Vita

Hila Amit (b. 1985, Tel-Aviv) is a freelance researcher, Hebrew teacher and author. She is the founder of the International Hebrew School (learnhebrewnow.com). She holds a PhD in Gender Studies from SOAS, University of London, and a Master’s in Gender Studies from the University of Tel-Aviv. Her first fiction book, Moving On from Bliss (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2016), was awarded the Israeli Ministry of Culture Prize for Debut Authors. Her academic work stems from the intersection of Queer Theory, Migration and Diaspora Studies, Postcolonial Thought and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Her research focuses on political activism, queer kinship, national belonging, and diasporic communities. In her book, A Queer Way Out – Israeli Emigration and Unheroic Resistance to Zionism (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2018), she argues that emigration from Israeli is a subversive act that it symbolises a refusal to answer Zionism in the currency of heroism and active resistance. She was awarded the ECPR Joni Lovenduski Prize in Gender and Politics for her dissertation in 2017.

Berlin - The New Zion:
The Revival of the Hebrew Language
in Contemporary Berlin

As more and more Israelis emigrate from their homeland and express criticism regarding the state of Israel, this research explores forms of diasporic resistance to Zionism. The research will focus on the ways Israeli emigrants promote the use of Hebrew in the diaspora, and specifically in Berlin. This is important as some of these emigrants emphasize the diasporic use of Hebrew must be considered under a political framework.

Several events in Berlin, as well as the establishment of a Hebrew Library and a Hebrew literary journal called Mikan Vaeilach (translation: From Here and Onward) will be explored from a political perspective that seeks to disconnect and undermine the inherent relationship between Israel and Hebrew, a relationship that has hardly been questioned since the establishment of the state of Israel. The Israeli case offers an interesting opportunity to investigate the relationship between language and nationalism.