Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Ronit Ricci: Breaking Down History, Building Future Bridges

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

A conversation between an Indonesian and an Israeli about a forgotten history and how our capacity to pursue, receive and transform knowledge can lead to a better understanding of each other. Professor Ronit Ricci is Sternberg-Tamir Chair in Comparative Cultures and Associate Professor, Departments of Asian Studies and Religion, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem; and Associate Professor, School of Culture, History, and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra. Her book, “Contentious Belonging: The Place of Minorities in Indonesia” addresses fundamental questions about Indonesia's tolerance and acceptance of difference, and examines the extent to which diversity is embraced or suppressed.

I find Indonesia a very fascinating and important country, and I think there's a great deal to learn from its history and from its literatures and from its other arts, and of course also in many other areas, but I'm sticking here to the things that I work on. And so for me, the opportunity to introduce Indonesia to Israeli students with something, and still is something very special and very important to me. This is Endgame. Hello, people,

we're coming Professor Ronit Ritchie, chair from Department Asian Studies in Hebrew University. Hi, Ronit. Hi. Thank you so much to be here. Thank you so much for making it to our show. I know you're a few of your few people. you're a few hours, you know, away from us.

Appreciate doing a Zoom call. I want to spend, you know, the next hopefully hour and a little bit more to talk about, you know, how you grew up and what you're busy with or what you've been busy with and what you think makes sense for Indonesia to be culturally richer. Not that it's not rich, it's already rich, but I think, you know, the mission is really for, how Indonesia could expose itself, how it could project its soft power to the world in hopefully a wider manner. Please tell us where and how you grew up and what got you interested into Indonesia. So first of all, thank you very much for having me today. It's a pleasure to be here. I grew up in Jerusalem. I was born in the United States, but when I was very young, my parents,

moved to Israel. My mother returned. She grew up here and my father immigrated to Israel. So I grew up here and after finishing high school, I served in the Israeli army, which is something that everyone here does. And then I went to the university and I studied psychology and Indian languages and literatures. Wow. And somehow I got very, very fascinated with India. I had also traveled there for about six months before going to university. And so I continued. I also did a master's degree, and I was mostly interested in the literary side of things. While I was doing my MA, my professor here at the university suggested to me that I considered doing a PhD on Indonesia. Now, for me, that was a complete surprise and also a complete unknown.

I had never been to Indonesia. I barely sort of knew where it was on the map. But because Israel and Indonesia do not have diplomatic relations and never have had such relations, it's a country that we here know very little about. And so when he suggested it, it seemed, you know, I had to think about it for a while, but basically, and make a decision. But basically, it was for me, like opening a door to an unknown world, and it felt like a very, it might be a very big, fascinating adventure.

And so I thought, okay, why not? And that's really, I mean, that's kind of my story about how it all began, because it was a place that I didn't really know anything about. but the only thing I did know, and that was really the connection, the initial connection was because I had been studying about India, that India and Indonesia, at least in ancient times, shared a great deal and that there were many elements of Indian civilization that were adopted and adapted in Indonesia. But I had a very sort of fuzzy general sense of that.

Now, presumably your professor was already, familiar with Indonesia or he just thought it was. Yeah, my professor's name is David Schulman. He's a world renowned specialist on India. He knew he knew something about Indonesia. He had been to Indonesia once, I think, he read widely about it and he thought it would be very interesting to introduce that field to Israeli academia because there was no one of working on Indonesia at all, on any aspect of that. And so then I went to the United States to study. I did a PhD.

During those years, I also went to Indonesia, spent a year in Jokh, Jakarta. And when I finished, when I completed the PhD, I then had a postdoctoral fellowship in Singapore. I spent two years in Singapore. Then I got a job at the Australian National University in Canberra. And finally, after all of those years of being away, about 15 or 16 years in total of being away from Israel, studying, traveling, raising a family, you know, starting family. And after all of that, I was able to return to Israel, which is something that I was hoping to do,

but wasn't sure would be possible. And really one of the reasons that I was able to return here was that there was a job that opened up. And I knew that I would be able to actually not just have this knowledge that I gained along the way, but that I would be able to teach and to share it with others. Talk a little bit about what made you stay as long as one year in Georgia, and did it change your predisposition, you know, from earlier times or did it even reinforce certain things that you had thought about Indonesia?

Yeah, well, of course, it changed my perspective. It deepened, you know, my perspective. I had been studying Bahasa Indonesia and also a little bit of Bahasa Jawa in the United States. But of course, it's always better to study a language in situ, you know, to be surrounded by other people who speak it, who speak it naturally, not like you speak to students in a classroom, which is, you know, slower and more correct and everything. And that year in Georgia was very, very important in all kinds of ways. So just living, you know, day-to-day life in an Indonesian city. And I was there with my family and my children went to a local teca. And that was also very important because we got to know, you know, we got to know neighbors. We got to know the parents of other children. We got to see how young children were raised, you know.

And of course, there are in different places. There are different ideas about what it means to be a parent, what it means to be a child. what kids do, what they don't do. So that was also very interesting and very significant. I felt it allowed me, you know, not just an intellectual academic perspective, but much wider view. And in terms of what I was doing, research-wise, I was actually doing my dissertation research. I don't know if this is the right time to talk about it, but basically I was. I decided from my dissertation to study a particular textual tradition and in its many variations.

And the basic story of this text is it talks about a meeting in 7th century Arabia between the Prophet Muhammad and a Jewish leader by the name of Abdullah Ibn Salam. And Abdullah Ibn Salam comes to the priest. prophet with a thousand questions that he had prepared in advance that he had thought about in advance. And he approaches the prophet and he says that he would like to ask him these 1,000 questions. And if the prophet replies correctly, then Ibn Salam, along with all of his people, because he's described as a rabbi or as the leader of the Jewish people at the time, they will all embrace Islam. So this is the sort of the basic outline of the story.

and the questions I wanted to ask and use this textual tradition as a window were questions about the Islamization of Indonesia, of Java in particular, but not only Java. And the ways in which we can study religious conversion, religious change, Islamization through the perspective of literature and through the perspective of text. Because there have been many studies about the Islamization of Indonesia and the region, some of them based on archaeology, some on history, some on linguistics. I mean, you know, there are many perspectives that you can take. And I wanted to take the literary perspective and also to compare it to what was happening in this regard in South India. So again, at that time, I was still very much connected to my past of working on India. And so I compared the two regions, Indonesia and South India.

