Defining Neighbors Read online

  DEFINING NEIGHBORS

  JEWS, CHRISTIANS, AND MUSLIMS FROM THE ANCIENT TO THE MODERN WORLD

  Edited by Michael Cook, William Chester Jordan, and Peter Schäfer

  A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.

  DEFINING NEIGHBORS

  RELIGION, RACE, AND THE EARLY ZIONIST-ARAB ENCOUNTER

  Jonathan Marc Gribetz

  PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

  PRINCETON AND OXFORD

  Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press

  Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

  In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

  press.princeton.edu

  Detail of map: Hans Fischer, Palästina, 1890. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, The National Library of Israel.

  All Rights Reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gribetz, Jonathan Marc, 1980– author.

  Defining neighbors : religion, race, and the early Zionist-Arab encounter / Jonathan Marc Gribetz.

  pages cm. — (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the ancient to the modern world)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-691-15950-8 (hardcover)

  1. Zionism—History—20th century. 2. Palestinian Arabs—History—20th century. 3. Jewish-Arab relations. 4. Khalidi, Ruhi, 1864–1913. 5. Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer, 1858–1922. 6. Palestine—History—1799–1917. 7. Palestine—History—1917–1948. I. Title.

  DS149.G738 2014

  320.54095694—dc23

  2013040012

  British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

  This book has been composed in Charis

  Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  To Sarit, Sophie, Daniela, and Max

  Contents

  Acknowledgments ix

  Note on Transliterations xiii

  Introduction 1

  CHAPTER 1

  Locating the Zionist-Arab Encounter: Local, Regional, Imperial, and Global Spheres 15

  CHAPTER 2

  Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi’s “as-Sayūnīzm”: An Islamic Theory of Jewish History in Late Ottoman Palestine 39

  CHAPTER 3

  “Concerning Our Arab Question”? Competing Zionist Conceptions of Palestine’s Natives 93

  CHAPTER 4

  Imagining the “Israelites”: Fin de Siècle Arab Intellectuals and the Jews 131

  CHAPTER 5

  Translation and Conquest: Transforming Perceptions through the Press and Apologetics 185

  Conclusion 235

  Bibliography 249

  Index 269

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to many for their assistance and support as I wrote this book, and it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to express my appreciation.

  I began this project as a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, where I came to study Jewish history with Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, of blessed memory, and Michael Stanislawski. In seminars with Yerushalmi and Stanislawski, I observed how great historians read and analyze texts; I hope that their influences are recognizable here. As my graduate studies progressed, my research interest in Zionism led me to Middle Eastern history. Rashid Khalidi, through his research, mentorship, and generosity, sent me on a journey into the fascinating world of Late Ottoman Palestine from which I have yet to emerge. Khalidi also kindly shared with me Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi’s unpublished manuscript, a text that sparked many of the questions that drive this book. My committee also included two scholars from other universities, Derek Penslar and Ronald Zweig, who treated me—and have continued to treat me—as their own.

  As I was completing my dissertation, I had the privilege of spending a year at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was welcomed by the center’s director David Ruderman. My conversations there with other scholars interested in secularism and modern Jewish history—including Annette Aronowicz, Ari Joskowicz, David Myers, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Daniel Schwartz, Scott Ury, and Yael Zerubavel—were most helpful as I considered some of the implications of my work. At the CAJS I also gained a dear colleague and friend, Ethan Katz, who has read and critiqued many parts of this book multiple times.

  After I finished my doctorate, the indefatigable Hindy Najman graciously invited me to the University of Toronto. I had the opportunity there to work more closely with my mentor Derek Penslar, who took me under his wings and has wisely and selflessly guided me intellectually and professionally ever since. In Toronto, I also benefited greatly from the intellectual friendships of Doris Bergen, Sol Goldberg, Jens Hanssen, Jeffrey Kopstein, Alejandro Paz, Robin Penslar, Natalie Rothman, and Harold Troper.

