Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. My name is Jack Cobargo.
For those of you are used to see Peter opening these sessions, I have to apologise for taking over.
The reason for me taking over is that. And the format of our seminar today would be slightly different.
Our guest today is a real delight and pleasure to actually welcome you while you wait for the second time to Oxford, the Israeli studies universe.
Dr. Evil, every who is currently in the delivery room, early career fellow at King's College and deals in his research on cultural and
political history of Palestine on the land of Israel at the turn of the 20th century.
And he's dealt extensively with issues of far in our Jewish thought, which lie really at the heart of his research.
And as if end of this teaching.
I'm sorry, you can't research traces a multi lingual translations and cultural models that emerged in the beginning of the 20th century,
Palestine or Land of Israel,
and explores how their fluidity inherent in these cultural models becomes a source of resistance to the dominant monolingual forces,
a method that we've discussed quite extensively in this similar serious and to any exclusive claims of ownership of land,
text, traditions or languages. And the occasion for the seminar today is the publications of a publication of you was new Hebrew
book The Return to the Loose Dispute over a Safadi culture and Identity between Arabic and Hebrew,
which was published earlier this year by McGinest Press.
The Hebrew University is a UVB Noyce's press, and I should also say that this is a wonderful occasion to also celebrate, in a sense,
a farewell to your vile who is leaving us soon to the land of prose Trump to take their moreish
an account sharing Ottoman with Rock and Sephardi Jewish studies at Brandeis University.
So we will. Will. Thank you. And welcome to the seminar.
Thank you, cost. And thank you for this kind introduction and for the invitation.
Thank you, Peter, for that. So the format of the seminar today and again, this is why I took over from from Peter.
And thank you, Peter, for allowing us to do so. Is that instead of a lecture and a one sided presentation of the book,
we thought it would be more intuitive and more maybe interesting with the flow of this format to have a discussion, not really a dialogue,
because I want to ask the questions and I hope you will find them interesting to answer,
but maybe this will give us a better understanding of the project, which is of immense importance.
So you will let us start with this. Very well, you're right.
Let's just note that the book talks about the father,
the food which Hebrew allows us to inflict to add the nest to save our day nests in a sense in which doesn't really accept it.
And there's something interesting going on with identifying if our duties are phenomena.
The book suggests that we return to to the discussion, the historical discussion or debate over Safaa.
The author of Safadi Dienes. Let's call it the history,
the tradition that is identified under SSAFA readiness and also maybe to begin with a
re-examination of the Israeli present or maybe Weiden in that the Jewish global present.
You do so by retracing, in a sense, a political thought, historical cultural interventions, but by a fascinating list of intellectuals.
I thought maybe if you allow me this, I'm taking too much with one question just to mention the names.
I think this is someone like Sami Shalom.
She tweets boyin were, you know, narrating the name is the action, the act.
But just to mention the names, because they're not often heard. And I don't want you to feel uncomfortable mentioning all of them.
Time and again, amongst those who study and I'm reading from the book itself, we can count Avraham Shalom, Yuda, Shole, Abdallah Yousef,
the video, Lehn, Yousef, Me or Hust Shame on Moyal, Estelle Moyal as Hari Yousef David Ma'mun Nissim Malu Haim Natale Mohamed Mallia, Yusef Ali.
I will flush the video we saw Ali.
I will assure you that Bhullar you Huck our buddy the end Hindman kicky each one of them, an intellectual giant who unfortunately kind of, you know,
most of the missing or missing either from the discourse at large or missing from the Safadi discourse, such as the case of the video link.
So let us start and finally ask the question by really trying to figure out what this disturbed means.
What is it for the youth? What is the far readiness? How do you understand it?
And how did this intellectuals whom you follow understood it?
OK. Thank you very much. Colin, I want to start with saying that I'm really happy that we're doing this format of discussion,
because doing my writing this book, I had lots of discussion with you and I learnt a lot from it.
And in a way, it's continuation of this discussions. So in the way that the initial the initial interest in what you said sissified you would Safadi.
And this was part of a research journey into the long, what you call it,
the long Safadi Miyazaki Eastby inquest into Zahidi story beyond the boundaries of the national estate from the beginning,
its bulk set of questions, how can we write to find the exactly history in a post partitioned era?
How can we we imagine its historical geographical scope after more than a can,
essentially of physical, social, cultural and political displacements, marginalisation and negation.
But it a step partition. And you found not only to the partition of Palestine in 1948, but also this.
So the separations of disciplines, traditions, histories and languages.
The suppression of people in Arabic, Hebrew literature, in Arabic literature of Judaism and Islam.
And Zionism and Arab nationalism. Jewishness, madness.
And the suppression of Alanda Lowson and Spide.
So it is not surprising that in the post partition environment, this partition environment, boundaries become such a crucial,
crucial issue in the research of modern safadi Arab Jewish history and the bonda a boundary lines in terms of language and plurality and space place.
They are far from being clear. What, for instance, is the linguistic scope of what the linguist?
What is that? The language that we need to research, says Safadi Ness, a modern Sephardic history.
Is it a literate Arabic? Is a table Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, Spanish, French or English?
It should be discussed in the research. This is a division of a larger Jewish history.
Or should it be considered as part of Hebrew, Arabic, Middle Eastern, Spanish or post-colonial historical framework?
In addition to that, we have the question of meaning. And that's a critical question.
And it's it's going back to what you started with. What is five Udaltsov fuzziness?
So which term should we use to define the collective entity or identity which lies at the centre of this research field?
