Современный Израиль

Часть 1 Языки, социальные практики, межкультурные взаимодействия

and assurance to people that they are safely within the boundaries of the known universe, which is familiar, orderly, civilized and protected. Wazana shows that the expressions describing the Promised Land are no more than a reflection of the borders of the empire of the Assyrian kings. Ancient documents delineating these borders also mention seas, rivers, mountains and deserts, mostly the same sites noted in the biblicaltext, and their purpose is to glorify the kings and confirm the claim that their domain is congruent to the borders of Terra Cognita – the known world – of ancient times.

The reason that the borders in the divine promise are mistakenly read as real borders is the distance between the language of the Bible andthelanguagespokentodayinIsrael.Thedemarcationoftheborders of the Promised Land is a spatial merism, an expression that describes a whole by referring to its poles. When it is written, «In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth,» this doesn’t refer to the creation oftheskiesandthelandalone,buttotheentiretyoftheuniverselocated between these two extremes.

Accordingly, the mention of liminal sites like mountains, seas and rivers in the borders of the divine promise means that the whole populated land was given to the people of Israel. Indeed, reading biblicallanguagethroughtheprismofIsraeliHebrewandinaccordance with the contemporary reality blocks our understanding of the position expressed in the Bible regarding the pivotal relationship between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel. In fact, the Bible recognizes the legitimate existence of the Jewish people outside the country’s borders. On the other hand, the Bible accepts the fact that the Land of Israel is populated by various peoples, and recognizes the rights of the Philistines, the Moabites, theAmmonites and others to live in the area alongside Israel and to maintain sovereign, independent regimes.

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After a short and stormy visit to the Land of Israel, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav would say, «Everywhere I go, I am going to the Land of Israel.» It was his poetic way of expressing the fact that the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel isn’t dependent on being in any defined geographic location, and certainly not on applying Israeli sovereignty to it.

Hebrew and Yiddish, Revival and Survival

AnycredibleanswertotheenigmaofIsraelirequiresanexhaustive study of the manifold influence of Yiddish. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Yiddish and Hebrew were rivals to become the language of the future Jewish State. At first sight, it appears that Hebrew has won and that, after the Holocaust, Yiddish was destined to be spoken almost exclusively by ultra-Orthodox Jews and some eccentric academics. Yet, closer scrutiny challenges this perception. The victorious Hebrew may, after all, be partly Yiddish at heart. Inotherwords,YiddishsurvivesbeneathIsraeliphonetics,phonology, discourse, syntax, semantics, lexis, and even morphology, although traditional and institutional linguists have been most reluctant to admit it.

Israeli scholars and public figures are trying to impose Hebrew grammar on Israelis’ speech thus ignoring the fact that Israeli has its own grammar, which is very different from that of Hebrew.

The linguist Menahem Zevi Kaddari has criticized young Israeli authorEtgarKeretforusinga‘thinlanguage’–asopposed toShmuel YosefAgnon.KaddaricomparesKerettoAgnonasiftheywroteintwo different registers of the same language. But whilst Agnon attempts to write in (Mishnaic) Hebrew, which is obviously not his mother

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Часть 1 Языки, социальные практики, межкультурные взаимодействия

tongue (Yiddish), Keret writes authentically in his native Israeli. Israelis are not less intelligent than their ancestors. Their language is not thin and their vocabulary not poor, just different. Educators imposing Hebrew grammar on Israelis’ speech ignore the fact that Israeli has its own internal logic.

We propose that the language spoken in Israel today is a beautiful hybrid, marvellously demonstrating multiple causation throughout its genetics and typology. Whatever we choose to call it – Israeli, Reclaimed Hebrew, (Spoken) Israeli Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, ContemporaryHebrew,Hebrew,Jewishetc.–weshouldacknowledge and celebrate its complexity.

We cannot argue that every revived language must be hybridic. But given that the Hebrew revivalists, who wished to speak pure Hebrew, failed in their purism, it is simply hard to imagine more successfulrevivalattempts.ItwouldbehardtocompetewiththeHebrew revival for the following two components: (1) the remarkable strength of the revivalists’motivation, zealousness, Hebrew consciousness, and centuries of ‘next year in Jerusalem’ ideology, and (2) the extensive documentation of Hebrew (as opposed to, say, ‘sleeping’ (i.e. ‘dead’) Australian Aboriginal languages). At the very least, this should make linguists refrain from referring to Israeli as a case of complete language revival. We believe that Israeli does include numerous Hebrewelementsresultingfromaconsciousrevivalbutalsonumerous pervasive linguistic features deriving from a subconscious survival oftherevivalists’mothertongues,e.g.Yiddish.Lookingatitpositively, from a Jungian psychological perspective, we see this conscious cum subconscious process resulting in hybrid vigour.

