On April 22, 2025, the Clough Center was pleased to host a seminar in which Professor Yehuda Shenhav talked about Maktoob, a project translating Arabic literature into Hebrew. Yehouda Shenhav (Ph.D. Stanford University 1985) is a Professor of Sociology at Tel-Aviv University. His main areas are social theory, sociology of knowledge, management and bureaucracies, ethnicity, race, and the political sociology of sovereignty. His main publications include Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1999), and The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Ethnicity and Religion (Stanford University Press, 2006).
Maktoob started in 2016 intending to translate literary Arabic work into Hebrew. A group of prominent Palestinians and Jewish figures run the project. Shenhav serves as the main editor of Maktoob in cooperation with a professional team that includes Eyad Barghuthy, Dr. Yonatan Mendel, Kifah Abdul Halim, and Hanan Saadi. According to the introductory statement on Maktoob’s website: “The members of Maktoob neither seek to build “a cultural bridge” nor do they wish to cover up the conflict with a fig leaf, or to call for “coexistence” in a context of such political inequality. In addition, they take a clear stance against orientalism. Our model is the meeting of Arabic and Hebrew in the first Islamic era, specially in Andalusia, which was based on Arab-Jewish dialogue.”
In the seminar, Professor Shenhav noted that his motivation to initiate this project originated in his family background who migrated from Iraq to Israel. He learned Arabic as a second language after Hebrew as his native language. During his teaching as a university professor, he realized that there was a language barrier between a majority of Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking Israelis. This gap existed because of the shortage of Arabic literary work translated into Hebrew. So, the Hebrew-speaking audience did not have access to the original resources to learn about Arabic literature and culture. Since then, Maktoob has developed to fill this gap and to create mutual understanding between Israelis and Palestinians involving translators from both languages. At this point, Maktoob focuses on translating Arabic into Hebrew.
Professor Shenhav emphasized that Maktoob does all translations from Arabic to Hebrew with a close dialogue between the authors and translators. The translation style in Maktoob is to agree on a binational term between both sides even if the translated version does not exactly correspond to its original text. However, the outcome is based on a mutual understanding. Maktoob educates and teaches the translators to create a dialogue with the authors. In a sense, there is no individual translation in Maktoob. Maktoob avoids an Orientalist approach in its translations. Professor Shenhav told a story of his cooperative translation with Elias Khoury, a Lebanese novelist, with whom he used to meet regularly in person to translate a novel. They read and checked the translation together. Maktoob has translated dozens of books and creates hope for people to work together.
Professor Shenhav pointed out that the language is a powerful tool to connect people. In his opinion, if Israelis learn Arabic, there will be a significant change for the better in their society. This seems idealistic, but there is a possibility for change. This talk concluded with a Q&A between the speaker and the audience who discussed further possibilities and alternative approaches to the translation of Arabic into Hebrew or vice versa.
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