"In the beginning I was almost desperate,
I won't bear it forever,
And with all this I carried,
But don't ask, how?"
These words were written by Heinrich Heine, the 19th-century German-Jewish poet, and translated by Avigdor Hameiri. Heine had every reason to despair. He was what we now call a "healthy head in a sick bed." The sick bed was the German academy of his time, which did not allow him to accept a position as a doctor of law at the University of Göttingen because he was Jewish. For this reason, Heine converted to Christianity, but even that did not help, as evidenced by the letter he wrote to his friend Moshe Moser: "Now I am hated by the Jews and also by the Christians. Very much regret that I converted to Christianity; I do not see at all that by converting to Christianity my situation has improved by much or little."
It is easy to sit in Israel today, two hundred years after Heine's conversion to Christianity, and know that the German academia of his day was sick. The trick is to see things like this in real time.
Here, unlike Dr. Heine, Dr. Keren Asayag, a breast cancer researcher at the University of Haifa, did not agree to "convert": when the rector of her university, Prof. Gur Alroy, declared that "Netanyahu's voters are not my brothers" – she refused to undergo the baptism ceremony undergone by other faculty members who identify with the right: she did not agree to remain silent. Dr. Asayag answered the rector, made him apologize, and thus apparently severely damaged her future promotion opportunities, but this week we were informed that not only her promotion was affected. She writes this on Twitter, while taking her lunch break alone, following the quiet boycott she is undergoing:
"I'm in pain now. She breathes deeply, but the tears threaten to burst out and flood the Aroma University branch of Haifa. It hurts to starve every day and wait for a meal in my warm home, wrapped up and loved. It hurts to punish myself just because I dared to criticize my rector for saying I wasn't his sister. It hurts to feel the cold shoulder and the stares in the hallways and the whispers and the disregard.
"It pains me to go through a silent boycott that shakes all the rooms of my heart in a place that is supposed to be my home.
"So today I decided to raise my head and dare. I took my wallet, went up to Aroma and ordered myself a luxurious meal. But it's hard to eat with a lump of tears in my throat, and all my resources are invested in stopping the dam. My mind wanders, and I wonder how many of the people here inside the extremist university in Israel feel silenced and hidden in a closet...
"... At that famous dinner where my friends on the left mocked me and justified the rector, the two right-wingers in the closet decided not to remain silent. Not because they defended me and my views, which also happen to be theirs, but because they wanted to win the affection of the other members of the left who rule here with a high hand. So they said that 'anyone looking for reasons to whine will find out what it's about.'
"So here I am. I find reasons to whine. Because what is happening here is so distorted in my eyes. Because I can't even be angry with them, only sorry for them that they are forced to live a lie and act in a way that is sinful to their inner truth. And because I know, just like them, how heavy the price is. Professional, social and personal. And I'm experiencing it right now as the food in front of me cools... Have an appetite for me."
Dear Dr. Karen Asayag, I don't know if your research will advance the finding of a cure for breast cancer or not. I only know that your courage is the cure for the disease of Israeli academia in our time.
Next time you're sitting at Aroma – a woman of science who is also a woman of faith and an academic who isn't ashamed to make a different voice – know that you're not sitting there alone. History is on your side.
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