Ever since I started to write about our Tel Aviv adventure, I have been asked periodically…well, what about Mike? While I feel that this is really his story to tell, I also realize he is too busy writing about Ottomans, Berbers, and Balfour to say much about himself, so here I go. ( I promised him that he would have editorial control!)
When Mike finally retired, we knew that Israel would figure somewhere into our plans, but a return to University for a third masters degree was not even a flicker on the horizon. But when the idea came into focus, the chance to concentrate on Middle East Studies…in Israel…was just too compelling to pass up.
Now we knew there would be challenges of course, and indeed there were: finding an apartment, navigating the university bureaucracy, being “somewhat” outside the dominant age group of the class, (and professors too, now I think of it), writing papers etc. However, there are unexpected challenges as well. For example when going to museums and galleries, Mike has to decide between the student discount and the senior rate…hmmm…tough call. And then he has to tell the staff at the desk. We expected that we would see a few raised eyebrows and maybe some scepticism when Mike would request the “student rate”, but it is not so. Every time he goes into his pocket to pull out his student card, the cashier waves him off…”No no…I believe you”. (Really?) Then sometimes they give me the “student by association” rate too! How can you not love a place like that.
The campus at Tel Aviv University (TAU) is, as you can see, quite modern. It is built on a hill, and also houses Beit Hatsufot, an impressive museum (which you can see in the background), that has as its mission the commemoration and celebration of Diaspora Jewry. It also has an excellent gift shop, where I had only to mention that Mike was a student, and immediately received the TAU discount and a free book about the museum! (Okay, okay, enough about discounts.)
Mike’s fellow students are a diverse and interesting group of people. They come from Asia, South America, Europe (Italy and Germany), and the U.S. and range in age from their early twenties to mid-thirties. They include several journalists, an entrepreneur, and a lawyer among others…and unexpectedly (to us anyway), many if not most of them are not Jewish. (In the first term, the class also had one wild, heavily bearded, conspiracy theorist, who bogged down many a class discussion; but he vanished, to everyone’s relief, when the time came to write papers.) Interestingly, it turns out that one of the high points of going back to university has been the opportunity to meet and get to know an intelligent and dynamic group of young people! He has become very fond of them.
The profs are also an impressive lot, and yes, all but one of them are younger than him. They are expert in their respective fields…something Mike notices as he reads extensively, and sees their work cited repeatedly. And he also finds that the course work is fascinating,…and so do I, since I get to hear his thoughts and read his papers. Just as an example of some of the courses: Islam and the West, Minorities in the Middle East, History of the Ottoman Empire, Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East, you get the idea. And some of his papers: The Balfour Declaration at 100, The Jews of Salonika during the Ottoman Empire, The Berbers of North Africa, and the Challenges of Arab Nationalism. Studying all this in Israel takes it from abstract to real, because all this history really informs the events taking place throughout the Middle East to this day.
Mike’s program is the “executive M.A.”, not that there are any actual executives in it, and was to have wrapped up on August 23rd after a final exam…and the small matter of 3 long (25 page) papers, and 5 short ones (10 pages or so). Of course, this being Israel, not everything goes exactly to plan, so his program now encompasses 3 additional short papers for a total of eight (!), and they are due at the end of November, so we will be staying on for a bit. There is also a long thesis option (replacing the exam) for those who want to go on to an academic career, but since the requirements for that are an extra year and, even more daunting, the study of Arabic or Turkish, that is unlikely to happen. I say unlikely, only because nothing about this whole venture has been predictable up to now.
In the course of this past year Mike has rediscovered how much he likes original research, academic life and yes, even writing papers…though maybe not so many at once. I always felt he would make a wonderful history professor and to this day, I am impressed by his recall of dates, the sweep of historical events, and his ability to place these in context relative to current events. So he is happy as a clam to be both back at university and in his beloved Israel (see picture above), leaving only the question of…what happens next?
