JIPSC Interview No.2「What is Aravrit？」

　Due to COVID-19, we have been forced to prepare for the 18th Japan-Israel-Palestine Student Joint Conference remotely. However, even under this circumstance, we thought, there are somethings we can do. Thus we set up the new project called "What is Israel/Palestine for you?"

　In this project, we interview people who are involved in activities related to the Middle East in Japan, Israel, and Palestine.

　For our second installment, we spoke with Ms. Liron, who is working on a language initiative in Israel! As a typeface designer, she created a new writing system called Aravrit. She began 3 types of activities with Aravrit; designing words, holding talks and workshops, and selling products with Aravrit on it. She also made a speech in TED about her inventions and activities.

　In this interview, we asked her why she decided to follow this path and how she came up with the idea.

Outline
1. What is Aravrit?
2. Three Types of Activities with Aravrit
3. Aravrit Came Out of Life in Haifa
4. Creation of Aravrit
5. Future Perspective of Aravrit
6. Summary

We are in the interview!

１. What is Aravrit ?

ーCan you tell us about Aravrit and the activities you do with that?

　First of all, Aravrit is a hybrid new writing system. This is the combined system of Hebrew and Arabic. And its structure is the top part is Arabic and the bottom part is Hebrew and letters are integrated. So it has the same meaning in Hebrew and Arabic. 

　In other words, Arabic speakers can read the top part of a word and Hebrew speakers can read the bottom.So actually two people who read different languages can look at one word, and at the same time, they can understand the same meaning in their own languages. 

　Moreover, they realize there is another language attached, and they are not ignoring this language. Therefore, they realize the other people around them who speak another language, live in a different culture. So this is what “Aravrit” is. (Below are samples of Aravrit and their meaning in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.)

Home/Bayt/Bayt

 Water/Maym/Maan

２. Three Types of Activities with Aravrit

　There are 3 types of activities that I am doing with Arabrit.

　First of all, I am designing specific words that I want to design and offering to make custom design for someone who wants to use Aravrit for their company or their organization or their shop. So it's an activity to support dialogue and there are a lot of organizations that say they want to support dialogue among people who live in different cultures and they ask me to design the Aravrit words for them. So the added value is what people understand and also what the companies care about.　

　Another thing I do with Aravrit right now is a lot of talks and workshops. Normally I go around the world about once a month. I travel and talk about this project and give workshops about it. But right now in Israel, it is a bit difficult situation to travel, so I am giving some online workshops because everyone is moving to online of course. So this is what I am doing.

　And the workshops, it is really nice because people I teach the methods, even if they can not read or write Hebrew or Arabic, they still learn the methods and get some templates and examples and they create their own Aravrit. So this is also an exercise in compromising to know which part you have to keep for the letter and which part you can let go off. And this is the second type of activities,

　And the third type is the online shop. I sell products such as necklaces and T-shirts for people who want to say a message of life together but without saying it with their mouths, just by showing it.

　Show it, use it and wear it. And this is also an important part of Aravrit because although it was shown in Museums and exhibitions I think Aravrit lives mostly in our daily lives. So if people carry it with them, wear it and use it, this is the best interaction because someone can read it and talk to you about it and they can share their experiences. It can create such an amazing dialogue.

　So these are three main things that I am doing with Aravrit. Also, I am talking about this project on social media, and interviews. I talked about this and a lot of topics come out from Aravrit.

ーI visited your homepage and watched you talking in the TED in Vienna. It was very amazing.

　Yes, thank you. In Vienna, it was interesting because there were a thousand people who didn’t know Hebrew and Arabic. but still the story of Aravrit and the concept of that attracted them. Also showing the message by using letters and tools, you feel comfortable with this. This is the message to talk to them.

３. Aravrit Came Out of Life in Haifa

ー You are from Haifa aren’t you? Can you tell us about Haifa?

　Haifa is the city where I was born and grew up and still live in. It is the third-largest city in Israel. Israel is a very tiny country anyway but it is the third-largest city that we have and it is a really beautiful city because there is a mountain (Mount Carmel) and you can see the ocean from the top of the mountain. You can also go to the beach. There is a lot of nature here. And this city is one of the example city for coexistence because Jews and Arabs live together in the same city. So this is one of the example cities where people live peacefully side by side.

Photos are taken at Jisr az-Zarqa

ーIn TED, you said that Haifa is more like parallel existence than coexistence.

　This is actually the continuation of this question and even the reason why I began to work on Aravrit. I grew up and still live in the city for coexistence, but it would be more of a poster city. This is what people would say about the city.

　However, I never learned Arabic. A lot of people in Israel are Hebrew speakers. And many of them, they do study Arabic but I never studied Arabic. I never learned it at school.

　And one day I was walking down the street, I looked at the trilingual street sign. In Israel, there are three languages on every sign. Almost every sign, there are Hebrew, Arabic, and English, so Latin letters. And at that moment I realized actually I was ignoring one-third of the sign. I am reading Hebrew, and I know the Latin is there but I am not even paying any attention to the Arabic. And it made me think maybe we don't really live in coexistence.  

　Maybe we just say that we live in coexistence, but actually we live our own life and the other people live in their own life and there is almost no interaction.

