Behar, Abou Shmeiss Confront Gaza War Trauma Across Hebrew and Arabic
University of Michigan
Authentic dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians demands confronting raw fear and mutual destruction directly rather than smoothing over trauma for polite coexistence.
AI-assisted summary of Can Israelis and Palestinians Talk Through Poetry? — original source. Check the original for full context.
Source published:
Key ideas
- The Samantha Woll Dialogues at the University of Michigan convened poets Almog Behar and Ayat Abou Shmeiss to examine whether poetic expression can bridge deep Israeli-Palestinian fractures amidst ongoing war. (0:01)
- Ayat Abou Shmeiss explained her choice to write primarily in Hebrew as an organic outcome of living in mixed Jaffa, which she leverages to bypass political gatekeeping and directly address Israeli society regarding Palestinian lived realities. (22:51)
- Almog Behar highlighted how aggressive 1950s Israeli assimilation policies severed Mizrahi families from ancestral Judeo-Arabic, forcing later generations to reclaim the language through contemporary Palestinian speech and literature. (27:20)
- Both writers presented searing poetry addressing the war in Gaza, with Abou Shmeiss memorializing nine extended family members killed in airstrikes and Behar linking ancient biblical temple lamentations to modern destruction in Gaza and Jerusalem. (51:09)
Detailed notes
## Background Published on YouTube by the University of Michigan on October 12, 2026, this event is part of the Samantha Woll Dialogues at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. The panel features poets Almog Behar and Ayat Abou Shmeiss in conversation with scholar Stephanie Kraver, exploring identity, language politics, and whether Israelis and Palestinians can converse through poetry.
## TL;DR Convened on the eve of October 7 at Rackham Amphitheater, Jerusalem-born Mizrahi poet Almog Behar and Jaffa-born Palestinian poet Ayat Abou Shmeiss read multilingual works in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The discussion traces Behar's reclamation of his family's suppressed Arab-Jewish heritage and Abou Shmeiss's strategic use of Hebrew to voice everyday Palestinian female reality and confront systemic silencing. Both writers address the devastating emotional impact of the war in Gaza, reading searing works on personal loss, fear, and shared ruin while candidly assessing the limits of cross-cultural solidarity. The panel concludes with reflections on bilingual publishing, untranslatability, and poetry's role as an unflinching internal mirror rather than a superficial bridge.
## Atmosphere & style The atmosphere is solemn, heavy, and intensely intimate, opening with tributes to the late Holocaust survivor Irene Butter and grassroots organizer Samantha Woll. A palpable, quiet vulnerability fills the room as Abou Shmeiss recounts the names of her young relatives killed in Gaza and expresses raw fury toward militarism, complemented by Behar's measured, liturgical meditations on ancient temple destruction and modern ruins. The rapport among the speakers and moderator is candid and unvarnished, steering clear of facile optimism to hold space for genuine grief, fear, and the complexities of shared survival.
## Bulletin - [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1s) The Samantha Woll Dialogues at the University of Michigan convened poets Almog Behar and Ayat Abou Shmeiss to examine whether poetic expression can bridge deep Israeli-Palestinian fractures amidst ongoing war. - [22:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1371s) Ayat Abou Shmeiss explained her choice to write primarily in Hebrew as an organic outcome of living in mixed Jaffa, which she leverages to bypass political gatekeeping and directly address Israeli society regarding Palestinian lived realities. - [27:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1640s) Almog Behar highlighted how aggressive 1950s Israeli assimilation policies severed Mizrahi families from ancestral Judeo-Arabic, forcing later generations to reclaim the language through contemporary Palestinian speech and literature. - [51:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3069s) Both writers presented searing poetry addressing the war in Gaza, with Abou Shmeiss memorializing nine extended family members killed in airstrikes and Behar linking ancient biblical temple lamentations to modern destruction in Gaza and Jerusalem.
## Key takeaways - [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1s) The Raoul Wallenberg Institute hosted the Samantha Woll Dialogues on the eve of October 7 to explore cross-cultural dialogue through multilingual poetry. - [04:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=258s) Almog Behar's poetry, notably 'My Arabic,' interrogates the domestic suppression and state-enforced erasure of Arab-Jewish identity in Israel. - [11:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=679s) Ayat Abou Shmeiss utilizes bilingual and trilingual poetry to give voice to silenced women and articulate her dual identity as a Palestinian citizen of Israel. - [18:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1128s) Both poets initially turned to writing as an intimate personal escape from domestic rules and strict schooling before developing it into a public medium of political negotiation. - [22:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1371s) Abou Shmeiss was taught Hebrew through the Jewish curriculum at a French private school chosen by her mother for defensive literacy, which later allowed her to address the Hebrew-speaking public directly. - [27:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1640s) State-driven assimilation in the 1950s made Behar's mother passively bilingual and alienated Behar from his grandmother Louise, prompting his decision at age twenty-three to formally study Arabic. - [33:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2003s) Cross-cultural literary solidarity has been heavily strained post-October 7, though rare bilingual gatherings in Jaffa and Tel Aviv have provided spaces for joint grief and anti-war dissent. - [38:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2291s) Behar noted that reclaimed Arabic among second- and third-generation Mizrahim fundamentally relies on Palestinian Arabic and literature rather than vanished ancestral Baghdadi dialects. - [42:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2559s) Abou Shmeiss's poem 'A Rock in the Feminine Form' leverages grammatical gender differences between Hebrew and Arabic to explore female resilience under systemic pressure. - [47:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2876s) Composing poetry simultaneously across Hebrew and Arabic recovers ancestral cadences while generating bilingual works that deliberately resist conventional translation. - [51:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3069s) In 'Eyes on the Road,' Abou Shmeiss chronicles the agonizing cognitive dissonance of commuting in Israel while mourning nine relatives killed in airstrikes across Gaza. - [01:00:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3629s) Behar's poem 'Tisha B'Av 2025' links the liturgical commemoration of ancient temple destruction directly to the mutual devastation of Gaza and Jerusalem today. - [01:10:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=4241s) Both writers regard translation as an act of release where texts take on independent communal lives, generating fresh meaning rather than merely suffering linguistic loss. - [01:14:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=4484s) Publication of Behar's work in Cairo legitimized his literary pursuit of Arabic in the eyes of his parents, showing how translation can cross rigid political frontiers. - [01:24:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=5056s) Abou Shmeiss argued that authentic dialogue requires confronting fear directly, emphasizing that military uniforms and weapons that signal safety to Israelis evoke acute terror for Palestinians. - [01:24:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=5056s) Following three months of creative paralysis after October 7, Behar re-entered writing by compiling Hebrew Bible verses featuring the word 'war' to construct text when personal expression failed.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1s) Opening Remarks, Tributes, and the Mission of the Samantha Woll Dialogues
Jeffrey Veidlinger, director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at the University of Michigan, opens the event by welcoming attendees to Rackham Amphitheater. He gives a special nod to students from the ALA 259 course, reminding them to head to their regular classroom for their post-event discussion, while inviting students not enrolled in the class to join a moderated conversation over free food in the East Conference Room. Veidlinger expresses gratitude to the institute's staff—Miriam Mora, Eleanor Camp, Alexis Gideon, and Joe Johnston—for bringing the program together.
