Maya Arad’s The Hebrew Teacher: The conscience and the tenure of a BDS professor

The American-based Israeli writer Maya Arad grew up in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which in 2023 was one of the tragic sites of the October 7 massacre.  In her novella The Hebrew Teacher, Arad has crafted an unforgettable lesson about the culpability of the academia in encouraging the antisemitic sentiment that Israelis deserve what is coming to them and that loving Israel is unconscionable.  The story takes place well before October 7, 2023—and it is hard to not feel in it a foreshadowing of the ways in which some in the academia has been lending implicit or explicit support to the desire to destroy Israel.

Ilana Drori Goldstein has been teaching Hebrew for 40 years, the same amount of time that the Israelites spent in the wilderness on their way to Canaan.  Born in 1948, the year of Israel’s Independence, Ilana went to America to teach Hebrew for one year—but ended up meeting her husband Shelley, a Professor of Jewish History who retired shortly before the novella begins, and making her home in the Midwest.  After four decades of enthusiastic and dedicated service, Ilana has to come to terms with declining enrollment in her classes: “It wasn’t a very good time for Hebrew” (7).  Back in the former decades of Ilana’s career, celebration of Israel as a strong, resilient and peace-loving country was integral to Ilana’s teaching practice: “Back then, in the good years, she used to organize a big event for Independence Day every year.  Israel’s birthday.  And hers. . . . They’d buy falafel and hummus from the Lebanese restaurant in the next town, and she’d stop by the Jordanian’s grocery store for Bamba and Bissli and other Israeli snacks” (9).  But love of Israel is becoming verboten.

Into what is becoming an increasingly icy academic ecosystem enters a new Hebrew and Jewish Literature hire, another professor of Israeli origin: Yoad Bergman-Harari, graduate of Berkeley and then Columbia.  Yoad is hired even though in Ilana’s mind the other candidates are clearly better:

“She promised herself that she would keep an open mind. . . . But still, what a difference between the first two candidates and Yoad. Karen and Rakefet gave straightforward lectures, taught excellent demonstration classes, visited her Hebrew lesson, and said they would be happy to work with her, collaboratively. While Yoad . . . She hardly understood a word of his job talk. He taught his demonstration class offhandedly, targeting his interviewers rather than the students. In the brief meeting scheduled for them, he acted as if he couldn’t understand why they needed to talk at all. She spent fifteen minutes trying to spur him on” (12).

After he is hired as a highly praised and brilliant scholar, Yoad keeps his office door closed on the first day of classes.  While Ilana “always feels festive and uplifted” when classes begin, Yoad yawns at the prospect of teaching: “I can’t be bothered” (18).  Yoad is also dissatisfied with the local coffee shop: “This coffee is shit” (17) and is hostile when he visits Ilana’s class “out of obligation” during his job talk: “She was particularly proud when she introduced him to Anh from Vietnam, who was studying Hebrew so that one day he could read the Bible, and Faisal from Saudi Arabia, her protégé, her personal contribution to peace between the nations, to a better world. But Yoad was unimpressed by Anh, and seemed downright averse to Faisal” (13).

Yoad’s academic work in Jewish studies is not what one might expect:

“‘Basically, it’s about Heidegger as a Jewish writer,’ he finally says, and leaves her staring at him. ‘Heidegger?’ she asks in disbelief. ‘Isn’t he the Nazi?’ . . . . ‘The idea, basically, is to examine the question of what Jewish literature is from a new perspective. To challenge that inquiry. To problematize it. What is Jewish literature? Is it Sholem Aleichem? Agnon? Is it Saul Bellow? Today there is fairly broad agreement that Jewish literature is not only what is written in Hebrew or Yiddish, not even only what is written by Jews. Dan Miron has talked about the Judaization of European literature in the twentieth century. So basically, my idea is that the literary expanse is full of broken vessels of Jewish contexts, which find their place in twentieth-century literature and thought throughout Europe, and it is precisely Heidegger’—he accentuates the name—‘who manifests that notion so plainly, and I stand behind that claim, problematic as it may be’” (25).

In other words, Yoad seems to have little interest in what would conventionally be regarded as Jewish or Hebrew literature—or in what would be heartwarming or unifying to many Jewish people.

While Ilana worked for years to create community partnerships, Yoad declines all invitations to contribute.  About speaking to the synagogue bookclub that is “thirsty for Hebrew literature,” it is rumored that Yoad said that he was “not interested in entertaining a gaggle of old ladies looking to stay busy in their retirement!” (25, 37)—never mind that some of the donations that made his academic position possible came from these same highly cultured and educated bookclub members.  About an invitation to visit the Hillel Sukkah, he is reported to have said, “It’s not part of my job. I’m sorry. I’m a Comparative Literature professor, not a summer camp counselor in the Catskills” (42).