Is it the Sephardi Jews? Is it Arab Jews, Muslim, Ottoman Jews?
Or maybe Middle East regions? What kind of historical, lingual geographical and political sets of issues are encoded in each term?
In fact, there is no one name or term that can fully represent this unified entity,
and in my book I try to trace the formation of different names and terms.
So from early stages of my research, I understood that we, meaning me and other scholars of Safadi history,
already navigating in their narrow and limited scope and adapting into the posts, partition, fragmented academic landscape and political reality.
And I also understood that the need for adapting to adapting new metal or new ways
stone-Cold frameworks which recognised by by also go beyond calling geographical,
historical and disciplinary boundaries and in a way to to explore Safadi of Jewish Misrati history in its fullness and complexity.
So the first thing I decided to do is to to shift the focus to the pro partition era and to explore
the partitioning process itself by shifting the focus to those formative moments of transition,
such as the turn of the 20th century. That is in the centre of my book.
We can identify cultural and political divisions that emerge at the time, but were negated, marginalised and forgotten.
It also enable us to trace episodes of resistance, destruction and dispute that appears during these crucial moments.
But it's vanished from the official historical narrative.
So the turn of the 20th century Palestine is if it is a formative period in the model and Jewish history and in the history of Israel Palestine.
It is a period of shifting gay imperial orders and time of emerging national movement.
It is also that Zuhur moment of the Israeli Palestinian national conflict.
So against the background, what's this dramatic political and social events of the period that the book explores the way in which Safad,
the intellectuals fundamental, fundamentally challenged their nationalistic and monolingual separatist ideologies?
And that was dominant in their time and propose and ultimately political and cultural roots.
So you have intellectuals there. The names that you mentioned who died and then in Malaysia, Isobar,
Malia Simulcasts and others were part of most of them, born in the second part of the 19th century.
Most of them in Palestine. Not all of them were part of the growing circles of Safadi local scholars and
were engaged in different intellectual and activities such as translation.
If you read the patient journalism, technology and education and they wrote extensively on them,
the Lucien thinkers and poet such as My Munadi Susan Levy, modest in a given as I mean you've been,
they focus focussing on their intimate connexion to Arabic philosophy and for its readers and those historical figures represented there for them,
an ideal type, you can say, for Jewish modernisation and modern looks.
People are be in some symbiosis of three Hebrew and Jewish cultural revival in conversation, in connexion with Arabic language and me.
Some thought in this context that they view their historical moment as a kind of Andalusian moment.
So here again, Safadi Ness coming back. So fabulous as a moment, as an idea, as it is a model.
It was a moment of reunion of Jews and Muslims, Arabs and Hebrews in a shared homeland here.
Now, Palestine, as it was in London's before the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from the land as the not the most this moment.
Also the opportunities for establishing a joint Hebrew in our country,
a moment of new encounters and promises of shared culture and and a shared future based on revival of the great Judeo-Arabic Andalusian heritage.
So this intellectuals again, Bonning, their second part of the ninth century,
where are active members in both Hebrew and Arabic revival movements at the time that's collapsed.
And then that same moment.
During the late Ottoman era, they operated within a range of conflicting political and ideological affinities of the time they were committed today,
merging national Jewish Zionism the day they considered their certain Zionists.
In that time, we'll talk maybe later what it means.
They identified they identified with their Ottoman political formation, then Zormat, and with the ethos of the shared Ottoman homeland, its waste.
In that time. That moment.
And they emphasised their affiliation with the Arab revival movement with the not and the joint historical legacy and Judeo Muslim into their country.
This kind of affiliation and multiple affiliation with people and loyalties may be considered as contradictory for them in that moment.
It's something was even a complimentary help to to establish that vibe.
He bought the gun together with Reviser looks at how we can sign so far.
We can talk about it maybe later in our conversation in a way that was developed in relation and his reaction to the emergence
of Hebrew in Arabic national cultural movement that the Devizes is an wonderly monolingual and nationalistic movement.
And the day amongst themselves and with the European Jewish counterparts, Ashkenazi, they discussed and debated how they research it,
how to research cultural heritage of an Andalusia, the Safadi legacy that she points me of Spain.
How is it on the Hebrew legacy? Is it they have to be outby Keibel email a bilingual legacy.
Is it Easter and legacy, its Western legacy?
But in addition, they debated how their modern Jewish Cultural and national project in Palestine, Zionism should relate to the Arabic language.
Did the language of the land therefore speak with the language of their own language?
Jewish. Is the Jewish language to the Palestinian Arab natives into the Ottoman state.
So in a way, the book, by explaining these debates in this contested representation of Andalusian identity and culture,
a re-examines some fundamental issues that imagine the turn of the century.
And we still continue with Asanti today that the national conflict between Jews and Palestinians,
the conflicts and splits between people and cultures and the ethnic Parbo relations between those.
Thank you. Is this a rather short introduction? Suggested so much in this book and do so much to discuss that we, you know,
couldn't possibly cover all but to maybe focus stays on the theme of the seven or serious.
You know, we we call it the reconsidering. Yeah.
We were afraid to hold the seminar is reconsidering early Jewish nationalism or modern Jewish nationalism.
And this is where your contribution is so important.
Until now, all of our discussions were European, not only in geographical and historical terms, but also in conceptual and epistemological terms.
It was a thinking of Jewish nationalism within the European history and the European conceptual toolkit in a sense.
And the reference points have always been towards other European cases.
And this brings me to the question. I want to actually I would like you again to expand on.
