Prof Joseph Ben David

Miriam Ben-David

14 July 2009

On Joseph Ben-David

I was asked to try to bring to you the image of the person behind the legacy this conference was inspired by. I have given a lot of thought how to do this, in such a way that it would reveal some of the connections between J.B-D's professional development and his personal history.

While preparing this talk, I interviewed several people who encountered him through their work at different times. By listening to the narratives of his students and colleagues, you may find your own associations to the material you know, to the topics he chose to deal with, to the methods he applied. Thus we can build together tonight a mosaic of a man's story.

Some of the people who are in this room probably interacted with him at a relatively late stage of his life and might find some components of the story foreign to their own experience.

So, obviously among the interviewees, the first one I listened to, was myself, my own narrative, the family mythology of three generations and descriptions of the way he interacted with me and his children. I shall also relate to whatever I learned from him about his family of origin and probably also, what I have projected on him as my partner and most significant figure who shaped my life.

Jossi, as we called him, was born under the name Gross, which was his original surname in Gyor, Western Hungary. He was born in 1920, as the first living child in a stricly traditional Jewish family. Preceeding his birth his mother had miscarried four previous pregnancies. This, seemingly negligible data - in my opinion - was the first factor that determined many things for his later life. Though he had 4 younger brothers, his image remained forever that of the distinguished son who fulfilled all the ideals of his parents, particularly that of his mothers', a sensitive and emphatic woman - as described by the family.

Jossi received a strict religious education. He went to a cheder (a pre-school where they learn to read Hebrew and study the Bible).

Then he attended a very small orthodox elementary school. He completed his middle and high school education in a Benedictine gymnasium which was known to be a school of a particularly high level. He actually spent only part of the school year attending lessons there, and the other part of the year he had private tuition. Yet he was greatly influenced by the Benedictine teachers and admired them. There was one member of the staff whom he was especially attached to and we even tried to look him up in 1969, on our one and only visit to Hungary after W.W.II.

Upon finishing high school, or actually already during the high school years, he also attended a Yeshiva, where they engaged exclusively in Talmudic studies. I believe, that style of teaching was the source of his argumerntative nature and also to his approach to challenge all data in every intellectual material he looked at.

,

At the age of 20, he worked for a while as a printer in his father's establishment.

The Gross family had a printing and publishing company that was established in 1860. The family business which started as a small shop for school and office equipment, soon also extended its activities to a lending library and in the course of time became their printing and publishing company. The business was handed down from father to sons and managed by the Gross brothers, for three generations. David Gross, Jossi's father, also worked with his brother. The particular characteristic of the Gross book publishing company was that they were the first in Hungary to publish inexpensive popular editions of classic literature. They also published text books for schools.

All this information, I recently learned from literature discovered in the public library of the city of Gyor, relating the history of the printing industry of Gyor, which seems to have been a centre for publishers.

So Jossi, on the one hand grew up among books and book lovers; on the other hand, came actually from an entreprenurial family. These facts, in my opinion, are reflected in his development as an academician, who preserved a pragmatic approach in his analysis and recommended it as aims to be followed. As a young boy, he was particularly interested in chemistry. This interest affected him later on in different configurations. This was the reason he started his university studies by registering to chemistry, which, however, he could not follow-up because of financial reasons. Later, he returned to his secret love and admiration for natural sciences in a vicarious way, by studying the sociology of science, as you know.

In 1942, at the age of 22, he left for Palestine and became a student at the Hebrew University, with short intermissions, while he spent some time in a Yeshiva in Tel-Aviv and in a post in the military service of the British mandatory government. About a year later, he became at last a full-time university student but had to give up chemisty. He attended history and some kind of sociology classes - which was probably more philosophy than sociology, taught by Martin Buber. (I believe it was called sociology of culture.)

After working at a cleaning job in the university, he joined a group of students and became a youth leader for deserted children and delinquent youth. The clubhouse was situated in the old city of Jerusalem and the living conditions were abominable. But the work was very stimulating and led to the next phase of his life which had a great impact on his career. Thus, due to his experience with delinquent youth, he got appointed as a probation officer for youth in the British Mandatory Government, which was his first real job.