The afternoon begins on a somber and reflective note as Veidlinger honors the memory of Irene Butter, a local Holocaust survivor, educator, and activist who passed away just days earlier on Friday, and whose funeral several attendees had attended just hours before. Butter was a foundational figure in Ann Arbor, serving as co-founder of Zeitouna—a long-running dialogue group of local Jewish and Palestinian women who gathered for decades—and helping establish the Raoul Wallenberg Medal and Endowment. Veidlinger highlights her enduring optimism despite childhood horrors, noting that she had addressed the institute's inaugural gathering and remained a dedicated supporter.
Veidlinger contextualizes the event within the broader scope of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, founded by the university in December 2023 to combat antisemitism and religious hatred while fostering inclusion. Named in honor of the 1935 Michigan alumnus who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews before perishing in Soviet custody, the institute houses the Samantha Woll Dialogues. This series commemorates Samantha Woll, a grassroots organizer and interfaith champion murdered in 2023 at age 40, made possible by her family, Margo and Douglas Woll, along with Monica and Ben Rosen. Taking place on the eve of October 7, the panel convenes to explore a fundamental query: can Israelis and Palestinians talk through poetry?
- **Raoul Wallenberg legacy**: 1935 U-M alumnus who worked in Budapest alongside Swedish and U.S. authorities to save thousands of Jews from Auschwitz before his capture and death in a Soviet prison. - **Event structure**: Two participating poets read selections of their work across multiple languages, followed by a moderated panel and audience questions submitted via index cards.
---
[04:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=258s) Almog Behar: Performing Linguistic Fractures and Longing
Veidlinger introduces Almog Behar, born in Netanya in 1978 and currently residing in Jerusalem. Teaching in the Department of Literature at Tel Aviv University, Behar's scholarship and creative work bridge Hebrew and Arabic literatures, traditional Jewish liturgical poetry (*piyyut*), modern Mizrahi writing, Judeo-Arabic, and Jewish literary engagement with Islamic traditions. Author of four poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novel, his writing directly confronts the displacement of his family's Arab-Jewish roots from Iraq and Turkey.
After a brief, lighthearted exchange over microphone logistics, Behar begins reading his poetry, first reciting in Hebrew before presenting the English translation by Dimi Reider of his celebrated poem, "My Arabic":
> "My Arabic is mute / Strangled at the throat / Cursing itself without uttering a word / Sleeps in the earliest shelters of my soul / Hiding from relatives behind the Hebrew blinds / And my Hebrew is raging / Running between rooms and neighbor's balconies / Making its voice heard in public / Prophesying the coming of God and of bulldozers..."
The poem constructs a vivid domestic landscape of cultural suppression, where Arabic hides behind closed blinds, pretending to be Hebrew, whispering *"Ahlan Ahlan"* at visitors, and showing an ID card to police on the street to verify its Jewish status, while Hebrew paces deaf and restless in the living room. Behar explains that Rima Jaber translated the piece into Arabic, while he translated his second selected poem into Arabic himself. He reads in Arabic before sharing Shoshana Olidort's English translation of a shorter piece inspired by iconic Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum:
> "Amal is hope / Hayati is my life / And when they meet / Between the lips of Umm Kulthum and my own ears / A great many longings will dig wells in my heart."
---
[11:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=679s) Ayat Abou Shmeiss: Giving Voice to the Mute and Encased Burdens
Veidlinger welcomes Jaffa-born poet and activist Ayat Abou Shmeiss, born in 1984. Abou Shmeiss is the author of two bilingual Hebrew-Arabic collections, *A Basket Filled with Mute Tongues* (2013) and *I am Two* (2018), and heads the independent publishing house Mi'tan. Her third collection, *An Unmothered Tongue*, marks her English-language debut. Her writing and cultural work center on everyday Palestinian female experience, duality, silencing, and archival recovery of women's historical narratives.
Taking the podium with an opening greeting of *"Marhaba"* and hello, Abou Shmeiss confesses her nervousness and playfully cautions the room about her language fluency, noting that English is neither her first, second, nor third language, but her fourth: "sometimes I mix between languages, so just be aware." She presents her poetry trilingually, reading first in Arabic, then Hebrew, and concluding with Lisa Katz's English translation of the title poem from *A Basket Filled with Mute Tongues*:
> "I dragged the words I haven't learned yet / My language drown / My teeth storming like the sea in a wintry day / I can't snare a single word with my palate / Raise my voice like a fishing rod / And bear a basket filled with mute tongues / Mute as fish / That I place / On the counter / In your kitchen."
