After 24 years in the Israel Defense Forces, much of it focused on the West Bank and Gaza, Lt. Col. (ret.) Avi Shalev, a Jew, made the unique decision in his late 40s to devote two-day weekends for the next 1½ years to acquiring a graduate-level teaching certificate from the Al-Qasimi Academic College of Education in the Israeli Muslim-majority town of Baqa al-Gharbiya. Founded in 1989 with a distinctly Islamic orientation, the college offers B.A.s and M.A.s. The Only Jew builds on Shalev’s real-time notes to present a sometimes boisterous, sometimes anguished account of his unusual experience.
Shalev keeps the narrative personal and stays away from politics but he always remains aware of the topsy-turvy situation whereby he, a former member of Israel’s power elite, voluntarily subjects himself to linguistic, religious, and social marginality at Al-Qasimi.
The Only Jew contains many observations of value. On Jerusalem: “In Arab and Islamic public consciousness there has never been a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.” When he disagreed with this consensus, he met with frank disbelief: “A Jewish temple in Jerusalem? Come on, ya Avi. Who told you this lie? There was always a mosque there, it’s a well-known fact.”
When the month of Ramadan arrives, with its daylight fast required of observant Muslims, the instructor says to Shalev “Ya Avi! Be kind to us during Ramadan. Don’t eat a sandwich in class and don’t drink coffee near us! It’ll finish us off!” Shalev reports that the instructor’s laughing comment “infected the class, releasing some pent-up emotions.”
About the contrast between aspirations in Jewish and Muslim Israel, Shalev observes: “Most people are [at Al-Qasimi] to do the minimum, mark it as done, and move on. It seems to me that in this regard my experience of Arab society is fundamentally different from Jewish society, which seeks to dig out anything that lies beneath the surface and confront it head-on.”
And then comes his gloomy commentary on the whole enterprise: “The Arabs choose to look at the abandoned houses of Haifa, identify as victims, and mourn their fate, while the Jews feel compelled to look hopefully toward the future, come what may. Only I have chosen to wake the dead and learn Arabic.”
