Slavic Studies in Israel

Tue Jan 17 16:41:00 UTC 2006

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list [mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
Sent: 14 January 2006 23:13
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] A Chinese-English-Russian Question

14 January 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 University’s 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

Dear Colleagues,
The aging Tolstoy repeatedly praises the writings of a Chinese 
philosopher he refers to as "Mi-ti" (Ми-ти).  I find no such figure in 
the standard English references on "Eastern" thought.  On the other 
hand, there is the important thinker Mo Ti (Mo-tzu), opponent of 
Confucius and advocate of all-embracing love and avoidance of warfare.  
Could this be the same person?  Are there Chinese speakers out there who 
could clarify how the name should be represented with English letters?  
The index to the Makovitskii memoir says the philosopher in question is 
"Mo-di" (Мо-ди, Мо-цзы), but gives different dates than the English 
references.

Thank you,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

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