Mati Shemoelof

I

I recently met a friend who returned to Berlin after living in Paris for a few years. As we sat talking, I asked him why he came back. After all, he had a good job there managing a cultural institution. He even learned the language and to some extent integrated into the French cultural world without giving up on his Jewish and Hebrew roots and diasporic worldview. He said that Paris demanded of him a complete cultural and linguistic assimilation, with all that that entailed. But Berlin, his former place or residence, does not require such a process. Berlin allows him, as a Yiddish activist and diasporic intellectual, to preserve the variety of identities that are already a part of him as well as new ones he wishes to explore. He pointed out to me that in Paris I would not have been able to produce the “Poetic Hafla” evenings.¹ In Paris, he added, they would have told you to start by learning the language, since in Paris you can only perform in French. The demand for full assimilation has always scared me. I never had the talent for mastering other languages. Actually, only my writing talent saved me by allowing me to invent my own syntax in different forms of the art of writing. When I emigrated to Berlin, I knew that I wouldn’t leave my beloved Hebrew language behind, and in 2019 I published my first bi-lingual poetry book Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin. As it turned out, it was one of the first books which were published after the holocaust, written by a non-Ashkenazi Hebrew writer living in Berlin.

I often wondered what would happen if I would have switched to writing in broken German like the author Tomer Gardi, or even broken English. I experimented with bi-lingual poetry and also with a radio play that I wrote in English and was translated to German. And yet, I love the Hebrew language, where every word can reach as far back as the ancientest times. I thought a lot about what my former Parisian friend told me. Indeed, Berlin allows me to live in-between languages, in-between worlds, without asking for full assimilation or full integration. It receives me with my broken German, my broken English and even my strange Hebrew, which also changes and accepts into it the other two languages (English and German) that accompany me.

Writing Hebrew in Berlin is not a standard category, such as writing English, French or Arabic in Berlin. Hebrew has an entirely different tradition there. In between world wars, Berlin entailed a rich Hebrew literary center, with publishing houses, magazines, and many Hebrew writers who lived in Berlin while dreaming in Hebrew. Some of these writers were Zionists, others from the Bund Socialist party, some communists, liberals, anarchists, and others.² After the 2nd world war this rich Hebrew literary center vanished off the face of the earth and to this day there is not a single Hebrew publishing house in Berlin. Alongside the emigration of Israelis to Berlin, however, Hebrew returned to be heard along the city’s sidewalks. Writers, poets, musicians, artists, and others create their works in Hebrew, often combined with German and English and other languages. It is hard to ignore the fact that Hebrew is now part of Berlin’s life.

Hebrew also has its own unique cultural system, which is also connected to the city’s historical past. The slang for example looks ahead when it is constantly recreated in Berlin, as well as backwards. As a language within the Hebrew, the slang symbolizes the unique cultural and linguistic space of Hebrew speakers in Berlin. Let’s take a look at a few examples. There is a bar in Berlin called “Südblock” (meaning “Southern Star”). A friend of mine started calling it “Jydblock,” replacing the German Süd (south) with “Jyd,” which in many Slavic languages means Jew, often in a derogatory manner. This is one way in which new slang is being created while referencing to the Jewish past, yet also to the present, and in doing so it is unique to the place and community that uses it. Another fascinating example is the slang word “Todanke” which refers to both “Toda” in Hebrew and “Danke” in German, both meaning “thank you” in English. Thus, within Berlin, a local Hebrew is created with and between languages, and it is unique to the place but also to its recipients. This language has a strong correspondence with Hebrew but also with the place in which it is spoken and the German language. One could claim that Jews who emigrated back to the Diaspora are returning to the former situation in which many Jews have lived, and are now using three languages: German, a local language (Yiddish or Slang, Berlin’s English, and the combination of those three) and Hebrew. The national mono-lingual situation is being abandoned and there is a return to a condition of multilingualism.

Writing Hebrew in Berlin is a turn towards a minor literature (borrowing Deleuze and Guattari’s well known term). A Hebrew writer can play with the German language of Berlin and even write a German novel, but he or she will always be perceived as an outsider who enters the temple in disguise. The question of trying to cross over your language will take its toll. Saying that, I do think that German culture is not to be solely defined by the German language. Those who live in a place acquire knowledge of and experience the local climate, architecture, festivals, clubs, streets, holidays, tv, cinema, leisure and so on. There are many things that grant them access to the local culture and life, and their presence is also a part of that culture.

In 2017, I joined a special conference at the Literary Colloquium of Berlin (LCB) that dealt with the fact of expat writers creating in different languages inside the guts of the city. No one has ever taken on the mission of re-creating the Hebrew center as it was between the two world wars. Perhaps there is no need for one. Maybe there is just no real linguistic, cultural, or political character to lead the Hebrew community of Berlin. This unfortunate fact may also be related to the lack of knowledge and direction of this community. An Israeli playwriter recently came to Berlin and asked me where the Hebrew community sits, and I smiled and replied that there is no such thing, everyone is scattered in many neighborhoods, and there is not one place you can point out as a Hebrew center.

There is however one journal: “Mikan Ve’eylakh: Journal for Diasporic Hebrew,” a diasporic Hebrew magazine, and an online magazine in Hebrew called “Spitz” (A name that has parallel meaning both in German and Hebrew). Beyond that, the Berlin municipality recently established an award of 7 scholarships per year, for non-German writers in Berlin. Sometimes one of winners of this scholarship is Jewish or Israeli but there isn’t any special literary scholarship for Jewish writing in Berlin. Since there aren’t any Hebrew publishers in Berlin, Hebrew writers are left without any real Hebrew publishing industry to help them grow and progress. Some, like the poets Zehava Khalfa, Hila Lahav or the fiction writers Sami Bardogo and Hila Amit, are publishing their books in Israel but no one knows their work in Germany.

