Here's the English (shorter) version of my Hebrew love letter to my Alma Mater, Tel Aviv University.
Last Thursday I went to work in my Alma mater, Tel Aviv University, where I spent the better part of the last 2 decades.
That's the way to study! 🙂
And suddenly I realized I just love it, unconditionally. Forget all the bad things they say about universities – that they are ivory towers, hubs of extreme leftists, grade factories. Forget about it and look how beautiful this place is. Look at the archaeology labs, where old and tiny clay fragments tell you about the whole world, and when a literary mind comes and reads them, you get wonderful books. Look at students wrecking their tongues learning new languages, forcing strange and new sounds, subtle accents, to emerge from a blunt Hebrew mouth, until such day when another linguistic nationality is added to that mouth of theirs. Look at these boards, filled with physical formulas, seemingly boring, until the penny drops, their meaning is revealed, and one more thing about nature stops being arbitrary, random, and becomes logical, reasonable, comprehensible. Look at all these classes, where young and old study together absorb these new and exciting ideas. One more article, one more idea, one more concept – and all of a sudden something clicks in your head, a mystery unfolds, separate facts join in as one, and the whole is bigger than its parts, making you bigger than you were. The world is at your feet, and you observe it, excited, enthralled, enriched.
…
I love being in a place where knowledge and curiosity are a advantage and not a scarlet letter. I love the people here – so sharp, quick, challenging me to go beyond myself and my knowledge, feeding me new ideas that I can roll on my tongue like dark chocolate, like a peach – the idea itself may be bitter, but its joining to the soup boiling in my head is inevitably sweet.
Coming back here was like finally taking a deep breath. Not just the bare minimum I need to survive, but enough oxygen to get reverse height sickness – bask in new knowledge, feel my blood pumping, grow!
אז לשמחתי, את "סיפורי חייו של א' ג' פיקרי" (
עָבַד בְּתִרגוּם 