Now, in Jogja, I was mainly going every day to a library, especially in the Purofaku Alaman in Jokhakarta, which has a very wonderful manuscript library. And just struggling, struggling, trying to read the Japanese versions of this story, little by little, you know, managing a little bit more and a little bit more. Amazing. Amazing. Now, Abdullah Ibn Salam was older and Prophet Muhammad, right? He was, what, 10 to 20 years older? He was, yeah, sorry, yeah.

Yeah, and draw the picture again in terms of how that conversation between Prophet Muhammad and him would have repercussions on the Islamization of India vis-a-vis that in Indonesia? Yes. Yes, so, yes, so, so, so, I didn't explain what actually happened. The outline is that there are these thousand questions. It's usually in Malay. I looked also at Malay version, so it's called Heqayat Sribu Masail, or just Sribu Masail or Sribu Masala.

In Java, it's actually called Srat Samud. And Samud is the Javanese name given to Abdullah Ibn Salam. So in the Japanese title, we have less of this. the framework of the 1,000 questions. But what happens is the prophet says, you know, of course, please go ahead, ask me these questions. And then the rest of the text is, I wouldn't even say it's a debate, the question and answer debate, but it's more of a Samud or Ibn Salam asked a question.

The prophet replied. He asked the next question, he gets a reply. So most of the text is made up of these. questions answer question answer and there are not a thousand of them but there are several hundred usually depending on the version and then by the end Abdullah I bin Salam says I acknowledge your truth and I see that you know you are the prophet of truth you are the final prophet and therefore I accept your religion and there is sometimes also a description of it but but what allows it to be such a

what I thought was a very good text for comparison is that the questions and and the answers are different from one version to another. And so that allows you to see what was the agenda for different communities throughout history in terms of what was important to them, what were they trying to figure out, what questions were, you know, at the top of the list in terms of understanding Islam. Because I think, you know, we can take it very literally, we can take it more metaphorically in terms of thinking about the process of Islamization. Another thing I want to say, because you started by asking me about my own background, and this is related, that when I set out to study Indonesia, as I said, I knew very little about it.

It was a place that I thought was very, very different and distant from my own. And that's what was, you know, we're drawn to learn about something that's very different from us. We're curious. And then after studying for several years in the United States and looking at different literary corpuses and learning some history, and I came across mention of this 1,000 question, the book of 1,000 questions. And it really fascinated me. And I thought to myself, in the end, here I am studying about a Jew and a Muslim in dialogue. And this is something that is entirely related to my own life, my own personal history.

the kinds of things I try to advocate for now in Israel. So that in itself was very interesting for me to see that, although I thought I was going to a very, very distant, a different place, I wound up, first of all, finding a topic that very much spoke to me personally, but also indicated that, in fact, it's not such a different place in many ways. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, he ended up converting to Islam. And I think, you know, you know, I've been telling people that Indonesia is a place that's uniquely, you know, one that has gone through, you know, Hinduism for 600 years, Buddhism for 400 years, and Islam, colonialism, colonialism, for 400 years, and Islam, colonialism, colonialism, colonialism, colonialism, colonialism, colonialism, colonialismization,

and Christianity, independence, democratization for six, seven hundred years. You know, we go through these episodes, right? Where I think, you know, we're innately so tolerant with so many differing forces or differing influences. And it's not unlike what you're going through in your part of the world, right? where there were so many differing influences or forces. And the fact that, you know, the city of Medina, you know, in the old days was a place where I think there was a lot of tolerance amongst different Abrahamic, you know, beliefs. And that is, I think, the kind of picture that we want to basically draw for the future of, you know, many people, you know.

Definitely. I mean, I would like to say that we are also tolerant over here in our part of the world. But we could use, we could, you know, we could take a few lessons probably from Indonesia. But I think you're right that there is, in Indonesian history, there is this great openness to change and to adapt, adapting and to accepting, you know, ideas and trends from elsewhere. I think, you know, in the past especially, this was often seen by scholars, certainly in the colonial period, as if Indonesia was always somehow at the receiving end of something, you know, of Islam or Indian civilization. But I think that, and so that the Indonesian were just accepting something from elsewhere, as if they didn't have their own, you know, enough of their own culture or, but I think of it very differently.

kind of openness is a very positive thing and it also allows for incredible creativity. Because again, I'm talking only about, you know, my small world of knowledge. I'm not, I can't say, you know, much about other things, but I don't want to generalize. But when you look at the textual tradition of Indonesia, when you look at the what people did with texts that came from, probably came initially from Array or from other places in the Muslim world or from India, the level of creativity and originality that you see in the way these texts were rewritten and reshaped is incredible. So if you look at it superficially, you could say,

oh, they just took this from over here and this from over there, but in fact, it's something very, very different. Fascinating. Well, I mean, it's probably a good time to pivot to, you know, the book that you wrote about Sarandip, Lanka, and Ceylon, which basically went through that experience as early as the 17th century where Indonesia was actually projecting its influences onto some other island beyond.

Yes, well, I spent several years studying the history and the literature of a community that today is known as the Sri Lanka Malays. And these people, this is a community that is still part of Sri Lankan society today. But it started out in the late 17th century with people who were exiled or sent in various capacities by the Dutch, who were then already ruling parts of Indonesia, the Viof Théos, the Dutch East India Company. sent them to the island of Ceylon, today Sri Lanka, which was also under Dutch control in part. And this really is this story is one part or one chapter in the larger story of forced migration and banishment in the colonial period. We know, I mean, this is I think more well known for Indonesian study history.

we know that there were people exiled or sent away from various within Indonesia, within what's now Indonesia, like Dikonegro or, you know, or other, or Sheikh Yusuf. Sheikh Yusuf of Makasar, who was also an important figure, he was actually sent away to Ceylon. So the Dutch used exile as a punishment and also to deter people from doing things that were viewed as rebellious. or anti-Dutch, but they also sent away people who were criminals, who were convicts, as well as servant, slaves, soldiers who served soldiers from across the archipelago who served in the Dutch colonial army. So all of these types of people are the forefathers, were the forefathers of this community that is known today as Malays. And so I read about them. My first

came across mention of this community in a footnote in a book that I was reading and I was very immediately very interested because I first of all because I had not heard about this subject and I thought how is it that I've been studying Indonesian history and I never heard about this? Well I can sure a lot of Indonesians are probably even heard about this you know yeah yes yes so I think I mean that's also in my opinion an interesting question why Why was this left out? Why was this episode left out of the history books or, you know, maybe the more conventional history books that kids study at school?