So as you already suggested,
a main theme of your whole investigation is how this diverse group of writers and different opinions on address and on the loose.
Southern Spain, this historical event, even moment.
And as a role model is something that could maybe inspire a rejuvenation or a rethinking of the president.
And they don't do this in a vacuum because they have counterparts also from the Palestinian side, from the Arab world, who do the same.
Also from obviously the European side. So maybe let's start with this issue.
What does the Luce mean to this diverse group of people?
What is in this model that is so promising?
And also, let me just, you know, to to ask a question, how does it correspond with competing?
What specifically? I think you mentioned it already in your introduction that what what we have
you in play is an alternative to this rising notion of Jewish nationalism,
as Zionism also is the boon that other group of that.
So once you tell us what the Lusi is, can you also explain what what alternative that is holds regarding that kind of nationalism?
Yes. I think it's you know, I think that the essence of the book,
it in a ways is this is to trace a Londolozi or sex aloud all the names of the billionaire heritage.
Joe Oh. Oh, she. That's flat.
And the identity of a Sephardic Jewish identity as a moment that devised in the 19th century in different naming and different representations.
So this intellectuals are seen that they in in in the creation of Jewish studies that really establish the end of the ninth century,
early 20th century through history, and that the Hebrew literature and the study of people literature and that did rise the ninth century,
mainly in European circles, killing Jewish circles and then in the TIAR, the Jewish year has collapsed.
He Muscala circles Safad and on the Sephardic tradition of mediaeval time, becoming very important point of reference.
So people from Mendelssohn onwards see he sees a philander is a point of reference to it as a model for modernisation of Jewish culture,
as a model for them, as a as for European culture. The way Jewish you would think culture Jewish should great culture aside.
Also another, you know, Jewish tradition, culture and culture that arise inside of a big culture.
Same as happening in Europe in the way that they emphasise this aspect in the Hebrew school
out there that emphasised aspects of Hebrew and nationalisations or a marginalisation,
commercialisation. And they see themselves as heresy of this culture.
In the same time, they they separate this this this legacy from their SAFADI communities that they meet in Palestine and the Ottoman Empire.
And they do see them in a way, the opposite. They're not the heroes of this legacy if they're too far.
The legacy of evil is his rationale is that his western Israel is one of the golden ages or the golden points of Jewish history.
It is Sephardic Jews in Ottoman Empire out there coming,
the representatives of eastern mass of backwoods, a culture of the opposite of what happened to them,
and that this is kind of the the intellectuals, the being the centre of this of this Balkan and who and others are scholars of something.
Even they have the German scholarship in that sense. And they see this movement and they are disputing against.
First of all, they dispute it against their negation of our big stick into them.
So far, the legacy of mediæval, they say you can learn you would then Ellisville was a seaborn asla.
Oh it. Oh, humble mon. Other great thinkers and writers of Off-Air mediaeval Spain without knowing Arabic,
not knowing, are to understand the great influence of Arabic into this writing.
And for them it's a it's a legacy of of of bi lingual and coexistence of Judeo Muslim that you can't you can make it without one in another.
And then they see that that the trend will be that there is the separation until you can see until today that you can study Hebrew literature and oh,
you are leaving the university without knowing how said to them.
So it's it's that that's the trend today. They wanted to stop and they saw the same thing happening in how they had the separation between Safadi,
modern safadi control and identity with this legacy.
And they were against it and they saw it in the same way.
And for them, it was the same thing of what happened with the settlers first settler Zionists coming to Palestine and not learning Arabic,
the language of the land. For them, it's the simplest test. Exactly if you want to revive Hebrew.
And there were the first the first committee of that was one of the first people that we people.
But they saw it as a joint. Exactly what happened in London.
Again, this is coming back as a joint project. The people in Arabic revivalism.
So it's it's for them, it's exactly the same logic that they were bringing scholars negating Arabic in the research of psephology.
That's a father's tragic legacy of mediaeval time. And the ones that come into Palestine don't are big as the language of the Lengen.
And there's a Jewish language because the language and the language of Udai Levy and others really important scholars.
So what? So I think they're very crudely we could separate the two interesting elements within this land.
Uh, Orlanda Luther. Well, one more dead.
There's a cultural one, which is, you know.
Could be appropriated by non Sephardim, not just in the sense of, you know, not belonging to a SAFADI tradition,
but almost to a point of know orientalism, the objects that have carried so far.
And then recruited within. A different understanding of Jewish modernity all together.
And then there's a political reading of this is, I think, what I would ask you to focus on for a second.
What what political horizons would Woody Allen,
Linda Lucy and Ron Moore then offer these thinkers just to to to clarify the
point when when we discuss the turn of the century national thinking in Europe,
it's clear that the nation state is the horizon on that island.
Alanda, lose. The one thing we can say wider than the loose in terms of Jewish history is that there wasn't Jewish sovereignty,
there wasn't Jewish self-rule, there was Jewish politics.
Some Jews took famously has Davidge your fruit was a, you know, a military man and an A and a diploma.
But it couldn't possibly, I would say, naively be understood as a model for modern Jewish nation state ism.
So what is the political horizon or promise there?
Yes, I think it is. It is two questions. The first question is why?
Alanda Loose is very important,
not only because the discussion with the European Jewish think in the same time they see that in the mad that the revival
of the Arabic and Arabic nationalism Alanda misses the point of reference as well for the Arab scholars of the time.
And they saw themselves as part some of them were really part of this circle.