The year is now 1943-44. In the Summer of 1944, briefly after I arrived to Palestine with my parents, as a 16 year old girl, I met him at his uncle's home. His uncle was married to my aunt. They lived in Haifa and often invited their nephew. Due to this connection, he became my private tuitor, teaching me Hebrew. This -as you can see- led from one thing to another.

After Jossi left Hungary, his mother wrote a diary for him, which never reached him. The connection was severed between Hungary and the British Empire as a result of the war. Sporadic brief Red-Cross notes were the only way of communication until the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944. Soon after that, his two youngest brothers and his parents were murdered in Auschwitz and the two older ones survived.

Jossi never worked through this loss and rarely talked about it. Some people think that this event was one of the factors that led him to leave religion so abruptly. The two older brothers, who returned alive, came to Palestine in 1947. And then, one of them fell in the Israel War of Independence in 1948.

It was in 1947 that we married. It was just at that time, he received his job, as a probation officer of the British mandatory government.

Three months after we married, Jossi was offered a government scholarship to study at London School of Economics, on a special program for social workers of the British colonies. At first he refused the scholarship, since it was not sufficient to live on, for the two of us. Intuitively, I must have realized what a great chance this offer might be for his future career, and without any hesitation, convinced him to accept the offer. Thus we spent two years in London.

Meeting Western culture for the first time was an enlightening experience. In London, we set up household with my two bachelor brothers, who had lived there already for some years. At that time professor Eisenstadt was doing his post doctoral studies at L.S.E. The five of us spent a lot of time together and had a wonderful carefree life, in spite of austerity in post war London. In addition to the classes of the prescibed scholarship program, he also joined classes in sociology and social psychology., may be also in antropology. That is, when he met Edward Shils who was a guest lecturer at L.S.E. from the U.S. Shils became a life-long friend. Many years later it was Shils who initiated Jossi's invitation to the faculty at Chicago University, where Jossi had an appointment in the last years of his life.

On our return from London, he had completed his thesis in history on "The Beginning of Modern Society in Hungary in the First Half of the 19th Century".( This study later received considerable attention. It was published in "Jewish History" Haifa University Press in 1997 and also in a very respectable Hungarian periodicle "Vilagossag" in 1997-98.) At the same time, he took a job as a researcher with the Ministry of Welfare and we started a family.

Jossi had many friends. One of his close friends was the historian Prof. Yacov Katz, who was also interested in Hungarian Jewish Society. Prof. Katz actually came from the same area in Hungary as Jossi came from and his family sent greetings to Katz with Jossi, when he came to Palestine. This was the beginnig not only of a deep personal friendship but also of their ongoing intellectual dialogue for the years to come.

Another friend who was originally his student, Prof. Chaim Adler, a professor of education, often came to our home. He worked with Jossi on his dissertation, on the Scout Movement. At that time Jossi was already part of the teaching staff at the Hebrew University. Adler told me that he learned from Jossi many things that were not included in the curriculum. The respectful way in which Jossi related to my mother - who occasionally appeared with some coffee and cakes - made special impression on Adler. Adler also noticed the way Jossi treated his 3-year old son, who kept interrupting them, taking things from the desk. Adler remembers till this very day, the patience of the young father, who disciplined the child and who did not tire of repeatedly explaining whatever the child was not supposed to do.  Adler also told me about the directness and informality by which he himself was treated.

At that time, Jossi was still interested in the sociology of youth movements and education. From here his interest moved on towards teachers and teaching as a profession, which eventually led to his interest in universities and higher education.

He started his career at the Hebrew University as a teaching assistant while still employed as a researcher at the Ministry of Social Welfare.

At the beginning, frontal teaching was not easy for Jossi - he was better at working with students on a one-to-one basis, and in seminars. But he was never indifferent to his students. The husband of one of my friends told me the following story. When he was a first year student, he received a very low grade on his exam paper in one of Jossi's classes. Jossi called him in and said to him that according to his participation in class, and the quality of his remarks, the grade he had received does not seem feasible. Jossi suggested to him to take an oral examination so that he might correct his grade. Years later the young student became a professor and director of school of social work in one of our universities.