She follows with a reading of "A Rock in the Feminine Form", delivering the verses in Arabic, Hebrew, and English translation. The poem traces an intimate, enduring weight:
> "I have a rock on the back of my neck, / Encased in silk / I don't remember who put it there / But I remember that I wrapped it myself / So it would at least look nice / I go everywhere with it / Disabled, but imagine without a wheelchair / People around me stare but don't comment / Apparently they think / That I like it or it's good for me / Perhaps because I wrapped it / I remember that it's been there / Since it was just a pebble."
---
[17:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1055s) Welcoming Stephanie Kraver to Lead the Discussion
Veidlinger returns to acknowledge the shared motifs of silencing, bodily tension, and linguistic duality between the two poets' readings. He then introduces the panel's moderator, Stephanie Kraver, a fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. Kraver is a scholar of modern Hebrew and Arabic literature whose research investigates transcultural exchange, trauma theory, translation, and expressions of mourning.
Her current book project, *Writing Past Difference*, interrogates the political and linguistic partitions dividing Arab and Jewish literary histories. As Kraver, Behar, and Abou Shmeiss take their seats and sort out their handheld microphones on stage, Kraver opens the discussion by sharing what an immense privilege it is to convene the dialogue.
[18:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1128s) Finding Poetry as a Refuge and a Secret
Moderator Stephanie Kraver opens the discussion by expressing how meaningful it is to hear the poets' words spoken aloud in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Before analyzing specific verses, she invites both panelists to reflect on their artistic origins and explain how they originally found their way to poetry as a medium of expression.
When offered the microphone, Ayat Abou Shmeiss frankly admits that she did not grow up in a literary household surrounded by bookshelves or reading the works of renowned poets like Fadwa Tuqan with aspirations of following in their footsteps. Instead, her poetry began as an outlet for mundane domestic friction:
> "Actually, it was because I have some tensions and some arguments, very foolish, with my mom, and to write it was just kind of a expression and it just felt free. I had the freedom to write whatever I want in the way that I wanted."
She explains that this sense of absolute freedom was something sorely missing from her daily life, particularly at her strict and demanding school. Writing became a private space of liberation, and she seized upon it.
Taking the microphone, Almog Behar jokes that Kraver has started with the most difficult question imaginable: "Where are we going from here?" He traces his own writing back as far as his memory stretches, describing it as having begun as a deeply guarded "personal secret." For decades, he simply wrote into the drawer, spurred by a sense of envy toward what he read and tentatively imitating the literary models before him. This insular habit continued until his early twenties, when poetry suddenly transformed from a hidden diary into a direct vehicle to "negotiate with the world directly and not as a secret." Stepping into the public realm in Hebrew immediately brought questions of language, lineage, and politics to the forefront of his craft.
---
[22:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1371s) Writing in the Language of the Other: Hebrew in Jaffa
Kraver directs the conversation toward the complex linguistic reality of writing in Israel, asking Abou Shmeiss about her experience as a Palestinian writing in Hebrew, and Behar about his advocacy for the preservation and restoration of Arabic within Jewish culture.
Abou Shmeiss recalls that when she first started writing, she never consciously framed her work in political categories as "a Palestinian who writes in Hebrew." Hebrew was simply an organic part of her environment, a language she grew up with, understood deeply, and loved. The political friction surrounding her choice only became obvious after she published her first book. During an early interview, an Israeli journalist bluntly asked her whether writing her poetry in Hebrew was akin to "sleeping with the enemy." The question left her dumbfounded:
> "Really, I didn't realize that this is an issue. So I live in Jaffa, and Jaffa it's a mixed city... Hebrew was everywhere. The language was like everyday language... It wasn't kind of military language or something like that."
She illustrates how thoroughly Hebrew permeated daily life in Jaffa—from doctor appointments to the neighborhood grocery store. She notes with irony that virtually no one in Jaffa even uses the Arabic word for the post office anymore; everyone defaults to the Hebrew word, *Do'ar*.
However, the journalist's provocation forced Abou Shmeiss to confront the painful reality of her linguistic medium: Hebrew is the official tongue of the state that occupies her people, enforces systemic racism, and dictates whether she is permitted to visit her own relatives in Gaza or the West Bank. Although she experimented with writing in Arabic, she felt her expressive strength remained in Hebrew. Recognizing that Israeli society reflexively reduces Palestinians to narrow political boxes based on their appearance, language, or identity cards, she realized Hebrew could serve as an indispensable tool: by writing in the dominant language, she could bypass political gatekeeping and directly address the Israeli public on her own terms.
---
[27:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1640s) Linguistic Eradication and Reclaiming Arabic
Behar reflects that in his family, the politics of language unfolded inside the domestic sphere long before it met the street. His mother was born in Baghdad under the name Samira and immigrated to Israel at age five; today, her legal name is Mirabella. Growing up, Behar listened to his mother converse with her parents and aunts in Iraqi Arabic, but she always responded to them exclusively in Hebrew. When she was ten years old, a school educator visited their home and formally instructed her parents to cease speaking Arabic to her—a reflection of the state's aggressive 1950s assimilationist policies:
> "Her parents, of course, didn't stop speaking with her in Arabic. They didn't have another language. But from that day, she stopped answering them in Arabic. She became passive in Arabic. She heard it, but answered in Hebrew."
The linguistic tapestry of Behar's household was extraordinarily dense, spanning four distinct ancestral languages: - **Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic:** Spoken by his maternal grandparents. - **Judeo-Spanish (Ladino):** Spoken by his paternal grandfather's family, who came from Istanbul. - **German:** Spoken by his paternal grandmother, who was born in Einbeck. - **Danish:** Spoken by his father's parents after fleeing Nazi persecution to Copenhagen in 1939.