Ilana repeatedly tries to reach out to her new colleague and make him feel welcome, including inviting him to a Friday night dinner at her home.  But as time progresses the problem comes into clear relief.  It is a problem of conscience: Yoad’s conscience would not allow him to have anything to do with the love of Israel.  When a writer’s visit organized with the Israeli Consulate requires Yoad’s signature to proceed (Ilana cannot sign because of her lower status as an adjunct professor), Yoad refuses to perform the formality.  He will have nothing to do with the Israeli Consulate: “I will not act against my conscience” (63).  When Ilana, finally sick of trying to please and chase Yoad, tells him that his hostile behavior might end up undermining his job security, he retorts with “the tormented look of a Christian saint:” “My conscience is more important than getting tenure” (69).  And of course he signs a BDS petition.

Ilana remembers days, for example the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when threats to Israel led to an outpouring of support in the academia.  But now Ilana has to “collaborate” with a Jewish colleague who hates Israel and seems to take satisfaction and pride in wanting nothing to do with her:

“It infuriates her that young people like Yoad don’t understand that Israel is nothing less than a miracle. They take it for granted, they cannot see that there was a hairsbreadth between its existence and . . . God forbid what would have happened if that country did not exist” (61).

One of the most striking measures of reality that The Hebrew Teacher provides is in showing the value that the academia might place on a Jewish Israeli professor who hates Israel—for who is a better asset than such a person to lend support to the self-persuasion of, “I am not antisemitic, but my conscience is telling me that. . .?”

At the same time as Ilana is being painfully devalued, the university seems to be doing everything it can to avoid losing the presumably brilliant Yoad, who on his part takes care to exude the vibe that he belongs in more excellent places.  Robert, the Chair of Middle Eastern Studies (into which Jewish Studies was annexed more than a decade ago), confides in Ilana, “We’ll have to work very hard to keep him” (64).  Robert speaks to Ilana as if it is a self-evident truth that everything possible must be done to please the young genius who might otherwise escape (even though job opportunities in the field are extremely limited).  Instead of being grateful for getting one of the very few jobs available in his field, Yoad focuses on negotiating a deal that will persuade him to stay and not look elsewhere:

“For some reason, Robert insists on updating her on the negotiations with Yoad. As if she were his confidante. As if she were just as interested as he is in Yoad staying. He informs her triumphantly that he’s managed to get Yoad a raise. ‘Great,’ she says, attempting a smile, although inside she seethes: she’s been slaving away here for forty years, busting her butt—she’s not ashamed to say it—and no one ever tried to get her a raise. And now that little pisher, half her age, is going to make twice as much as she does.” (65)

Despite the efforts that Ilana makes to welcome Yoad and to collaborate with him, the psychological terror that he exerts eventually comes to settle in her body: “The chill in his voice makes her shoulders tremble” (43).  But is Yoad’s power indeed the byproduct of the formidable conscience of a principled personality, far superior to Ilana?  Is Ilana being justly punished for loving what must not be loved, for devoting herself to what must be discarded?

Ilana, like countless Israelis, is critical of the Israeli government: “I absolutely do not defend Israel at any cost. On the contrary, I am very critical, especially in recent years” (53).  But Ilana’s body and soul can also intuitively and accurately tell the difference between criticism, which pretty much any government on earth deserves, and the obsessive, power-oriented channeling of antisemitic tropes under the mask of “conscience” and “criticism of Israel.”

After you read The Hebrew Teacher and know what happens at the end, answer this multiple-choice question:

Which of the following most accurately represents Yoad’s attitude toward his tenure and the relationship that The Hebrew Teacher suggests might exist between anti-Israel activism and job security?

(1) Yoad is true to his word: “My conscience is more important than getting tenure.” He does not get tenure because he refuses to be silent about his criticism of Israel.

(2) Yoad betrays his own conscience and learns to be quiet because of a Zionist lobby that controls all promotion decisions at the university. He is too scared to not get his tenure.

(3) Yoad gets his tenure after much hard work and also learns to respect colleagues who love Israel even though he disagrees with them.

(4) Yoad gets his tenure exceptionally fast while also successfully working to harm a colleague who loves Israel.

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My thanks go to Carlie MacPherson, Senior Librarian, Greenberg Families Library, Soloway Jewish Community Centre in Ottawa for recommending The Hebrew Teacher.

Quotations are from Arad, Maya. The Hebrew Teacher. New Vessel Press. Kindle Edition.