It's been a long while. Lots of news that I could report, but instead, a few quick impressions from the land that so many peoples call holy, including the people that some people call Jews. During my first week here, I had the luck to meet two very interesting Jews.
First, I met a nice legless Japanese man who informed me that the Japanese people are one of the lost tribes. Yoshi, as he is now called, is trying to make aliyah (to gain Israeli citizenship by virtue of being a Jew). Though he knows that the Japanese were originally Jews, he officially converted, but alas not with the help of a kosherized Orthodox rabbi. My guess is he has a long road ahead. I have not seen him in a while, but he sure could talk a blue streak. (Why blue? Why not red or purple?) One night I sat next to him at a sushi bar (also called Yoshi's, but no relation); he talked and talked and somewhere along the way he asked me if my husband was also Jewish (husband back in the US of A). "How do you know that I'm Jewish, Yoshi?" He ignored me. The sushi chef (an Israeli also named Yoshi) interrupted the Japanese Yoshi's monologue: "Yoshi, how do you know she's Jewish?" "I just know," he said.
Second, I met a nice young woman from Turkey who had converted to Judaism while living in Montreal. A post-doc in physics here in Israel, she is also struggling to "make aliyah," but she is also having a difficult time. Despite the fact that her extended family in Turkey is secular (albeit Muslim), they have apparently rejected her and refuse to speak to even her mother...
This week I'm giving a talk on RACIAL FEVER (what else?!) at Tel Aviv University as part of the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas.... (What a mouthful! They really need a catchy acronym... CIHPSI ... I suppose that could be "chipsy")...
Anyhow: 4pm 18:00 (6pm!) in the Gilman building, room 429.
Anyhow: 4pm 18:00 (6pm!) in the Gilman building, room 429.
That's the news from here. For now.
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