  I continued working on the manuscript of this book as an assistant professor at Rutgers, where I was blessed with wonderful colleagues in the Jewish Studies and History departments. Toby Jones, Hilit Surowitz-Israel, Paola Tartakoff, Azzan Yadin-Israel, and Yael Zerubavel read key portions of the manuscript and provided critical advice. Other Rutgers colleagues, including Debra Ballentine, Douglas Greenberg, Paul Hanebrink, Jennifer Jones, James Masschaele, Sara Milstein, Eddy Portnoy, Gary Rendsburg, Jeffrey Shandler, Nancy Sinkoff, Camilla Townsend, and Eviatar Zerubavel, helped make my time at Rutgers exciting and productive. I am grateful as well to Arlene Goldstein and Sherry Endick for their exceptional administrative support.

  While revising the manuscript, I benefited from the vast knowledge and abundant generosity of Israel Bartal and Israel Gershoni, two scholars who, to my great fortune, were spending the academic year in New Jersey.

  Other friends and colleagues who have read and commented on parts of this manuscript at various stages include Leora Batnitzky, Julia Phillips Cohen, Chaim Cutler, Alan Dowty, Jessica Fechtor, Benjamin Fisher, Jackie Gram, David Horowitz, Abigail Jacobson, David Koffman, Steven Lipstein, Jessica Marglin, Eli Osheroff, Elias Sacks, Daniel Stolz, and Joseph Witztum. Omid Ghaemmaghami meticulously reviewed my Arabic transliterations; Rachel Feder painstakingly proofread the entire book; and Menachem Butler provided electronic bibliographical support.

  Jeremy Dauber, Martha Himmelfarb, Jeffrey Prager, Peter Schäfer, Debora Silverman, and Moulie Vidas have offered sage counsel at every turn.

  I received valuable feedback when I presented parts of this project at workshops and symposiums at Brown, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, and at the annual conferences of the Associations of Jewish Studies, Israel Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.

  I also obtained important suggestions from the anonymous reviewers of two articles I have published that emerged from this project: “An Arabic-Zionist Talmud: Shimon Moyal’s At-Talmud,” Jewish Social Studies 17, no. 1 (Indiana University Press, 2010), and “ ‘Their Blood Is Eastern’: Shahin Makaryus and Fin de Siècle Arab Pride in the Jewish ‘Race,’ ” Middle Eastern Studies 49, no. 2 (Taylor & Francis, 2013). I thank the editors and publishers of these journals for allowing me to include some of this material here.

  I gathered most of the sources on which this book is based during a year of research in Jerusalem. I am grateful to the staffs of the Central Zionist Archives, Israel State Archives, al-Aqsa Library, Haifa Municipal Archive, Jerusalem Municipal Archive, Lavon Labor Archive, Rishon Lezion Archive, and Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. I am especially thankful to Haifaʾ al-Khalidi, who not only opened the renowned Khalidiyya Library to me for weeks on end but also welcomed my wife and me into her historic Jerusalem home. My months at the Central Zionist Archives were made particularl
y pleasant by the friendship of, and frequent coffee breaks with, Noah Haiduc-Dale.

  I could not have undertaken my research without the support of foundations and fellowships that had faith in me and my project. These include the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, Schusterman Israel Scholar-ship, U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship, Kathryn Wasserman Davis Critical Language Fellowship for Peace at Middlebury College, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and Foundation for Jewish Culture. To assist in the preparation of the manuscript, I received generous grants from Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and from the Israel Institute.

  As my work on this book comes to a close, I have been fortunate to return to two old-new intellectual homes. I spent a year at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, where I was graciously welcomed back by Shaye Cohen, Peter Gordon, Rachel Greenblatt, Jay Harris, and Ruth Wisse. And I embark on a new position at Princeton in Near Eastern Studies and Judaic Studies, joining the extraordinary faculty and intellectual community that inspired me as I was writing my dissertation years earlier in Firestone Library.

