“These Hearts, Can They Reach Tranquility?”

Reuven Snir

doi:10.35699/1982-3053.2021.36589

Abstract

The article examines the Arabic literary poetry written by Iraqi Jews in Israel during the 1950s after their immigration from Iraq. This temporal revival of Arabic poetry by Jews was the swan song of the Arab-Jewish culture as we are currently witnessing its demise– a tradition that started more than fifteen hundred years ago is vanishing before our eyes. Until the twentieth century, the great majority of the Jews under the rule of Islam adopted Arabic as their language; now Arabic is gradually disappearing as a language mastered by Jews.

Highlights

There were already Jewish poets in the pre-Islamic period as well as after Islam appeared; in Muslim Spain (Al-Andalus) in the 11th-13th century we find even Jewish authors so at home in fusha that they were able to achieve wide recognition for their literary works.2 But since the mid-13th century, Jews were nowhere as open to participation in the wider Arabic culture, and at home in fusha, as from the 1920s in Iraq.3 This cultural involvement was encouraged by the process of modernization and secularization of the Iraqi Jews since the second half of 19th century
The great majority of the Jews under the rule of Islam adopted Arabic as their language; Arabic is gradually disappearing as a language mastered by Jews
The vacuum created in Arabic literature in Israel after the founding of Israel encouraged Arab-Jewish poets and writers, especially those emigrated from Iraq to engage actively in this field, in the dominant genre of poetry

Summary

Introduction

There were already Jewish poets in the pre-Islamic period as well as after Islam appeared; in Muslim Spain (Al-Andalus) in the 11th-13th century we find even Jewish authors so at home in fusha (standard literary Arabic) that they were able to achieve wide recognition for their literary works. But since the mid-13th century, Jews were nowhere as open to participation in the wider Arabic culture, and at home in fusha, as from the 1920s in Iraq. This cultural involvement was encouraged by the process of modernization and secularization of the Iraqi Jews since the second half of 19th century. There were already Jewish poets in the pre-Islamic period as well as after Islam appeared; in Muslim Spain (Al-Andalus) in the 11th-13th century we find even Jewish authors so at home in fusha (standard literary Arabic) that they were able to achieve wide recognition for their literary works.. Since the mid-13th century, Jews were nowhere as open to participation in the wider Arabic culture, and at home in fusha, as from the 1920s in Iraq.. Since the mid-13th century, Jews were nowhere as open to participation in the wider Arabic culture, and at home in fusha, as from the 1920s in Iraq.3 This cultural involvement was encouraged by the process of modernization and secularization of the Iraqi Jews since the second half of 19th century. Because of the escalation of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine

Arquivo Maaravi

Immigration and Adaptation

Conclusion

66 The poem was published in 2005 in Helicon