Julia Lieberman, Ph.D.
Trip to Israel, Summer 2006
From June 25 to July 14, I was among 21 university professors from all over the United Sates as well as two from Europe that participated in a Brandeis University program, "The Summer Institute for Israel Studies" (SIIS). The SIIS consisted of two weeks at the Brandeis campus in Waltman, MA, and a week in Israel. S. Ilan Troen, Stoll Family Professor in Israel Studies at Brandeis and Director of the Institute, and Professor Sylvia Fuks Fried, Executive Director, Goodman Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, were the organizers. Funding for the program, in its third year of existence, came from various Jewish foundations, such as The American Jewish Committee, The Koppelman Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations, The Koret Foundation, The Jewish Federation of Greater Chicago, The San Francisco Federation.s Jewish Community Endowment Fund and a rather long list of private donors. But, as it was explained to us at the Institute, donors do not interfere in any of the academic aspects of the program: the selection of presenters and participants and the topics of presentations and discussions are all decided by the Brandeis organizers and from an academic point of view.
As stated in the Institute's home page on line, "The study of Israel in the American Universities is an emerging field whose growth and development are limited by an absence of qualified academics". To fill this need, participants to the SIIS were selected on the basis of our commitment to teach courses on Israel studies at our home institutions. Our academic background and training were very diverse and included a geographer, a playwright, two rabbis, a political scientist, various historians, a cultural anthropologist, as well as several professors of Jewish Studies, English, and Spanish; professionally at various levels in our academic careers, from junior faculty to full professors and some had Christian backgrounds while others were Jewish. What we all had in common was a personal and professional interest in Israel and its people, and we all had applied to the program in order to have the chance of getting training and being able to share that interest with our students in the classroom.
The program was a rigorous one, and our preparation started well before we arrived at Brandeis, as we were provided back in March with a long list of selected readings and a syllabus on line to ensure that we went to the seminar well prepared. During the two weeks at Brandeis, we had a rather intensive schedule; lectures took place Sunday through Friday, mornings, afternoons and evenings.
The presenters were all distinguished scholars from the United States and Israel and their fields of teaching and research represented a wide spectrum of perspectives in Israel studies: film, literature, music, gender, history, political science, diplomacy, religion, sociology. The Seminar started with an overview of Zionist thought and continued with the social, political and economic history of the State of Israel. Most, if not all the topics discussed were controversial, such as the tension between secular and religious Israelis, between Arabs and Jews and between rich and poor, and from the various multicultural study perspectives of presenters and participants. Through the critique of film and music, for example, we looked at changes in Israeli and Palestinian societies since the creation of the State of Israel. Through the study of the religious ideology of the settlers we were able to understand their view of the land of Israel. At the end of the program, each participant presented a syllabus of a course to be taught at his/her university. What was most interesting was the diversity of the courses we designed. I designed a course on Israeli culture that I will teach to students in the International Studies Center at Saint Louis University beginning next January.
From my perspective, the highlight of the program was the one-week study tour in Israel that followed the two weeks of study at Brandeis and that was packed with incredible activities. We arrived in Israel on Friday July 7, and shortly after a break at the hotel in Jerusalem, we walked as a group to Friday evening services at the Shira Hadasha shul in the German Colony neighborhood, a modern Orthodox congregation and halakhically egalitarian. This congregation meets at an unassuming building that is used for other purposes during the week. Services take place in a large room with its mehitzah (partition) running through the middle of the room, so that men.s and women.s sections are side by side. Although most of the participants to the SIIS were not Orthodox, we were all captured by the spiritual beauty of the services with its emphasis on men and women singing. That evening the place was packed with men and women of all ages, and at the end of services it took a while to exit the building. From the shul we walked to Spoons, a restaurant in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood, where, after Kabbalat Shabbat, we were treated to a wonderful dinner.
Our home base until Tuesday morning was Jerusalem and while there, we visited numerous sites: the old city, the Knesset, the Supreme Court of Justice, Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, the Western Wall Tunnels, the Foreign Ministry and the settlement of Ofra, where we had lunch with a group of settlers. Just about every place we visited was turned into a classroom where a lesson was taught to us on the history of the State of Israel as we listened to presentations and panel discussions by Arab and Jewish presenters.
On Tuesday morning, we traveled north of Jerusalem, to the area of the Kfar Saba, where we viewed a segment of the fence, accompanied by representatives of the IDF. We had lunch at the Arab restaurant al-Babor, at Umm al-Fahm junction. The junction where the restaurant stands was a place of great turbulence in October 2000 during the second intifada. After lunch, we visited the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm, adjacent to the .green line. or the territories. Wednesday and Thursday, we were in Tel Avid where we visited among other sites the Palmach museum, the Beit Dani Community Center where people of low socio-economic background (including illegal foreign workers) are offered free health, education and recreational services, and went on a walking tour of the Tel Avid neighborhood of Neve Tzedek. The diversity of the places we visited and the people we encountered were quite impressive.
On July 13, coinciding with the escalating attacks by Hezbollah on northern Israeli towns and the IDF military responses in southern Lebanon, the program concluded. About half of the participants returned to the United States, while others lingered on our own for several more days in Israel. I feel extremely appreciative of the opportunity I was given to get to delve into so many aspects of the past and current challenges of the State of Israel and its people.
Julia R. Lieberman, Saint Louis University
