NY Times: Tel Aviv's Technology and Economy

December clouds over roof tops. Most Israeli homes no longer use TV antennas but do warm their water using passive solar collectors / © 2010

In his New York Times Op-Ed piece David Brooks reiterate the Jewish-American view of Israel as a complete opposite for everything Jews have been. His opinion of Jews as being:

"Milton Friedman used to joke that Israel disproved every Jewish stereotype. People used to think Jews were good cooks, good economic managers and bad soldiers; Israel proved them wrong."

This quote pretty much sums up the Jewish-American view of Israel. But like most stereotyping and sweeping generalizations, Americans view Israelis in terms of who they are not. Israel had two universities, The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and The Technion Institute of Technology, before the state was founded. Then the Weitzman Research Institute was founded. Israel's academic development has been attributed to the suppressed opportunity in Europe and Arab countries before Jews had their own state. It took a few decades until Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva became a large institution, today the biggest undergraduate university for engineering and science. Haifa university is a large humanities school and Bar Ilan university in Ramat Gan is focused on Jewish studies, religion and has a large law school. Add to this over a dozen mid-size colleges from Ariel just across the green line to the Open University which focuses on non-traditional students in business and computers. I almost forgot the Interdisciplinary Business and Government school in Hertzelia and finally Tel Aviv University, a private school with a well known Medical and Business schools.

OK, maybe most Americans do not care that Israel has probably the largest density of colleges and universities east of Rome and west of Tokyo. I guess Brooks is still getting his information from the traditional image of Israel from the 1950s. That's just fine, because the two books, Start-Up Nation and Israel Test are slowly revealing what has been happening in Israel for the last 80 to 100 years. Israel's policy of bringing volunteers to work in Kibutzim in the 1940s to the 1970s left a strong impression on Americans. But it also brought British, Argentinian and South African Jews. Most non-American Jews came back or simply stayed to live here. While American Jews have enjoyed the fruits of minority liberalism in the US. What Brooks says:

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

In his book, “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement,” Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.

In Israel we would add just a tiny qualification: "The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement," In America from American perspective." Don't get me wrong, some of these achievements are respected and admired by Israelis. BUT, what about what was happening in Israel at the same time. In Israel: a Nobel prize for Hebrew! While in America a Nobel prize for Yiddish and one for the Holocaust. Well, it would take years to describe the developments here in Israel and it does not make any sense to do it anyway. One thing that American Jews do not understand and therefore have a hard time describing to America is Israel as an independent state. Independent in culture, business, education, language and organization. Jews in America have done well, Israelis for a long time envied the economic opportunities in America. But Jews in Israel have done the things independent people have been doing in every country for hundreds of years. The French have a cuisine, the Italians have art, the German have science and industry, the English culture and trade and so do the Dutch and the Spanish. Now finally the Jews have the opportunity to do "other things" besides "...living off of their wits ever since."

I often get the question from Americans: "what is it like in Israel?" ~ 30 years ago I use to try to describe cities and food and work and politics and "the army" ... and, and, and... finally, like most Israelis I say: "it's a world of it's own" in Hebrew "olam u' mlo'oh" - literally translated "a world and everything contained within it". Finally: THANK YOU David Brooks! You shed a tiny, fuzzy, focused light on Israel. Maybe you are surprised by what we have done here, but that's OK. If you want a stream of consciousness on primary education, industrial production, technology both high and low... this tiny world and all it's content... just let me know. College and professional education was just an example, oh, another Israeli just got a Nobel prize in chemistry (A woman educated and working in Israel.) In this blog I tried initially to write about life here, now I realize with comments from people around the world, mostly surprises, that what has happened in Israel is not only remarkable but also more surprising than what the Jews in America have done. Like many Israelis while the state was developing into a wonderful place we felt like a worm inside a cocoon. Suddenly with a bit of attention from America we are starting to feel like butterflies.