that sense, but it's the beginning of it as a cultural phenomenon.
It's only after the expulsion. So it was just one of these before now it was either Arabic.
Arabic was very strongly even after. Yeah, even in Toledo he would live.
This was under Christian rule in the Arabic was and then was a sea Venezia was
was expelled from Granada to two led the two and he always thought of himself.
Arabic was the cultural language, you know, after the expulsion, of course, until today,
it's still Ladino and elements of Ladino, not without the Hebrew, you know, the sandwich, the Arabic.
It's it's Arabic with Hebrew characters. So Ladino it's Spanish in the old form of it, in the medieval form.
It's the same with English and German. It's the same.
It's, it's kept the old version. Of course it depends where you are speaking Ladino, if you're speaking Ladino in the Ottoman Empire.
So probably Arab words would get into it. The Ottoman Turkish, you have, of course, words that are always coming in and entering into their language.
Anyway, my second question was that is there any significance to the fact that a love of Arab and um and in in the Hebrew and
the significance in that similarity with areas with that would ninth and then I don't know maybe can help me with that.
And but the effort of that of it's the of course the Hebrew and Arab and one of the who that what I'm
saying I mean who the books in Hebrew it's evident that we have a and and a both mean it evening.
No no ever ever. It's crossing the other side of the lake even to pass novel in Hebrew and.
I'd like to begin with a comment on the process, how you began, how your I mean, was surprised to agree.
And I have a cousin in Baghdad was called Fouad Hammam when he went to his friend.
They changed his name for him to say, you're not handsome, you're not your goodness is being the picture now fired is out.
Yeah. So and now he's he's done so he became hamama.
He came out. What became her. Yeah. Yeah.
And I don't know why they chose that sort of you to prove something in the, in the broader context, the history of Israel,
Zionism and Israel is a constant move to turn their back on the eastern roots and Eastern legacies and to turn Israel into a Western country.
And you describe, very interestingly, the perspective of these Mizrahi intellectuals,
how they dealt with these issues and the resentment a fifth of the Jews in
Palestine for refusing to learn Hebrew and refusing to engage with this culture.
In your last talk here, you spoke about a different thing, which was Mizrahi Jews in Palestine, the reaction to the Balfour Declaration.
Yes. And I found that really fascinating, that from day one,
they opposed the Balfour Declaration because they wanted to be left alone to get on with their Arab neighbours.
They wanted a national home. But for both peoples, yes.
And. And I wonder whether there is any connection between these two strands of you.
A few research? Yeah, I think it's very connected and in certain in certain points the same figures.
And because I think with al-Andalus for them it's,
I think it's even more strongly because they call it the spreading they they supposed to be even though most of them are not the Iraqi,
most of them the think they are not part of the Sephardi expulsion, but through halachic traditions,
they were called Sephardim and but they were dismissed from the heritage of the middle level.
So in many ways, they the Ashkenazi elite of their of their culture said, okay, we are their heroes of their of this medieval tradition.
For us, it's a Hebrew tradition. It's a it's a Western tradition and it's a national tradition.
You Televisa is a nationalist figure and Bialik would say that is the continuation of a feud every the same with Mendelssohn and in German and others.
So they see themselves and they say there are two can they can our tradition and they are westernising it and they're distancing every aspect,
Arabic aspect into it. And the same time, they are labelling us as Arabs, as Austrians, as not cultured, as outside of the Jewish modern culture.
And and the intellectuals see it, and they understand from day one that this is a it's a project.
It's a political project that we have to combat and to show that the Andalusian is a different country,
is a different heritage, but it's not only a different heritage in the past.
It have a different application for the present in Palestine.
And that's going back to the question of Balfour Declaration.
For them, the Andalusian project is an Arab Jewish tradition that we need to as as as natives,
Arab and Jewish natives in Palestine need to go together to event together in another place.
I wrote about the who the coming in 1920, given the talk in Arabic, in in in Jerusalem.
It was it was a it was introduced by Nashashibi.
They're the mayor that knows him from childhood because they were born together in Jerusalem.
They were raised together in Jerusalem and they're in Arabic. He says to the intellectual person, Let's revive together.
al-Andalus is topic was. al-Andalus said, okay, this is the moment the Jews and the Muslims together let's revival Andalusia and modernise.
