Help save Slavic studies in Israel!

Mon Jan 16 17:01:48 UTC 2006

Save Slavic Studies in Israel!

Dear Colleagues and Friends! 

I am Helen Tolstoy, a literary scholar teaching Russian literature at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As many others in Israel, I am deeply
concerned about the fate of the Universitys Slavic scholars. 

There are about 1.200.000 Israelis who came from the former Soviet Union,
most of them in the 1990s. Their mother tongue is Russian. They constitute
about one-fifth of the population of Israel. As a group they are highly
educated (60% with academic degrees) and envision higher education for their
children. 

There are about 60 chairs of Russian studies in the US and 24 in Italy where
there are no Russian-speaking population whereas in Israel with over one
million Russian native speakers there is but one small department of Russian
studies at the Hebrew University founded in the 1970s by a group of
brilliant émigré Jewish-Russian scholars.  For twenty years it was denied
any opportunity of growth. And, according to some pronouncements on the part
of the authorities, now it is doomed. 

For 30 years it has been presenting Russian classic literature to the
Israeli students who have no command of Russian. Secondly, it has been
instructing bilingual new repatriant students in Russian literature and
culture as part of their B.A., M.A., or post-graduate programs, thus
performing an important social role of encouraging second- generation
repatriant social mobility and also creating new Israeli elite who would
have roots in two cultures.

Our faculty is composed of several highly active first-rate scholars who
enjoy international fame. They are invited to teach at American and European
universities and take part in international projects.  Among them are
Professors Roman Timenchik, Moshe Taube, Michael Weisskopf, Vladimir Hazan,
Helen Tolstoy. 

In recent years our Russian department established itself as an important
world center of Russian studies. Here are the facts: the journal, Slavica
Hierosolymitana (1978-1988), became one of the best academic periodicals in
the world which united Israeli, major international Slavists, and, in
defiance of the still working prohibitions, prominent Soviet scholars.  The
journal demonstrated a taste for innovation and great intellectual daring.
Its contributors are now the cream of international Slavic studies.
Slavica was followed by a series of collections of articles Jews and
Slavs (Vol. 16 is to appear soon). A number of our scholars launched an
international Russian-language journal Solnechnoe Spletenie (1998-2004,
www.plexus.org.il) which is a unique combination of a highbrow academic
publication and an avant-garde literary project.

The international congresses organized by the department have established
Hebrew University among the leaders of European Slavic studies: April 2001.
Pilgrimage in Slavic Cultures  62 participants from 16 countries;
December 2002. Anti-Semitism and Filo-Semitism in Russian Culture  79
participants from 20 countries; May 2003. Russian Symbolism  38 scholars
from 6 countries; December 2004. The Russian Word in the Land of Israel 
40 scholars from 12 countries; April 2005. Messianism in Slavic and Jewish
Cultures  80 scholars from 12 countries. 

Israel is a unique place where Eastern European expertise meets Western
thinking. Israeli archives contain unique documents pertaining to the
cultural history of cosmopolitan Russian Jews, an extremely mobile group,
acting in Russia, Europe, Israel and the US.

To sum up: it would be a humanly devastating, socially insulting, and
completely senseless blow, to teachers, students and to world research in
humanities, if the University destroys its Russian studies unit. 

I am turning to international Slavists for a clarification of the status and
rating of our scholars worldwide. Please help us! 

All is needed is to send an e-mail with some words of support to our
President, to Chairman of the External Commission, with CC to me so I could
monitor the volume of your responses: 

To: Professor Menachem Magidor
President, Hebrew University
[hupres at cc.huji.ac.il]

To: Professor John Gager,
Chairman of the External Commission for reform of HU
[gager at Princeton.EDU]

With hopes of support,

Dr. Helen Tolstoy, 
Lecturer in Russian literature, 
Russian Studies, Hebrew University.  
Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel.  
Tel. 972-2-6232852 
e-mail address: tolstoy at mscc.huji.ac.il

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of John Hope
Sent: 13 January 2006 06:40
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] 

Greetings, SEELANGTSY!

I'm looking to fill a couple of empty slots for a
panel I'm putting together on Russian Orientalism,
ideally with a focus on incidences of the adoption
(playful, ironic, or otherwise) of an Eastern
identity.  We're getting down to the wire, so if
anyone is willing to present they should let me know
ASAP and, ideally, forward me their CV.  Please reply
off list.

Many thanks,

John P. Hope
University of Notre Dame

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