Some of them, when he saw it from afar, but very in affiliations of people like you, Mr. Moir lent him only and in the summer,
lool actively in this circles of mad that in the same time they were actively in the seconds of a scholar and he will evangelise.
And so they see that the Arab nationalism, the local nationalism of the place is going back as well.
Well, Lankan's. So this is a point of reference if we want to be in the shared society.
So it's a point of reference that you can speak to the Arab world living with us, that this is going to be the base of our living together.
The second point of reference that is usually missed in and now the reason we tend to it and I'm happy about it.
And I think it's very important is the Ottoman context. Usually we talk about there, there, there, there the Palestinian Jewish conflict.
And there is your point is the British. And we avoid the ultimate.
And I think it's very important context and it's bringing different kinds of logics and it's political objects that happened there.
And the logic that the Ottoman developed in either developing in the Ottoman Empire in the end of the
19th century is a logic of multiple realities that people can be isolated as Armenians and the Ottoman.
And there's no live in sort of Mekhi and Stenborg in other parts of the Ottoman Empire.
And the same way it was was right for the people that lived under the Arab province of the Ottoman Empire.
So it can be Arab nationalism, maybe not the movement and an Ottoman National in the same time.
And it's the same for this Ottoman Jews and native Jews that were, again,
very part of this kind of nationalisation of the Ottoman Empire and the building of their shared the Ottoman there in a nation that they saw the day,
their project of.
Of the Zionist project, of the point of the Vaska loved Hebrew in a revival of people cultural going together with their project of Ottoman musician.
And the project of ABBA and the Arab.
So this kind of multiple that, you know, you can see it very strongly in their debates because they understand it.
And the settlers then secondly, are people with common resisted their their suggestion to open their newspaper
to Jewish newspapers in Arabic and that and etc. don't understand this logic.
And they're going back again. You know, the logic of the Ottoman Empire is different.
It's not competing loyalties is the loyalties that are coming together.
And we can walk and is of course, we've gone back and we'll talk later.
What about language? It's not a monolingual it's a multilingual language is can operate together.
So this is there if you going back.
This is the moment that that's that the political and the political horizon within walking out of it would be interesting to see.
And the book is going into the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the British mandate.
And for me, I think that that's it's a critical moment for Safadi to understand what Safadi ness and what's this Safadi intellectual
happened to them from an Ottoman then imperial and subjects that the going back to air to air under British,
but very into the national concept of ethnic some from an Ottoman man.
And of course, the. Transition is between the logic of multiple loyalties to the logic that the British bring, is the logical partition contested?
Yes. So let us press this point for a second,
because I think it's a it's critical to understand the potentiality of the moment in any sense and how it is lost.
You know, we now non-binding binary became a catchword for, you know, for enlightened gender understanding.
But this is an interesting take on modernity.
The turn of the 20th century were non binary identity, more widely understood, not just not necessarily on terms of gender,
but in terms of ethnicities and culture and then language and also nationality.
Is presented as the solution in a sense within.
So the question would immediately be interesting to would be immediately interesting to ask.
First is how do they relate to emerging Arab nationalism?
Do they see themselves as potentially part of an Arab nationalist movement? Again, it depends.
It depends in which moment we get we'll be going to them and to which one out of there.
I think most of them see it. Some of them are really part of it.
Stumbly. I definitely even more than Zionism and the Hebrew nationalism.
She was part of Arab now that she saw itself as part of it.
And the reference was what we're going to do with the European influence on our culture.
Our culture is the Arab culture or the Ottoman culture. But there is European influence, the French coming in culture.
What we gonna do? How we present our culture. And that's for her.
It was their entrance for feminism as well.
She's a she's an Arab. Somebody is one of the first activists.
So it's so of course, for them, it's it's it's it's it's part of the discussion with Arab nationalism that, again, in that moment for them,
it's their cross, her cultural politically engaged in the question of of native Zahra or of homeland in a way that Ottoman,
you know, Ottoman subject to. This is starting. Is that closer than the European Jews are coming from outside?
So what they want to do is to convince the European Jews that coming from outside not to be settlers and acts as colonialists,
coming to lots of them to integrate this Ottomans, to be part of this kind of world.
So this is really the crux of the off of the historical moment.
You have an empire in the shape of this multiple identities, multiple modernities,
almost a reformed Ottoman Empire being replaced by the British Empire.
And you have the partition minded, as you describe. You have the British.
Bringing with design his project to Palestine, this notion that Jew and Arab are mutually oppositional.
And you have a reality of Palestinian Jews.
We'll see. The exact opposite is the horizon.
So the question is, how do they react and how do they really relate to the Zionist movement in Palestine?
I know. I know having read the book, I know that they've had their innocence endlessly trying to turn the there that got about.
Listen to us. We understand something that you don't how it is always it.
Was that it? Politically, I think it's it's it's a very interesting question and very important question.
And I think, again, in the end of the Ottoman Empire, they have.
There is a fierce debate between them and they're their second aliya establishment of the time.
In a way, I doubt that in the end of the Ottoman Empire, that took him from a position of majority peoples.
Without that, the subject of the Ottoman Empire then not and that the one that hosteen the new immigrants are coming,
but most of them very young, very close. They need a lot of support and their support of the delectables come form a very established family.
So. And they ended and they offer a different kind of nationality,
native nationality in their Jewish nationality that is connected to the to the places and so on, so forth.
I think that that the crucial moment for understanding what happened then.
And I think to understand what happened with Mr. Theme in Islam today is that transition from Ottoman Empire.
