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Giving Seminars in Israel

11 October 2004

I have never been to Israel, and this is one of the countries I'd like to visit at some point. In particular, Jerusalem must be a very interesting city. This, however, is not a "touristic posting", as it was spurred by browsing a piece entitled Intel gives staffers warning of Israeli culture shock written by Oded Hermoni (Ha'aretz, July 9th 2004).

Apparently, as part of a course for staff in America, Intel workers are enlightened about the culture shock that awaits them when they visit Israel. Some of the points made at Intel's "Working with Israelis" session are:

• Present your ideas clearly and get directly to the point. Prepare to be interrupted and cut to pieces in the course of your presentation.
• Israelis like to argue and enjoy discussing every topic enthusiastically. Visitors may be startled by this fervor, but in most cases don't mistake passionate argument for anger, but just a different culture of expression.
• If making a presentation, be armed with plenty of supporting facts, and keep the slide show shorter than usual to allow for questions. Israelis prefer to ask questions immediately and not wait for the end of the presentation. Be prepared.

I have no personal experience of giving seminars to Israeli audiences, and so cannot offer supporting evidence for the behaviour of Israeli scientists mentioned above. However, some of that advice seems relevant while preparing any seminar. I'll try to bear it in mind, if and when I have to deliver my next talk.

Reading the text above made me think of what I had read in the Italian translations of Amos Oz's books Help Us to Divorce and A Tale of Love and Darkness, two books that I warmly recommend to my readers. There, master novelist Amos Oz describes, amongst other things, the Jewish love for arguments that even leads two rabbis to argue for days without eating or drinking. When God intervenes to settle their dispute and save them from starvation, one of the rabbis tells Him to mind His own business!

Oz also describes how easy it is to get involved in all kinds of intellectual discussions with, e.g., Israeli taxi drivers. Reading those lines brought me back to a taxi ride I once had in Copenhagen, when Anna Ingolfsdottir, Jens-Christian Godskesen and I were joking about something called Clifford algebras, and it turned out that the taxi driver had written a thesis about those.

Taxi rides can indeed be interesting experiences.