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A linguistic memoir by an American Jew who embeds himself in a village of the Arabic-speaking, reputedly secretive, Druze of Israel and emerges transformed by his experience.
During the 2015 "Knife Intifada" in Israel, author William Miles, a Jewish political anthropologist, embedded himself for four months in a Druze village within eyeshot of Lebanon. He returned year after year, spending eight months in total. The result is a multicultural auto-ethnography, a linguistic memoir that relates his research on, and experiences with, this intriguing Middle Eastern minority known mostly for practicing a "secret" religion. An Other Israel is intended not only for readers interested in the Middle East; it will appeal to all those interested in non-Jewish (but philo-Semitic) society in Israel, as seen through the eyes of a Jew who (paradoxically) comes to learn Hebrew from the Druze. Miles’s experience of "living in Hebrew while surrounded by Arabic" is an inspiring example of radical multiculturalism, especially in these conflictual times when communication between Jews and Arabs is often so fraught.
William Miles is Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston. He is the author of Zion in the Desert: American Jews in Israel’s Reform Kibbutzim, also published by SUNY Press. Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. His work, translated into two dozen languages, has been adapted into film, TV, radio, and theater. His latest book is Conversations on Dictionaries: The Universe in a Book (Cambridge University Press).
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Ilan Stavans
(An Existential) Preface. Jews, Druze and their Entangled Israeli Soul
Acknowledgments
1. Livers, Goats, and Zionism
2. Confessions of a Linguistic Zionist
3. My Druze Village: First Impressions, First Frustrations
4. A Sixth Grader Pushing Sixty
5. Hebrew, Holocaust, and Judaification of the Druze
6. The Druze as "Jews"
7. Representing the Jewish People
8. "You're in the (Jewish) Army Now"
9. The Real Secret of the Druze Religion
10. Dealing with Death Among the Druze
11. Devotees, Doubters and Deviants
12. Speaking With (and About) Women
13. Saying Goodbye to this Other Israel
Notes
Bibliographic Recommendations
Index