December 2005. A tall man in a suit steps in huge steps toward the Be'er Sheva train station that is scheduled to open that day, followed by a trail of people unable to keep up. He waves his hands, enthuses, points in different directions, those behind him drinking his words thirstily as they try to reduce profits. This man is named Prof. Avishay Braverman, president of Ben-Gurion University, and he did the unbelievable thing - to bring the train to a stop at the university entrance.

He has been fighting for 15 years for this to happen. 

Some people despair of them. A scorching, scorching sun, a thousand shades of yellow and brown without a drop of green to ease the eyes. He was fascinated by the desert Braverman and the agitated and the cow, he always saw palace dunes and gold sand. From a senior position at the World Bank in Washington, he landed directly to the position of university president, who had no chance of dealing with universities such as Tel Aviv or Hebrew. 30 years ago, she was much further from the center than she is today. 

But Braverman's little ones like that were never his business. People who have a vision, look at problems as challenges, are still on the way to achieving a goal. 

And Braverman is such a man who constantly raises the bar. Let's try some more, all together, it's possible. This combination of enthusiasm, energy, leadership, and intelligence has been swept away by donors from all over the world. The joke at the university was that after you go on a tour with Braverman, you come into the office with him, dripping with sweat and no air, and begging to be checked out.

I worked with him for five years. I was very young, with a master's degree in theater, totally not the stuff that university leaders see as worthy of consulting. Only in Braverman age, gender or ethnicity was never a criterion. He judged humans solely in terms of how they could help the university. 

Zionists are not simple people, they demand from you what they require of themselves. But most of us, we don't have the ability to be a McGiver of reality, that famous TV series character who would look at an empty drinking can, a broom stick and a bath mat and see a helicopter. Us reality is bent, tiring, subservient; In front of her, at least in some cases, she is ready to bow.

Only politics was able to subdue him. This man, who is an asset to every state and government, did not survive the political system. There are a thousand and one reasons why. None of them matter, because in the end - the losers are us. 

Prof. Braverman received the Israel Prize for a life project yesterday. It is not worthy of it.