And to the mandatory. I think that the declaration and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire,
so that all the Safadi ness that is connected to the bigger Ottoman sphere, Jewish and Jewish, is collapsing.
And it's redacting their identity to a different kind of way.
And the transition from that then used to be their representatives of the Jewish community in Palestine into their
imperial rule as a humble she and other institutions where there and they're being replaced by the Zionist defended.
Most of them, they don't know that. That's Madeleine beginning Bateman and the people in London and then that the institution in Palestine
themselves have been established and they been marginalised and been assigned in that sense.
And they've become from being natives. They become people that we need to integrate that that other discussions change.
But I think that the most important moment, again, the transition is that they first of all, there are some of them,
most of them were very critical, critical of not taking a opposing gave out completely, but critical about the Butler declaration.
They didn't think about that. The natives of the land.
Then the Jews ended and Arabs. And second day they understood their mistake of this kind of proposal.
It doesn't look at there that they're there, that the local Arab and going to the British and the alliance with the British mandate.
And in that moment there, the logic of multiple. They want the try to continue the logic of multiple realities, but it's becoming really hard.
First of all, the Ashkenazi Jews look at demonstrators or people that you can't really trust because they're very close to the Arabs.
So you are against us. So with us and I you given the voice of the Arabs, all you are part of us is the coalition of building a Jewish home.
The Palestinians did something where their friends are going to get in to school or colleagues or in commerce and Pratten ships in the day.
They will expecting them to be critical about Zionism like them and back declaration to declare the Dow and then Dow natives like them.
And they are against this European power that come in from outside and controlled us.
And they even trying to appeal to them in 1920 21 with probably a declaration that we understand you.
There is so the you know, the making of the land.
You are part of us come to us. You want us to be together. It's great to walk together against these, you know, outsiders.
The settlers come in and they tried to separate the Palestinian leaderships, trying to say, we always been we are not anti Jews.
We are always living together with our local Jews, with our society, with the native Jews,
that we are against this, you know, settler movement that come from outside.
Zionism, not Judaism, as we know it.
And so I think it's it's a critical moment in that sense to understand and and that in that the question of necessity.
It's another interesting moment. People that walk in on this city and.
It's kind of Zimm population usually going back to 1948, 2050.
I think it's interesting to see what happened in that moment when their SAFADI identity is becoming part of an ethnic relation of Ashkenazi.
It's reductive from the Ottoman context that was larger to non Ashkenazi identity.
And there and there are political. It's the beginning of we conceived the political safadi.
You know, a movements to try to claim for representatives inside or to try to get more voices or more places and more jobs.
So you can see it from the early 1920s, 30s, the same arguments that we want to be part of, the establishment of the establishment reject us.
And that's a moment of reductive into an ethnic identity.
And so I have to digressed here from the list of questions I have in my mind. And just ask you this outright.
Did they understand at the time?
This is I mean, I guess that barely the first two decades of the 20th century did they understand at the time that they are now being relegated,
in a sense, to the dustbin of Jewish history because of the changing of this Germany in the Jewish one?
So some of the some of them and very interestingly, are getting they are getting in very quickly.
So one of them is kind been kicking a figure and discussing this book and other discussant, other places.
Fascinating intellectual body to various find the intellectual and from the early 1920s publish really critical
articles against not only then what happened with Balfour Declaration and then what happened with disadvantages.
We understand what happened there, that the Ottoman.
What will happen in its transition from Ottoman to British rule and what it means to our identity of the of the area as it is again,
is a native Ottoman that continue. So what will happen to our space of place in the play, in what we call Palestine?
India, when we are not connected to Arabic and we are not connected to the Ottoman,
their connexion and to disavowed the heritage that's coming out at a long time back.
And he, you know, in a way is is forming.
And this is critical. It is critical also what's happened in modern Turkey, trying to to you know,
to negate in that time that the Islamic part of it and then changing the script and
doing the same things that he see that happens in Palestine with the Jewish settler.
So is his view is really interesting. You see assumption we have very interesting views in that time and that they understand it.
And I think that one of the one of the things that we need to understand, or I learnt a lot from watching this group,
is that usually we're talking about Safadi or, you know,
imagination in Jewish a Jewish studies that so far they are more lock-Up came to modernity late and late.
They were very influenced or maybe French and the Anscombe and changed them, or they're always reactive to things.
And I think what they learnt here in this is, like we said,
this despite all of the Safadi intellectuals that I was working on were very global as well.
A very global, very imperial subjects. That is true.
The Imperiale and Logic's. And they knew how to walk with difficult I'm schlemiel that was there in Spain for.
And there he played a different kind of imperial game. And he was part of the Ottoman and played different kind of imperial.
So he wasn't a transnational subject. McCamey a local.
There were have connexions to local locality in local places.
But there had movements and transnational movements and there was other kind of modernity in that sense.
I think it's very important to put it there. And this generation understood that their position is becoming reductive into a national ethnic question,
that they saw themselves much bigger than that.
So this is maybe the right Segway to move to what you already hinted at and I think is probably one of the biggest the themes of your work,
but also of discussion, specifically in the context of our seminar, the issue of multilingualism, or Polly Gluck teased him.
All of your protagonist in this book are polyglots.
All of them are not just bilingual. They live in different spheres of languages, from German to Arabic to Hebrew to to Turkish and Judeo,
Spanish and whatever and whatever else was in the mixture.
And they encounter exactly a global phenomena of unilingual ism and a national motivation for erasure of these other languages.
