Arabic Studies Class Recontextualizes the “Language of the Enemy”

By Sean Medin

 

Students in Givat Haviva’s intensive 2-month Arabic summer course speak of the experience in universally glowing terms. Many of them came to Givat Haviva because this was the only place they could find that teaches an intensive spoken Arabic course in a country where 20% of the citizens are native Arabic speakers. Classes run five days a week from 9am to 5pm. Some students enter the course with no knowledge of Arabic and some have already taken it for several years. By the end of the eight-week course all students can comfortably converse—and even hold debates—in Arabic.

 

"The course itself, it's amazing how much knowledge you can put in just two months. I mean I arrived here with absolutely no knowledge about the Arabic language,” says Yonatan, one of the students.

 

The summer course is not the only one offered by Givat Haviva’s Institute for Arabic Studies. Founded in 1963, the institute on the Givat Haviva campus provides adult education in the Arabic language and culture. It also offers a 4-month intensive winter course as well as weekly classes at a variety of levels throughout the year.

 

While many Israeli Jews have grandparents who immigrated from Arabic-speaking countries, only 9% of Jewish citizens are proficient in Arabic—in contrast to the 81% of Arab citizens who can speak at least a moderate level of Hebrew. In schools, students can choose to take an Arabic class, but normally they teach literary Arabic rather than the spoken dialect that the Arab citizens actually speak.

 

More than that, many Jews, even from bastions of liberalism like Tel Aviv, instinctively view Arabic as the language of the enemy. One student remarked that “the moments in my life where I encountered Arabic, it would be only watching the news and then seeing some kind of…terrorist use the language.” In recent years, the situation has further deteriorated. “It was very traumatic for me to even hear this language” after October 7th, said another student.

 

For these Israeli Jews taking the Arabic course is therapeutic. One student described how he would feel “his whole body tense up” upon hearing Arabic and hoped the class would help change this reaction. Another noted a key reason for taking the course was “to deal with this trauma” from hearing the language.

 

The ages of the students in the class ranged from the mid-20s to mid-60s and they came from all over Israel. Each student had their own reasons for taking the course. One said Arabic fluency was important for his career path. Another wanted to connect to the language of her Yemeni grandparents. Several had more ideological reasons for wanting to learn the language, explaining that it was essential for Jews to know the language of their neighbors. “In order to live fully together the language barrier must be broken,” said Yonatan.

 

Most students described growing up socially segregated from their fellow Arab citizens, even within ostensibly mixed communities. Yair, who grew up in the mixed-city of Akko described not having a single Arab friend since “the Arabs go to their schools and we go to our schools,” and in his school they did not learn “about the other side's language, culture.” A natural consequence of this was that “you start to have stereotypes about each other because you don’t learn about them,” he said.

 

Filling in these cultural knowledge gaps is an active goal of the course. Khaled, who teaches several Arabic courses at Givat Haviva, highlighted the teaching of “customs, holidays, events, festivals – everything related to Arab culture and the Arabic language.” Going on tours of Arab localities is an integral part of the program and each class has multiple teachers who provide their unique perspectives on Arab society. By the end of the course, Khaled observes a shift in the students’ perspectives. “The change begins with this: first of all, they learn about the culture and customs, and then they begin to understand why a person behaves in one way or another,” he said. ‘They identify more with Arab society.”

 

The students echoed this sentiment. They are better prepared to engage more with Arab society. One remarked that he now had “more courage to engage” in Arabic and another noted that “speaking the language enables me to meet them on their ground.” Another student observed that when she speaks to Israeli Arabs in Arabic “automatically the response that I am getting is a smile.”

 

The students emerged from the course very appreciative of the Institute for Arabic Studies staff and Givat Haviva. “I would say it’s a very special place,” one student said. “It’s very apparent the love that everyone who we encountered—Angela [institute administrator] and the teachers—are passionate about it, they care about the language and the culture and they just really care, it’s something that we felt throughout.”

 

And regarding the trauma from hearing Arabic after October 7th, one student mentioned “I came here also to deal with this trauma and it was very difficult and I don’t know if I solved it completely but there’s a change and I definitely now am connecting with people easily and quite without fear.”

 

Sean Medin is an American volunteer at Givat Haviva.