1957-58 was the first time we spent a year in the U.S. at the Center for Behavioral Sciences, at Stanford. It was a wonderful year. We took many beautiful trips with the children, all over the U.S. and held many lively parties in our home on Stanford campus. He loved nature and was a very entertaining host.

That year had a far-reaching effect on his professional development. We made many long-lasting friendships with American colleagues. He was exposed to the influence of some of the best known people in different fields of social science. As it is well known, Milton Friedman's conservatism had a great impact on him.

He believed in the importance of the promotion of social change, he also was a great believer in free competition and supported decentralization.

One of his students, now a professor - particularly interested in women in the academic world - told me a story. On one occasion she said to Yossi, "women are discriminated in the academia" - upon which he answered, "They are deprived but not discriminated". She asked, "What is the difference?" Jossi said that deprivation comes from nature: they are doomed to bring children into the world and all that goes with it: pregnancy, attending the baby, etc. That was in the early 60's.

He believed that if you wish to have a family life, two parents cannot make a professional career because it would affect the children. I wonder, what would he have said today?

My youngest son told me that when he was at the courting stage, his father said to him, "It is important for the couple that the woman should have satisfaction in her own work". That was in the early 80's - probably when I was fed up with my job as a councelling school psychologist and was making my way to clinical psychology. Also, the world started changing. But in spite of his view on the differentiation of roles between men and women, he always took an active part in the household chores and particularly in attending to the children: bathing, diapering and feeding babies - at a time when it was still considered a woman's job. He had this nurturing element in his character and though he was primarily a rational person and used sharp logic in his arguments, he did not neglect to listen to his own intuition.

(Personal story)

The year at Berkeley in the earlier part of the 60's was also an eye-opener in many ways. Another student of his told me, that following Berkeley, he participated in Jossi's seminar on social change and that was the time when Jossi's interest in professions, particularly in the medical profession, had some practical implications. For example, Jossi collaborated with the Beersheba Medical School and initiated contact between medicine in the community and the teaching hospitals. Though he is better known for his theoretical contributions, he was never really indifferent to social justice and human rights in any system. He was a man to whom humanitarian values- on an individual and on a public level- were of primary importance. He was very much aware of the discriminative way Arab citizens were treated in Israel. He talked about this already in the 50's and foresaw the political consequences.

His personal concern left a long lasting impression on one of his students, who recently told me the following story. When this student - who had a job as a part-time teaching assistant, approached one of the professors, asking what were his chances the following academic year, since he was about to marry and needed to know what his income would be. The professor told him that if he will be good, his job might be increased, if not, then not. The student was upset and approached Jossi, telling him that he was about to marry and was worried because he had not sufficient secure income. Jossi answered that he wants to think about it. A few days later, he called the student, informing him about a job in one of the government offices. The young man said, "I don't think I can take it, I don't have enough experience in that area". So Jossi said, "I shall make out the plans of the work and you will execute it". So in fact, he volunteered to be his guide. And so it happened. It worked out well.

He had a tendency to encourage young people who entered the academic field but not indiscriminately, because of the very high standards he required. We had a family policy to open our home to new immigrants and to young people who needed moral support. It came to us so naturally, that I didn't even notice it. I realised this much later, only when people came and told me that they fondly remembered how they were received in our home for a Seder night, or for a Friday night family dinner.

He could also be very critical and demanding. Some students, who couldn't take it, were reduced to tears by his strict criticism. He was reluctant to make any compromise towards his students or towards his own children. When our first born was at the stage of toilet training, we had fierce arguments because I believed he had to be trained according to his own pace. Jossi believed that this was the time to develop his motivation and present him with a goal to be achieved. I won the argument. Yet he grew up to become a highly motivated person.

Our daughter, who is today an artist and interior designer with quite a good record, did not dare to reveal that she actually wanted to go to art school because she had not proven her talent and thought her father wouldn't agree to it. Therefore, at that time, she chose to go to nursing school.

His demands towards his children were quite implicit but because of his warmth and closeness they always felt they had to satisfy him.