I mean, the history books can't contain everything. History is much, much bigger than, you know, the 200 pages or whatever that you have in the book. But still, choices are made. And I think it is interesting to think in modern Indonesia to think about why the question of exile and banishment, was left out of the history books. And we might think, especially in terms of the Suharto period, we might think of reasons why this was not really discussed. But the other thing that really sort of, I think, drew me to this topic,

except for the curiosity, okay, I've never heard about it. So it's interesting. But I think also just the thought of people in places like Java or Maddo, or Bali or Ambon or getting on a boat being shipped away in the 17th century or the 18th century. Most of them were sent away during the 18th century, including very important people from the central Javanese courts, especially Karta and Surah Kata in the early 18th century. What was it like? What kind of experiences do people have at that time?

being sent away probably never to return. Some of them were able to return. Some of them were returned after death and reburied in places like Java. But basically it was a one-way ticket. And I thought, so I thought the human element of this story was very, very interesting to try to explore. Were they able to assimilate with the pre-existing ethnicities? in Ceylon? Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good question. For sure, some of them did. There's no doubt. However, one of the things that's really sort of interesting and I think also remarkable about these people is that despite, you know, the time that has passed, we're talking about, you know, 300 years and even longer, they have maintained a cultural and also religious identity that's very strong.

They are a small community. They're about 50,000 of them. Probably, you know, it's not the numbers. I'm not really clear, but that's the official figure. And they still speak a form of Malay. It's now mostly a language spoken at home. But they still maintain the linguistic connection. And also at least into the 20th century, it's no longer really true now,

but into the 20th century, they continued to write in the Malay language. And one of the things that struck me was that the materials that I was able to find during this research were so similar really to what you find in other parts of the Malay world, the Indonesian Malay world. So the same stories, the same writing style, the same genres like Shai, or Hikayat. So although there is no doubt that many of them, you know, assimilated and married, you know, into other groups, and we don't really have a record of how many of those they were

or have, you know, sort of overtime left the community. They still manage to remain a distinct community within Sri Lanka. Now, probably most of the marriages and assimilation, if that's what we call it, happened between them and the Muslim community that already existed in the colonial Ceylon, which was mostly a Tamil, Tamil-speaking community, and less so with a Singhhala. But it's also important to say that in the early stages in the 17th and 18th century, we do have. records not only of Muslim people coming from the archipelago. There's evidence of Christians and there's evidence of Hindus because there were Balinese who were conscripted, I guess you could say, into the colonial army and people from Ambon, from Eastern Indonesia who are Christians. It's also mentioned, I mean, not just because of their place of origin.

But when we look at the community today, the two things I would say that really distinguish them are their adherence to Islam and their use of the Malay language. So these are the two things that have remained with them. How in your view would they differ from the Malay community in South Africa, who you could argue would have been banished or exiled to some extent, right? Yes. I know less about the community in South Africa, but I can say that it's true. There is a community that's today known as the Cape Malays in South Africa,

especially in the area of Cape Town, but there is also the aforementioned Sheikh Yusuf of Makasa, who was a very important religious leader, but also very very important religious leader, but also very important anti-Dutch fighter. He was sent first to Ceylon, he spent 10 years there. And he was one of the people who arrived there very early in the 1680s. And after 10 years, the Dutch were still worried about him, even though he was a very old man by them, especially by the standards of the late 17th century, he was very old and he had already been in exile for 10 years for a decade. Still, they felt that his connections, his networks were

too strong, too threatening. And then he was shipped further afield to the Cape. And so there is still a place today where he is buried. I mean, he has several burial sites, but one of them is in South Africa. And that place is called Makasar for his place of origin. So there is this community, but the so-called Malays in South Africa, they were a much more mixed, even at the beginning, but certainly today a much more mixed population. And many of them were sent to South Africa as slaves. There were many slaves from across Indonesia and also from Sri Lanka and India sent to South Africa.

And that became a much, much more mixed population with the local people. than in Sri Lanka. There were also some people from royal families sent to the Cape, but many more were sent to Ceylon. And so that may explain also, at least in part, the fact that this community remained more distinct, also because of these status differences, that of course they couldn't maintain the way they were maintained

in Indonesia, but still we have evidence of people marrying within elite families or trying, at least to maintain some of the status they had. They were also often living in separate quarters because the Dutch were watching over them much more than on other people who were considered less important and less influential. You know, let's go back to the Sarandip, Blanca and Ceylon book, right? You talked about many of the literary remnants or even, you know, still existing today, right? Ongoing, you know, within, very much within the culture, the day-to-day culture of these, you know, 50,000 people living there. In your view, how would that literary journey differ from what we have gone through in the last two to three hundred years?

Or do you see commonality in the way that they actually were leaving these literary experiences for their children, grandchildren, and beyond? I think in what happened in Ceylon was that probably some of the texts were brought along with the early exiles. Especially, again, especially people who were from the upper echelons of society and probably had more access to writing and to manuscripts. because most of what we still have from, again, we have very, very little from the 18th century. We have a few letters, a few documents. There are many Dutch documents, but I mean documents written in the Malay language or in another Indonesian language in Ceylon. That is very, very rare.

From the 19th century, we have more. So people were probably copying and recopying. books that they had brought with them or maybe putting down in writing stories that they had heard orally in their families. Again, it's hard to reconstruct the very early period of this. And also, especially in the 19th century when Ceylon was under British rule, because in 1796, the British took over Ceylon. they kept, for a while at least, they kept trying, especially to recruit soldiers from across the Indonesian archipelago and to bring them to Ceylon in order to sort of fortify their rule.

