Israel, 1997


Acknowledgement: 
I originally hoped to be able spend up to a year in Israel as part of Social Science Research Council's (SSRC) International Predissertation Fellowship Program (IPFP).  The IPFP was designed to support research in traditionally understudied regions of the world by funding graduate students at the predissertation stage of their work, thus giving them the opportunity to learn about the region and make the necessary contacts for a dissertation study.  Unfortunately, SSRC did not fund my proposal.  However, I was able to secure a small predissertation grant from Michigan State University, which allowed me to travel to Israel for two to three weeks in order to begin to lay the foundation for later work.  While in Israel, I met with faculty at three different Universities, as well as folks at the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Absorption.  So, from an academic perspective, it was a very productive trip.  However, I also took some time to see the sights and discover new relatives.  These are the pictures that you see below. 


It's always fun to discover new relatives, especially when you come from a
small family like I do.  The elderly woman in the back (aunt Bebe) is the younger
sister of my paternal grandfather.  The guy with his hands behind his head is her son.
 

Sometimes, one also discovers someone else's relatives.  The friendly guy above is Yosef.  He is my fiancé's grandmother's cousin's husband, but he took me into his home for three weeks and introduced me as his grandson wherever we went.  The woman on the left is his wife Esther. The other older woman is Yosef's sister who lives on a Kibbutz with her family.  Her granddaughters are also pictured above.


I'm not sure there is any place in the world quite like a kibbutz.  Everyone contributes
to the community, even small children, and everything gets used, even garbage, which is
what all of the above art pieces are made of.

The couple in the middle are friends of Yosef and Esther.  The painting is their creation, but it's not really a painting.  It's actually composed of many tiny marbles of different colors.  It took them over a year to put it together.

 


That's me floating in the Dead Sea.  Everything floats in the Dead Sea.
Many tourists like to have their pictures taken sitting in the water with
their legs crossed at the ankles, reading a newspaper.  I would have
done it, but I didn't have one with me.  The reason everything floats is
that the water is over 30% saltier than ocean water.

Behind me is the Western Wall (don't call it the Wailing Wall), which is the holiest place in the world for Jewish people.  The men in black who are standing right in front of the wall are all praying.