So of course these. These. Is inspired by Nadal and in that sense inspired by the pan-Asian fandom sentiment is inspired the other.
But this is a different. Yes, this is a very different point of view.
And it's very connected to the different point of view that they took to.
But for declaration said, no, we don't want a Jewish national state.
We want a binational. In many ways they wouldn't say bonjour, but we living together in that in that space.
So can I just ask expand on two issues you already raised.
But the first is how strong were the ties, these Jewish Arabs character?
It kind of is established when we post Indian Muslims overseas and Arabs.
Yes. And so just when he goes, how do they reply?
And second, do they offer a positive alternative to the national political wing of Zionism?
What would there be the political really? Yes, I think it's a it's a very important question.
I think it depends in what time of going back to them. If you going back before 1917, I think they had the moment, major,
major point of view that was different from Zionism and they had a bigger connection to Ben and to their Palestinian intellectuals.
So if you're going to Shimon, we are in a similar role in Jaffa.
In the in 1911, they had the great connection with the Arab intellectuals of the time.
They even though the ones attacking Zionism, they tried to respond to them, said, no,
Zionism doesn't contradict Arab nationalism and doesn't contradict Ottoman nationalism in the time.
They they talking from a multiple loyalty perspective in that sense I think 1917 and the Balfour Declaration changing the story dramatically.
So when you who this coming bringing his lectures is lecturing in 1921 of the biggest supporters was the affair and Mustapha what's his name there?
The Iraqi poet. The famous Iraqi poet. And so there was a famous elected poet attending there in the car.
And he was really blown by it in many ways and said, yes, we have to call it weakening.
But the Palestinians intellectuals already been in a different place.
They said, okay, he's a Zionist or not Zionist, he's the same.
When I talked last time about Castille and Ben Kiki, they only the Balfour Declaration.
Even if they were opposing Balfour Declaration, the Palestinians already wanted them to declare that anti-Zionist.
So if you anti-Zionist, you are with us. If you're not and it's only so it's a different platform.
So but for the question changed dramatically the map that I think that's the tragedy because in that sense you have to you can
you couldn't be anymore in multiple realities that you could be in the Ottoman time that one time you can say I'm a poor Arab.
The violin went to mosques and then giving lectures in Arabic and was very supportive of of Nahda.
And the same with we of course, Yemen. We are similarly in Egypt and in the turmoil in Lebanon even more strongly,
but is sentence would declare them such as analysts, l Jewish nationalists and Ottoman of course Ottoman patriots.
But after 1917 this this collapse into this binary of the partition.
Yes. That the partition the separation that have you have to decide a clear reality
that to one of the sides then [INAUDIBLE] if any of them choose choose the.
So I think the most the one the most radical one was Haim. But they died the sadly, in 1930 came Ben Kiki was a native from Syria to various.
And he was, I think, the most critical and most critical of Zionism inside.
But he had to resign from the Sephardic agency in Haifa because of his views in the twenties.
And he died in 1932, I think in Aden.
He was on his way to the Iraqi. That's for to raise money for the community and died on the way.
But I think he was the most critical. And of course, you always have anti-Zionist, mostly outside of Palestine, but in Palestine,
too, in Iraq, of course, and others, there was always Jews that were anti-Zionist.
But I'm talking about these ones that had a I think the most interesting ones are the one that were they will call themselves Zionist,
but they saw Zionism completely different for what we understand Judaism is for them.
Zionism was reconnecting to the east, really. We we establishing a Jewish, Hebrew, Arabic nation.
For them, Arabic is partly Arabic is a Jewish language. It's the language of my one.
This is why I thank you. It's their language. It's sad. They are going is translating the Bible into is for them.
Arabic is a Jewish language. It's not outside. It's not that. So we have to of course, we connected to this kind of know.
I think in this area one bit, one should remember the Turks or the U.S. and the ultimate were very clear, very clear and finish clear.
They said they're very good if you want to call the states.
Yes. Much later, the mosque survived.
Yes. And that's what drove the friction because they didn't mind genocide.
Even Zionism was all about it. And there's a very good example.
How does that is it without war, if at all?