So can you just explain to us how they understood the role of this multilingualism in their in their being in the world,
in this, you know, not necessarily empirical mindset, but as a global mindset?
And what is the option they offer us in term?
You know, if we, you know, try to learn a lesson from this in terms of creating not just a shared society, but a multilingual society?
Yeah, I think it's it's a it's a very important question. I think in in in my research today,
I'm trying to trying to delve into this kind of off of option that they offer
that I think mainly in their translation and less debt deal with it in the book.
But then the translation project. So it's a fascinating project.
But I think that I agree, you know, that of 9th century was the time of a of expulsions of that it was a possibility of learning
languages and endow there that they were raised in the time that they can learn new languages.
Maybe people follow them and learn French, German.
And stagnation matters, and they had the languages that they brought with them.
And expand the languages of Hebrew and Arabic. That had revived in the time, modernised in the time in the Ottoman, Turkish in Ladino.
And some of them even knew most of them with new Yiddish.
Yeah. The Jewish and Ashkenazi languages.
And and some of them were very fascinating philology. So they were in a way, they were in the creators of of a standardisation of languages.
But they are very influential, multiple languages. I would say.
And now I'm talking from my perspective, my research today, I'm really interested in if this is the moment that of an invention.
What is it? What is their mother tongue? What is monolingualism?
Because before that, I think for them,
the differentiation between Arabic in Hebrew is separate languages that the boundary between Arabic stops and when he starts or vice versa.
It was not so clear, as we understand it today. And for a pause, UDR because was part of it.
Of course, Arabic in Hebrew script.
But not only that, you can see the inferences between how we can keep the movement between Hebrew in Arabic and in that time,
and of course, underoos Wednesday. And of course, Ottoman boards coming in and league in Ladino when talking about Latinos can be, of course, Spanish.
There is intuitive Ottoman Arabic. So for them, language is not as we see it, as it is a monolingual invention, something that is closed that we have.
We we we can it we can go out of it. Of course we can bring something from outside.
Something is fine to eat something.
So I think this is this kind of understanding helps them to understand better what's what sovereignty can be a Shetland lacking language.
You don't have the borders can be more flexible, flexible.
You can share borders. You can share traditions. They've gone back to traditions and that doesn't have origin.
Even the biblical stories that these middle class chants translate is the biblical is becoming the,
you know, the original who is the owner of the Texan, who is the owner of the original tradition.
He's going to the Palestinian oral history of the biblical text and translate it to a biblical Hebrew,
connect it with lots of Arabic words into it in a in a way and a political move to dismantle this kind of separations.
Or they're going to elsley lower level two to 1000, 1008 stories that, you know.
What's the origins of this kind of tradition?
And then translated, it's coming for, you know, Sanskrit, Persian to our big two to two Hebrew word to multiple other languages.
It's something that happened. Oh, he loved them. That they're going to these kind of traditions.
It doesn't have an origin or two translation that does.
Mixed into it, you know, again, I think in a way to to resist this kind of separation of the languages,
its traditions, and that happened in that time. So just as they challenge money or unilingual isn't they also challenge the whole,
they say, the union modernity or the unified European narrative of modernity.
It took Europeans corners about another century to realise that modernity is maybe multiple different ways of understanding, whether it is.
But already, again, at the turn of the 20th century, your protagonist all kind of trying to reassert the sense of this world,
duplicity of ways of being what they are as modern as any other player in the field.
But they understand the possibilities differently. And this has to do again with the fact that, again, in the context of our seminar, at least,
it's the first time that we are considering a narrative of Jewish culture, of, uh, of Jewish history, of Jewish identity or Jewish nationalism.
That does not nourish necessarily only on European sources, although obviously it corresponds with them and with European notions of modernity.
So, for example, as you just noted, it doesn't have to be an integration.
Is modernity in the sense that either you in the state or you are with the state, you can be both in and out and in different states at the same time.
Can you say something a little bit about the way they understood modernity?
Yeah, I think it's it's a it's a very important point. And I was fascinated with this scandal.
I tried to you know, again, it's most of the things came out of the sources themselves.
And it was fascinating with with their with their modernity projects that Europe is not in the century.
Again, if you going back to Jewish history, Augustine Mosque, most of them research on to find in modernity or modernity,
not of their land or within the deal Misaka Jews connected from the European.
There is instruments from European phenomena that starts in Europe and then come to the other Lanard,
other parts of Jewish culture in and outside of Europe through this kind of mechanisms.
And here you can find different kind of modalities that Europe is not in the centre.
And in a way, it's even if it's it's in the different model of what we used to see as Jewish modernity.
One of them, one of the fascinating models that I am recounting in the book is that in one not the Baghdadi diaspora,
the creation of the Baghdadi diaspora in the 19th century in that Bombay, India.
And what today, China, a lot of merchants, that grain's from the 9th and middle of the 9th century onwards.
You know, Tom, from Baghdad and Iraq of today to this kind of centres and doing a modernisation
project that they have the cultural aspect to it because their journalism and
their language and they have their and their set of questions of what's to be a
modern and even elastic questions and and so on and so forth that is going back,
going and physically and symbolically eastwards. Yeah.
And going back to the Arabic text, because they're all there in the beginning,
the first second generation of this kind of companies is the Sun Family Companion and Condola and others.
They all their writings was they are all the bureaucracy wasn't, you know.
So they even talked to people as a modern language.
And they they had their translation project of translating modern novels into judo and began publishing house that was dissimulating.
And they and they sponsored a lot of modernisation of schools in Iraq and other places.
