Jerusalem-which sometimes feels like the frontline of an ongoing war

You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.

Jerusalem is so permeated with layers and textures, minglings of all kinds that, once you've lived there you don't get over it.

The Jewish artist in me feels displaced. I want to have time to write, to create literature which expands our notion of our Jewishness, which might in turn give us rest and inspire us to keep on with our peace work. But I don't make time for it. I remain focused on Israel and the Occupied Territories, where the situation is worsening.

What affects me most is the continual sense of isolation that I feel as a Holocaust survivor, an isolation enhanced by my being a Yiddish writer. I feel myself to be an anachronism, wandering across a page of history where I do not really belong. If writing is a lonely profession, the Yiddish writer's loneliness has an additional dimension. Her readership has perished. Her language has gone up with the smoke of the crematoria. She creates in a vacuum, almost without a readership, out of fidelity to a vanished language, as if to prove that Nazism did not succeed in extinguishing that language's last breath, that it is still alive. Creativity is a life-affirming activity. Lack of response to creativity and being condemned to write for the desk drawer is a stifling, destructive experience. Sandwiched between these two misfortunes struggles the spirit of the contemporary Yiddish writer.

I who lived in Jerusalem for very long, I worshipped under the calls of its minarets, and submitted to the will of God under the rhythm of its church bells. I was exiled from my beloved Palestine. I am thirsty, I am longing to return to Jerusalem, I am longing to beautify my eyes with it before I die.

("So what about Palestinian culture, in terms of those who live here in Israel, as opposed to in the West Bank or in Gaza?") SN: There are no conflicts and no real cultural differences, but of course our lives are different. They live under a military occupation, and we live under a cultural occupation...we have to differentiate between three different groups of Palestinian writers: Palestinians living in Israel, Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians living abroad. As far as Palestinians in Israel are concerned, I can speak from experience. I have written about Jews myself. They are my friends, I meet them everywhere, every day. My experience of Jews is well rounded, and so I can write about how they live at home with their families, with their wives, how they love and how they hate. Because I know. It's different for a writer living in Ramallah. He cannot write about anything other than settlers or soldiers at the checkpoints - whereas I can write a short story about myself and a Jewish friend discussing love and the universe, a writer in Ramallah couldn't even imagine that. And he doesn't need to either, because the Jew is the occupying force, and you don't write about occupying forces as anything other than occupying forces.

I write about Israeli experience, and that experience, being so intense and concentrated, is probably a good background for distilling human experience anywhere.

For a long time I didn’t write about Israel at all. It’s such a volatile place and people have such strong opinions and everything you write about Israel is perceived as political. It is a double edged sword—some people may find your writing more alluring because of it while others may not want to go anywhere near it. At some point I had to stop worrying. I had to resign myself to the fact that I was going to piss people off, and that people are going to read the book and interpret it any way they like, and there is nothing I can do about it.

Three cities run in my veins: Jerusalem, which I consider to be the place of my soul’s identity and existence; Jericho, the city that colors my heart and my passion; and Hebron, which I believe is the source of my creative imagination and my personal archive of popular folk tales, like those about Al-Shater Hassan.

Like most activists and artists, I have difficulty establishing priorities. The tension between being active in the world and needing solitude is one all of us struggle with. I find myself discussing this tension with other Jews, particularly in regard to our activism on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Not an abstract discussion.

…Obviously Israel will always be home. I feel it most intensely when I'm there for a long enough period. When I first arrive, I'm not so sure about it, but once I stay for a few weeks, it feels like I could easily move back and live there. It's beyond the fact that my entire family lives there: It's a visceral thing, an attachment to the physicality of the place, to how the place smells and tastes. I also have an intense connection to the sea in Israel; I actually have to say goodbye to it whenever I leave and it's always a difficult parting…

The more strongly I felt the urge to write, the weaker I felt in face of the enormity of the subject. I feared it, and this fear hovers over me to this day, whenever I try to write on the subject of the Holocaust.

My hijab is a personal reminder of the tension between submission and struggle.