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Showing 21 - 40 from 65 entries
> Life in Beit Sahour: Jaela Andoni’s Story
> Sada, living in Dheisha, 120 years old
> Hend, from Al-Walaja near Bethlehem
> Abu-Yaser Recalls Life in Tel el-Safi
> Najwa Ahmed, a Palestinian refugee in Khan Younis
> Ramzt Baroud's father
> Ishaq al-Shami, Arab Jew
> A Palestinian child in a Syrian refugee camp
> This Is Me! By Dina Meo
> Mazin Sukkar, taxi driver
> Prisoner of War: Yusif Sayigh, 1948 to 1949
> A Palestinian in Dhahiat al-Barid Records a Life...
> Talbiyeh Days: At Villa Harun ar-Rashid
> Sa’id Nimr’s Stormy Career:From the Dungeons...
> A Personal Account of the Life of Zahra al-Ja’uniyya
> Growing Old in Palestine: Gabriel Khano
> Our Palestinian Elderly: A Sociological View
> Elderly people in Palestine
> Families in Beit Ummar
> Interview with a Muslim Teacher from Artas Village
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Ishaq al-Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in Palestine
Salim Tamari
Source:
Jerusalem Quarterly
August 2004, issue 21
In his retrospective personal memoirs of the 1930s and 40s, Ta’ir 3ala Sindiyanah (Bird on an Oak Tree), the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi discusses two groups of Jewish companions he encountered during his student days during the French Mandate in Lebanon.1 The first group consisted primarily of Arabic-speaking Jews from Syria and Iraq, several of whom took a prominent place in Arab nationalist, and anti-imperialist intellectual circles in the 1930s and 40s; the second he identifies as Yiddish-speaking Jews from Palestine, who exhibited marked Zionist sympathies.2 While the first group blended smoothly with Arab social circles (many of them being middle class and secular in outlook), the second - recollects Salibi - kept to their own, hardly spoke any Arabic, and viewed their host environment with suspicion.3
But this assessment does not fairly reflect the complex composition of Palestinian Jews during this period. Towards the end of Ottoman rule, native Jewish communities lived in the four ‘holy cities’ of Palestine: Safad, Tiberius, Hebron and Jerusalem. In the first three of these communities Arabic and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) speakers constituted a substantial proportion of the Jewish population, perhaps even a majority. Only in Jerusalem did Yiddish gain an upper hand, due to the large pietistic Ashkenazi migration from Russia and Eastern Europe.4
The life and writings of Ishaq Shami, described by Arnold Brand (perhaps with some exaggeration) as “one of the most significant Palestinian writers of the [twentieth century],”5 shed important light on one of the most contested of Levantine identities - that of the Arab Jew. Or perhaps one should use the term Jewish Arab - indicating that they were Arabs of Jewish background, in the same category of Christian Arabs.6 It is quite indicative that in most places today this term is considered an oxymoron. It designates a forgotten milieu of those Mashriqi Jews who identified themselves with the rising Arab national movement and its emancipatory programme, and who shared language and culture with their Muslim and Christian compatriots in greater Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, as early as the Ottoman administrative reforms of 1839. The image of the Arab Jew became more poignant, first with the struggle for Ottoman decentralization and its accompanying emphasis on Arab nationalism, and decades later when Zionism began to challenge the affinities of Jews in Arab countries in favour of a separate Jewish homeland. One recalls the Egyptian critic and satirical essayist Yaqoub Sanou’ from an earlier period, and Iraqi liberal and leftist writers who immigrated to Israel and Europe (Shim’on Ballas, Sasson Somekh, Sami Michael, Nissim Rejwan, and the cineaste Ella Shohat). Like most of those writers, Shami was never at ease with either his Jewish or Arab identity.
For the remainder of the article, see:
http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/details.php?cat=4&id=204
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