The Writer, the Storyteller, and the Folktale: Voices from Haim Hazaz’ archive

• In Event: New Directions in Ethnography and Sociology

Abstract

This lecture will deal with the dynamics of ethnographic documentation within Haim Hazaz's 'Yemeni Project', focusing on the process of story transmission between the author and his Yemeni informants. The archival text, comprising Hazaz's ethnographic notebooks, presents a challenge in distinguishing between different voices, as it represents a multi-dimensional creation that requires a reconstruction of its ethnographic context and the events narrated within it.
Through archival research and interpretive imagination, drawing on available facts to envision the 'ethnographic moment', the lecture will highlight the role of Salamon Keisar, an immigrant from Sanaa who settled in Jerusalem, as Hazaz's primary mediator of Yemeni folktales, culture, and language. The archival materials offer numerous testimonies to Keisar's mediating role, and a thorough examination of the documented narratives reveals that a significant portion of the ethnographic content in the notebooks, conveyed by various informants, was relayed to Hazaz through Keisar. The central case study through which I will discuss these dynamics regards a collection of stories recounted by Salem Shchib, an old Yemeni Kabbalist who became one of Hazaz main inspirations to his literary Yemeni figures.

Author

• Tom Fogel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem