LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

israeli jewish nation buildingTranslators and anthologists thus often presented their own translations inprefaces, afterwords and media interviews as ‘the best possible choice’ out oftexts written during a certain literary period. This predominant norm is followedby two others – an academic one and a political-national one. All three wereoften applied together, particularly since the few main figures active in Arabic-Hebrew literary translation were often involved in the Israeli academic systemwhere the high quality norm has prevailed. At university level this norm hasbeen applied in the choice of texts to be taught and researched since theestablishment of the Oriental Studies Institute at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem in 1926 up to the present. The academic norm has dictated thetranslation of both classical and modern Arabic works either taught as part ofthe academic curriculum or serving as the object of study by academic scholars.This, for example, combined with the source-language quality norm, mainlyaccounts for the fact that eleven Arabic novels out of a total of thirty-threetranslated into Hebrew have been novels by Naguib Mahfuz. 1 The last preliminarynorm, the political-national norm that sometimes contradicts the formerones, has dictated preference for particular Arabic literatures. Later discussionin the present chapter will demonstrate the interaction of all preliminary normsas applied to two prominent cases.During the earliest phase of Zionist Jewish nation building in Palestine,Zionism sought to build up a new Jewish identity replacing the miserablediaspora Jew with a brave new one. This objective was surprisingly promotedthrough selective translations of classical Arabic poetry with clear preferencefor the Hamasah [bravery] genre that depicts such personal qualities as valour,courage and undaunted devotion to one’s tribe. Thus the ancient brave Arabdepicted by that poetry was chosen as a model to be imitated by the modernbrave Jew. Most of these translations were published in Luah Eretz Yisrael [ThePalestine Almanac], a periodical published in Jerusalem (1896–1916) bypublisher-scholar Avraham Moshe Lunz (1854–1918). It included variousscholarly texts and reports for the small Hebrew readership in Palestine andEastern Europe that served, at the time, as the cultural centre of the young revivedHebrew culture as well as that of Zionist activity. The Luah was intended toencourage Jewish national aspirations through reports of current Zionist achievements,articles reporting archeological and historical discoveries, with anemphasis on the old-new connection between the Jewish nation and its landand literary texts. These included ancient Jewish legends about holy sites inPalestine as well as Arabic texts, both folk tales and Jahili poetry. Strange as itmay seem, the same practice was followed in daily life where Russian Jewishimmigrants used the native Arabs as a practical model (Even Zohar 1986),adapting Arab clothes (such as the kufiyyah gown and Æabah cloak), food (suchas Arab bread and coffee, olive oil and olives), work instruments (such as the— 103 —www.taq.ir