09-11-29 Happy Holidays, and a little gift for you and yours

RE: Happy Holidays, and a little gift for you and yours

Please accept this note as my little Holidays gift to you and yours...
Joseph Zernik
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Bethlehem - end of 19th century.
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Among other endeavors, I was named Editor, by commission, on a volume of early middle-eastern modern fiction, published by the official Press of the Calvinist Church of Switzerland, Labor et Fides:

- - - Nouvelles d'Hebron by Yitzhaq Shami (1888-1949)
- - - Edited by Joseph Zernik. with Introduction by Arnold Band
- - - Labor et Fides, Geneve, Switzerland, 2006
The English version of the work, original edition, became a collector's item, available at scalping prices as used books on Amazon and elsewhere:
- - - Hebron Stories by Yitzhaq Shami (1988-1949),
- - - Edited by Moshe Lazar and Joseph Zernik, with Introduction by Arnold Band, 2000.
This volume was recognized by the Palestinian Academic Society as one of the important Palestinian literary works of the 20th Century. With that it held a unique place in the Israeli-Palestinian landscape - as a shared cultural treasure.
In 2004 I was invited and visited the Palestinian Authority, in relationship to efforts to produce a high-quality Arabic translation of the volume. Copied below is an English version of the Epilogue for the French Edition.

Hebron - end of 19th century
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Yitzhaq Shami (1888-1949)
Yitzhaq Shami, born in Hebron and a native Arabic speaker, was an early Modern Hebrew writer and an
early Middle Eastern Enlightenment figure. He studied in Hebron under one of the prominent rabbinical
authorities of his generation, Rabbi Medini a teacher of law, ethics, and Kabala. However, in his teens
Shami was caught by the ideals of the Enlightenment, and by seventeen he left the religious academy and
joined a secular teachers seminary in Jerusalem, committing himself to the revival of the Hebrew language.
In his youth Shami was deeply impacted by the writing of Jirji Zaidan (1861-1914) leader of the Arab
Awakening (Nahdah). Shami advocated Zaidans call for unity of the Moslem world and for unity of
Religion and Enlightenment. But Zaidans most important contribution, according to Shami, was the call
for examination of the historic variations in the relationships between Islam and the State. A century later,
these calls still need to be heeded.

Shamis position regarding organized religion both Jewish and Moslem - was complex and multi-faceted.
His first story, The Barren Wife, published while he was still in his teens, decried the treatment of Jewish
women by Halachic law. Protest of the treatment of women in both Moslem and Jewish traditional
communities was a recurring theme in his works. But Kabalistic and Sufi motives appeared in Shamis
writing and personal correspondence throughout his life.

The pilgrimage from the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron to the Tomb of Moses in the Judean desert near
Jericho provides the backdrop for Vengeance of the Fathers. Abraham and Moses are the two central
prophets of the Jewish religion, and the revelations to Ibrahim Khalil Allah (Gods Beloved) and Musa
Kalim Allah (Gods Interlocutor) are likewise central in the Quran forming the basis for the revelation to
the Prophet Muhammad. These two holy tombs, with Jerusalem-al-Quds in between, also formed the axis
of Moslem devotion in Palestine.

The revelation to Moses is the theme of the Sufi hymn included Vengeance of the Fathers. And the
manifestations revealed to Abraham are associated with the vengeful, jealous Almighty alluded in the
novellas title and ending. Therefore, this novella and Shamis work as a whole artfully preserved voices
and images of Moslem and Jewish way of life and local religious rites in Ottoman Palestine long since
vanished with the advent of Modern times. But Shamis writing showed no nostalgia he was a self proclaimed
anti-Orientalist, coining the Hebrew term for Orientalists in 1912.

Instead, Shamis stories sounded a doomsday prophecy and opposition to zealous veneration of holy tombs
and holy sites, foretold the violence and bloodshed that soon enveloped his homeland, and called for social
justice. In all of these Shami echoed biblical prophets from neighboring towns in Judea, like Amos and
Micah.

Implied in the title of Vengeance of the Fathers was also a macabre variation on the Blessing of the Fathers
one of the oldest and most central blessings in the Jewish prayer book. Rather than a source of blessing,
the Patriarch Abraham through religious zealotry could become a source of perpetual violence and
bloodshed to his descendents and followers Christians, Moslems, and Jews.

Vengeance of the Fathers was signed in Hebron, when Shami and his family lived outside the Jewish
quarter, in a house leased from a local Effendi who, with his family, were also close friends. Shami was
concomitantly teaching in a Jewish school and in a Moslem school, while also serving as Secretary of the
local Jewish community. In the 1920s he was among the founders of an Arab-Jewish friendship
association in Hebron in an attempt to dissipate the growing tension. Shamis position left him outside the
mainstream of either Israeli or Palestinian literature. After leaving Hebron for Tiberias in 1928 he lamented
I feel that the Arabs are missing here, and expressed the impossible position of his writing
Sometimes I think that during this period, full of violence and atrocities between us and our neighbors, it
may not be appropriate to show interest in them [the Arabs].... Indeed, Shamis writing, recently
recognized by the Palestinian Academic Society as an important part of Palestinian literature, belongs to the
long tradition of Arab literature, where in Shamis words the desert winds blow from between the lines.
Joint efforts are under way in recent years to introduce Shamis work to a new generation of young readers
in Palestine and Israel as part of their common cultural landscape. At a time of growing peace prospects, let
Shamis work, emanating from Hevron al-Khalil, become the source of the blessing of Ibrahim
Avraham.

Joseph Zernik
February 2005
On Behalf of the Literary Estate of Yitzhaq Shami

Epilogue by Joseph Zernik for Nouvelles dHebron by Yitzhaq Shami, Labor et Fides, Geneve, Switzerland, 2006.