By the time the third child grew up and had to make his choices, Jossi completely relied on him and agreed that he should go according to his own pace in his own direction. But guess what he chose of his own accord at the start of his studies? History and Philosophy! Though later he moved on to business in the hightec field.

Jossi didn't have much chance to teach his sons fatherhood. But he left a legacy not only in sociology but also for his family. We all remember his humour and dignity which stayed with him up until the last moment of his life.

Now, let us look at the well known Israeli poem by Zelda (Mishkovsky) "Every man has a name" ..The last row of the poemt "he name given him by his death," is very meaningful to me these days..

A few years ago, I visited an exhibition in Budapest, about famous people all around the world who were born in Hungary. There, I suddenly discovered his picture with some biographic notes.

And of course, a most precious surprise, so many years after his death - is the name given to him by this conference. I was extremely moved when I received the invitation. I am excited and proud to be here today.

I wish to thank all of you who initiated and participated in this conference and all of you

…………………………….. who put in such hard work to organize it. Thanks to Lia Greenfeld and Marcel Herbst. And on this occasion I would like to express my thanks to Gad Freudenthal for the collection of the essays and to Shaul Katz who has been always ready to be my advisor behind the scenes and to all the people whom I never met before, who enabled the materialization of this wonderful conference.

1913--1996- The Eger Family Association- pg.22

וסף בן-דוד (19 באוגוסט 1920 - 12 בינואר 1986, ב' בשבט ה'תשמ"ו) היה סוציולוג שעסק בחקר הסוציולוגיה של החינוך והמדע.

בן-דוד נולד בשם יוסף גרוס ב-Győr שבהונגריה, והתחנך בצעירותו בחדר ובבית ספר קתולי מקומי. בשנת 1939 סיים את לימודיו התיכוניים, למד בישיבה והוכשר כדפס בבית המלאכה של אביו. בשנת 1941 עלה לארץ ישראל והחל בלימודי כימיה באוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים. כעבור סמסטר אחד הצטרף ליחידה בצבא הבריטי שיועדה לשירות באירופה, ושירת בה עד 1945. לאחר מכן החל בלימודי היסטוריה באוניברסיטה העברית, ועבד עם נוער במצוקה בשכונות העיר העתיקה. בשנת 1947 נשלח לאנגליה מטעם ממשלת המנדט להכשרה בבית הספר לכלכלה של לונדון כקצין מבחן בעבודה סוציאלית.

בשנת 1949 חזר לישראל, החל לעבוד במשרד הסעד, ובשנת 1951 הצטרף לשמואל נח אייזנשטדט, יעקב כ"ץ ויונינה טלמון בייסוד המחלקה לסוציולוגיה של האוניברסיטה העברית. עבודתו האקדמית הושפעה מהאסכולה הפונקציונליסטית ומאדוארד שיילס. ראשית מחקריו עסקו בתנועות נוער, ובהמשך עסקו בניתוח המבנה החברתי של אנשי מקצוע בישראל. בשנת 1955 סיים בן-דוד לימודי דוקטורט בהנחיית פרופסור אייזנשטדט. במהלך השנים הוא פעל כעמית מחקר במכון ללימודים מתקדמים שבפרינסטון (משנת 1976), כחבר בסגל אוניברסיטת שיקגו לחינוך ולסוציולוגיה (משנת 1977), וכן כחבר במועצה האמריקאית לחינוך (משנת 1973).

פעילותו בחקר המדע הייתה מהראשונות לשלב ניתוח מוסדי בהתבוננות על עולם המדע ורבים מכתביו עסקו במבנה האקדמיה ובהשפעת הסביבה האקדמית במדנות שונות על צמיחתן של דיסציפלינות חדשות. בספרו "The Scientist's Role in Society" נותחו באופן השוואתי מקורות האתוס המדעי של מדינות שונות. בין טענותיו על האקדמיה בישראל מצוי חששו מהעדר התפתחותה של יצירתיות מדעית בשל העדר אמצעי מימון במדינות קטנות.

בשנת 1981 נבחר בן-דוד לחבר האקדמיה הלאומית הישראלית למדעים וזכה בפרס רוטשילד למדעי החברה.