Is that what they were actively. They were the Syrian the Syrian side.
Absolutely. Yes. No, no.
They for those who were doing a lot of them, they they were very important early Christians.
It's really the earliest Christians still existed.
And they did very well and developed them. And to the First World War in Russia, champion me.
And then there was Saddam he etc. They they of course, both they and the Moslem tells you they knew where the borders.
They knew half of the conflict. And they knew how much that how much they wanted.
Yes. And things changed, as he said. Yes.
They allowed for the creation. Yes.
That totally changes everything, because the only I don't know of Jews, if I hold them back, they have these Jews down.
Thank you for that. I know the Jews in Israel, which they were in the they that the older generation out of it before the First World War.
They knew of it how far they brought with them.
And therefore they controlled, as it were, the younger.
Yes. And this was very risky for a young person, I guess.
Grew up in that in that atmosphere.
Yes. In that area. Yes. And you know, I think I think this is an important because they had it all go on then war zones.
Their what do they not want this. Yes. Yes.
No, I think they want them in the middle. Imagine Zionism is a separatist movement.
They wanted to support this. So Zionism is part of the area.
And of course, going together with Arab nationalism and Ottoman, they the it is the Eastern Movement,
but it doesn't for them it wasn't contradictory into to the other aspects of it was part of this.
And I think it's interesting what you're saying about the Ottomans and al-Andalus in that sense.
So many you have many nostalgic memories of Ottoman in a way that you haven't tragic memories of.
And that is in both places, of course, are not completely right. It's a nostalgic.
But the ottoman always seems to be a more and a pluralistic, more inter-religious surface, even though in reality, of course different.
The picture is different, the same as in al-Andalus. But this image again is if you're going back to the Arab Jewish thought in that time for them,
the Ottoman times that the great time again for them for flourishing and in the end of it is the end of the Arab Jewish.
But that's even more. Why should remember that everything changed.
Not only buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy a short declaration, but but each sell.
And that's important because Arabism and the South did not take the seven year vision,
did not take any part in Turkish empire because they they were they were against terrorism because.
And you mentioned earlier on about as you were taking over to some extent, you've mentioned European images.
What sort of things were you thinking of having the example that you're talking about,
what Abdallah Solon said that remember he said that they they they they they.
Your position of Yehuda Levy? Yes, I think probably was, yes.
So he what he saw because he is a autodidact, a scholar,
a Iraqi in a region book that the knowing the text of the Jewish text and he knows the
context of you that live you writing in Judea I think but the context that he was working in.
So he can read the Arabic poets of his time if you deliver and he sees that the the scholars in Europe mainly high body
there was one that he was particularly but not only that investigating this point without understanding the Arabic style,
poetic style and the trying to a translated it or to interpret it or to investigate it to European framework.
And for him, that's that's the main criticism. And so he will do it, of course, largely said.
But if you want to try to make a you deliver as Ashkenazi is not Ashkenazi is a
Sephardi but this is of course for him is a battle with the Ashkenazi European Jews.
But for him, he is not the distance him you the living from his roots that are the Arab poetry.
Of course you can understand Sephardic poetry, Jewish.
We don't understand Arabic poetry. And today we know it.
Even though if you're going to study today Hebrew literature in in in the Hebrew University,
you don't need to know Arabic so you can learn you there live it without Arabic oh oh modestly in Israel or others without Arab will.
You don't need to know Arabic. Even scholars doesn't have to understand Arabic.
So that's why you would understand from the beginning of this petition that the Hebrew literature will be so different from Arabic literature.
So you learning Andalusian Hebrew literature completely different, different discipline from Arabic literature,
and for them that's the moment of partition that they will try to prevent.
And in terms of an Arabic naming ceremony city today, Anderson, that's where the concepts of like the semi, the Abrahamic come in.
If they do come in, yes, I think the Semite is very into it.
In a bombshell, me who died because I was trained in in the German intel system,
he did this on the note, one of the famous Islamic scholars in Germany.
So he knew very well the Semite discussion.
So in his writing, there is it's a lot there, but he's always saying what I'm saying.
Semite is not what the European trying to say because he knows what they mean.
I'm saying that going back to the prophet spirit for him, eastern is the prophets to experience the spirit of religion.