Despite this heritage, the unspoken social contract dictated that home languages should never spill into the street. Behar’s parents expected their children to master only modern Hebrew and English. When Behar was around twelve, he suggested to his parents that it was a waste not to learn any of their family tongues. After deliberating for a full week, his parents replied that he could study Danish—an absurd conclusion, given that his family had spoken Arabic for a thousand years, Ladino for five hundred, German for two hundred, and Danish for merely ten.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Generational Language Severance and Reclamation accDescr: Diagram tracing the multi-generational shift from diverse diaspora languages to forced Hebrew monolingualism, culminating in the poet's deliberate reclamation of Arabic.
subgraph Ancestral_Roots ["Ancestral Languages at Home"] A1["Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic<br>(1,000 years)"] A2["Ladino / Judeo-Spanish<br>(500 years)"] A3["German<br>(200 years)"] A4["Danish<br>(10 years)"] end
subgraph State_Assimilation ["State Assimilation (1950s)"] B["School policy demands parents drop Arabic"] C["Mother becomes passively bilingual<br>(hears Arabic, answers in Hebrew)"] end
subgraph Severance ["Linguistic Severance"] D["Grandmother Louise suffers dementia at 17<br>Reverts strictly to Iraqi Arabic"] E["State policy severs intergenerational bridge<br>Behar unable to converse with her"] end
subgraph Reclamation ["Poetic Reclamation"] F["Decides to study Arabic formally at 23"] G["Writes 'My Arabic is Mute'<br>Reclaims belonging and breaks repetitive cycle"] end
A1 --> B B --> C C --> D D --> E E --> F F --> G ```
The decisive turning point arrived when Behar was seventeen. His maternal grandmother, Louise, began suffering from dementia, forgot her Hebrew entirely, and reverted solely to Iraqi Arabic. While older cousins could still converse with her, Behar found himself completely cut off:
> "And that was the moment that I understood that someone from outside the family, that the state decided that we wouldn't be able to talk with her in the last month of her life."
This profound realization drove him to study Arabic formally at age twenty-three. Later, when composing his celebrated poem *My Arabic is Mute* (*Aravit Ilemet*), he recognized the transformative weight of its opening words: claiming the tongue as "my Arabic" allowed him to step beyond passive loss and actively reforge his belonging, ending the cycle of endlessly mourning an inherited silence.
---
[33:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2003s) Solidarity and Literary Spaces After October 7
Kraver asks the poets to assess the contemporary literary landscape in Israel in the shadow of October 7. She asks whether joint spaces still endure where Jewish and Palestinian writers can share their work, build community, and organize together, or whether the terrain for cross-cultural solidarity has fractured beyond repair.
Abou Shmeiss, currently residing in London for her second year, acknowledges that the present cultural climate is profoundly strained. As director of the *Mita'an* publishing house, she has remained committed to amplifying Palestinian voices, particularly those inside the Gaza Strip. She recounts partnering with educator Dr. Rachel Korazim roughly two years prior to organize a public literary evening dedicated to showcasing Gazan poetry.
Reaching writers inside the enclave amidst the ongoing devastation was an agonizing logistical and emotional challenge. While several Gazan poets consented to have their verses read, some firmly requested that their words not be translated into Hebrew, unwilling to be embraced by the language of their occupiers at that moment. Nevertheless, Abou Shmeiss and Korazim mounted a major bilingual event at the Jaffa Theatre (*Teatrot Yafo*), reading the texts in both Arabic and Hebrew:
> "And it was like the first time when I saw during the genocide, like Israeli and Palestinian together, like gathering through poetry. It was very excited."
The gathering proved to be a rare, emotionally charged instance of collective presence and shared grief amidst escalating violence, prompting Abou Shmeiss to seek further ways to build cultural bridges despite severe funding shortages and mounting political hostility.
[36:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2162s) Bilingual Publishing and the Literary Response in Israel
Ayat Abou Shmeiss recounts a significant publishing project undertaken through her press. An author approached her wanting to publish a poetry collection and requested that his work be translated into Hebrew. When she inquired which languages the book should include, he replied, "like your book. Bilingual." Abou Shmeiss pressed him on the specifics, and he confirmed: "Arabic and Hebrew." Stunned by the boldness of the request, she asked, "are you sure?" He stood firm, and they brought the collection to print, following up with a series of public events that proved deeply moving and powerful.
Outside of their own efforts, however, Abou Shmeiss found the broader literary scene in Israel profoundly disappointing. She had expected widespread organizing and a surge of publications taking a stance against the genocide in Gaza, yet very little materialized. She highlights one standout exception: an evening organized by her Israeli friends in Tel Aviv. The gathering brought together numerous Israeli poets who read works condemning the crimes and military actions. That single gathering proved to her that dissent and shared humanity within literature are possible, even if one must actively search for them amidst the current landscape.
[38:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2291s) The Shift in Jewish-Arab Identity and Linguistic Return
Almog Behar reflects on the fluctuating relationship between poetry, politics, and language. He explains that when he is optimistic, he believes in the power of poetry to effect change and sees the bridge between Hebrew and Arabic as holding transformative potential. Yet in pessimistic moments, he recognizes that while poetry and the Hebrew-Arabic connection profoundly changed him personally, personal transformation does not automatically translate into changing the world at large.
Behar contextualizes this dynamic through the history of Arab Jews (Mizrahim). Before 1948, approximately one million Jews spoke Arabic, but intense systemic pressures to assimilate forced the rapid erasure and forgetting of the language over the subsequent two to three decades. For second- and third-generation descendants of these immigrants, reclaiming Arabic was only possible through Palestinian Arabic and Palestinian literature: - The path back to Arabic expression did not lead to ancestral Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, but to the living dialect and literary corpus of Palestinians. - Behar notes that two decades ago, he maintained the optimistic view that spreading knowledge alone could resolve historical fractures. - Today, he realizes the conflict stems from far deeper human and societal currents that sheer awareness cannot easily heal. - A decade ago, he might have concluded with the hopeful prediction that Hebrew and Arabic would merge within 50 years; today, he admits he no longer knows how to offer an easy, optimistic ending.
