Sasson Somekh is a professor emeritus of Modern Arab Literature

Arabic literature

Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....

 at Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...

.

Biography

Sasson Somekh was born in Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

 to a secular Jewish family. In 1951, Somekh and his family immigrated

Aliyah

Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...

 to Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 in the wake of growing pressures on the Jews of Iraq to leave the country. He did not know Hebrew at the time, but started learning it in earnest in order to achieve his goal of becoming a translator of Arabic poetry into Hebrew. His first translation was published in 1954 in Ner, a journal published by Ihud ("Unity"), an association dedicated to the advancement of Arab–Jewish reconciliation established by Judah Magnes.

Academic career

Somekh earned a Bachelor's degree in Hebrew Language and History from Tel Aviv University, and a Master's degree in Linguistics of Semitic languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

. In 1962–1965, Somekh served as scientific secretary of the Academy of the Hebrew Language

Academy of the Hebrew Language

The Academy of the Hebrew Language was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language."-History:...

. He did his doctorate at Oxford University in 1966–1968. His subject was the novels of Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...

, concentrating on the Cairo Trilogy

Cairo Trilogy

The Cairo Trilogy or ) is a trilogy of novels written by the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz.The three novels are, in order:* Palace Walk...

. Over the years Mahfouz and Somekh became friends. The thesis supervisor was Egyptian scholar Mustafa Badawi. Upon his return to Israel he became a lecturer in Arabic Literature. He served as chairman of the Arabic Language and Literature department at Tel Aviv University in 1972–1984. In 1980, he became a full professor. Between 1982 and 2003, he held the Helmos Chair for Arabic Literature. In 1996–1998 he was head of the Israel Academic Center

Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities

The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was set up in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between scholars from the sciences and humanities in Israel, to advise the government on research projects of national importance, and to promote excellence. It comprises...

 in Cairo. He was a visiting professor at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, St Antony's College, Oxford

St Antony's College, Oxford

St Antony's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England.St Antony's is the most international of the seven all-graduate colleges of the University of Oxford, specialising in international relations, economics, politics, and history of particular parts of the...

, Annenberg Research Institute

Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania is the world's only institution exclusively dedicated to post-doctoral research on Jewish Civilization. It is located at 420 Walnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The center is directed by Professor David B...

, NYU and Uppsala University

Uppsala University

Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...

. In 2004, he received an honorary doctorate from Ben Gurion University.

He is among the founders of the Arabic Language Academy in Israel, established in December 2007 in collaboration with several former students.

He wrote 10 books, many translations from Arabic to Hebrew, among which are 4 anthologies of modern Arabic poetry, and about 90 articles in academic journals. Over the past 50 years Somekh published hundreds of articles in literary magazines and supplements such as Iton 77

Iton 77

Iton 77 is an Israeli monthly of literature and culture. Founded by the poet and editor Yaakov Besser in 1977. Iton 77 is among the oldest literary magazines in Israel and has been published regularly for 30 years, which is almost unprecedented in Israeli publishing. The magazine also owns a small...

, Halikon and Moznayim. His articles deal mainly with modern Arabic literature and writers, connections between Arabic and Hebrew literature and the Cairo Geniza

Cairo Geniza

The Cairo Geniza is a collection of almost 280,000 Jewish manuscript fragments found in the Genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, presently Old Cairo, Egypt. Some additional fragments were found in the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and the collection includes a number of...

. He is a regular contributor to Haaretz

Haaretz

Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

 newspaper.

Baghdad Yesterday

At the age of 70, Somekh wrote the first volume of his autobiography, Baghdad, Yesterday: The Making of an Arab Jew. The book was published in Hebrew and has been translated into Arabic, English and Turkish. In the book he describes his life as a Jewish child and teenager in Baghdad during the first 17 years of his life. He speaks of being a secular Jewish child from a secular Jewish home. He shows that the educated middle class that achieved prominence in the 1930s and 40s was the main influence on the norms of life in the Jewish community. Also, he shows that the Jews of Iraq enjoyed neighborly relations with their Muslim neighbors. Perhaps not ideal relations, but mutual respect between neighbors.