  Fred Appel of Princeton University Press has been enthusiastic about this project from our first meeting in Toronto and has, with the assistance of Sarah David, Juliana Fidler, and Ali Parrington, shepherded it along with great care. Anita O’Brien copyedited the book and Tom Broughton-Willett compiled the index.

  My parents, Rhonda and Michael Gribetz, have generously supported and lovingly encouraged me as I pursued a career in academia. My father insisted on reading every paper I wrote along the way, and my mother, who proofread key portions of the manuscript, made sure I took care of myself and always looked like a mensch. I am also grateful to my mother-in-law, Esther Dreifuss-Kattan, my father-in-law, Shlomo Kattan, and Miriam Lewensztain, who, from across the country, took great interest in this project; to my brothers Eric and Seth, sisters-in-law Carin, Orit, and Gabriela, and brother-in-law Pavel for their advice, generosity, and good cheer; and to my grandmother Florence Gribetz, who has inspiringly modeled open-mindedness and endless learning.

  Finally, I express my boundless love and gratitude to my wife, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, whose sharp, critical mind made a mark on every page of this book. From our sweet daughters, Daniela and Sophie, identical-but-different twins, I have learned much about self and other and the porous boundary in between, while our son, Max, born just as I was completing this manuscript, reminds me that seemingly fixed groups and categories such as “our family” can expand, with love.

  Note on Transliterations

  In transliterating Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, I have generally followed the International Journal of Middle East Studies transliteration guide. In transliterating Hebrew and Yiddish, I have generally followed the Encyclopaedia Judaica transliteration guide. For ease of reading, in the body of the book personal names and foreign words that have entered the English lexicon are written without diacritical marks. For the benefit of those interested in locating referenced texts, the transliterations in the bibliographical information provided are more precise. For the sake of consistency in transliteration between Hebrew and Arabic text titles, I have capitalized only the first letter of the first word (unless the title begins with a definite article, in which case I have capitalized the letter immediately following the article) and personal names found within the title. For Hebrew, I have generally followed the rule that a sheva under the first letter of a word is a sheva naʿ (a rule Ben-Yehuda followed in transliterating the name of his newspaper in the masthead as Hazewi), except in the body of the book when noting proper names that have a conventional English spelling (such as in the last name of Israel’s second president, Ben-Zvi).

  DEFINING NEIGHBORS

  Introduction

  On the final Saturday of October 1909, two members of Palestine’s intellectual elite met for an interview in Jerusalem. Eliezer (Perelman) Ben-Yehuda, fifty-one at the time, had immigrated to Palestine from Russian Lithuania nearly thirty years earlier. Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi, eight years Ben-Yehuda’s junior, was born in Jerusalem, though he spent much of his adult life outside of Palestine, in France and Istanbul. These men had much in common, aside from their shared city. Both had received traditional religious educations—Ben-Yehuda in the Hasidic Jewish world of Eastern Europe, al-Khalidi in the Sunni Muslim environment of Ottoman Palestine—and, like many of their intellectual contemporaries, both had also tenaciously pursued modern, secular studies. Ben-Yehuda made his career in journalism in Jerusalem, while al-Khalidi first became involved in academia in France and finally found his place in Ottoman imperial politics. Each believing that the fates of the Zionists and Arabs in Palestine were linked, Ben-Yehuda and al-Khalidi, friends for some time, met that Saturday, just before al-Khalidi was to return to Istanbul as one of Jerusalem’s three representatives to the newly reconstituted Ottoman Parliament (see figures 1 and 2).

