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Expat Ruby Namdar Wins Israel’s Top Literary Prize

American-based Israeli writer Reuven “Ruby” Namdar won Israel’s Sapir Prize, its most prestigious literary award, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported today. Namdar is the first Israeli expatriate to win the award.

Interviewed by Skype from Israel, where he had traveled for the ceremony, Namdar told JTA that he was “stunned” by the victory of his novel, which took a decade to write. He described the book as “ambitious” and a “challenge” that demands a “reading commitment.” He added that he was pleased his “ZIP code” was a “non-issue” for the judges.

That a winner for a prize intended to be a national one does not reside in Israel apparently did not dissuade the panel of judges, chaired by Menny Mautner and including Aviad Kleinberg, Batya Shimoni, Shiri Lev-Ari , Meron Isaacson, Sara Fun Schwartza and Iris Milner. Lev-Ari, reached by phone, said that Namdar’s residence was “mentioned as a fact” in the judges’ discussions but that his book is “like every other Hebrew book, even if the author does not live in Israel.”

She added, “We live in a global world, people have more than one place to live.”

Writer and journalist Beth Kissileff interviewed Namdar for Tablet Magazine to get his reaction to the award:

In an interview by Skype last night, before the award’s results were known, Namdar told me that the fact that he “was allowed to come so far” in his career shows an “expansion of the Israeli and Hebrew sphere globally that was never there before.” He said he was pleased not to have been excluded “because of my zip code.”

Of being an Israeli expat writing abroad, he said, “Israelis are fascinated by this idea and in a way liberated by it.”

Namdar had previously told me he sees himself as a “cultural translator” from America to Israel and vice versa. Namdar’s novel, edited by Haim Weiss, is about a professor of comparative cultures in New York who has dreams of working as a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem. The book jacket describes it as “a Hebrew and New York novel that creates a new possibility for Hebrew literature.” Clearly, the judges were intrigued by the possibility.

Kissileff focused on Namdar in Israel Has an Amazing Literary Diaspora, a survey of Israel’s literary community abroad, which was published in the January 2015 issue of The Tower Magazine.

For Ruby Namdar, the opposite is the case. For him, colloquial Hebrew is less important than the language’s eternal qualities. He sees himself as a “cultural translator,” saying, “I see my work as part of the sacred Jewish canon and I feel in my very contemporary unholy way I am contributing.” He believes he is “channeling the entire Hebrew canon” and that because Hebrew is not his day-to-day language, it has “returned to la’shon ha’kodesh [the holy tongue]” for him. Nonetheless, he says, “I see my work as a great contribution to Zionism and Hebrew culture,” since his novel is both Hebrew and American but “not necessarily very Israeli.”
Among the young generation of Hebrew writers are many who agree that language is “portable,” and feel their location is irrelevant to the language they use. All they need are their ideas and their writing devices.

One fascinating forum for Namdar’s approach is expressed by, as he puts it, his gratitude to “Mr. Zuckerberg,” referring to the founder of Facebook. “Facebook and the Internet is a lifeline” he told me, and a “main anchor in my life,” because “today the Israeli cultural sphere happens on Facebook.” Namdar calls the social networking site the “new city square” and a “common place” that enables “Hebrew culture to expand past the boundary of and limits of Israeli culture to become global.” He does not think this threatens Israel or Hebrew but rather “enriches” them. In fact, Namdar said, “I don’t think Hebrew culture can survive without the cultural center of Israel, but that doesn’t mean that every laboratory of Hebrew culture must be on Israeli soil.”

Part of Namdar’s life is very much in English, however. His wife is American and they raise their daughters in an English-speaking household. He made a conscious choice that he and his wife would speak English at home and admits there are “prices to living outside Israel.” One of which is that, though his Hebrew-speaking mother has read his books in the original, his children probably won’t. He believes, however, that his story is one of “immigration without tragedy.” In the course of our conversation, Namdar tells me what brought him to New York originally: to learn about his heritage. His mother is from Mashhad in Iran. Mashhadi Jews were a unique group, hiding their Judaism for many years. When the community left, portions went to Israel and portions to New York, so Namdar came here after his army service in Israel and worked in the diamond industry for a few years. He told me he wasn’t interested, like most Israelis at that age, in going to India or the Far East but only in New York and his heritage.

[Photo: Courtesy Ruby Namdar ]