So this is interesting modernisation project that the Jews are going going physically eastward and going back to did Arabic, not to European country.
And it's a modern modernisation. Yes. I agree with you that it's never only that he's going to show up, Delo said.
It's one of the things they needed this journey and he was waiting in Hong Kong.
He was very connected to the British, of course, and he was a British subject.
He was had they rehearsed? He had them. And, you know, and he was a trader in Hong Kong and he walked in different kind of imperial logic.
But he had the logic as well of modernisation going east and going back to.
No, I. I don't realise how fast time runs with so much.
Interesting topic to discuss. I have just one more question and then I want to open this for questions from the audience.
We already have a couple. But just to your people, please write down the questions and we'll.
You have to ask your violin. I'll read this and then you will answer.
But of course, I want to to to maybe conclude this part of the seminar you.
Is to press the fast forward and ask what does this history tell us about the present?
So first of all, let me state historically or still by way of narrating his story, what happened to this?
Array of viewpoints, this different takes on Jewish identity and history.
What happened to them in Israel? Are there any hair heirs today?
Is there anyone else, anyone contemporary who wants to fight intellectual you would identify as maybe carrying on this tradition or this voice?
Did they fail? Did they fall victim to Zionist nationalism? And what then?
You know, looking forward, what models may they offer for a rethinking of the Israeli contemporary situation?
Yeah, it's it's a question that I'm merely dealing with it a lot and then I'm dealing with it in there.
The epilogue with them, including gave chapter.
And now I was afraid to be in to get into its trap of the missed opportunity paradigm, meaning there was there.
Back then it was missed an opportunity diminished demise.
It's not there that it's not relevant anymore.
We can't really we can reflect on Atum the past. We can look at it as an object of the past, but doesn't have any.
Doesn't have any connexion to what we have in the present or the future of Palestine.
But I think that they are at me in first of all, you can see, of course, that the tragic of what we saw,
that partition languages with Arabic in the petitions of Jewish and Arab as even as identity of Jews is something that we can see in Israel today.
And most of them. Exactly. Jews today want consider settlers, Arabs, even though their parents and grandparents were Arabs.
And part of the society, most of them won't be able to speak out to without me.
There was a great survey that they only mandoline for sedition have did the body had knowledge of Israelis, Jewish, Israelis of Arabic.
And it said that even Ashkenazi in my generation, no Ashkenazi, some of them because of intelligence,
know a little bit more Arabic then third generation of Arab Jews.
So they did that then they're the negation of Arabic is is very strong and is the negation of identities.
At the same time, you can see traces of these kind of possibilities coming along the way all the time that traces there.
So in a way, there is continuities of of of logics.
If it doing the political side of it seised scholars and thinkers that are going
back to these kind of identities and and logic and models today in Israel.
But you can see you can very strongly music and the peut and popular music in Israel.
You have the third generation of Arab Jews going back to Yemen, music, Emmonak music.
So I'll be clemmy under our and Iraqi music like the Tarzan Moroccan music like in that they are kayum and yet Z4 cascaded down.
And you have done the loosing Andalusian musical traditions and orchestra.
So you can see it in the music that there is the places that you can still see the continuation.
And even if you're going to Jerusalem to a synagogue necessarily, Zinner will be Jerusalem today where I used to live in Oslo,
you will still hear the Arabic, you know, the popular Arabic Egyptian music into the prayer.
And it's still there, the Arabic, even though that may be most of the people to pray there.
You know, Bibi supporters or cracklings supporters of Sensabaugh, they were, but they're still Arabic is very present there.
And you still see the Arab Jewish tradition very present in the events.
So this kind of continuation and Trace's is really interesting to go in and rethink about them in in light of this long history.
Well, I you know, I don't think anyone can doubt this, but I would still, just as a note, not as evident as a question,
I would still raise the issue of is this how would I call it the popularisation or follicle or rosacea?
And also from a dude, in effect, it's a politicisation. So it's a it's you know, it's a neutering of it's a political potential, which is a.
Yeah. I think the less optimistic view of the situation.
Now, again, please write down your questions. We have a couple of questions.
And I just want the one is one me. Mattel was asking you why.
First of all, congrats on the Brandos chair. Is there an English translation of the book in the works?
Yeah, yeah. It's first of all, thank you for the congratulations.
And yes, yes, that's the beginning of this process.
Sidelights. Wonderful.
Mark, is this asking regarding your Figlio with Agonistic or Safa, the Arab Jewish figures?
Were they discussing. I'm sorry. Were they ever entered into a dialogue with Martin Buber related with his activities in breach along and or the Ehud.
Yeah. This is really interesting subject, and I wondered what about it already in the 40s and what a great article about it in
these to be beer and newspaper called Tetum is like they wondered what about it,
interestingly, is your are Evelyn, the father of the current president of Israel that was in a way,
raised his Ashkenazi native both ways, that he was married to you, who does not know his first wife.
And he was, you know, a student of Tokyo. One of my goodness.
Then he tried to claim the dead. The dead.
There is a differentiation between the people who are coming from outside the European that come from outside.
I know I was voguing notion of what's what's living together and the natives and a Jewish perspective that have a different kind of offer of affair,
of their vision, of living together. That is not the same. Exactly.
And he tried to do the differentiation. But I would say that, of course, a hood in particular, it was in touch with and kept my business.
I was in touch with its founding director and some of them were part of it.
Did I call it Charlie in the beginning? And the left and the whole de Tocqueville that came to some of the meetings.
So there was, of course, the connexion between the two.
