Professor Gil Hochberg's new book, In Spite of Partition, examines the works of contemporary Jewish and Arab writers, such as Palestinians, Anton Shammas and Sahar Khalifah; Moroccan-Jewish, Albert Swissa; Jewish-Egyptian, Jacqueline Kahanoff; and Israeli, Ronit Matalon. As a literary study of how Hebrew and Arabic influence politics, education and relationships between Jews and Arabs, as well as how writers from both nations are coming to grips with their intertwined histories, Hochberg's book delivers an insightful critique on a sensitive and significant subject.

BookZone: Your book drives home the politics of language; language as a means of defining or redefining borders; language as the claiming of identity. In the contemporary writings of Jews and Arabs, particularly with fiction, is identity the prevailing theme of most of the books being written?

Hochberg: Yes, I definitely think that the question of identity is central. The writers that I chose to look at are not just focused on the question of identity - who is what - but more on the question of identity as a production. How is identity created? Why are certain identities created as non- identities or impossible identities? Let's say, the identity of the Israeli-Arab, someone who is both Palestinian and an Israeli citizen. How is it that we've come to see that figure as an oxymoron or as some kind of a figure that inevitably suffers from an identity crisis? Rather than saying, there are Israelis and there are Palestinians; there are Arabs and there are Jews and who ever mixes in between them is somebody who is a borderline figure, [why are we not] shifting the angle and instead saying, what are the ideologies that want to produce Israeli and Palestinians as opposite identities so that any other configuration of identity will appear impossible?

BookZone: Jews and Arabs have a shared history as Semitic peoples who were cast as Orientals by an Occidental Europe. Do the roots of their languages stem from a common origin, and are there similarities between their languages such as being written from left to right?

Hochberg: Actually, they're both written from right to left. I think that what you're referring to might be a comment I mention in the book, made by author, Anton Shammas, who ironically said that while they both languages are written from right to left, Hebrew is now read from left to right. What he meant by that is that Israel has created this Westernized version of Jews. This is why my chapter is entitled "Bringing Hebrew back to its (Semitic) Place." In terms of the linguistic similarities, they're both of course Semitic languages. In fact, if you look at Biblical Hebrew, it is much closer to classical Arabic. But modern Hebrew, that is Hebrew that has been "revived" as part of the Zionist national agenda in the late 18th century and throughout the present -- Hebrew was always used by Jews in exile but it wasn't an everyday living language as much as a religious language used for prayers etcetera -- is influenced by many external sources. In this sense it has "moved away" from Arabic. In Modern Hebrew, there is so much that isn't originally, so to speak, Hebrew. Arabic didn't have so much of that schism that Hebrew had in being a textual language for so many years; it was always a living language. Sure, there are definitely great similarities between the languages- especially as so far as grammatical structures are concerned. But it's not that if you know one, that you actually understand the other- not more than, say, being able to count to ten in both, it's that level of similarity as so far as vocabulary is concerned.

BookZone: You mentioned that most Israelis don't know Arabic.

Hochberg: Right. That is something that I tried to emphasize in the book because it is really about separatism and the ideology of separatism. That for me is a very, very sad reality. I think that it's starting to change a little bit but for Israelis who live in the Middle East, it's not just that they happen to not know Arabic, it's that their whole educational system is built in a way that one has to be excessively eager and determined [to learn Arabic]. How many children, given the option to learn or not learn another language, will learn another language? Especially when that language is seen as "inferior." You see, most Israelis, given the choice, would pick German or French-languages with "cultural cache." this is of course a very western perception; it is prevailing here in the US, and in Europe as well. How many French colonizers have ever bothered to learn Arabic? Vietnamese? Wolof? Why is Spanish still not a formal recognized language in the US?

So back to Israel, you see learning Arabic is actually a difficult task. The system is not providing and definitely not encouraging the study of Arabic, unless one joins the IDF secret services, so of course it's not studied. It really is a shame because eventually, if Israel is to stay where it is and function as a nation with a future, not just as a nation that constantly lives in a state of survival and paranoia, it's citizens will have to know the language of the region. Everybody in the region speaks Arabic. That has been the problem with Israel since the moment it was established; it sees itself as an hermetic bubble. It's either a Jewish bubble in the midst of Islamic culture or, as others suggest, a Western, or now, most specifically American reality in the midst of the orient. I cannot think of another example in history in which that practice of isolation worked for a significant period.

BookZone: You had written about monolingualism versus multilingualism and how when multilingualism is seen as unstable, there is an effort to gain control by narrowing down to one language, a practice that goes back to colonialism.

Hochberg: When I talk about language politics in this book, the case of Israel is, I think, like any other colonial society, where when the settlers come in, they impose their language. We've seen this most clearly with French colonizers. What makes the politics of language most interesting in this case is that the revival of the Jewish nation and the revival of Hebrew as a modern language not only took place at the same time but also was a united project. To revive the nation meant to revive the language; to revive the language meant to revive the nation. When you realize the central role that modernizing Hebrew, reviving Hebrew, or "saving Hebrew" had in the Zionist project of creating a Jewish modern nationhood, you realize what a level of threat other languages presented. That included not only Arabic but also Yiddish, German, or any other language that Jews from the diaspora came with. There was really an intensified language programming to make everybody speak Hebrew and only Hebrew.

BookZone: Palestinian author, Anton Shammas, wrote his book, Arabesques, in Hebrew, a language that is not his native language. Writing in Hebrew was, as you described, an "act of transgression." Are we going to see more of this type of approach to Jewish and Arab literary styles?

Hochberg: Yes, I do. Again, I think that the transmission now of Arabic for Jews is very limited at the moment because at the moment there really isn't a Jewish generation that you can say lives in Arabic (there are very few Jews living in Arab countries since 1948). This may be my Utopian image of the future but I do think that things are going to change. In the last few years suddenly several small and independent Arabic schools have opened in Israel, indicating that people are interested in learning the language. I do think that the younger generation realizes the importance of it. Frankly, most young Israelis are tired of this war mentality, and are also tired of pretending that they live in New York when they wake up in Tel Aviv or Jaffa. They realize that language is the key. It's not about, 'Are we going to eat the same food?' It's, 'Can we talk to each other?'

There is also a young generation of very talented Palestinians writing in Hebrew. Unlike Shammas, they do not consider Hebrew to be a language of the Other. For them it is the most natural choice, as they have grown up in Hebrew and studied in Hebrew. But for the future to look better, the exchange of languages must be equal. Israel must finally come to terms with the fact that Arabic is one of its two formally recognized national languages.

Professor Hochberg is currently working on a book entitled Arabenss in Modern Hebrew Imagination and is editing a collection of essays on Queer Politics and the Question of Palestine.