The Malays, and when I say Malays, I should have explained this, but Malay is a kind of an umbrella term that the community itself is using. But in fact, it's made up of people who are descendants of people. people from all over the archipelago and also the Malay Peninsula. So that's another interesting question, how they seem to be known as Malay. But so they were considered a martial race, just like other groups in British India. The British, you know, looked at the population and they picked out certain groups like the Gurkhas, for example, in Nepal or the Punjabi. So the Malays were considered a martial race.

was considered very courageous, very brave, willing to, you know, to fight till the end. The concept of namuk, you know, to what we say in English, to run amok, but it's actually derives from Malay. That was, that appears again and again and again in the records, that these people were willing, you know, to run amok. They were willing, if there was an enemy, they would do anything. So therefore, the British sort of inherited these people in their army from the Dutch, and they kept trying to recruit additional people

from the Indonesian archipelago in the 19th century. And I'm saying this because there was a flow of sort of new people also coming in, and they would also bring manuscripts and stories and texts. And these were sort of retold at least into the early 20th century. And then there's also some original production of text. So for example, there are some shire, some written in poetic meters that were written in Ceylon by people who were descendants

and still were able to master the rules of these genres and write in Malay. One very famous case is a book titled Chaira Fide al-Aid, which was written at the turn of the 20th century, looking back sort of in recapping the history of the community in Ceylon. long and connected with what you asked, you know, about passing to the next, passing this on to the next generation, the author whose name was Baba Unus Saldin, he says explicitly in his introduction that he is writing this book because he's worried that the younger generation, that's always the case we always worry about the younger generation doesn't know enough or doesn't remember enough.

So he's writing this in order to make sure that they will know the history of their community in Ceylon. So it doesn't go back to what happened in Indonesia or where you know what happened to their forefathers that caused them to be sent to Ceylon. It just

begins with the island itself. It begins with the story of Adam, Nabi Adam, who is the forefather, not just of all Muslims, but of all of humanity who was banished from paradise and happened to find himself on

Mount Sarandib. This is very old Arab tradition. So it opens with that and that sort of locates the Malays not only in a godforsaken island to where they were exiled, but also at the place where humanity first touched this earth. And then he goes on to talk about their own history on the island. That's amazing. So that's an example of how, you know, how texts both came with the early exile, came from Indonesia, came from the Malay, peninsula, but then people continue to use the language and also the literary genres to produce their own literature and history. You know, they should come out here and tell this story to the Indonesians. You know, I think they would love to. I mean, I think, you know, that touches on other questions, you know, more political questions of the present, right? We have the history. a long history and then we have the present what's happening in the present and and in fact you know

Malaysia has been much I don't know if to say much better but you know and you know I mean I don't but Malaysia has been much more sort of yeah has acknowledged them a lot more yeah they've been more they've been more proactive they've been more and they've been more and not just in acknowledgement but also in funding so so they are like annual Hari Bahasa Malayu, I think it's called, where they encourage the children to write essays in Malay or poems, and there's a competition. And various things like that, which are really supported also financially by the embassy of Malaysia. So if you have any contacts with the Indonesian side of things, you can... Well, I'm hopeful that some people will watch this content and, you know, recognize, you know, something that needs to be done.

I met a few, I met many, many Malay families because my research was basically based on going from family to family and searching for documents because there is no archive or library where you can access this literature or these documents. But along the way, I did meet a few people who had traveled to Indonesia and looked for, you know, looked for search for their roots. It's very difficult, almost impossible or to find, you know, actual. relatives because most people in Sri Lanka have absolutely no documentation of their genealogy. Again, except for people who claim to be from royal families, they don't have documents, but it might be that these kinds of families kept the memory alive, again, because of their status. But people do not have any documentation. So it's very hard for them to come to Indonesia and actually find, you know, blood,

relatives, but people have traveled, have come to Indonesia, just to see the place, you know, and to visit places that they may have heard about in family stories and found it very moving and found it. What people always said was that it felt in some ways very, very familiar, even though they had never been to Indonesia and even though a lot has changed, you know, over time and everywhere, but that there was something for them, especially the older people, there was something for them that felt very, very familiar. You know, I've been to Sri Lanka a few times, but I've not had the pleasure meeting

up with somebody who's a descendant of the Malay people, right, from Indonesia or the archipelago. But I've been to other places called Madagascar and South Africa, where I have met many people who just look like me. It's kind of weird. You know, and they're actually the ones who come up and tell me, hey, dude, you know, my ancestors came from your place two to 300 years ago, you know, from this island, from that island and all that. It's, it feels weird, but it feels really good. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

It's a special feeling. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and the looks, you're right. I mean, to me also, I mean, not all the people, because, of course, they're very mixed by now, but, you know, Here and there, I met someone who, yeah, who looked completely Indonesian or Javanese. And maybe I can mention one more thing really about the Javanese because that's also my sort of, you know, we're talking about Indonesia. But, of course, people who study Indonesia will usually study, you know, or at least emphasize one part of Indonesia more than another because it's a huge country and so diverse in so many ways. and it's hard to encompass everything.

So for me, it's Java. And one of the questions that really interested me was where, why is everything that we find in Malay? Again, we can't find a lot. Most of the documents and manuscripts have been lost, you know, the climate and people not really, you know, losing them or not passing them on. And so we have a small archive

of text, but why is it all in Malay? If people came from all over the archipelago, what happened to the other languages? And certainly if we're thinking about people like from the, you know, craton in Solo or, I mean, they must have, you know,

they must have known Japanese and people came from Bali, New Basa, Bali, etc. So, so here and there, very, very rarely, I did find, a few things written, very small, very small sections of text written in Bahasa Jawa.

And I think including a poem that may be familiar to some of the, you know, some people in the audience, it's called Kidung Ruemexoing Wongi, the song guarding in the night. Wow. You got me here. You got me. It's a poem that's attributed to Sunan Kalijjjjjog. you know, one of the leaders of the Wally Songha, that's nine wallies who are said to have brought Islam to Java. So it's a poem that offers protection and that like I said,

the song guarding in the night. So it's a poem that's supposed to offer protection from many things, from fire, from flood, from gin, you know, from the danger of various beings that lurk out there in the darkness. So I thought it was very interesting to find that particular poem among the writings of people who were themselves in exile, in a kind of a dark place or dark period of their own life. But it also indicates to us that there is room for much, much more research. My research was, you know, I mean, I worked very hard at it and it took me a long time, but it's still in some ways very preliminary.