I think it will be interesting to see what's the differential between a native perspective of this called coexistence
or shared life and and and and the model that come formally to be from outside from the European perspective?
No way. But that's it. Interesting game.
And, you know, we don't have more questions on the question and answer and just very well for allowing people the more just I have one more question,
which is actually outside of the of the premise of the book, but it would be interesting to note.
Can you say something about contemporary Arab appropriation or discussion with these writers we listen to there,
Arab writers, or do you notify the writers? Yeah, I want to say something about how they been used.
Now, there is a reason we tend to discount thinkers, but it's interesting.
In the Zionist sphere.
So there is now there was a very important book by taking it to a level that they said that the detective was we were also Zionist.
So he went to this group to show that he and the safadi was the first down.
And so he took it to a different kind of their authority.
And there is others that going back there will say here we can see the first day of revivals of Hebrew.
We have that. We don't talk about that. So let's do the same framework of zombies.
You start to see that we had. But let's find missed voices and put them together.
But we don't change how we organise the setting itself.
And there is a very interesting and we tend to this thinkers inside an Arab intellectual and world
and into Mali wrote beautifully about it's Chami and his work as part of Palestinian history.
I know that historians are more committed. Steinert historians Arby Stones are walking with these candles texts on the contribution from that house.
Yalcin their stumbly and was written in this kind of framework.
So there is we tend to them as part of revivalism, all part of Palestinian history and as natives of the land.
So this is another interesting. And of course, there is the Misaka aspect of trying to.
And we tend to early voices of bizarre resistance of Ms.
Uschi. Voice on culture. And this I think all of them have.
It's interesting. You know, it's it's it's important. But all of them have the danger of mechanistic a way to look at them.
Because I think most of the categories that's what I meant in the beginning of my
talk when I spoke about the partition environment in academically and politically,
that it's always going it can be. We do understand the categories that we used today doesn't really apply to the categories that they use,
even though that, you know, Zionist or not Zionist, secular or religious or Eastern and Western and all, just kind of.
I'll be Kaju in all these kind of categories that are essential in our discussion today is not really applying fully to them.
So the last question will take is actually from our core convenor, Peter Bergen.
Peter, would you allow me to show you so you could ask the question yourself? All right.
So I'm need now. So you've all thanks and sorry for showing up late. Thank you.
You can blame Microsoft and technology, which seems to be following me around like like the Grim Reaper at the moment.
Anyway, you mentioned very quickly that the Hapsburg Empire and I was thinking through the hot part of your talk that I
heard that there is certainly a parallel between this cop Seeberg and Ottoman concepts of multiple realities.
And they certainly are coming from different opposite sides, say, of this, but going together and meeting in the middle somewhere.
And I thought maybe you could just say a little bit more about this,
because it struck me as something very, very interesting that never occurred to me before.
Yeah, that's really, really interesting point, and I think those are interesting walk now on the metre Shamsky.
You know, and you've just did them. Great book about them then.
And you have to read from them. He'll be Benyamin and others that day trying to understand that I was born again.
You know, multilingual multinational empire as as a as a model for Jews that came to Palestine being Jews,
that had a different kind of a fair, you know, political model created in Goulburn and their Hugel Balga man.
And Benyamin and others. And they traced back into that.
Absolutely. And a connexion. I think it's it'll be interesting to see how some of them understood that the Ottoman Empire is the same logic.
I think. You mean if you go in. I remember was the one that understood it better.
And he even wanted to become a safadi is in the end of the Ottoman Empire.
It was like in Safadi. Can you stay crazy? You understood that the right part of being a native.
It's that conversion will change. And that is so public.
Apollos, I'm not sure that the other side. Similarly, I think that we are as historians would be really, really interesting to compare the two.
And to put it in conversation, these models.
And in a way, you know, it was a transition from empire to nation state is something that we need to put in question.
How Nation state, a continuing empire logic.
And vice versa. Now, in their empire setting, there is a national logic and I think.
Absolutely. And the Ottoman tool, the less talk them in the is the Palestinian setting.
And I think that very important, the discussion.
And I was just going to say, kind of as an aside, I was looking frantically through my documents while you were talking.
But just this morning, I was actually cataloguing something from this archive I'm working on.
And I think, you know, I was looking at the 19th Zionist Congress from 1935.
That's the first time that somebody appeals for a separate SAFADI department or for even some of the funding to be even brought into the conversation.
By the way, it was Paul Goodman, Martin's grandfather, Ya'acov. But and it's also interesting, I was noticed, too, that, in fact, you know,
1935 takes place and was certain that we still at this point, we have a very, very strong Keibel cultural element to everything.
But not all of the reports are still published in German.
I mean, and I think it not just because it took place in Switzerland, but I think this is somehow the regu with the Zionists.
They continued to kind of think in German. I find it. Absolutely, yeah.
I was reading it this morning thinking this is absolutely crazy. Anyway, that's my final my final comment.
A depressing one. Well, with what better way to end within it.
A depressing note. Well, thank you well for this fascinating talk.
The book, again, is in Hebrew. Has she really, Alan, on the loose, available for mugginess press.
Also as an e-book, if you just want to log in and buy the book and or if you can't read Hebrew, wait for the English translation.
Also, follow your Woz work wherever you can find it.
I'm sure you'll find it very interesting.
Next week's Israel Study Seminar is actually Peter's on lecture about how should I say, Jewish terrorism and that of the British mandate.
Do come with us next the next week.
And thank you all. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me. Thank you very much.