That's all to say, of course, that this is this discussion have to go into least perception into it.
But he tried to divide himself outside of that. And even in one of his quotes,
he said this European Jews are trying to they don't understand that what they're saying is going with this Aryan point of view.
So, yeah, even understand that word in early 20th century.
And he said, no, we have to go out of this binary between Aryan and Semites.
But in the same time, he's imagining essentialist Eastern objects of us as opposed to the modern.
I mean, those are would be. But we have to read him from his time and not to do.
And that's why my big question here is a question for me as a researcher,
I think is is a generation of researchers that already were trained in this post
partitioned because I was trained not in Arab and he was trained in Hebrew.
And I don't know the life I don't have the scope that Avuncular had when he wrote these things.
So what I'm doing to him, I'm always can reducing him to my world and I always have to be reflective about it.
So at the same time, what he meant and what I think we already trapped in this post partitioned disciplinary and that when Jewish
studies are separate from Muslim Islamic studies on in Arabic literature and Hebrew literature are separated.
So they're writing from their point of view to try to prevent this partition.
But we are already trapped in this post partition, the reality in the Abrahamic works.
So I didn't see Abrahamic and I think it's a concept that came later, but I didn't see it in their writings.
This is. And my personal opinion is that there for reason is different from Zionism because the asexuals
that the native population would be threatened who died with their religious beliefs and so on,
she stated. But my other question was, would it be possible for you to read this poem in Arabic?
Yes, I can, but for me it would be hard to really translate it.
But I can understand. My Arabic is basic is not enough to do it.
Yeah, but I have to admit, I don't have the.
There must be a YouTube. Yes. You need to hear what's beautiful and familiar with Mahmoud, which I think is a phenomenon, is really a phenomenon.
Because for him, in his readings came hundreds of people.
He was a star in the Arab world after his exile. And every time you read this is the poem, you rewrote it.
I think he said it in one of his interviews. And he's a phenomenon not just only to see him reading it.
I think it will be a reference to the youth.
You could sort of situate yourself in the postscript of this history because and it interesting your story sort of ends in 19 1448,
but there seems to be some sort of rediscovery of this area of the culture.
Yes. And I wonder what it has to do with the political.
Yes. Possibilities for a one state solution and people who in the sort of utopian business reconstruct the idea of the culture.
So do you think? It's a really good question. And I think it's connected to what I said in the end of that about the reduction,
because now I'm trying to be, you know, conscious not to do reduction.
But for me, I started my work on and when Shimon Peres people here are familiar with but but Arab Jews that wrote in Arabic
in Iraq and moved to write started in Arabic in Israel and then moved to Hebrew because there is a social method.
They were they were the ones that stayed on writing in Arabic.
They were writers without their audience because the average just dealing with them and the Palestinian and interest in their writings.
So for me that was the my masters was about human balance and other.
Abby Joseph I think I'm, of course, is coming from political involvement.
I was involved in Mizrachi movement and I'm still very involved into it and the politics of it.
So it's it's of course connected in my today I wanted to go one generation before so I started we did
talk show me a seven night Arab Jewish writing in Hebrew so I wanted to write about him might be a dream,
but then through him I discovered this never like a generation before.
So in the beginning, when I read, of course about shalom, you that if you reading it,
you have lots of letters and articles and others, you're still your first instinct is that, oh, this is an opposition to anything.
This is exactly opposition.
This is a and and in a certain point in my kids the I discovered I think on a moving here and and so that I need to be really
careful not doing it because if I would do it only as a position to Zionism as an anti-Zionist voices or alternative figures,
I think that this is will be the reduction of what they said to and the post partition,
but it would be a reduction project for them because there were more of them.
That's why I tried to say here, but maybe I didn't deliver it enough. I think they are much more than anti.
There was Zionist in the sense that they had lots of contradiction into them.
And yet the figure there's lots of contradictions it was a supportive of Zionism believe
was critical of Arab nationalism in a certain point and it's it's a great figure.
Yeah and of course is it so deficit a great figure as an imperial then he went to Madrid and the conversation with
the king and there is this is figures with them imperial logic and they have lots of contradiction into them.
And so I said to them unto to it is the money to Zionism, anti-Zionist or not, and Islam's religious secular people.
