didn’t do it with Eli; the money went to the AIDS Help Fund. I bought one just for the hell of it, but I never wore it, of course, though I could have.
There were many rumors about Eli; no one knew which were true. Ma’ayan, who had told me various Eli stories over the years, admitted that most couldn’t be verified. In the category of “definitely true” were stories from twenty years ago or more, when he taught at the Hebrew University: he would drive up from Tel Aviv to the dorms in Jerusalem to visit his students in their rooms, three per trip, in succession. He’d make the three dates in advance, an hour apart, and he’d move from room to room like a salesman offering a special deal on sex. He swore each student to secrecy—not because he was worried about his job, but in an attempt to keep them from finding out about one another and comparing notes.
In the category of “probably true” were stories about unstable sixteen-year-olds whom he’d driven over the edge; I myself had been present when his wife had jumped out the window of their second-story flat during a party. In the category of “unverifiable” were rumors about sado-masochism. He was famous in his field and he’d been married several times, though one of the things he was famous for was his philosophical position on the bearing of children, which he opposed for interesting reasons. He’d had a vasectomy at an early age and he kept a bowl of condoms on his desk for students; he described the features and advantages of each type and made sure his students knew how to use them properly.
I had been a student of Eli’s as well, when I was doing my doctorate. I’d completed my master’s degree in Beersheba; there was a teacher at the university there, Nava, whose work interested me, and I went down to the desert of Beersheba like a pilgrim following a prophet or sage. It had always seemed to me a stroke of extraordinary good fortune that thinkers of her caliber were to be found in our low-paying universities, for I was not ready to study abroad, in a foreign hearing environment.
Nava was well past retirement age. She wore baggy cotton shorts, leather moccasins with short white ankle socks that always bunched up, and shapeless sleeveless tops that allowed us to stare for hours at a time at her aging body: the loosening, spotted skin on her upper arms; the skeletal bones protruding through her upper chest as though impatient to take over. She wanted us to contemplate death. That was not the reason she wore sleeveless tops, of course; she wore them because she was hot. But she did want us to contemplate death—and life—and I felt that the exposure of her body was a reflection of her desire to probe our pitiful coordinates as relentlessly as possible.
But Nava left for a sabbatical in Holland before I began my doctoral dissertation, and she confided in me that she might not be back when the year was up. She’d had enough, she said, and yearned for some peace. There was no point in staying at Beersheba after she left, and I enrolled in Tel Aviv University.
I’d read one of Eli’s books, Presumption, Progeny and Power , and I liked its elegant arguments and subtle humor. I signed up for a course with him and was not disappointed. Eli was a good teacher: organized, focused, generous. He had a pedagogical instinct; he really wanted to transmit the things he knew and thought, and he had a striking way of perceiving the world. He told funny stories, too, about famous people he’d known at Yale, stories full of sly slander and delicious tidbits: Hilton Morris inviting the New Yorker to photograph him slumming in a hick dive, Jacques Derrida buying a designer raincoat for his photo shoot. It was impossible not to be entertained, in spite of the way he looked at his female students.
I had no personal contact with him at the time, though I watched with amusement as beautiful young scholars entered the classroom decked in their sexiest clothes,
There were many rumors about Eli; no one knew which were true. Ma’ayan, who had told me various Eli stories over the years, admitted that most couldn’t be verified. In the category of “definitely true” were stories from twenty years ago or more, when he taught at the Hebrew University: he would drive up from Tel Aviv to the dorms in Jerusalem to visit his students in their rooms, three per trip, in succession. He’d make the three dates in advance, an hour apart, and he’d move from room to room like a salesman offering a special deal on sex. He swore each student to secrecy—not because he was worried about his job, but in an attempt to keep them from finding out about one another and comparing notes.
In the category of “probably true” were stories about unstable sixteen-year-olds whom he’d driven over the edge; I myself had been present when his wife had jumped out the window of their second-story flat during a party. In the category of “unverifiable” were rumors about sado-masochism. He was famous in his field and he’d been married several times, though one of the things he was famous for was his philosophical position on the bearing of children, which he opposed for interesting reasons. He’d had a vasectomy at an early age and he kept a bowl of condoms on his desk for students; he described the features and advantages of each type and made sure his students knew how to use them properly.
I had been a student of Eli’s as well, when I was doing my doctorate. I’d completed my master’s degree in Beersheba; there was a teacher at the university there, Nava, whose work interested me, and I went down to the desert of Beersheba like a pilgrim following a prophet or sage. It had always seemed to me a stroke of extraordinary good fortune that thinkers of her caliber were to be found in our low-paying universities, for I was not ready to study abroad, in a foreign hearing environment.
Nava was well past retirement age. She wore baggy cotton shorts, leather moccasins with short white ankle socks that always bunched up, and shapeless sleeveless tops that allowed us to stare for hours at a time at her aging body: the loosening, spotted skin on her upper arms; the skeletal bones protruding through her upper chest as though impatient to take over. She wanted us to contemplate death. That was not the reason she wore sleeveless tops, of course; she wore them because she was hot. But she did want us to contemplate death—and life—and I felt that the exposure of her body was a reflection of her desire to probe our pitiful coordinates as relentlessly as possible.
But Nava left for a sabbatical in Holland before I began my doctoral dissertation, and she confided in me that she might not be back when the year was up. She’d had enough, she said, and yearned for some peace. There was no point in staying at Beersheba after she left, and I enrolled in Tel Aviv University.
I’d read one of Eli’s books, Presumption, Progeny and Power , and I liked its elegant arguments and subtle humor. I signed up for a course with him and was not disappointed. Eli was a good teacher: organized, focused, generous. He had a pedagogical instinct; he really wanted to transmit the things he knew and thought, and he had a striking way of perceiving the world. He told funny stories, too, about famous people he’d known at Yale, stories full of sly slander and delicious tidbits: Hilton Morris inviting the New Yorker to photograph him slumming in a hick dive, Jacques Derrida buying a designer raincoat for his photo shoot. It was impossible not to be entertained, in spite of the way he looked at his female students.
I had no personal contact with him at the time, though I watched with amusement as beautiful young scholars entered the classroom decked in their sexiest clothes,
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