The 20th-century migration of the Jews to the Arabian Peninsula and the birth of Israel was not only a change witnessed within the historico-geographical sphere, but the beginning of a new era in the world of literature. The coexistence of both the ethnic groups of Jews and Arabs was a merging of two different cultures and traditions that was reflected in their writings as well and made the rest of the world see them both with new perspectives – one community through the eyes of the other. Unfortunately, both groups formed hostility towards each other owing to the drift in their political and religious beliefs. However, this hostility was not only seen during a particular time period or between the Arabs and Jews but it finds its roots way back in history.
Hannah Arendt points out in the introduction to her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, that ‘anti-Semitism’ was, despite its coinage in the late nineteenth century, not unknown in arguments before the 1870s. We learn in the same book that in 1791, France became the first European country to pass an edict that emancipated its minority population of Jewish people. Before that, and much after it as well, the Jewry in large parts of Europe was a mute ethnic group – unable to express itself to the outside world without fear of persecution and ridicule. It is evident in literature like that of Voltaire – notably his famous Candide – that they were a subject of jokes for the most part. While it could be argued that Candide and the caricatural Don Isaachar appeared more than 30 years before emancipation, France was not the only place where this soft anti-Semitism was rooted. In Avon, almost two centuries prior, the Bard William Shakespeare was caricaturing the business-minded, conniving Jew in the character of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare did not stop at archetyping this character, rather, he went ahead to use a variety of insults for him, and finally an attempt to convert him to Christianity is made by one of the characters.
If one fast-forwards to the mid-20th Century, when the State of Israel came into existence, a forward-looking liberal world witnessed the new outspoken Jew, a Jew that transcends stereotypes of money-lending and wearing bowler hats. This new Jew brings with him the Modern Hebrew language. The Arab nations, not entirely pleased with the Israeli declaration of independence, in the epicenter of the Peninsula, waged a series of wars to reclaim the land occupied by Zionist Aliyot. This posed a threat of extinction to the newly revived Hebrew language.
Soon, however, after the advent of pioneers like Mendele Mocher Sforim, Yosef Haim Brenner, and Uri Nissan Gnessin, the Hebrew language carved out its own place in modern world literature. When Shai Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1966, it became instantly clear that Hebrew Literature was a force to be reckoned with, and depictions of Arabs were at the mercy of a new artistic form and language unknown to most of them. We look at the example of Y. H. Brenner in this article, as given to us by Gila Ramras-Rauch in her book The Arab in Israeli Literature. Killed in 1921, Brenner did not live to see the formation of Israel, so the depiction that we get to see through his eyes consists of the at-home Palestinian rather than the displaced refugee. However, the hostility is thinly, if at all garbed, rejecting the “fairy-tale” of Arab-Jewish harmony, as proposed by Brenner’s contemporary Rabbi Benjamin. Often, these early depictions of Arabs were mired in unspeakable cruelty in the works of Brenner such as his novel “Between Water and Water” (Hebrew: Bein Mayim Le-Mayim). However, before his murder in 1921, in April of the same year, his final composition acknowledged the complexity of the Arab-Jewish relationship and went ahead to humanize the Arab in some capacity as well.
Finally, we move to Anton Shammas, a first in the range of Palestinian writers to write in Hebrew for an Israeli audience. Shammas’ opus, Arabesques: A Novel (Hebrew: Arabeskot), is a rare composition of his not to be made available in the Arabic language. The reason for this, we learn in his interviews, is that he does not think he can write about people he loves in a language they can understand. “In order to not feel my heroes breathing down my neck, all the time, I used Hebrew.” He told the New York Times in 1988. The novel uses a lot of symbolism and irony as pointed out by the critics. A notable instance from the story is when Anton, the narrator is standing on the boulder and he learns that he was named after the dead Anton, the son of his uncle Jiryes and his wife Almaza, this is a dilemma faced by the boy as his identity is tied to that of the dead boy and ironically the boulder poses as a “foundation stone” of Anton’s identity. Yet it is precisely the latter that opens it up for irony; the world of experience and the fictional and linguistic dimension is divided by the very boulder he stands upon. It essentially acts as the foundation of his failure to anchor himself to one specific identity.
So we have seen how the depiction of both Jews and Arabs in literature since antiquity to modern times has evolved to give rise to discussions on complex issues such as identity, race, ethnolinguistic realities, both represented and lived. It is hoped that literature can be used as a medium to bridge divides rather than build barriers between people belonging to different races, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, and holding differences in opinion.
Hiba Ali is an undergraduate student of English Literature at Women’s College, Aligarh Muslim University. Affan Shikoh is an undergraduate student of English Literature at Aligarh Muslim University.