And there is, I mean, especially for Indonesian students, you know, who may be looking for something to think about or to research further. So, I mean, the fact that we can find here and there a Japanese poem and maybe, you know, writings in other languages, that indicates that there is still a lot to uncover about this history, I think. Amazing. I'm just curious. You spent your whole day at your university talking about, you know, Indonesia and of course India to some extent. But how would the students react to what you have to say about all this? I hope I'm not boring them to death. Does it evoke even more curiosity?

This will take us, I think, to the number. next point that I want to bring up in terms of how we can actually become closer, right? And I think there is a lot to be done in order to try to get, you know, the two places to understand better and more closely. Yes, thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, no, thank you very much. These are students who are forced to take an elective with you, or these are actually

students who sign up who want to, you know, actually try to get a better understanding of what's happening in this part of the world. Yeah, thank you for asking me that because it's really something I do want to mention. So I mentioned that when I was able to come back to Israel after a long time of living away, one of my sort of main incentives was that I knew that I would be able to start developing this field of Indonesian studies in Israel, which is. It didn't really exist. And still, I'm at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We are the only university in the country that offers such a program

and that offers Bahasa Indonesia for the students and various courses on Indonesia. And to me, that was a challenge that I really wanted to embrace. And that is because you can see from everything I've said, you know, I find Indonesia a very fascinating and important. country and I think there's a great deal to learn from its history and from its literatures and from its other arts, you know, and of course also in many other areas, but I'm sticking here to the things that I work on. And so for me, the opportunity to introduce Indonesia to Israeli students with something, and still is something very special and very important to me,

in part, again, because it's a country that we don't have diplomatic relations with, and so people here know relatively little about it. Here and there are people who've gone to Indonesia and traveled or read about it, but in general, compared to other countries of the world, and compared to other countries in Asia, which people here know a great deal about or very interested in, like China or Japan or India. Indonesia is sort of sidelined. And so I wanted to change that as much as I could.

And another sort of aspect of this, another dimension, is the fact that because of the history of Islamization, because Indonesia has a very large Muslim population, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, really, I think, you know, the historical and cultural and religious and linguistic connections between Indonesia and the Middle East, go back hundreds of years and they continue today and Israel is located in this part of the world. And so I think that's another element that's very important for Israeli students to understand and to think about. And, you know, for all kinds of reasons, the students here and people in general, you know, are very used to thinking about Islam and Arabness as one and the same. and again this is sort of to be expected but I think it's very very important to expand their minds also on that and for them to understand that Islam is a global civilization and that the majority of Muslims in fact today

80% of them live outside of the Middle East it doesn't mean that the Middle East is not crucially important but it means that there's a lot out there that they should know about So, but back to your question, this is not like, no one is forced to take Bahasa Indonesia or the courses on Indonesia. I was only kidding. Yeah, no, I know, I know. But it also means that, you know, it means that the students have to choose to do this. So in some ways it would be good if, you know, if it was a mandatory course.

So then some people who think it's not interesting would actually discover that it is. But every year we have more students. We have now a beginner's course in Bahasa Indonesia and an advanced course. And then we have tech courses where a little bit even more advanced, where we read simple texts. I mean, we can't offer them yet at this point enough hours of language instruction so that they'll actually be very fluent. And this is mostly a question of funding.

But this is the first year that we have an Indonesian. Her name is Betty Susie Arjo, who is teaching the language. So she's the first Indonesian citizen who's teaching Indonesian in Israel, and that's wonderful. I have a course on, like an introductory course on Indonesian history and culture. We have a gamelan at the university, and so we have another faculty member teaching the music. We have a Gamalan workshop that students can sign up to. And also because that's still a very small program, we try to bring in guest lectures and people who will teach, you know,

for two or three months will teach like a mini course. And now with Zoom, in general, it's a disadvantage, I think, not to be able to really be on campus and interact, But Zoom has allowed us to also have guest lectures from Indonesia. And I find that the students on the whole are very curious and very interested. The ones who start learning the language realize very quickly, just as I did when I started learning it, that if they know Arabic, and even if they know Hebrew, without knowing Arabic, they will be familiar with many words in the Indonesian language.

And how you roll the R's too, right? How we roll the R's is similar. But I'll just give you an example that a daily life example, and that is that the days of the week, you know, in Bahasa Indonesia and in Hebrew, are basically the same, except for Mingu, which comes from Portuguese. But Senin Salazarabuk, Kamis, Jumat is a little bit different, and saktu. All of those are just the same.

So the students, you know, so that, just like you said about South Africa, you go and someone says, hey, you look like me. Yeah, it's catchy. And they start talking to, it makes, very early on, it makes a connection for them, you know, oh, I'm studying a very distant place, but look at the languages. There is a real connection. There is a real similarity. There is a real link via the Arabic language between Indonesian and Hebrew.

Hebrew or Indonesian and Arabic. And so I think relatively early on, they understand that there are many connections and comparisons to be explored. Plus, of course, there is the interest of studying about a place that is in many ways very different. We try to have, we've had several conferences here, we've had workshops, and two years ago, we even, this I must mention, because we had a Wayang performance. Wow.

And it was really a big success. We had over 200 people in the audience, which for Indonesia probably sounds very tiny. Was it Wayang Kulit or Wayang Kulit? We had a research group that was here for 10 months at the Israel Institute for Advanced Study of people, scholars working on Japanese literature. And one of them, Professor Ben Arps from Leiden University is also at Dalang. So we collected puppets from here and from there, and we had a screen built, especially for the performance. And the Jamelan played in the background, you know, accompanied the performance. And he did it in English with a little bit of, you know, a little bit of Indonesian or Japanese.

