Yitsḥak Shami

Born Yitsḥak Sarwi in Hebron, Yitsḥak Shami grew up speaking Arabic with his father and Ladino with his mother. While attending yeshiva in Hebron, Shami broke with his traditional upbringing, eventually leav­ing home for Jerusalem. There, he attended a German-language teachers’ college and became involved with the Zionist labor party Ha-Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir, forming relationships with Zionist activists and intellectuals such as Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and with the great Hebrew writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon. During this period of his life, Shami began publishing in Arabic and Hebrew, writing short stories and essays on topics ranging from literary criticism of the historical fiction of the Lebanese writer Jurji Zaydan to historical accounts of modern Arabic theater. His Hebrew work focused primarily on Arabs and also Mizraḥi Jews (Jews of the Arab world), which set it apart from most of the Hebrew literature written during his lifetime. Shami’s best known work, a novella titled Nikmat ha-avot (The Vengeance of the Fathers), appeared in 1927/8.