Marginal At the Center by Baruch Kimmerling

Author:Baruch Kimmerling [Kimmerling, Baruch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Social Science, Sociology, Jewish Studies
ISBN: 9780857457202
Google: fAUSTf1OrnMC
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2012-01-15T04:22:23+00:00

Notes

1. The national religious wear skullcaps that are knitted or crocheted while the traditional religious usually wear cloth skullcaps.

2. Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz suggested transforming the area in front of the Western Wall into the country’s biggest disco and calling it the “Divine Presence Discotheque” to make both the secular and religious communities happy.

12

THE DEPARTMENT

From the end of the 1960s onward, the Department of Sociology, later known as the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, became my second home. My spouse even used to complain sometimes that it was my primary home. And it is in fact difficult for a young lecturer to have an academic career if research and teaching do not become his whole world and eventually, at least for some of us, a kind of “second nature.”

I still love coming to the department because I love being among so many young, attractive people who are full of energy and hope and, sometimes, even a thirst for knowledge. I get a surge of adrenalin whenever I talk with them or teach them. The encounters with most of my colleagues are different since each of them is primarily concerned with self-aggrandizement and self-promotion, usually while demeaning the achievements of his or her colleagues. This too is part of the distortion existing in the profession, although it is not necessarily supposed to be that way.

Actually, it is very difficult to define what the “Department” is. It might be that today it is a group of men and women assembled together within a bureaucratic framework which provides services and support to promote teaching and research and nothing more. As a social network, the “department” sometimes throws parties for the beginning or the end of the academic year, for the celebration of a newly published book, or for the promotion of whomever the Head of Department favors or whoever pushed hard enough to get it. During the last few years, all kinds of personal congratulations and administrative announcements have been transmitted through the internet. As department head, Michael Shalev transformed the performance of administrative functions via the internet into an art, and Amalya Oliver continued with this approach, albeit in a gentler, more reserved, and more pleasant way. The use of the internet became essential, especially as more and more staff members have either never lived in Jerusalem or have moved to metropolitan Tel Aviv. At first, the university tried to address the phenomenon of Jerusalem’s desertion, but most of the public cannot, or does not want to, deal with the issue. Thus today “the department” is actually active or exists only for three days a week, when most of the “Tel Avivians” come to teach, participate in one meeting or another, and sometimes attend a departmental seminar. I am not an ardent supporter of the department when it functions as a club for members. Such a club might distort (for better and for worse) judgments regarding junior members (as indeed has already happened). At the same time, most of the talks, the stormy

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