“and I don't care that you're bowlegged and I don't care that you're bilingual”

last night I attended what I would consider to be a model bilingual meeting. everyone had at least a basic understanding of both languages spoken, so rather than repeating everything spoken in 2 languages, every person spoke in whichever language he/she felt most comfortable in. it was refreshing to be in an environment where everyone’s fluency was enough to understand both languages so that people could speak freely in their mother-tongues, yet still be understood by the entire group. additionally, there was pizza and cookies making it a model meeting regardless of lingualism.

however, this was no sadaka reut hebrew-arabic staff meeting, it was a holylanders ultimate team meeting and the languages were hebrew and english.

at sadaka reut staff meetings no one pretends that there is a pretense of bilingualism. since my hebrew is the weakest of anyone around the table, we uni-lingually go about business in hebrew, trying to make the meeting as quick and painless as possible. sometimes at more ”formal” events like board meetings and the organization’s annual “general assembly,” introductions and welcomes will occur in both hebrew and arabic, but as soon as its time to get down to the nuts and bolts, everyone switches into the dominant common language.

everyday i find myself more frustrated with my deteriorated arabic skills and more convinced that I need to invest significant time and energy into learning this language. i don’t think it’s the fault of any individual jewish israelis that they weren’t raised bilingually with arabic. yet, even though all the jews in the office are working on learning arabic, they are a long way off from being able to conduct a bilingual staff meeting. and as much as the people I work with, both jewish and arab, believe in equality and bi-national cooperation, ive spent a good deal of time wondering; in a bi-national society, can you have equality without bilingualism?