And he even, you know, inserted a little bit of Hebrew for the, you know, for the audience to laugh and to have fun. And it was very, very successful. So these are the kinds of things I think that are very important. You know, it's not only about talking and giving lectures and writing articles. It's about allowing people to experience something of the arts, of the music. That, you know, that these are all very important, I think, gateways to at least imagining Indonesia and hopefully also visiting it in the future for these students and others. What are your general expectations with respect to each one of your students that would have gone through your class,

that you think he or she would have gone a much better understanding of the differences of the two cultures or regions or countries or it's even more than that in that, you know, you would expect each one of these students to actually be able to do something good about bridging the gap, if there is any? Well, I think just knowing something about Indonesia, knowing where it's located in the world, knowing something about its history, knowing something about its diversity, because, you know, you know how it is. I mean, it's nothing special to Indonesia or to Israel, but people often can, tend to generalize out of ignorance or out of, yeah. And stereotype, yes, exactly.

And I think our job, you know, at the university more generally, not just about this, is to try and make people think, to try and make them be critical, to try and make them ask difficult questions, and to try and make them see that there's nothing, nothing simple, nothing black and white at all. And it's, when you're talking about your own society, it's always easier for you to see the complexity and the ambiguity because you know the place when you think about when you talk about another country about the other side of the world is a lot easier to just stereotype and and so I try to work against that but I think one of the ways which I think is good to in terms of trying to learn about a different society is also to see their commonalities and the similarities again not in a superficial one way, but to see, okay, there are some things that are similar or may seem similar on the surface,

but let's see if they really are similar. So in terms, just to mention very briefly, in terms of Israel and Indonesia that seem like completely different countries and, you know, and of course in terms of size and complexity, they are very, very different. But I think there are also some underlying similarities. For example, I always think that someone, should study the someone should compare bahasa indonesia and hebrew modern hebrew these are two countries that have had enormous success with their national language where in the early 20th century

in you know in indonesia there was a very low percentage of people who could speak i mean it wasn't even called bahasa indonesia but you know it was a form of malay then they made the decision you know at the this very famous conference you know to the fact that Bahasa, you know, Bahasa Indonesia. And all of the efforts that were made afterwards, you know, institutional efforts, personal efforts in order to make this into a national language. Sukarno was the guy that basically used that to unify and unite the country. Yes, exactly. As a form of unification and as part of the, you know, making people feel Indonesian. And several generations later, I mean, I don't have to tell you, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's, it's an,

It's become a natural language for newer generations of people born in the country. And with Hebrew, you know, there was a huge struggle about modern Hebrew because for different reasons, but many people felt that this was the language of prayer. This was an ancient language that should not be, you know, contaminated with everyday usage. But eventually the people who fought for, you know, for making it into the national language, they won. and we see a somewhat similar process, and we see a huge success in terms of course, of course there are also prices that you pay for having, you know,

elevating one language above all others. But I mean, in terms of thinking of the production, the literary, political, everyday production of in the language, and the use of the language, I think there are many similarities. They also both have this father figure. You know, you have Thakadir Ali Shabana, and we have someone by the name of Eliasel Ben Yehuda and how, you know, a single person,

not that they did, they really did it single-handedly, but the roles that they play. So, I mean, that's one thing that I could point out. And also more in terms of the present, I think it's very interesting to compare, you know, the roles of religion and state in Israel and Indonesia. Israel does not have a separation between religion and state. And Indonesia does.

at least officially, but we know that it's a very complicated subject, also in Indonesia. What is the relationship between the religion of the majority and the state? And how does that relationship affect things like education, like politics, like gender roles? And so Judaism and Islam are two religions that are very, very similar in many ways. I mean, most people don't think of it that way, but they actually, are very similar and they're similar in the way that they guide the believer through life. They have a very complicated structure of rules and regulations. It's a religion of practice.

And to look at these two countries, one where Judaism is so central and one where Islam is so central, and to see how they, for example, how they confront the question of minorities. So these are things that I try to point out to the students in order for them to actually be able to connect. Yeah. You know, I've been spending more and more time in the educational space, pretty much on a mission to further democratize ideas, right, while I'm seeing more and more of the polarization of ideas, right? And I think it's good that we have to, you know, that we have this ability to be independent in thinking about what's good in a long run for ourselves and ourselves and the people around ourselves.

And I think it's just a concern that ideas have gotten more and more polarized as of late. And I've been advocating that this is partly attributable to the role of technology, right? And to some extent, the role of politics. And we can go into, you know, what's been happening in your part of the world recently. But I'm off the view that, you know, to a large degree, this is politics more than anything, right? and how conversations have gotten so polarized in going way out to the left and going way out to the right at the expense of the diminution of the center or centrality.

And unfortunately, unfortunately, there's still a lot of people that belong to the center that I think could bridge the gap, you know, amongst ourselves or between us and yourself and many others. What's your view on this? Before we start talking about your other book, because I want to get to that, but I think this is a good segue, you know, to this point of the need to help, you know, further democratize ideas as opposed to polarize ideas. Yes, well, I'm all for it. And I agree with you.

I mean, I think technology, you know, has played a major role in the way that we, you know, it's in some way sort of destroy. or destroyed our attention spans. It's harder and harder for us to actually go deep into something, like to read a book from cover to cover rather than a text or an email or a Facebook post. I mean, I keep hearing that, you know, in order to get the attention of students, we need to, you know, write things that are shorter and shorter. But I'm not saying this like to blame the students. I also feel it on myself and on my colleagues.

I think it's more difficult for us to focus. And in fact, in order to understand another culture or in order to study history or literature or any of the things that we've been talking about or to understand yourself, you can't only use sound bites. You really need to, you know, to read a lot and to think and to get into the nuances of historical, you know, circumstances or circumstances of, for example, the production

of a particular text, you know, it's history, how it developed the way it did why. I mean, so these are things that require time and require concentration and it is becoming, I think, more challenging. And then also there is

there's the media, you know, what gets reported, what doesn't get reported? So what is emphasized. And that also shapes a lot of what we see and the way we see the world. So, you know, not to get, you know, too deep into recent events, but still one thing, you know, to say about what's happening here is that, you know, with all the really terrible violence of the last few weeks, there are many, many initiatives here in Israel.

