My journey with Arabic started at the local Jewish Community Center, where I took a class in high school. I then studied the language for four years in college and with Syrian refugees on Skype. My studies were helped by my passion for languages and my love for Hebrew, its very similar sister language.
Why Arabic? It all started when I was sitting in my Lebanese friend Jad Zakhour’s (z”l) car hearing my first sounds of Arabic music. It was those tantalizing sounds, plus the delicious food and warm welcome I always received in his house, that caused me to become curious about this language. After all, Arabs and Jews are cousins. If we’re ever going to make peace with each other, we need to understand each other.
As with many other Jews and Israelis, I felt the pain of October 7th deeply and personally. In addition to the horrific results of the attack, the subsequent war has involved my friends risking their lives by serving in the military, going through countless rocket attacks, and a friend’s nephew being injured in the vile Hezbollah terrorist attack on Druze kids playing soccer in Majdal Shams.
I lost friends over the past couple years who showed their antisemitic (or at best, deeply ignorant) sides to me. I was discriminated against in the LGBTQ+ community, including being screamed at in public for being Israeli. I would walk by my local synagogue only to find antisemitic graffiti daily across the street.
All of this caused me to distance myself from Arabic. Anything that sounded like Hamas, like terrorism, like antisemitism, made me feel disgusted and frankly, scared. This was not an easy thing for me to reject. I had written an entire book about my relationship with Arabic as a gay Jew. Arabic is in my veins, it is part of what motivates me to make the world a better place for everyone. Yet the pain was so raw I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even listen to Arabic music for over a year.
Something changed for me recently. Because of the Syrian government’s attacks on its Druze minority, Arabic’s spirit has reawakened in me. Why? I’m not entirely sure. But I think it’s because I remembered – Arabic is not just Hamas. Arabic is not just Hezbollah and the wretched Syrian government. It is also the language of the my friends. It is the language of 20% of Israelis. Yes, it is a language of many Muslims – and also Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Jews! It has been a Jewish language, with specific Jewish dialects, for many hundreds of years across the Middle East. Some of which were spoken by my Iraqi Jewish neighbors in Tel Aviv.
Terrorists don’t get to “own” a language. Neither do antisemites. Arabic can and should be for all, just like any other language. It is a way to communicate, it is a way to build bridges, it is a way to make peace. I don’t know how to make peace in the Middle East, but I do know I’m in the process of making peace with Arabic. And maybe, here as I sit writing and soaking in the sounds of the Arabic music that got me interested in the first place, making that peace internally is the first step to making a more peaceful world for everyone.
As my blog banner photo from Majdal Shams says in Hebrew and Arabic: “why not?” The time to heal, to build, and to grow is now. Make your internal peace and then maybe one day all sides can reach out their hands to create a safer, more peaceful world. Ken yehi ratzon, inshallah, may it be so.
Planting Roots Bearing Fruits 