This paper contributes towards recognizing that the revival of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from

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the revivalists’mother tongue (s) and towards understanding Israeli as a hybridic language. In Israeli the impact ofYiddish and other European languages is apparent in all the components of the language but usually in patterns rather than in forms. Moreover, Israeli demonstrates a split between morphology and phonology. Whereas most Israeli morphological forms, e.g. discontinuously-conjugated verbs, are Hebrew, the phonetics and phonology of Israeli – including the pronunciation of these Hebrew forms – are European (Zuckermann, 2005a, 2020).

The Hebrew revivalists’ attempt to deny their European roots, negate diasporism and avoid hybridity – has failed. Thus, the study of Israeli offers a perspicacious insight into the dynamics between language and culture in general, and in particular into the role of language as a source of collective self-perception. We maintain that Israeli is a Eurasian (Semito-European) hybrid language: both Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European. Whatever we choose to call it, weshouldacknowledgeitscomplexity.Whenonerevivesalanguage, one should expect to end up with a hybrid.

One of the surreal observations of this paper is that revival of one languagedoesnotnecessarilyresultinthedeathofanother,butrather in its survival. Although it might initially appear that the victory of ‘Hebrew’ over Yiddish (as the national language of the Jewish people) condemned Yiddish to be spoken almost exclusively by Orthodox Jews, this paper suggests that much of the victorious ‘Hebrew’is indeedYiddish.

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Часть 1 Языки, социальные практики, межкультурные взаимодействия

Глава 2 Преподавание и изучение иврита в СССР

и современной России*1

Teaching and Learning Hebrew in the USSR

and Contemporary Russia*

В современной России при довольно низком уровне антисемитизма есть определенный интерес и к еврейству, и к Израилю, однако об израильской истории и культуре российское общество знает сравнительно мало. На русский язык переведены произведения двух-трех десятков израильских писателей (Ш.Й. Агнон, А. Оз, Э. Кишон, Б. Таммуз, А. Аппельфельд, А.Б. Иегошуа, Д. Шахар, Д. Гроссман, М. Шалев, Г. Альмагор, Э. Керет, О. Кастель-Блум, Й. Блум, И. Кацир, С. Шило и др.), иногда организуются показы израильских фильмов и мультипликации (с переводом), выступления израильских музыкантов и спектакли израильских театров, однако нельзя сказать,

*Александра Полян

**Alexandra Polyan

1 Исследование выполнено при поддержке Российского научного фонда (проект №19-18-00429, ИЯз РАН). Автор благодарит Е.Э. НосенкоШтейнзавсестороннююпомощьвнаписанииэтойглавы;М.А.Членова, С.Г. Парижского, Л.М. Дрейера, Р. Заславски, З. Гейзеля и Б. Лидски, согласившихся дать автору интервью, С.Б. Ямпольскую, любезно предоставившую автору текст своей неопубликованной магистерской диссертации, Ш.Резника, Е.Г.Пескина иВ.А. Дымшица –законсультации ибиблиографическиерекомендации.М.А.ЧленовиВ.А.Дымшицтакже любезно согласились прочесть черновик данной главы, автор благодарит их за критику и рекомендации.

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Глава 2 Преподавание и изучение иврита в СССР и современной России

что литература, кинематограф и другие грани культуры Израиля популярны и хорошо известны в России. Более того, эти темы остаются маргинальными и для российских исследователей: регулярно выходят работы об экономике Израиля и отношениях Израиля с другими странами, но не о культуре.

Исключением на общем фоне оказывается изучение иврита.

В этот процесс были вовлечены десятки тысяч людей в СССР –

ион продолжает оставаться популярным в постсоветской России.

На самом деле под «изучением иврита» подразумеваются несколько разных процессов, что мы и планируем показать. Речь идет о разных группах изучающих, которые ставили перед собой совершенно разные цели, и о разных предметах изучения.

Традиция изучения современного иврита в России насчитывает, видимо, чуть более ста лет: в начале XX века появились первые учебники современного (по тогдашним меркам) иврита, который только входил в обиход в качестве разговорного языка в Палестине, и началась специальная языковая подготовка людей, желающих уехать в Палестину. Традиция изучения древнееврейского (библейского иврита) – существенно старше. Важно отметить, что речь идет, в сущности, о двух традициях: о традиции изучения древнееврейского языка в еврейской среде (в хедерах, иешивах, позже – в тал- муд-торах и еврейских гимназиях системы «Тарбут», в еврейских детских садах) и вне ее. С XVIII века древнееврейский язык преподавался в университетах и Академии наук (в рамках изучения библеистики, гебраистики и семитологии), а также – как язык Ветхого завета – в православных семинариях

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