[42:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2559s) Gender, Survival, and Language Choice in Poetry
Moderator Stephanie Kraver introduces a discussion focused on the mechanics of their verse. She asks Abou Shmeiss about her poem *A Rock in the Feminine Form*, noting its footnote on how stone/rock is grammatically masculine in Hebrew (*even*) and feminine in Arabic (*sakhr* or *hajar*). She simultaneously prompts Behar about his bilingual poem *Amal is Hope* (*Tikva he Amal*), asking about his linguistic choices and the themes of longing within it.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Linguistic Evolution Across Generations accDescr: Diagram illustrating how historical conditions shaped the language acquisition and poetic choices of Abou Shmeiss and Behar.
subgraph AbouShmeiss["Ayat Abou Shmeiss: From Survival to Poetic Reappropriation"] A["Illiterate mother (Nakba survivor)"] -->|"prioritizes defensive literacy"| B["Enrollment in French school"] B -->|"taught Hebrew as native, lose spoken Arabic"| C["Writes in Hebrew while centering Palestinian identity"] C -->|"plays with gender differences"| D["'A Rock in the Feminine Form'"] end
subgraph Behar["Almog Behar: Polyphony and Reclamation"] E["Erosion of Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic"] -->|"learns Palestinian Arabic"| F["Bilingual composition"] F -->|"translation flattens bilingualism into monolingualism"| G["Simultaneous dual-language writing"] end ```
Responding first, Abou Shmeiss explains the personal history behind why she writes primarily in Hebrew. Her mother, a second-generation Nakba survivor who is illiterate, was consumed by the urge to protect her children through education. This ambition was not rooted in dreams of university degrees or literary fame, but in elemental survival: she wanted her children to be able to read formal letters issued by the Israeli state. Because underfunded schools in Jaffa lacked basic resources, her parents sacrificed financially—her father working overtime—to send them to a private French school.
At the French school, Hebrew was taught to students as a primary language (the Jewish curriculum), rather than the secondary curriculum designated for Arab schools. As a consequence, Abou Shmeiss lost much of her fluency in Arabic literacy, occasionally making reading mistakes that she stresses were not her fault, but the outcome of survival choices. When she began publishing poetry, she resolved to embed her Palestinian and Jaffa heritage into Hebrew verse—inserting Arabic words, cultural references, and everyday intimacy (such as greeting her husband with *salamu alaykum*). In *A Rock in the Feminine Form*, she capitalized on the grammatical gender divide between Arabic and Hebrew to spotlight womanhood, resilience, and identity.
[47:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2876s) Polyphony and Untranslatable Verse
Almog Behar explains that his poem *Amal is Hope* was conceived nearly simultaneously in both languages while he was listening to the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. He was struck by an earlier experience when his bilingual poem *My Arabic is Mute* was translated into Arabic by Rima Abu Jaber: because the original Hebrew sections became Arabic while the Arabic sections remained unchanged, the resulting text flattened into a monolingual poem.
This realization prompted Behar to compose directly in both tongues at once. In Arabic and Hebrew, the wordplay unearths layered ancestral resonance: - The Hebrew word for hope (*tikva*) was pronounced *tikwah* by his Iraqi Jewish grandparents, carrying their Arabic phonology into Hebrew speech. - Reclaiming Arabic opened a portal allowing him to re-experience the specific Hebrew cadence of his family's past. - This experimental path eventually led him to compose poems where each individual line is split evenly between Hebrew and Arabic—works that defy translation entirely, which he jokes with a laugh that "only Ayat will understand."
[51:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3069s) Memorializing Lost Kin and Driving Through Grief
Abou Shmeiss prepares to share her newest piece, composed about a year prior, pausing briefly to put on her reading glasses so she can navigate the lengthy text. Before reading, she addresses the room in solemn silence, reading aloud the names and ages of her extended family members killed in Gaza during the war: - Ages 28, 25, 5, 3, 26, 6, 4, 13, and 22.
Following an Arabic recitation, she recites the poem in English. The piece captures the harrowing internal rupture of an ordinary morning commute: holding hands on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the pavement, and feet toggling the gas and brakes, while her consciousness and heart are pulled completely to the bloodshed in Khan Yunis and Shuja'iyya.
Looking into her rearview mirror, the speaker studies her own reflection—eyes, nose, cheeks—desperately insisting: "I swear I look like a human being / We look like this / We are human beings / But they are slaughtering us." Overcome by tears and mounting fury, she forces herself to maintain control of the car so she does not crash among other people on the road. Arriving at her workplace consumed by shame and bitterness, she looks around at those around her, tormented by the agonizing realization of where she is: wondering which of her colleagues or neighbors had just served in Gaza and pulled the trigger on the weapons that took her family's lives.
[58:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3480s) Between the Classroom and Gaza: A Teacher's Grief
Ayat Abou Shmeiss concludes her poem with an agonizing depiction of cognitive dissonance and mourning in the wake of an airstrike. She recounts the collapse of a seven-story residential building that buried human beings alive: the granddaughter Rania, along with Haron, Hind, Julia, and their grandmother Rania—a woman with whom Abou Shmeiss had sat before the war at her own grandmother’s home. Gazing at the Israeli faces around her, she is overwhelmed by suspicion and sorrow, wondering who among them might have dropped the bomb: "Perhaps it's he / Or that one / Or that one / Or this one's husband / Or that one's brother / Or he / Perhaps his nephew / They they they." Losing her composure for a moment, she retreats to a restroom to splash running water over her face, whispering, "We are human beings."
Gathering herself, she walks into a classroom to teach the Arabic language to Jewish, Hebrew-speaking Israelis. When the lesson ends, the school principal convenes an urgent faculty meeting to discuss pedagogy. As the meeting wraps up, someone suddenly calls out for a round of applause for "Moshe"—she notes that is not his real name—who has just returned from months of military reserve duty. The room erupts with praise for "our hero," and everyone claps.
