Poetic Trespass : Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine

354 Pages·2014·16.553 MB·English

by  Levy, Lital

Poetic Trespass

Trespass
Poetic

Writing between
H E B R E W A N D A R A B I C
in Israel/Palestine
Lital Levy
Princeton University Press / Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William
Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford
Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket art: Hebrew letters are from Seder hagada shel pesah> ‘im sharh>
fil-‘arabi (Passover Haggadah in Judeo-Arabic), Jerusalem: Hosta’at
Bakal, 1977. Arabic letters are from Émile Zola, al-Mal, al-Mal,
al-Mal (Arabic translation of L’Argent, translated by the Lebanese
Jewish journalist Esther Azhari Moyal), Cairo: Matba‘at al-Shuri, 1907.
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-0 -6 91-16248-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014935596
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Gentium Plus,
Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk, and Brioso Pro
Printed on acid- free paper ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Ken and Jonah

Contents
Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xv
Introduction: The No-M an’s- Land of Language 1
PART I. HISTORICAL VISIONS AND ELISIONS
Chapter 1. From the “Hebrew Bedouin” to “Israeli Arabic”:
Arabic, Hebrew, and the Creation of Israeli Culture 21
Chapter 2. Bialik and the Sephardim: The Ethnic Encoding
of Modern Hebrew Literature 60
PART II. BILINGUAL ENTANGLEMENTS
Chapter 3. Exchanging Words: Arabic Writing in Israel
and the Poetics of Misunderstanding 105
Chapter 4. Palestinian Midrash: Toward a Postnational
Poetics of Hebrew Verse 141
PART III. AFTERLIVES OF LANGUAGE
Chapter 5. “Along Came the Knife of Hebrew and Cut Us
in Two”: Language in Mizraḥi Fiction, 1964– 2010 189
Chapter 6. “So You Won’t Understand a Word”: Secret
Languages, Pseudo-l anguages, and the Presence of Absence 238
Conclusion. Bloody Hope: The Intertextual Afterword
of Salman Masalha and Saul Tchernichowsky 285
Bibliography 299
Index 329

Illustrations
Figure 1. The Hebrew Bedouin: Hashomer men in the
early twentieth century. 31
Figure 2. The birthday poem in Semaḥ’s own hand:
Letter to Bialik dated 18 Tevet 5693 (January 16, 1933). 63
Figure 3. Meeting of Yellin and Semaḥ, Baghdad,
winter 1932– 1933. 71
Figure 4. Front page article on Bialik’s lecture, in Isra’il,
March 18, 1927. 88
Figure 5. Ronny Someck, “Khawaja Bialik,” 2004. 97
Figure 6. Ronny Someck, “Mikhtav katan li katva”
(“She Wrote Me a Little Letter”), 2004. 98
Figure 7. Ronny Someck, “El ha- tsipor” (“To the
Bird”), 2004. 99
Figure 8. Estina Lavy Chernyavski, “Layla Murad and
Anwar Wagdi” (graphic adaptation); front cover
for “Literature between Two Languages,” Ha- kivun
mizraḥ 7 (Fall 2003). 265
Figure 9. Haim Maor, Ana yahudi (I Am a Jew in
Arabic), 1990. 268