1945-2004
DAN URMAN .
HE WAS A PROF IN THE BG UNIVERCITY IN BEER SHEVA BUT HE STILL CARRIED THE SPIRIT OF NYU IN HIM.HE WAS AN HISTORIAN BUT ALSO THE 16 YEAR OLD BOY FROM HAIFA THAT LOVED ARHCYOLOGY.AND SOMEHOW IN BETWEEN HE WAS METY'S HUSBAND LIA'S DAD (ME) AND YAM'S GRANDFATHER THATS HOW HE WANTED TO BE REMEMBERED .
THIS SITE IS WHAT I FELT NEEDED TO BE REMEMBERED FROM MY FATHER HAVING KNOWN ONLY AS A DAUGHTER .BUT I DID KNOW HOW MUCH MY FATHER LOVED AND RESPECTED FRANK PETERS SO THIS IS HOW FRANK REMEMBERS MY FATHER.
I LOVED MY FATHER ALOT WE HAD AN INTERESTING REALTIONSHIP WE WERE MORE LIKE FRIENDS THAN ANYTHING ELSE SO IT GOT STORMY AT TIMES I LOVED HIM AND ADORED HIM I HOPE HE KNEW HOW MUCH.
Some moments we do not forget. Not because they were important or had unusual consequences but simply because at that time and in that place they became indelible. I had one such in Jerusalem in 1977 or 1978. I had been in the Old City once before, in 1960 when I was a graduate student living in Lebanon. Jerusalem was then part of Jordan, and I was able to drive there from Amman. But this time I was approaching from the west, from Israel, which I was visiting for the first time. And I had a project. Over the previous couple of years I had spent considerable time in Syria, had climbed over every rock in the Hawran and even gotten into the closed military area of the Jawlan, as the Syrians called it. Now I wanted to see the other side, the now Israeli Golan. I had discovered my guide in a book by the Franciscan Padre Bellarmino Baggati. In one of his footnotes he thanked one Dan Urman of the Israel Exploration Society for supplying the archeological information on the synagogues of the Golan. Perfect. I would ask this Urman--Professor Urman??for a little guidance on the Golan. So I wrote to the famous Golan expert and arranged to meet him at the Israel Exploration Society when I got to Jerusalem. So we met, sight unseen. It was a small office and so I guess the attractive blond young lady really had to perch on the desk where a young man seated at the desk, cigarette in one hand, coffee cup in the other, was explaining to her what I suppose were the mysteries of field archeology. When I appeared in the doorway the blond was swept off the desk (and quickly out of the room) and Mr. Dany Urman met Professor F. E. Peters, my first Israeli (if you skip the blond) and his first American professor. I don?t know what I expected but it wasn?t this Tony Curtis-like bad boy with the wise-ass grin. We introduced ourselves. I was offered a cigarette and coffee and we started to explore each other. We had a lot of time for exploration because once Dany decided that I might be more interesting than whatever it was he was supposed to be doing at the Israel Exploration Society?which I never actually figured out?he volunteered to accompany me personally to the Golan. So the next day he came to pick me up the Casa Nova, the Franciscan hostel where I was staying (this was before I discovered the more expensive pleasures of the American Colony Hotel) and which he insisted on calling ?Cosa Nostra.? We got into my rented car and he drove to the Galilee and up onto the Golan where, for two days or two weeks or was it two months, we looked at every rock and into every rill on the Golan Heights. We started with the historical sites and we soon got down to the real point of the visit, which was to relive the wartime experiences of Captain or Major or General Urman?like his job at the Israel Exploration, I never was quite certain of Dany?s rank?on the Syrian front. It was exciting and it was funny: he had a way with words, even in his second, somewhat imperfect language. It was a great time, an extraordinary time, and I learned a great deal from my guide and new friend. He was, I must say, a demanding and insistent teacher, and his lectures were often punctuated with ?you understand??, his equivalent, I suppose of a short quiz. Indeed, at one point I tried to get out of his class. We were driving south, heading back to Jerusalem, and I think we had reached about 1937 in his ongoing history of Zionism. ?Dany, I said, ?stop.? ?Stop what?? ?Stop the car. I want to get out.? ?Why,? he said. ?You can?t get out. We?re in the middle of the West Bank.? ?I don?t care. I?ve had enough. I?m strapped in the car and you never stop talking, not for one minute, not for one second!? He pulled over. There was a long pause. ?OK,? he finally said and put the car into gear. He got it. Dany always got it, if not on the first bounce, then certainly well before the