Israel and Palestine, that try to bridge, bridge the gap. Not just now. I mean, all the time. I mean, in recent years, there are many initiatives in the fields of education, of sustainability, of interfaith initiatives, all kinds of things, academics, academia, things that are happening between Israelis and Palestinians, between Jews and Arabs, between neighbors who live in a, you know, mixed city, and are horrified by the eruption of violence.

These things barely get any coverage. They're very, very significant. They're actually extremely significant in the personal sense, but also for the communities and for the country. You rarely hear about them, even here, not to mention, you know, outside. So all of these things, you know, are, I think, very significant in how we you know, how polarized or not polarized we are. Yeah.

Well, let's pray that, you know, we get to be more and more open-minded so that we can understand each other a little bit better, yeah. Hey, I want to switch to your other book, you know, the contentious beginnings, a place for minorities. Contentious belonging. Belonging, sorry. Place for minorities. Talk about that.

I think it's important for us to hear your views about, you know. Yeah, well, that's a book that I edited. I didn't actually write the book. I co-edited it with Professor Greg Feeley from the Australian National University. And the ANU, the Australian National University for many years now has had something called the Indonesia Update. Once a year, there is a two-day conference. You can tell from the name. It's an update about some aspect of Indonesian society.

It always begins with a political update and an economic update where people who are very knowledgeable, either from Indonesia or from Australia, usually speak about those issues. And then there is a theme to the conference. So we did this together a few years ago and we thought it would be interesting to think more about the question of minorities in Indonesia, different kinds of minorities, be it religious minorities, minorities in terms of LGBT, in terms of people with disabilities, ethnic minorities. And so we invited a group of scholars who work on these issues anyway to present their work. And that was later collected into this volume. And I think, you know, I hope this is, I hope this for all of the books, but this is one that I really hope people in Indonesia will have access to.

we had some conversations about having it translated into Indonesian, but that didn't materialize. I'm not quite sure why. I don't know if the topic was seen as maybe a little bit sensitive or whether there were other considerations, but the bottom line is we still haven't been able to get it translated, and so it's not very widely widely read. What's your view about how Indonesia has and is and will likely treat minorities? Look, it's not really, you know, it's not something that I personally do research on. So I think, you know, again, I think that Indonesia is a very, very complex place and made up of so many different.

groups, you know, religious groups, ethnic groups, linguistic groups. It's very, very, it's a very fraught topic. It's very complicated. I mean, we all have our views, you know, about how, yes, of course, minorities should be treated fairly and they should have the same opportunities, and this should be part of the, you know, represented in the legal system. At the same time, we know there are many, many challenges in reality. And so I think, and if you look at the book, you see that it's a very mixed picture. There are some cases that are, you know, represent real success stories.

And in other ways, there are many challenges that still, you know, have to be overcome. And that's why I said earlier that this is also something that really speaks to me because I look at, you know, my own surroundings. And I think here, too, we have a long way to go until the minority, especially, of course, the Arab-Palestinian minority within Israel, which makes up 20% of the population. It's not a small minority.

Feels equal, feels that it has the same rights and the same opportunities as the Jewish majority. So I'm sort of very aware of the challenges and also of the gap that remains in most countries. I would say, between what we would like to see and what we actually have. And we have to keep working on it, exactly as you said, keep striving and working hard. It's one of the most important things, I think, to reach a point where all citizens of a country feel like they have equal opportunity. Sure. I've been quite vocal about this, you know, the fact that inequality in many parts of the world has gone up.

and I think it's important to usher the equalization of opportunities as opposed to outcomes more than ever. And I think it applies to yourself, ourselves here, and many other places around the world. Let's talk about the future, Ronnet. I want to get you to draw the picture where you think Indonesia is likely to go in the next five to ten years. and all the way to 2045. Tell us. And you can put that in the context of how, you know, your country and my part of the world could connect a little bit better. Because, you know, we all belong to, you know, the Abrahamic beliefs, right? We've all descended from the same person.

And I think it's upon us to be... to be understanding of the differences and to be understanding of the means and ways to address the differences so that we can coexist, you know, in a really cool way. Yes. Well, first of all, you know, for the next few years, I very much hope for Indonesia that the pandemic can be overcome. I mean, this is, this seems to be the number one thing right now. for people to remain healthy and safe, you know, and not to face illness and the hardship that comes with that to individuals and to families and to the country as a whole. I'm very, very much looking forward to the skies reopening above Indonesia because I miss it very much. And for me, to be away for a long period is difficult.

And I'm certainly not the only one. I know there are many, many people looking forward to coming back and visiting and working and studying and that this is something that I also hope for my students that they are able to do. And again, for the future, I hope it continues to be the amazing place that it is, that it can cultivate the tolerance towards minorities and that it remains peaceful. and successful. And again, from my sort of my corner of the world, I do hope that the day comes when Indonesia and Israel can have open relations, can have diplomatic relations. I understand the complexity.

I understand the sort of the obstacles to that at the moment. I hope very much that Israel from its side, you know, can do what needs to be done, to reach political solutions to the problems that we have here, to the very complex situation that really, I mean, we've seen again and again that violence and war is not a solution. It doesn't lead us anywhere. It always brings us back to the same place,

and then we're usually worse off than we were. It's not even the same place. It's a worse place than we were before and before that and before that. So I think it's very clear that's not a solution to anything. And I hope very much that we can find ways to reach political solutions with our neighbors and that that will hopefully also, I think that will also open the way to relations with Indonesia. And I think that two countries have a lot to gain from such a relationship. We have a lot to learn from each other and a lot to share.

but until that happens, I hope that we can continue building bridges, academic bridges, bridges of research, of studying, and bridges of friendship, even, you know, without waiting for the politicians. I mean, this kind of conversation that we're having is this kind of an interview and various other initiatives. I've invited, you know, Indonesian scholars to come to conferences that I organized it. I mean, these are the kinds of things that we can do right on really more or less on our own without waiting sort of for the major political changes to happen. And I think it does matter and it's our way of moving forward. It's one of the many little steps that we can take, right?

