Today I met again with my advisor, Zvi Bekerman, mostly around university logistics. We went to meet with a university administrator about how I can get a university ID card, access to the library and the computer system, how I can audit a course and (least importantly for my project but something that would be nice for the whole family) access to the gym. The news was good overall – it can be done. It would be easier if I had “a letter of invitation from the university.” I found this a bit confusing since I thought for the purposes of these documents the administrator with whom I was talking was the university. Zvi helped, explaining that if Fulbright could talk to folks in the Hebrew U administration with whom they had prior contacts, they might produce such a letter of invitation. So I have asked the already very helpful Fulbright folks for yet more help.

There was a funny moment as Zvi and I were beginning to talk. I had not noticed on my last trip that many offices in the building (and due to careful architecture, many rooms of the university as a whole) have an unbelievable view over the Dome of the Rock and the Old City. I commented on the view, and Zvi said with a wry smile, “Never forget it is all conquered territory.” Hmm…is he thinking of 1967? 1948? Or further back, to Crusaders, Arab conquerors in the 7^th century, Byzantines, Romans, Greeks, Persians? Perhaps the reference was to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in the 6^th Century BCE? The first conquest I can think of is the Israelite conquest of Jebusite Jerusalem under David. It certainly is all conquered territory.