Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture (review)

In the 11 chapters of this book, Salim Tamari argues for a reconsideration of the origins and composition of cosmopolitan life in Palestine, and more specifically Jerusalem in the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods. Thanks to his skillful handling and analysis of primary source resources, Dr. Tamari challenges what we know of social and political life in Palestine. This volume fills a void in the English-language scholarship on this period. The memoirs and diaries that make up much of the volume are given the space to be heard and digested. Furthermore, it builds on some of the recent contributions that Dr. Tamari has made in the Jerusalem Quarterly and his excellent article “The Short Life of Private Ihsan: Jerusalem 1915.”¹ The book will be most useful to students and scholars in anthropology, political science, and history, and can be read by serious non-scholarly readers.

Chapters 1–4 detail the meaning of the title. The “Mountain” is the landed interior elites and the “Sea” is the emerging challenge of urban centers and the coastal cities, now competing with one another for pride of place in social, cultural, and economic leadership. These chapters serve as a foreground to the second part of the book, the individual studies in Chapters 5–11. That foreground covers issues of changing class status and the role of small plot farmers (Chapter 1); the unique and emerging role of Jaffa as a connector between the mountains and the trading and social spaces of the sea (Chapter 2); the role of coastal cities in shaping the societal behavior in Palestine, and the impact that the Nakba has on stripping the majority of Palestinian life from active coastal living (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 is an intriguing (and much needed) discussion of the representation of life in Palestine pre-1948 by exiles in art and literature.

The second part of the book (Chapters 5–11) is engrossing. The sensitive handling by the author of the variety of source material (memoirs, diaries, letters) and their contexts provides the reader with a treasure trove of new learning. These materials challenge the idea that Jerusalem was a culturally ossified city and that it was, in the late Ottoman period, a backwater, void of economic, social, and political discussion, and composed of a society dominated by religious duties and orientation.

The seven individual studies provide in-sights into daily life and in some cases the private thoughts of landed elites, urban intelligentsia, and social and political reformers. Reading them, one is struck by the dynamism, iconoclastic thought, and action that the individuals are either wittingly or unwittingly a part of. Lurking around the edges of each individual are the momentous changes that the end of the Ottoman era, the rise of European colonialism and the British and French Mandates, and Zionism bring to all of their lives.

While the chapters as a whole are good, there are some that are truly outstanding. Among them are Chapter 5 and the memoirs of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, a Jerusalem musician. It challenges the notion that it was the Europeans and their cultures that brought cosmopolitan life to Jerusalem. Jawhariyyeh’s memoirs detail a society rich in cultural hybridity and sharing among Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and overall radiates a joy of life. Chapter 9, “Ishaq Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jews in Palestine,” reveals a great deal about the indigenous Jewish community of Palestine living in Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed. Speaking Ladino and Arabic (in Jerusalem, Yiddish as well) highlights the cultural and social links of the community to Palestine. The tensions that Ishaq Shami’s life undergoes with the politicization of being Jewish in Palestine, coincidental with the rise of European Zionism there, are vividly revealed. The most enjoyable chapter was 11, “The Vagabond Café and Jerusalem’s Prince of Idleness.” Detailing the rise of...