And if there's one big point that, you know, we've been making about ourselves is really to move up the latter in terms of our educational attainment, right? And you have so much to offer, right? And not to mention the technological, you know, advancements that we could learn from. And yes, we are, you know, the fourth largest country in the world, the third largest democracy in the world,

the largest Muslim country of the world. But I think we recognize where we may need some further you know, enhancements. And I agree with you, you know, we do see each other as being able to fulfill each other, you know, in so many dimensions. I understand your kids are fans of our instant noodles. Do you cook Indonesian food? Or? Here and there, but, uh, I'd always rather go to an Indonesian restaurant than cook myself because I'm not very good at it. We don't have an Indonesian restaurant per se sort of here, but because there are many, many pilgrims, Indonesian pilgrims who come here every year as tourists, or these packaged tours,

about 40,000 per year pre-COVID. That's a lot. That's a lot of instant noodles. No, so there are a few places that cater to the Indonesian tourists or pilgrims. Okay. Where you can here and there you can get something good. But the noodles, the Indomii or something similar to that. I didn't want to mention the brand, but that's okay.

Oh, okay. All right. Okay, sorry, advertising them in Israel. The instant noodles, you know, you can find them here. Sure, they're everywhere. You know, some countries in Africa, I think they consume more of that than, you know, their original staple, you know. But just a few years ago, I came across a very nice man who actually makes Tempe at home. Before that, I had never.

Talk about that. No, I mean, it's just, it's an anecdote, but it's just nice because this is someone who learned how to make Tempe somewhere. I don't remember we're overseas and came back to Israel. And he has a small business. So it's possible to order temper from him and get it to your doorstep. That's, you know, the instant noodles in the temper. That's more or less what we have. Yeah, yeah.

Well, let's, you raise the topic of the pandemic, right? And I think, you know, it's safe to highlight that, you know, your country has been really, good at vaccinating itself, right? And you're well above 100% vaccination rate, right? No, no, not there yet. Above maybe... Heart immunity at least. Yes, yeah, I think 50-something percent, maybe 60%, something like that's close to heart immunity. We're well below that. Yes. But I do believe that the more quickly we can vaccinate ourselves, the more quickly we can recover to normalization,

where we can start thinking of things in a normal way, as opposed to abnormal way, right? So this all, I think, you know, boils down to how quickly we can economically recover. And that's key, I think, for all of us. Yeah, definitely. I mean, Israel, you know, is lucky in many ways. in the sense that, well, I mean, it was, I guess, a very good decision, you know, to buy the vaccines

from Pfizer early on, but also they had an interest, I think, in selling to us because Israel is a very small country, and it's really like a laboratory for the, you know, pharmaceutical companies in this respect, because it's a very small country, very small population. It has one major international airport and all the other borders around us are, you know, either closed permanently, like with Lebanon or Syria, or closed temporarily with Jordan and Egypt. So it's a closed space, basically. You have very little mobility of people in and out, so you can actually track what's happening with a virus. Plus, we have a very good system of clinics. So there's a very good infrastructure from the days when Israel was still a socialist country. So that's one of the,

the things that remain. We have universal health care and everyone has health insurance. And so through these clinics and because of the fact that everyone is, you know, connected to one of them and has insurance and doesn't have to worry in that respect, people could be vaccinated relatively very quickly and in a very orderly manner. And so that's how we reach the point where we are. I mean, we also have people here who do not want to get the vaccine. and there are various conspiracy theories about it.

But the majority of the population, you know, was, I think, very eager to get the vaccine. And so we're now, things are opening up in a very, very significant way over the last few weeks. So I very much hope, you know, the same for Indonesia. Yeah, yeah. Any final messages, Ronit, for us here? Final words. Look, I mean, what I get from this is that, you know, you've played a very big part in understanding, you know, and peeling the onions so much on our culture and our linkage with other countries from a cultural standpoint. And I'm a big believer of the fact that culture has been a big part of Indonesia and it's going to be a big part of Indonesia, particularly in its, you know, desires to

project, you know, itself to the rest of the world in a good way, as opposed to bad way. Yes, I mean, I agree that Indonesia has, you know, a great deal to offer, again, in many fields, but if I'm focusing on my field of research and teaching, which is literature and culture and languages, it has so much to offer. And, you know, I remember the time when we first, we took out the Gamalan instruments and we put them sort of in a central place in the university and we had like a little performance just maybe 20 minutes or half an hour in between classes and people just kept walking by and they were just amazed because first of all they'd never seen you know a gamelan before but also they were listening to the music and they were like wow this is you know it's so

different it's so beautiful you know some people of course not everyone likes gamelan music but I mean, in general, like this, just this opening up, you know, of this thing even exists. And some people thought, wow, this is beautiful. It's mesmerizing. Other people just wanted to know, where is this from? You know, so, I mean, I think there, and this is just one example, I think there are so many ways in which, you know, so many things that we have to learn from Indonesia. And I guess, you know, as a final word, so I want to thank you very much for this opportunity.

Thank you. And I want to, yeah, I just, you know, if people are watching this and they're interested, you know, in knowing more about our program, or they have ideas for collaboration and building bridges, then I would be very happy to hear about those. Okay. We'll do that. Thank you so much, Ronate. Thank you. Hi. Thank you.

My friends, that's Professor Ronit Ritchi from Hebrew University. Thank you. Endgame is a podcast by the School of Government and Public Policy Indonesia. The first Indonesian policy school to offer a full-time master's program in English

and is a production of the cinema of Indonesia's award-winning entertainment and technology company. Oni Jamhari and Angad Wima Sassonko are our executive producers. Ahmed Zaki Habibi and Jimmy Kuntoro are our supervising producers. Hannah Humaira and Farah Abedah are producers. Bobby Zarqasi is our director. Aditya Dema Pratama is our director of photography.

Video editing by Felicia Wiradiya. Alvin Pradana Susanto is our sound engineer. Pratri Pratiwi and Fira Rahmati are research assistants. Aulia Septiadi is. and Ferdizal Optama are our graphic designers. Transcriptions and translations by Isfi Afiani. The song you're hearing is by Neil Giuliarso, Ferdinan Chandra, and Philippus Cahadi,

mixed and produced by Gibran Wiriwian. The production of this episode adheres closely to the local authorities' health and safety protocols.