　So in the TED, I was talking about "parallel existence", not coexistence. This is why I was started because I wanted to change this for me. I did not want to ignore the Arabic, I want to live in coexistence, not in a parallel existence.

ーIsn’t there any description of Arabs in the school textbooks? Don’t you have any chance to know about them?

　In history class, we mainly lean the history of war. We have English class and Arabic class as the third language, because everyone studies English and another language. As for the third language, some study Arabic, and some like myself studied French. It is the decision of the school mostly. So if you study Arabic, yes you learn grammar and vocabulary. But I can say that you can become an adult in Israel without knowing any words in Arabic. And then no one thinks it’s weird. I think this is the problem.

４. Creation of Aravrit

― How did you come up with this idea, “Aravrit”?

　What I wanted to do is, I wanted to create a project that will give the same respect on the sign for Hebrew and Arabic. I realize that the Arabic in the street sign is not well designed and combined on the layout. It is not really combined very well. So ever since I wanted to say the messages using my own tools which are typefaces and fonts, because I am a typeface designer.

　And I wanted to say the message which is very authentic to me. Then I started thinking about how I can combine things that look very different. Hebrew and Arabic script look extremely different. I started thinking about it and researching it. At some point, I remember the French Ophthalmologist, his name is Dr. Louis Émile Javal, discovered something about the Latin letters which I really loved. He discovered that if you wanted to read Latin, you can only look at the top part, and you can read it.

　And I really love this and I want to see if it also works for Hebrew. It did not work for Hebrew, like for the Latin. But I realized if I see the bottom part of Hebrew, I can actually read. And I also checked on Arabic, and if you look at the top part of the Arabic, I can read it. This is how I decided that this will be my new writing system. The top part will be Arabic and the bottom will be Hebrew. It would always be the same words, people could read at the same time. Then I just started connecting letters, creating words, and checking if people can read it.

Process of designing Aravrit for Jerusalem

ーI thought there are some similarities between Hebrew and Arabic but not all characteristics seem to be similar.

　So Hebrew and Arabic linguistically they have a lot of similarities. Because they are both Semitic languages, and reading from right to left and written in the same tool. But when you look at them, they are very different. Hebrew is very tight and square and Arabic is a lot more flowing and it is written in a connected way. There is a really really big difference.

　This is the challenge to try and combine them. But also the sound of the words, some are very similar in Hebrew and Arabic but most of them do not sound similar at all. So they are not even using the same sounds. So this made me realize very very early on that I needed to make all the possible combinations of every Hebrew letter and every Arabic letter, so I can actually construct any words that I want.

５. Future Perspective of Aravrit

ーDo you want to use Arabrit for education or just for design?

    This is already been shown for kids learning both languages. It’s also in one official textbook for Arabic speakers who are learning about Hebrew so they get exercises and they learn about stories. I am attending a lot of educational conferences and using this like a motivation tool for students to learn other languages. I think this is the future because for children Aravrit is very simple and it’s not complicated. They can just read it. So everyone can read it but for children, it’s very very easy.

ーI know you are not a political person but do you think this is the “peace” activity?

　Actually I posted it on Instagram about this topic, about peace because a lot of people asked me to design the word for peace. And I say no. This isn’t because I don’t want peace. I want peace very much just like everyone else in Israel. I think that Aravrit definitely promotes peace. 100 percent it does. It brings us passion. It makes people think about the other one. I get a lot of images which telling me “wow I just now realize that I do not have Arabic on the street sign in my city. I just realize that I don’t have any Arab friends for instance. 

　My mom whenever she wears the necklace of Aravrit people come to talk to her and every time she comes back she has another friend which is Arab and just because of the necklace they started talking to her. So this promotes the practical way not in a state’s government way, but just in daily life.

　The reason I don't want to design the word peace is that I think it kind of doubles the messages.

　I think peace comes out when the chain of the letters affects their combination.

　And I would prefer to use more daily words. To show this, people feel to get peace by seeing this. We do not need to say peace and show peace.

ーUsing the same languages promotes understanding of each other. It means it creates a new culture and it will be a tool that we take over this new culture with. And this kind of activities will be the first step which is an amazing point.

　I also agree about this. And I think this is maybe one of the reasons why a lot of people around the world and in Israel love Aravrit. And I think it is because using languages and using letters, these two things are the basics of communication in daily life. This is really basic. But language is the means of communication. And letters are something we see and we just read it. We don't say Okay I am going to read. We just read it. So I think these things make the Aravrit very approachable. Anyway, It’s letters, anyway it’s words.

　The concept that you know and take this to modify them, to do something with them, all a sudden something clicks you change your perception or something. You get your ideas about what you can do or what you should do. So I completely agree with you I think the language is the best means of communication.

ーThank you.

６. Summery

　We hope that Aravrit will be a bridge between the speakers of Hebrew and Arabic, and beyond the regions, it will be a motivation tool for everyone to learn other languages!!

　Once again, We would like to thank Ms. Liron for giving us time and opportunity to interview.

　We will release a Japanese version of this article as a special edition soon. Please check it out!

　The following is a site about Aravrit. You can buy necklaces T-Shirts and more with Aravrit on it, so please take this opportunity to visit!

▷Click here.

*All the photos and images regarding Aravrit are provided by Ms. Liron. We appreciate that.