II

The far right in Germany is strengthening, and a series of events prove this as a dangerous process, among them are the murder near the synagogue in the city of Halle, the murder of German citizens of Turkish descent in the city of Hanau, the assassination of German pro-immigration politician Lubke, the latest connection between the extreme far right and police officers and other instances of that kind. Together with the extreme right, the perception of loaded terms in German political culture such as homeland (Heimat), a people (Volk) as well as the attitude towards the German language are intensified (many times in response to what is perceived by the far right as the threat of the arrival of Muslim refugees and others into German territory). This image of some imaginary homeland occupied by “German” white people who speak only German, a language they perceive themselves to be its owners, becomes clear through the re-penetration of the concepts of Heimat and Volk into the German discourse. Less extremist parties are already embracing the discourse of Heimat without realizing the danger involved. Going back to the topic I opened with at the beginning of the article, writing Hebrew in Berlin is not the same as writing Hebrew in Germany. Just recently a collection of Hebrew poetry in Germany, Was es bedeuten soll. Neue hebräische Dichtung in Deutschland (What is that supposed to mean. New Hebrew poetry in Germany, edited by Adrian Kasnitz and Gundula Schiffer), was published by a small publishing house in Cologne. But what is the meaning of writing Hebrew poetry in Germany while far-right parties are poisoning the atmosphere? Is it the same as living in the more pluralistic Ausländer-welcoming city of Berlin? I think that the answer is no. Berlin is not a representative for the rest of Germany. Not by accident most of the writers of that anthology were Berlin based writers.

The AfD party fights to be portrayed as philosemitic by waving Israel flags at its demonstrations, as if to say “I am chasing the Muslim refugees out Germany and not the Jews” but the truth is that there are quite a few of anti-Semites and neo-Nazis in the AfD. One example is Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD Party in the state of Thuringia who in a speech he gave in Dresden in January 2017, referring to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, stated that “We Germans are the only people in the world who have planted a memorial of shame in the heart of their capital”. There was also a chance that Höcke’s party would have been part of the coalition to form a government in Thuringia due to its high popularity in the ballots. Can the German far right tolerate the existence of non-German speaking foreigners who instead of mastering German as an exclusive language speak a mix of a little German, a little English and a lot of Hebrew? Will the multiplicity of languages not create an anxiety in those who dream of a purity of race, culture and language?

A few years ago, I participated in a Jewish panel to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Berliner Ensemble. The moderator accompanied the discussion with jokes about us being Jews. In the middle of the discussion, I realized I can no longer continue with the humorous panel. I noted that when the AfD comes to power, they will not ask me if I am an Arab or a Jew but will recognize me through my middle eastern appearance and broken language and it will not take long for me to suffer the consequences of being defined as their enemy. From my perspective, a hate towards the other that elicits Islamophobia should not be ignored by those who constantly fear the rise of antisemitism in Germany on the pretext that it is not anti-Semitism. As I see it, there is no Islamophobia that does not lead to anti-Semitism in the context of the local extreme right of Pegida, AfD, NPD, Grey Wolves, and other grassroots movements. But what does writing in Hebrew have to do with right wing movements? Well, writing Hebrew, is opposing the monoculture of the far-right wing who wishes, in Germany as well in other part of the world, to have one language for one people in one land. Hebrew writing in Berlin as well as writing in other foreign languages is in direct opposition the idea of total assimilation since it promotes a revival of a Berlin with new hybrid and lingual syntax.

When a person arrives at a city and refuses to write in the language of the place, but rather choses to preserve his own language, an ancient language which belonged to a community that became extinct in that city, it is both an act of rebellion and an attempt of healing. This is why the call to produce a Hebrew literary scene must come from the German literary establishments of Berlin, not only as support to the existing culture, but as an encouragement to rebel against assimilation, which could mean the re-erasure of Hebrew from Berlin.

I grew up in the state of Israel where my mother-tongue in Iraq became extinct in order to create a monolingual, mono-cultural society. That’s why I am cut off from my mother’s language and the only language I have is modern Hebrew. There are many other residents of Berlin who write in their original languages, while at the same time maintaining a dialogue with the local society and German culture. The rejection of the idea of “one place, one language,” is both cultural and political. What we need is a society that rejects the concepts of integration and assimilation as the only option to enter within its gates. It is true of the special culture of Berlin, also in the Jewish context, where one Hebrew literary center has been extinct and another is currently arising, but also in regard to the multicultural context of Berlin, where a multiplicity of cultures can communicate using English or German while creating a new syncretic and in betweenness hybrid language - Where the meeting points of different cultures create in a syncretic alchemy a new element which we did not know before. This element, however, is by no means a new power capable of tackling the racist notion of a Heimat, but it does create spaces in which this notion is irrelevant and exposed of its empty shell.

¹ “Poetic Hafla” events are multilingual artistic and poetic events, in which each artist performs in his own language. Usually, on these evenings, immigrants come to perform live in Berlin and create in different languages, without translation, and with the use of different arts, such as dance, theater, music, stand-up, performance and more. I founded Poetic Hafla together with the painter Barak Moyal and it is part of the revival of the Mizrahi Jewish culture in Berlin. Each event is attended by between 5 and 20 artists from around the world, and after the event there is a Hafla (the arabic word for party). To read extensively about how Poetic Hafla blends into multilingualism in Berlin, see an article by Melissa Weininger, “Nationalism and Monolingualism: the ‘Language Wars’ and the Resurgence of Israeli Multilingualism,” Rice University in Houston.

² For further readings on this topic: Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919-1933, by Rachel Seelig; A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture by Shachar M. Pinsker