  I began my research for this book in an attempt to discern how Zionists like Ben-Yehuda and Arabs like al-Khalidi thought about one another in the earliest years of their encounter, in the Late Ottoman period.1 In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—after about a hundred years of violent conflict—mutual hatred and delegitimization between Zionists and Arabs have dominated much of each side’s discourse about its counterpart. Many versions of such discourse circulate: there is no such thing as a “Palestinian”; contemporary Jews are merely Europeans with no connection to the Holy Land; there were hardly any Arabs in Palestine before the Zionists came; Zionism is racism; Palestinian nationalism is nothing more than antisemitism; and so on. Notwithstanding sporadic strides toward peace, these are the terms through which many who are engaged in today’s Arab-Israeli conflict perceive one another.

  FIGURE 1. Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi (1864–1913). From Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948 (Washington, dC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984), 74. Courtesy of the Institute for Palestine Studies.

  Was this always so? The short answer is, of course, no; the mutual perceptions of Zionists and Arabs (and their latter-day descendants, Israelis, Palestinians, and others in the region) have not been static but rather have evolved over decades of political struggle and violence. How, then, did these communities view one another at the start of their encounter, before the century of violence that ensued? This book sets out to answer this question.

  Exploring texts written by Zionists and Arabs about or for each other in the years before the Great War,2 before the political stakes of the encounter were quite so stark, I will argue that the intellectuals of this period often thought of one another and interpreted one another’s actions in terms of two central categories: religion and race. The historical actors, that is, tended to view their neighbors as members of particular religions—as Jews, Christians, or Muslims—or of genealogically, “scientifically” defined races (“Semitic” or otherwise). While the Arab-Israeli conflict is generally viewed as a prototypical case of a nationalist feud—and thus the Late Ottoman period is imagined as the first stage of that nationalist dispute—when we look carefully at the early years of the encounter, we see that the language and concept of “the nation” were not yet the dominant—and certainly not the only—terms through which the communities defined one another. This book explores in detail the implications of the religious and racial categories employed in the encounter’s first decades.

  FIGURE 2. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922).

  What I am proposing here is not that the ideas of nationalism (broadly, that humanity is naturally divided into nations, and that those nations should strive for cultural and political independence in their historic homelands) did not yet motivate many Arabs and Jews in the years before the Great War. On the contrary, this was precisely the age of the birth of modern Jewish and Arab nationalisms, and these years also witnessed the earliest stages of a uniquely Palestinian Arab nationalism.3 Nor am I suggesting that Arabs and Jews never saw one anothe
r as nationalist groups. Each side was certainly aware of the developing nationalism of the other. This book shows, however, that when we set aside presupposed categories and let our analysis of mutual perceptions in Late Ottoman Palestine be guided by the terms that emerge from the sources themselves, we find that the categories and interpretations were more expansive than a single-minded focus on nationalism would permit. Indeed, we begin to glimpse a new portrait of the early years of the Zionist-Arab encounter—one that is much richer, more nuanced, and in many respects more interesting than that of conventional accounts of the encounter between the communities represented by Ben-Yehuda and al-Khalidi; that is, between those whom we now commonly regard as simply “Zionists” and “Arabs.”4

  Moreover, as a study of reciprocal attitudes that examines the preconceptions and modes of interpretation employed by the various parties in this encounter,5 this book does not suggest that the various communities in Late Ottoman Palestine are most accurately defined—by those of us looking back a century later—as “religious” or “racial” communities. Modern theorists of religion, race, and the nation have compellingly demonstrated that these categories are historically contingent and socially constructed. As one scholar of race recently put it, it is at this stage “almost unnecessary to point out that ideas of race, in whatever form, are constructions of human culture and not an objective reality.” If this is true of race—the category that, among the three, claims the most “objective,” “scientific” authority—how much more so does this apply to religion and nation.6 By employing these terms throughout this book, I do not intend to reify them but rather to understand what they meant for the historical actors. Furthermore, especially at the very historical moment studied in this book—the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—these categories were particularly undefined and fluid, and the distinctions between them had not yet hardened.7 Part of the aim and the challenge of this book is to explore how these categories were employed in a period and place in which each was used inconsistently.