Poet’s writing reflects her deep Israeli roots
“My Jewish identity is primary to my life,”
asserts Dr. Sharona Ben-Tov, a widely published poet and assistant
English professor at Bowling Green State University.
“It is expressed through my deep connection to
Israel and through my commitment to Jewish values, values such as
education, tolerance of one’s fellow man, and faith in God and a
devotion to the culture of the book.”
That devotion has led her to creation. Her own
publishing credits have included two books of poetry—one
forthcoming, the other printed by Harper and Row in 1985—and a
scholarly work, The Artificial Paradise: Science Fiction and
American Reality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1995).
The latter was inspired by her father. Itzhak Ben-Tov
was born in Czechoslovakia, but, like one of his daughter’s poems,
his life took a dark, shimmering turn.
“In 1941, after the Nazis had invaded, he and
199 other young Czech Jews received the last two hundred exit visas
from that country, by luck and chance,” Ms. Ben-Tov related. His
ship was bound for Palestine, which was then under British rule.
“That was the last shipment of Jews the British allowed legally to
enter Palestine.”
The rest of his family were killed in
concentration camps.
Ben-Tov and twelve others founded a kibbutz, or
collective settlement, in the Negev Desert. Then during Israel’s war
for independence in 1948, he became a member of a group of
scientists known as the Science Corps.
“Their story has gone untold,” Ms. Ben-Tov
said, “until Bowling Green State University gave me a grant in the
summer of 1995 to go interview the surviving members.”
Her father died in 1979 without ever telling his
secret. He had come to the United States and made a career as a
medical inventor.
“I regard myself as an American with Israeli
roots,” Ms. Ben-Tov declared, “like all other Americans with
their roots in old countries.”
She is especially interested in the problems
facing the modern democratic societies of both her homelands.
“Sometimes I feel like Frankenstein’s monster
asking Frankenstein to answer some questions.”
One of those questions—does big science,
state-supported science, require wars to drive it?
“The flame of curiosity that drives scientists
and inventors is innate…. It is related to all creators,” Ms.
Ben-Tov said. “But its institutional form depends on the culture.
“I asked all the members of the Israeli Science
Corps if Israel had needed a war to produce a modern scientific
establishment. All of them, without reservation, answered that had
there not been a war they would have been working equally hard at
what they wanted to do, which was develop the country.”
Ms. Ben-Tov noted the Middle Eastern soil is arid,
the climate harsh.
“Israel’s only natural resource was
creativity.” She had this to say about the role of science in the
creation of a new world:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if American scientists felt
dedicated to improving our health, our children’s education, our
cities, our environment?
“Won’t it be nice when, not if, the Israeli
scientific establishment assimilates Arabs into its brain pool of
thinkers?
“And won’t it be nice when Israel’s neighbors
accept former Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ vision of Israel as a
think tank and partner for the peaceful development and enrichment
of the Middle East?”
Ms. Ben-Tov spoke to Peres when he visited Toledo
in December. She has been to Israel “many, many times,” which
included a visiting lectureship position at Tel Aviv University in
1993.
She was a Walter Rathenau Fellow at Technische
Universitat in Berlin from 1991 to 1992, where she studied the
archaeology of public space in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem.
Working in the old city, she learned to read its
history through the stone structures that have seen many
cultures—Jewish, Arabic, Turkish, and British—pass by, from King
Solomon’s reign to today.
“The stones told a story of continuous human
occupation, like a vertical slice through time.”
Such stories reinforce her faith, which in turn
reinforces the stories she tells, whether through her academic
writing or her poetry.
“Every poem is an act of faith. It doesn’t
matter what religion you are.”
Originally published in the Bowling Green (Ohio) Sentinel-Tribune
Copyright © 1997, 2006 by Jeff Fearnside