Abou Shmeiss contrasts that celebration with her own internal exile as she gets into her car to drive away. Her hands grip the steering wheel, her eyes watch the road, and her foot presses the pedals, but her spirit is trapped elsewhere: "My head remains in Gaza / My blood flows in Shuja'iyya / Where my grandmother was born in Gaza / Where Haron, Hind, and little Rania were martyred." She closes her reading by describing the lingering agony of that displacement: "And ever since, my eyes remained wide open / And it burns, ya rabby / It burns."
[59:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3597s) "If I Were a Jewish Mother"
Before yielding the microphone, Abou Shmeiss recites a brief, searing verse directly addressing the maternal sacrifice demanded by Israeli militarism. Speaking in a quiet, deliberate cadence, she imagines what her love would look like if she occupied the position of an Israeli mother ordered to surrender her child to the army. Rather than comply, she would unleash a desperate, physical resistance to anchor him home:
> "If I were a Jewish mother > And I had to send > My son to the army > I would fight > I would tie his tongue to his ears > I would glue my hands to his legs > I would hang my heart on his eyes > So he would not go."
The audience receives the short poem with sustained applause as she whispers her thanks.
[01:00:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3629s) "Tisha B'Av": Ancient Ruin and Present Slaughter
Almog Behar takes the lectern, announcing that he is changing the order of his scheduled readings. He first delivers a poem in Hebrew before reading its English translation by Vivian Eden, titled "Tisha B'Av 2025." To frame the piece for the audience, Behar explains that Tisha B'Av is the solemn Jewish fast day commemorating the catastrophic destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, first by the Babylonians and later by the Romans.
In the first movement of the poem, Behar evokes the traditional rituals of the fast day. In prior years on the eve of the 9th of Av, he would walk to the ancient ruins of Jerusalem to recite the Book of Lamentations (*Eicha*), abstaining from offering or returning the traditional greeting of *shalom* (peace). He would place a rough stone beneath his pillow at night so he would not fall asleep in a destroyed Jerusalem only to wake up comfortably in a rebuilt city; instead, he sought the right to remain in mourning, accompanied in sleep by visions of messiahs born and slain, before searching the streets at midday for genuine seekers of peace.
The second and third sections shatter this historical commemoration against the backdrop of present-day violence. Today, Behar laments, "the destruction isn't 2000 years old / The destruction is a hungry newborn babe." The ancient scripture speaks in an unsparing present tense, but his mouth is so dry that "no spit remains on my tongue to grind its words." People sigh and plead for bread, but the bread tastes like gravel, and not only is the soul in shreds, but human flesh is torn to pieces. Echoing traditional liturgy, he asks how the living can praise God when the dead cannot speak from the dust, concluding with a haunting realization of mutual annihilation:
> "And the destruction of Jerusalem > Is amid the ruin of Gaza > And the Destruction of Gaza > Is amid the ruin of Jerusalem > Amid the already dead > And the soon to be dead."
[01:06:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3993s) "A Woman Awaits the Bombardment"
Behar introduces his next reading, "A Woman Awaits the Bombardment," dedicated to the Gazan writer Manal Miqdad and translated into English by Vivian Eden. After reciting the text in Hebrew, he presents the English version, which centers on the quiet, domestic terror of anticipating an airstrike.
The poem unfolds around a woman lying awake in bed, struggling through the night to fall asleep while mentally cataloging how her personal library should be distributed after her death: - Her travel and nature books should go to her closest school friend, who nurtures dreams of exploring streams and deserts the following summer. - The children's books still resting on her shelves should be donated to the orphanages that the ongoing war will inevitably create. - Her personal diaries must be burned by her father—or by neighbors, if he cannot—provided the bomb blast has not already incinerated them. - The unread English books are earmarked for her cousin, who confided in her his simple dream of surviving and living. - Books previously borrowed by friends should simply stay in their care, provided they promise never to dog-ear the corners or mark the pages, leaving them free to bequeath the volumes to others in the event of another bombardment.
Around her mattress, Behar reads, "no heroes surround it / Just fear in the nights." The mute books have no say in who inherits them. She lies waiting, hoping for a dreamless sleep that is spared the thunder of explosions—content instead to be kept awake by the ordinary sounds of neighboring children playing, even as their stomachs churn with sheer panic.
[01:10:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=4241s) What Is Lost and Gained in Translation
Moderator Stephanie Kraver opens the final fifteen minutes of the event to audience questions, beginning with an inquiry into the translation process and asking how much personal truth is inevitably lost when poems cross linguistic boundaries.
Ayat Abou Shmeiss reflects on how translation introduces an intermediary into what is fundamentally an intimate, private encounter between author and reader. While translators strive to preserve original intentions, subtle emotional nuances and linguistic textures inevitably shift. However, she notes that translation provides an indispensable bridge to readers who cannot access her original tongues. Furthermore, she embraces the idea of artistic release: once she publishes a poem, it no longer belongs solely to her. Just as she cannot keep tight possession of the original text once it enters the public sphere, she accepts that a translated poem takes on its own communal life.
Almog Behar echoes this sentiment by citing Kahlil Gibran’s observation that children do not truly belong to their parents, applying the maxim to poems once they leave the author's desk. Drawing on Salman Rushdie’s concept of what is *gained* in translation, Behar recounts his early experiences collaborating with Palestinian translators to bring Hebrew works into Arabic. Rather than feeling diminished, he found that working across languages opened surprising avenues of meaning and fresh interpretations that enriched the original poems. He likens the translation process to setting a lyric to music: someone else composes an accompaniment or creates an alternative arrangement, granting the poem a vibrant second life.
[01:14:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=4484s) Writing Arabic, Crossing Borders, and Family Reckonings
Kraver turns to the practical and psychological hurdles of writing in Arabic, asking the panelists about the obstacles they face and how Arabic-reading audiences receive their work.
