CN3y Sharing the Sky Weblog No. 15
Twenty-four years of formal education are over.
From the time I started going to school in 1954 to my last day at the Hebrew University in 2010, I have been a student. Kindergarten and first grade took place at Iona Avenue School in Montreal. Following that there were four years at Roslyn School in Westmount, which I have written about before and about which I probably will write again. Then came one year at Westmount Junior High School, an old building with good teachers and courses. My years at the then-new Westmount High School lasted longer than I had hoped, because of a 14-month visit to the Jewish National Home for Asthmatic Children in Denver that led me to two good American schools. Then came two unsuccessful but highly interesting years at McGill, four at Acadia, two at Queen’s., and finally nine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The total of all this education comes to 24 years -- almost half my life so far.
Here comes the interesting part. I enjoyed those 24 years immensely. The learning process -- finding out how the world works -- was fun, engaging, and filled with interesting challenges. Many of these challenges ran into dead ends and locked doors, but some opened windows that led to other thrills. Especially during my college years, where I had the freedom to develop my own curricula of study, I found the whole process quite special.
Suddenly, on June 6, 2010, it was all over. As I sat on the stage of the Rothberg Amphitheatre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus campus, I could spot Wendee sitting in one of the upper rows of seats. I was very pleasantly surprised at my success in getting a dissertation approved that combined the best of two great fields of learning, English Literature in its early modern period, and the night sky.
I could never have done this without Wendee’s help. My wife supervised two mini-courses on Shakespeare, one of which assigned me to find all the direct references to the sky in Shakespeare’s 37 plays, poems, and sequence of sonnets. Her second mini-course expanded the assignment to include indirect references or allusions to the sky in these same works. Her accuracy and persistence in finding and correcting the myriad typographical errors pushed it over the finish line.
When the thesis was formally approved, I was told that a convocation ceremony would be held on Sunday, June 6, 2010. Wendee and I very badly wanted to go, and we finally found a somewhat roundabout connection via Dallas, Chicago, and Toronto with American and El Al. We arrived at Ben Gurion airport after an uneventful set of three flights, two on one day and one overseas flight the next. Before nine on the morning of June 2, we were comfortably ensconced the Hebrew University’s Beit Meiersdorf Faculty Club.
The view from our room at Hebrew University's Beit Meiersdorf Facultry Club, showing the old city complex including the Golden Dome of the Rock atop the Temple Mount. Wendee Levy Photo.
Over the next few days we enjoyed a light schedule of activities that included several walks through something called the Mount Scopus Forum, a long series of passages that connects almost every building that stands on the Hebrew University’s main campus. We also visited the Saffron Campus in the Givat Ram section of western Jerusalem. Thanks to the effort of Eshel Ophir, the person responsible for recovering Albert Einstein’s telescope and restoring it for use at the University, I presented a colloquium to an introductory Astrophysics class there. Although it wasn’t the best I ever gave, what really was great was the hour-long discussion the students and I enjoyed after the formal part of the colloquium ended. The questions came from everyone -- questions regarding comets, questions concerning my thesis, and general queries about the interaction among the sky and other fields. It was a magical afternoon.
On Saturday morning, June 5, Wendee and I joined Ilan Manulis, one of Israel’s premier amateur astronomers, to explore a Stalactite-crowded cavern west of Jerusalem. That evening Wendee and I walked over to the Rothman amphitheatre to inspect the graduation site. Although the Sun was still up in the west, the amphitheatre seemed comfortable, not too hot. We were about to leave when a guard appeared and began asking Wendee questions. “What are you doing here? How did you get in? How did you get past Security? How did you get into the University in the first place?” After Wendee finally succeeded in explaining that we just wanted to locate the amphitheatre, he said, “Well, you found it!” And we left.
Twenty-four hours later the previously empty site was filling rapidly. The ceremony that followed ran over two hours, and included the awarding of doctoral degrees to 357 very smart and impressive people plus me. Topics ranged from the peace process still struggling in the Middle East, to modern efforts in cosmology, and finally to some ideas about how the sky can relate to English Literature. This was hardly the most important research topic, but it captured the imagination of one older person sitting there waiting to receive his degree. It was nice that the theme of the event, “Genesis: Origins of the Cosmos and Humankind,” fit in so well with my theme for the day.
David meets and thanks some senior officials at the Hebrew University convocation. President Menachem Ben-Sasson stands at top center. Photo by Wendee Levy.
The next day Wendee and I boarded trains that took us safely to Rehovot, home town of the Chaim Weizmann Institute of Science. Named in honor of the first president of Israel, Weizmann is one of the world’s top scientific research facilities. There I delivered my second colloquium of the trip. This was truly a high point. Throughout my time at the Institute, I imagined my grandfather, Dad’s father, standing behind every wall, smiling at me from every hallway, from every opened door. Not only was Grampa a big supporter of Israel, the Jewish homeland reborn during his lifetime, but he also particularly loved the Weizmann Institute and its contribution to the world. I genuinely felt his presence that day.
Late one warm afternoon in 1961, he and I studied the setting Sun through a pair of binoculars. The Sun was so low that the thick haze absorbed its harmful ultraviolet rays and our eyes suffered no damage. He was fascinated to see for himself groups of spots on the Sun about which I had told him. Decades later, as the name
יול ? ??? was called out, I shook the hand of the President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and received my degree. As the ceremony ended I could see Venus appear faintly in the still-bright sky.
There is so much more to do. A whole new generation needs to be inspired and guided to explore the seashore, discover a few more golden nuggets of literary treasure in the sand, and behold the wondrous cosmic tapestry of which we are a part.