second. We never had another disagreement about anything. We both decided that this was too good to end so he thought we might go to Elath and soak up some sun. So we did, by way of Beersheva and Dimona??Nothing to see there,? he said with his usual Urman smile. At Elath I discovered another side of Dany Urman, his subtle grasp of the halakha. We had by then smoked our way through half the annual tobacco crop of North Carolina?how ironic that he would one day teach there?but I as the goyische visitor was totally cowed by the sign outside the hotel restaurant: ?We respectfully request our guests not to smoke on the Sabbath,? but Dany of course lit up as soon as we sat down at our table this Sabbath. ?Sir,? the waiter said, with a slight ooze of piety. ?We?d prefer you not smoke.? ?I will not smoke on the Sabbath when you stop working on the Sabbath,? the future professor of Talmud responded. ?Now bring us the menus.? Aha, I thought, so that?s how it?s done. But I never tried it myself of course. When we got back to Jerusalem, sunned and tired, we had one last talk, this time an actual conversation. About Dany and his future. I told him I thought he?d get nowhere without a Ph.D. He said he wasn?t crazy about the Israeli universities. I told him there might be some money at the NYU Near Eastern Department if he came there (I could say scary things like that; I was chairman at the time). He came there. And Meti came there and Lia came there. Lia learned perfect English. Meti learned pretty good English and Dany improved his English precisely enough to get by. Which he did very well: the English may have been slightly fractured, but I don?t think anyone ever misunderstood what Dany Urman was trying to communicate once he set his mind to it. After he was in New York City about a month, I told Dany I had a feeling he would never go back to Israel. The evidence was plain to see: he fell in love with our city here, absolutely in love. He loved the newness and novelty of it, even the surprises. He discovered, he told me, that he was a Jew; he had previously identified himself as an Israeli but in America he was, not entirely to his liking at first, Jewish. He had never seen a bagel before: he thought he was bring served a pretzel for breakfast! He was astonished and delighted that he was invited to lecture?the Israeli consulate made its academic visitors sing for their supper?at what turned out to be a gay synagogue in Greenwich Village, and that it was called, he roared with laughter, ?The Glory of Israel.? Dany loved the theater with a special love?which surprised me: I figured him for a movie guy?and he loved a local Italian coffee house called Bruno?s (no coincidence that he named his dog after it!) And now the tables were turned of course. Now it was he who was strapped in the car: General Urman was now my student. He took it well. He listened and he learned what he wanted to and what he needed. The rest he let go by, I think, in his pragmatic way. The only thing that ever threw him was when I told him that I had changed my mind: I thought he should go back to Israel when he finished his degree. Why, he demanded. Because your country needs you more than we do. I said. For once he was silent. Dany set his own agenda and his own timetable at NYU and he kept to it. He got his Ph.D. when he planned to, even if it meant putting his typist?s bare feet in ice water to keep her awake, and he wrote a dissertation of great clarity and meticulous detail which swelled into something truly magnificent in his monograph in the second volume of his and Paul Flesher?s book on Ancient Synagogues. Dany Urman the Golan guide had turned into Doctor Urman. And he really was the general of the Golan. It was by no means the end of the matter, of course. I was sometimes back in Israel, and Dany, the inveterate traveler, was more often in the States, tasting the varied and exotic pleasures of American higher education, but always with a pilgrimage to Bruno?s on LaGuardia Place, the same Tony Curtis bad-boy, always brimming with news, good and bad, a great joy of life, and, of course that implacable need to communicate. I?m not sure Dany enjoyed the classroom, which is odd since he so loved to communicate, to explain. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe what he really wanted was that I understand. I hope that before he left us he realized that I did. I got it too.
Frank Peters Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies,
History and Religion
(and former student of Prof. Dany Urman, alawi shalom) New York University