The second volume, Yamim Hazuyim ("Call it Dreaming") was published in 2008. It describes his life between Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

, Oxford, Princeton, and Cairo between 1951 and 2000. The book moves between the four major stations of his life: Tel Aviv - where he lived and worked for 40 years as a professor of Arabic literature, Oxford - where he received his PhD, Princeton - where he was occasionally a visiting professor in the 1970s and 80s, and Cairo - the city he did much literary research in, and where he was the head of the Israel Academic Center.

Books

• Baghdad, Yesterday : The Making of an Arab Jew / Sasson Somekh. Jerusalem : Ibis Editions, 2007
• The Changing Rhythm: A Study of Najib Mahfuz’s Novels/Sasson Somekh. Leiden: Brill, 1973
• Genre and language in modern Arabic literature / Sasson Somekh. Wiesbaden : O. Harrassowitz, 1991.

Articles

• "The Sad Millenarian: An Examination of Awlad Haratina", Middle Eastern Studies 7, 49-61, 1971
• "Two Versions of Dialogue in Mahmud Taymur's Drama", Princeton Near East Paper No. 21, Princeton, 1975
• "Language and Theme in the Short Stories of Yusuf Idris", Journal of Arabic Literature 4, 89-100, 1975
• "The Transformation of 'Ghalwa", Journal of Arabic Literature 6 (1976), 101-119
• " The Diglotic Dilemma in the Drama of Tawfiq al-Hakim", Israel Oriental Studies 9, 392-403, 1983
• "The Function of Sound in the Stories of Yusuf Idris", Journal of Arabic Literature 16, 95-104, 1985
• "The Participation of Egyptian Jews in Modern Arabic Culture", The Jews of Egypt in Modern Times, Shimon Shamir (ed.), Boulder: Westview, 130-140, 1986
• "A Minute to Midnight: War and Peace in the Novels of Naguib Mahfouz", Middle East Review 20:2, 7-19, 1987
• "Shelley in Neoclassical Arabic", Edebiyat, NS, Vol. I, No.2, 89-100, 1989
• "Modern Arabic Poetry and its Medieval Palimpsest", Edebiyat, NS, 3:1, 105-118, 1989
• "Cold, Tall Houses: The Jewish Neighbor in the Works of Arab Authors", Jerusalem Quarterly 52, 26-35, 1989
• "Lost Voices: Jewish Authors in Modern Arabic Literature", in Jews Among Arabs: Contact and Boundaries, Mark R. Cohen and Abraham L. Udovitch (eds.), Princeton: Darwin Press, 9-20, 1989
• "The Essence of Naguib Mahfouz", The Tel-Aviv Review 2, 244-257, 1990
• (with Mark R. Cohen), "In the Court of Ya'qub Ibn Killis: A Fragment from the Cairo Geniza", Jewish Quarterly Review 80, 283-314, 1990
• "The Neo-Classical Arabic Poets", in Modern Arabic Literature, Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, M.M. Badawi (ed.), Cambridge: CUP, 26-81, 1992
• "Colloquialized Fusha in Modern Arabic Prose Fiction", Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 16, 176-194, 1993
• "Structure of Silence: A Reading of Yusuf's Idris's 'Bayt Min Lahm'", Writer, Culture, Text: Studies in Modern Arabic Literature, Ami Elad (ed.) Frediction: York Press, 56-61, 1993
• "Biblical Echoes in Modern Arabic Literature", Journal of Arabic Literature 26, 186-200, 1995
• "Vestiges of Saadia's Tafsir in Modern Arabic Bibles", Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication and Interaction: Essays in Honor of William M. Brinner, B. Hary, F. Aster, J. Hayes (eds.), Leiden: Brill, 227-236, 2000

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients
• Iraqi Jews
• Arab Jews
  Arab Jews
  Arab Jews is a term referring to Jews living in the Arab World, or Jews descended from such persons.The term was occasionally used in the early 20th century, mainly by Arab nationalists, to describe the 1 million Jews living in the Arab world at the time...
  
  
• Literature of Israel

External links

• Israel Prize Official Site - CV of Sasson Somekh (in Hebrew)