Defining Neighbors. Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter - Jonathan Marc Gribetz

68 • cHAPTeR 2

meaning al- Khalidi attributes to the term appears to have been un-
known to Ben- Yehuda (whose personal lexicon is discernible to an
extent unique to the compilers of dictionaries). In his comprehensive
Hebrew dictionary, Ben- Yehuda identified five senses of the word
haskamah,^108 none of which precisely corresponds to al- Khalidi’s in-
tended meaning. For now, al- Khalidi’s source for the term remains
something of a mystery.
What we have found here, I suggest, is that even in al- Khalidi’s inter-
nal and sensitive reading of Jewish history, he read this history from the
perspective of one whose understanding of religious systems is grounded
in Islam. The Islamic shade of al- Khalidi’s theory of Jewish history is
perfectly natural, not only because of the multitude of similarities and
parallels between the religious- legal structures of Judaism and Islam,^109
but also because one inevitably perceives others through the paradigms
of reality with which one has been endowed by one’s culture.
The latter is an insight that has been compellingly explored in the
field of translation studies. Lawrence Venuti argues:

Translation never communicates in an untroubled fashion be-

cause the translator negotiates the linguistic and cultural differ-

ences of the foreign text by reducing them and supplying another

set of differences, basically domestic, drawn from the receiving

language and culture to enable the foreign to be received there.

The foreign text, then, is not so much communicated as inscribed

with domestic intelligibilities and interests.^110

In the course of translating a text from one language into another, ac-
cording to Venuti, the translator cannot simply or seamlessly “commu-
nicate” the text or its content into a new language. The imagined, “lit-
eral translation” ideal- type is necessarily an impossibility because of
the inevitable differences between the languages and their correspond-
ing cultures. The translator must negotiate these differences in order
to render the text into the new language. Venuti labels this not “com-
munication” but “inscription,” where the foreign is “inscribed with do-
mestic intelligibilities and interests.” Al- Khalidi’s overall project in this

(^108) eliezer Ben- Yehuda, “Haskamah,” in MBY, 2:1136– 37. One of these definitions
is “agreement between two things, such as ideas and the like— accord, einverständnis.”
carmilly- Weinberger seems to be referring to this same usage of haskamah when he notes
that “in the philosophical literature of the Middle Ages,” the word can mean “ ‘consen-
sus,’ ‘harmony between entities,’ ‘pre- established harmony.’ ”
(^109) See Ackerman- Lieberman, “comparison between the Halakha and Shariʿa”; Neus-
ner and Sonn, Comparing­Religions­through­Law; Neusner, Sonn, and Brockopp, Judaism­
and­Islam­in­Practice.
(^110) Venuti, “Translation, community, Utopia,” 482.