Not that it's I think it's a reduction to do it, but in the beginning of of course I was there.
Yeah. And I'm still, I think putting them in Hebrew sometimes I do it because I think bringing yourself mucus into the discussion on, on and on.
If the David in the US was born, it moved to Silwan when he was five and now they're the elderly.
The settlers are coming and doing lots of it's the one they're doing and tours and they're
going to his house and there's a big Israeli flag and they say this is not racist.
Middle class said so because they didn't want his heritage to be.
Now we are going back to our indigenous. Yeah, look, we do have one in in Jarrar in Sudan.
We are the settlers are now proclaiming the indigenous rights of us and other Arab Jews them.
And sometimes I'm going in and said, no, this is nothing.
Three of us said, So sometimes, of course there is a political the current political situation is very important, but scholarly.
We have to be more careful not to put them as only as a position.
So following this line, there was many of us.
We know the Israeli Minister and Minister of Education embarked on a project in which
some aspects of non Ashkenazi history would be reintroduced into the curriculum.
Do know if they approach these characters at all. And if they do, how do?
And now after my article was published about they've been quick in their casting
someone I think she's a religious as she's from their education but she she
contacted me and said I'm really interested in this so far the voices only
Sephardi voices so she they understand that the spoken coastal was critical.
But you can if you're going to find Gaza later, you will be a Zionist early Zionism because, you know, there is a very famous,
I think very important work on kind of Italian is a autodidact historian but the he was the editor of me one of the been to be very famous and he
wrote about these figures and he called this the book it's your name we born Zionists so for him the or Zionist that the early voices of Zionism.
So if the discourse the Ashkenazi dominant discourse will be the most likely one to Zandi's the didn't have any affiliation to nationalism.
We saved them from the Arabs and we bought them and we we educated them.
No, they said no, this is different.
Project will show that even the Iraqis in the twenties, in the thirties was an east and of course the Palestinian Jews were Zionist.
And we can see them and we can bring these voices and will we label them as analysts.
So this that you have this kind of projects going together.
And I think, again, that's why I'm afraid to go to this game of either alternatives or position to Zionism or positivism,
because I think their voices are taking us to the pre partition discourse and we have to,
to put it, I think we have I think the political project would be for us to go to.
To re-imagine this partition discourse, political discourse, cultural discourse, disciplinary discourse, of course.
And this will be the political veneer budget when we come across to the clients about this.
Yes, it's silly, but I'm going to check you down on that.
Yes. And when did you write your name?
2008. 2008. And all these figures are there?
2008. I really recommend you two to read the book. 2008 I think it went down in the events.
The publisher said, Yeah, this is what the I think Sokolov was set about there, this fabulous, the whole zone.
So for him, for the input, for him, it's really covering the Zionism of the Arab Jews.
And of course, it's very institution. That's why they do it. They're doing that.
And every for Iraq, they have a book about Iraq and Zionism in Iraq.
If you go to demolish it and if you visit Malaysia, it's unbelievable.
You have the Gil Neme you have there, there all the time and then they're going to modern time.
It's only Zionist movement, even though the Communists were much more.
Yeah, but you have every picture of every seven there were I know hundreds of 300 to 500 Zionist in the, in the underground.
But it's, it's only Zionism and this is the only way today to taste, to admit their collective memory.
It's to Zionism. Oh, now we have the new thing. I think it's more, for me, more worrying than the Zionism.
It's to to label Arab Jews as as refugees in that sense, to to come to the Palestinians and try to normalise the Palestinian Nakba.
So you and you were refugees? We were refugees.
So we are now even. That's it. So the political question is out, and I think this is the most worrying and I see it even here in London,
the Arab Jews in London are telling that there's lots of Sharif and other movements.
And and I went to the Sephardi voices, the old training only bet stories,
if you need to remember that it's only when they were persecuted in sixties and early seventies.
That's the only way to remember what we had that maybe we should talk more about.
Because he was so cautious in his. What launches on him.
All right. Okay. There's someone who's been waiting on him. I think we should conclude here.
I want to thank you so much for this. Wonderful. Thank you very much for the discussion.
And we'll see you in Trinity. Thank you.
The suit is. I mean, do you have the.