By the end of the first real week of my new routine, I could certainly feel content with how this sabbatical has shaped up: a place in which to focus (the TAU central library); lots of stimulating events going on around me; and some decent weather, in between the intermittent rain showers.
Sunday and Monday were spent preparing the introductory lecture for the Making Water class. Doing so was a way of sitting down and getting on paper the general themes I've been reading about for the last few months. One phrase from the proposed class reading stuck in my mind as I reached the end of my lecture draft: "hydrological mission," culled from an article by authors Naama Teschner and Maya Negev, "The Development of Water Infrastructures in Israel: Past, Present and Future." The idea that one water infrastructure is the result not only of problem solving (tactics) but of problem defining (strategy) should be obvious to all of us, but may be so only in retrospect. Teschner and Negev refer to "the hydrological mission of Israel's establishment," and write that it has generally been achieved: the Israeli state can provide water to its citizens with a good degree of reliability and resilience. But I will immediately challenge my students to consider their own society's "hydrological mission," and ask how they would define it. Will they look first to ecological concerns, to demand and water consumption, or to development that is feasible only given continued access to water resources? What might be their Water "Mission Statement" for Maryland, or for the Chesapeake Bay's watershed?
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Monday night, Isabelle and I joined Matthew W. for a play performed at Beit Lessin, a theater that promotes itself as being "the most Israeli." whatever that means. The title of the play was King of the Dogs, a brilliantly-produced adaptation of Sholem Asch's Motke the Thief. Since I'm not a fan of most yiddeshkeit, I was pleased that the play's ending wasn't typically sentimental; but I liked even more the "Physical Theater" flavor of the production. I enjoyed also the incongruity of Leonard Cohen's songs, introduced by the performers to provide the atmosphere that the stage set didn't.
Considering that Indecent, a play about Asch's Broadway tribulations, will be up next at Baltimore's Center Stage, I can't help but wonder if there is a global Sholem Asch revival happening, about which I was previously unaware? If there is, does anybody care?
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Tuesday was dedicated to a course session on Environmental Sociology. I adapted most of the material from my course last year, "Spanning the Metabolic Rift." I hope to provide my students with some lingo with which they can understand the social dimension of ecological and infrastructural issues. I am especially keen that they know a "Dominant Social Paradigm" when they bump into one. It should be obvious that a "hydrological mission" is probably steeped in a particular DSP, and so it will be helpful to identify the values that underlay both.
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A visit on Tuesday afternoon to TAU's Genia Schreiber art gallery allowed me to view the exhibit titled Defense Lines: Maginot, Bar Lev, and Beyond, curated by Galia Gur Zeev. (A comprehensive review of the exhibit was published last December in HaAretz, and another visitor's reflections were posted HERE.) The exhibit consisted of installations, videos, dramatic production, and photographs that depicted defensive structures like the French Maginot Line, the Israeli-built "Bar Lev" fortifications along the Sinai Canal after 1967, the Great Wall of China, and the Israeli separation fence built between Palestinian and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The photographs and video installations were certainly worth seeing. The overarching critique (of the efficacy of defensive structures per se, most obviously) was ultimately unsubstantiated, in part by the artists' aestheticization of their subjects and in part by any evident analysis of the structures' historical role.
A lecture Wednesday night by Dr. Gish Amit, titled "Ruins from the Present: a History of 20th Century Bunkers," provided some helpful context through his subjective interpretation of the material detritus left by now-abandoned fortifications in France, Germany, and Albania. But frustrating for me in retrospect was that I didn't recognize his name -- I recently cited Amit's article about the collection and appropriation of Palestinian books during Israel's 1948 War of Independence in a forthcoming (I hope) article about the architecture of the new National Library of Israel. I would have introduced myself to him if only I had made the connection at the time!
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Work on Wednesday was a heavier lift: water and national building, a topic that has always been at the core of the Zionist mission, but one with which I have only superficial knowledge. I've selected for the course some great reading on the subject, including a neat essay by Alon Tal titled "Enduring Technological Optimism: Zionism's Environmental Ethic and Its Influence on Israel's Environmental History." I also found a copy of Simcha Blass' biography, Water in Strife and Action on the shelves near my library table. Blass was the key figures in the story of Israeli water management, despite his on-going arguments with other key figures. My Hebrew language skills might not be up to reading an entire book, but I'm now keen on spending the time to make it happen. I have decided to look for a copy among Tel Aviv's used book stores, since I can't take the library copy home with me...
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Since there was so much to absorb, and not enough sitzfleisch on my part to absorb it, I took the afternoon off and explored the south Tel Aviv neighborhood of Florentine. It was an afternoon of great discoveries: the new light-rail red line, for which a tunnel under the city is now being excavated; a transformer station designed by Richard Kaufmann; the Nahum Gutman Museum of Art; and a neat hipster chocolate store. Thumbs up for Wednesday!
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To wrap up the week, I accepted an invitation from Efrat Beredjik and Hillel Schocken to join them to review student work at Tichonet-Alterman High School. The students, high-school juniors, are participating in a program that specializes in urban theory, including urban design but also more general humanist content. I had expressed to Efrat and Hillel my interest in learning more about this program, which they initiated. The opportunity to talk with the students about their work and to meet with the teachers (Shlomit and Amnon) was a stimulating first step towards understanding the potential role of urban studies in secondary schools' curricula. I plan to speak with the teachers about their program in the near future... and to return to see the development of the students' work.
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