Lew Shaw’s Blog from Haifa

Well, I had an ending planned for the blog.  It was supposed to end when I finished my sabbatical and returned to life in Boston.  But as we all know, you can’t plan endings.  I even had a title for it, Closing the Circle.  I would describe some poignant summary of what my return to Israel had meant after an almost forty year absence.  I imagined some sort of closure to something I hadn’t finished, but completed during this return – how I found a piece of me (probably my heart) that I had left here long ago and had now been found.  Sounds poetic, and probably is true. 

I feel more at home in Israel than in the place of my birth and where I have lived for the major part of my life.  Halfway through my sabbatical I began work on finding a way to stay connected to Israel, to be able to visit frequently, even to live bi-nationally.  I even looked into purchasing a small condominium here.  Maybe I still will. 

Through networking and successful academic work here, I managed to get invitations for annual summer teaching at both the University of Haifa and the Technion.  Both schools have international MBA programs taught in English and were eager to have an American Ph.D. in accounting on the adjunct faculty roster. 

So here I am in May, back in Haifa, back in Mercaz HaCarmel, getting ready to teach courses for both universities until mid-July.  I doubt I’ll do as much blog writing, but we’ll see how that goes.