Palestinian-Israeli to speak on navigating two worlds


Aviram Valdman/The Tower Magazine
Palestinian-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua will speak at Cornell on Wednesday, March 25 at 4:30 p.m. in 165 McGraw Hall

Palestinian-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua, known for his books and humorous columns in Hebrew, will speak at Cornell on "The Foreign Mother Tongue" on Wednesday, March 25 at 4:30 p.m. in 165 McGraw Hall.

Kashua will talk about his struggles, his challenges and his fears about being an Arab-Israeli author who writes in the language of the Jewish majority, even though he is part of the Arab-Palestinian minority. The event is free and open to the public.

“Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian-Israeli public intellectual, writing in Hebrew to an Israeli audience of Jews and Arabs. The television sitcom he wrote and developed, ‘Arab Labor,’ was popular with a broad audience in Israel,” says Deborah Starr, associate professor of modern Arabic and Hebrew literature and film in the department of Near Eastern Studies. “As his television series demonstrates, he treats difficult subjects with a light touch and a sense of humor.”

Kashua, a visiting professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the author of three novels: “Let it Be Morning,” “Second Person Singular” and “Dancing Arabs,” which was made into a feature film that premiered in 2014 at the Telluride Film Festival. “Arab Labor” is often described as the “All in the Family” of the Middle East. He is the focus of a documentary, “Forever Scared,” and is the winner of many awards, including the prestigious Berstein Prize.

Starr invited Kashua to Cornell as an extension of two courses she is teaching this semester: Minorities of the Middle East, which aims to enrich students' understanding of the diversity of Middle Eastern countries, exploring histories of inter-communal contact and conflict; and Palestinians in Israel, in which students read and discuss texts in Hebrew and Arabic by and about Palestinian-Israelis, including historical and sociological studies, journalism and literature.

“Palestinians in Israel is unique in North America in offering a bilingual modern Hebrew and Arabic text course,” explains Starr. “To understand the bilingual community of Palestinian Arabs that remained in Israel after 1948, which is often overlooked in discussions about the Israeil-Palestinian conflict and the peace process, both languages are necessary.”

On Thursday, Marcy 26, at 10 a.m., Kashua will meet informally with students for Hebrew conversation in 410 White Hall.

Kashua’s visit is hosted by the Department of Near Eastern Studies with the support of the Hope and Eli Hurowitz Fund, and is co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, the Society for the Humanities, the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative, Cornell Hillel, the Mediterranean Studies Initiative and the Institute for Comparative Modernities.

Linda B. Glaser is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.

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