Abou Shmeiss admits that she wrestles continually with language, dialect, and grammar, feeling an ongoing tension between Arabic and Hebrew—though she struggles even more intensely with Hebrew. When she began publishing, the Palestinian community in her native Jaffa embraced her warmly, accepting her bilingual voice without hesitation. Other Palestinian readers, however, were initially suspicious, questioning her motivations and asking whether writing in Hebrew meant she was trying to assimilate and "be Israeli." Yet, as Abou Shmeiss explains, once skeptics actually opened the books and read the poems, they recognized that her voice was authentic and uncompromised, shifting their criticism to genuine understanding.
Behar responds through the lens of family history, recalling how his parents initially reacted with bewilderment when he began returning to the Arabic language in his prose and poetry: - His parents felt that their family had spent decades shedding their Middle Eastern mother tongue in order to assimilate into Israeli society, and they would have preferred he pursue a bilingual project in Albanian or another unrelated language. - They viewed his cultural journey as an inexplicable "obsession," questioning why anyone would deliberately resurrect a language they had worked so hard to leave behind. - Their perspective shifted completely when Behar's short story, *Ana Min Al-Yahoud* ("I am from the Jews"—born out of the poem of the same name), was translated into Arabic and published in Cairo.
Because Cairo remained the undisputed cultural capital of the Arab world, publication there bestowed undeniable prestige. Behar recalls that seeing his work celebrated in Egypt finally legitimized his literary obsession in his parents' eyes, illustrating how translation can breach political and geographical borders even where physical barriers remain rigid.
[01:18:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=4715s) Translating Judeo-Arabic and Rabbinical Hebrew for an Egyptian Audience
Almog Behar reflects on the experience of stepping outside the local Israeli literary sphere when his novel was translated into Arabic in Cairo, Egypt. Because the novel contains distinct linguistic layers—specifically Judeo-Arabic and rabbinical Hebrew—the process demanded extensive dialogue with his Egyptian translator. Behar felt it was crucial to preserve the presence of Judeo-Arabic within the Arabic version rather than smoothing it out. To prevent it from looking bizarre to readers while signaling its specificity, the translator set those sections in side margins or distinct visual layouts, making it clear that it represented a dialect they were not necessarily expected to know fluently.
Equally challenging was translating the passages informed by rabbinical Hebrew. Behar and the translator engaged in deep discussions comparing rabbinical registers with classical Arabic Sufi sources to discover linguistic equivalents that carried the appropriate mystical and spiritual weight. The collaborative process felt like creating the work anew, editing and recalibrating phrasing to determine exactly what the novel should sound and look like for an Arabic-speaking audience.
---
[01:20:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=4829s) Advice for Young Poets: The Internal Truth and the Sudden Rush
Moderator Stephanie Kraver reads an audience question asking what advice the speakers have for young poets who wish to tackle controversial topics, and how to write for a broader audience. Almog Behar takes the first part of the question. He explains that for him, writing does not start by identifying an issue or a political stance and setting out to cover it; instead, it is rooted deeply in personal lived experience. Writing—poetry in particular, more so than prose—serves as a tool when it is difficult to speak honestly with oneself. For Behar, controversy is secondary: if a poem allows him to conduct a rare, successful dialogue with himself and discover a new internal truth, he considers the poem a success.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Approaches to Writing Poetry Under Pressure accDescr: Diagram illustrating Almog Behar's internal truth method versus Ayat Abou Shmeiss's raw kinetic capture method.
subgraph BeharApproach ["Almog Behar: Internal Dialogue"] A["Personal Experience & Difficulty"] --> B["Poetic Exploration"] B --> C["Uncovering Internal Truth"] end
subgraph AbouShmeissApproach ["Ayat Abou Shmeiss: Kinetic Impulse"] D["Anger & Emotional Intensity"] --> E["Opening the Door to Flowing Words"] E --> F["Immediate Recording Without Erasing"] end ```
Behar passes the microphone to Ayat Abou Shmeiss to address reaching audiences and writing raw material. Her advice is visceral: "when you're angry. Write a lot. Don't erase anything that you write." She encourages aspiring writers to invent unusual words and coin new expressions from unexpected sources. She recalls a time when poems would flood her mind during a brief 15-minute commute to work while riding a motorbike. The moment poetic phrases begin knocking on the mind, one must simply "open the door" and record them immediately without self-censorship.
---
[01:24:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=5056s) "Eyes on the Road": Fear, Uniforms, and Unfiltered Realities
Stephanie Kraver brings the conversation back to the readings earlier in the session, noting an audience question regarding the strong, direct language used in the poems and asking what it meant to read them today. Abou Shmeiss addresses her poem *Eyes on the Road*, stating that she wrote it in a state of intense anger and did not want to soften its impact. She explains that Israeli Jews often express that they fear Arabs, fear the Arabic language, and carry intense historical trauma. While she accepts that fear is a valid emotion that cannot be argued away, she insists that Israelis must recognize that fear flows both ways.
Abou Shmeiss shares the terror that uniforms and weapons evoke for her as a Palestinian: - Uniforms and guns do not represent security or bravery to her; they evoke death, blood, and the vulnerability of her own family. - She recalls arriving in London for the first time and being struck with immediate relief that there were no armed soldiers or uniforms on the streets. - She points out the stark contrast in perspective: while Israelis view the armed soldier as a symbol of bravery ("brave for you"), to her it represents a terrifying reality. - Authentic dialogue cannot occur by making things "nice" or "cutey"; genuine conversation requires putting raw fears directly in front of each other’s faces and confronting oneself honestly in the mirror.
Almog Behar adds that writing poetry is not an omnipresent state, especially amidst devastating trauma. For the first three months following October 7, 2023, he found himself completely unable to write original poetry. To break the silence, he combed through the Hebrew Bible, collecting every verse that contained the word "war" (*milchama*). His first composition of that period was an assemblage constructed entirely of those biblical verses without a single word of his own. Borrowing the biblical text allowed him to enter back into language when his own words had failed, creating a pathway to eventually address the ongoing reality directly.
---
[01:29:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=5350s) Concluding Remarks and Upcoming Events
Moderator Stephanie Kraver thanks both poets for their candor and invites the audience to applaud. Jeffrey Veidlinger then takes the microphone to close the Samantha Woll Dialogues event, directing students enrolled in ALA 259 to their regular classroom and inviting remaining participants to join the post-event discussion in Conference Room East.
Veidlinger announces the upcoming campus event on October 27, which will explore the question "Should universities strive to bridge division?" featuring three prominent academic leaders: - Mary Sue Coleman, former President of the University of Michigan - Brian Rosenberg, former President of Macalester College - Teresa Sullivan, former President of the University of Virginia
The session concludes with final words of appreciation for the guest poets and the moderator.
## Notable quotes > [04:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=258s) My Arabic is mute / Strangled at the throat / Cursing itself without uttering a word / Sleeps in the earliest shelters of my soul / Hiding from relatives behind the Hebrew blinds / And my Hebrew is raging / Running between rooms and neighbor's balconies / Making its voice heard in public / Prophesying the coming of God and of bulldozers... — Almog Behar
> [04:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=258s) Amal is hope / Hayati is my life / And when they meet / Between the lips of Umm Kulthum and my own ears / A great many longings will dig wells in my heart. — Almog Behar
> [11:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=679s) I dragged the words I haven't learned yet / My language drown / My teeth storming like the sea in a wintry day / I can't snare a single word with my palate / Raise my voice like a fishing rod / And bear a basket filled with mute tongues / Mute as fish / That I place / On the counter / In your kitchen. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
> [11:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=679s) I have a rock on the back of my neck, / Encased in silk / I don't remember who put it there / But I remember that I wrapped it myself / So it would at least look nice / I go everywhere with it / Disabled, but imagine without a wheelchair / People around me stare but don't comment / Apparently they think / That I like it or it's good for me / Perhaps because I wrapped it / I remember that it's been there / Since it was just a pebble. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
> [18:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1128s) Actually, it was because I have some tensions and some arguments, very foolish, with my mom, and to write it was just kind of a expression and it just felt free. I had the freedom to write whatever I want in the way that I wanted. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
> [22:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1371s) Really, I didn't realize that this is an issue. So I live in Jaffa, and Jaffa it's a mixed city... Hebrew was everywhere. The language was like everyday language... It wasn't kind of military language or something like that. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
> [27:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1640s) Her parents, of course, didn't stop speaking with her in Arabic. They didn't have another language. But from that day, she stopped answering them in Arabic. She became passive in Arabic. She heard it, but answered in Hebrew. — Almog Behar
> [27:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=1640s) And that was the moment that I understood that someone from outside the family, that the state decided that we wouldn't be able to talk with her in the last month of her life. — Almog Behar
> [33:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=2003s) And it was like the first time when I saw during the genocide, like Israeli and Palestinian together, like gathering through poetry. It was very excited. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
> [51:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3069s) I swear I look like a human being / We look like this / We are human beings / But they are slaughtering us. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
> [59:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3597s) If I were a Jewish mother And I had to send My son to the army I would fight I would tie his tongue to his ears I would glue my hands to his legs I would hang my heart on his eyes So he would not go. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
> [01:00:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=3629s) And the destruction of Jerusalem Is amid the ruin of Gaza And the Destruction of Gaza Is amid the ruin of Jerusalem Amid the already dead And the soon to be dead. — Almog Behar
> [01:20:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI&t=4829s) when you're angry. Write a lot. Don't erase anything that you write. — Ayat Abou Shmeiss
## Mentioned Jeffrey Veidlinger, Irene Butter, Raoul Wallenberg, Samantha Woll, Margo Woll, Douglas Woll, Monica Rosen, Ben Rosen, Miriam Mora, Eleanor Camp, Alexis Gideon, Joe Johnston, Almog Behar, Ayat Abou Shmeiss, Stephanie Kraver, Dimi Reider, Rima Jaber, Shoshana Olidort, Umm Kulthum, Lisa Katz, Fadwa Tuqan, Dr. Rachel Korazim, Vivian Eden, Manal Miqdad, Kahlil Gibran, Salman Rushdie, Mary Sue Coleman, Brian Rosenberg, Teresa Sullivan, University of Michigan, Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Zeitouna, Samantha Woll Dialogues, Tel Aviv University, Mi'tan, Jaffa Theatre, Rackham Amphitheater, My Arabic, A Basket Filled with Mute Tongues, I am Two, An Unmothered Tongue, A Rock in the Feminine Form, Writing Past Difference, Amal is Hope, Tisha B'Av 2025, A Woman Awaits the Bombardment, Ana Min Al-Yahoud, Eyes on the Road, Book of Lamentations
## Video description Can Israelis and Palestinians Talk Through Poetry?
This conversation, part of the Samantha Woll Dialogues, brings together two writers, Almog Behar and Ayat Abou Shmeiss, both of whom use the language of poetry to explore their own identities: Jerusalem-born Behar looks to his family roots in Iraq and Turkey to advocate for the restoration of Arabic to its place in Jewish culture, and Jaffa-born Abou Shmeiss expresses her dual identity as a Muslim-Palestinian and as an Israeli citizen in her award-winning poetry and human rights advocacy. The panel will be moderated by Raoul Wallenberg Institute Fellow Stephanie Kraver, a scholar of modern Arabic and Hebrew literature who specializes in transcultural exchange, expressions of mourning, trauma theory, and translation.
October 6, 2026 Rackham Amphitheater
A version of this video with audio descriptions is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x6VSWnIiYI
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-98iEuHfI)