But I am not giving up. One of the thrills of research is getting on the hunt, and the hunt goes on. Early in November, I appeared on BBC Four in a debate chaired by Ed Stourton on the controversial documentary film ‘Search for Exile: Truth or Myth?’ (Ilan Ziv, 2013). The film, which was shown before the debate, argues – what has always been known – that there was no exile of Jews from Palestine after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Its main, political point is that contrary to the Zionist myth of exile and return, Jews and Arabs have had a common history in the land until the creation of the State of Israel. This seems to me a constructive message. The debate was lively, but very civil and on a good intellectual level. This TV show was good publicity for the Department, but also demonstrated the importance of historical research, even going as far back as 70 CE, for understanding the complex situations in which we find ourselves today. As a history student it is always a privilege to witness, as I have had this past week, history in the making. Turning the tide in a nigh unprecedented campaign, outsourced cleaners at the University of London went on their first ever strike last Wednesday to demanding decent sick pay, holidays, and pensions – basic rights which the university has hitherto denied them. Tomorrow (3rd December) all of us students and members of staff at UCL will have our chance to influence the outcome of a struggle for fairness and education that is taking place around us, every day on our campus; staff at universities around the country are going on strike tomorrow, and by supporting the strike we help to improve justice and the quality of education at UCL. Staff members at universities across the UK have, during recent years, on average experienced real-term pay cuts of 13 percent. A worrying trend, since falling wages within the higher education sector are a threat to the long-term quality of university education. Additionally, there is a 14 percent pay gap between men and women and far from all workers at London universities even receive the London Living Wage. The aim of tomorrow’s strike action is to change this dangerous state of affairs, and it is very important that it does so. University managers could have avoided a situation like this, but chose not to. In all industrial disputes over pay and other
convincingly arguing that these notions emphasised successful integration and distancing from the peripheries of the European project. Dvora Bregman (Ber Sheva) devoted her talk to the authors of the many examples of poetry in the tributes, which she described as poets of limited literary value, but in some instances breaking new ground from a poetological point of view – not in the least because they were celebrating the achievements of a new type of leader. As the collection now is online (www.ucl.ac.uk/library/montefiore), the question arises what lies ahead. The cooperation between our department and the Montefiore Endowment has established a solid working relationship worthy to be continued. In the concluding discussion, several speakers emphasised the complementary nature of the tributes on the one hand and the petitions on the other. Whereas the tributes can be safely qualified as the product of the communal elites around the world trying to establish a meaningful link between themselves and the most famous Jew of the time, the petitions – very often asking for material help - reflect the needs of a much broader group of people expressing their hope to find a hearing in a world which looked pretty bleak at times. Finally, thousands of congratulatory messages glued into eight very weighty volumes in the collections of the Endowment have not been catalogued so far, not to speak of a digitization or transcription. Taken together, these three groups of documents indeed represent a very substantial collection of documents offering new insights into Jewish culture of the 19th century, including unchartered perspectives for genealogical research. Let’s hope our department, the Endowment and research funding bodies will find the best way to take this fascinating field of research forward. As was pointed out many times during the seminar on that bright sunny day after a very stormy night, the project would not have been possible without the sustained commitment by the Montefiore Endowment, the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the very substantial assistance from UCL Special Collections, the photographic mastery of Mary Hinkley from UCL Media Services, and the generous support offered by Martin
1455 his magnificent Gutenberg Bible in 180 copies was printed on paper and vellum. The printing press gave an opportunity to copy and multiply the same page of a book as many times as it was needed and thus contributed to a significant growth in the number of books printed in Europe. In comparison with the previous handwritten methods used by scribes which took incomparably more time, the letterpress became a high tech engine of printing of its time. This was described as ‘the art of writing with many pens’. The new possibilities of printing encouraged writers to spread their ideas, opinions and beliefs, and thus shaped religious, political, scientific and artistic thinking. This discovery was not without impact, even indirectly, on our 21st century living. From an academic point of view, it seems to be almost impossible to study without unlimited access to an unlimited number of books, journals, encyclopaediae, documents, chronicles, magazines and newspapers, to mention only a few, printed in all possible languages for almost six hundred years. Moreover, all of the printed material encourages us to electronically write and print other books, articles, essays, etc. Our relationship with a printed text is greater than we are able to imagine. Millions of books storied in libraries of whole the world constitute just a small percent of books from private houses. As UCL scholars, scientists, tutors and students, all on our different levels of the educational ladder, we are surrounded by an incredibly large amount of books even in the British Library and the UCL Library. One can ask: the establishment of many universities across the globe, including the University of London (in 1836 to become University College London): would it have been possible without Gutenberg’s invention back in the 15th century? Drinking a single espresso or eating lunch in the Print Room Café at UCL gives one the opportunity to think about the movable wooden types as representatives of one of the most influential innovations given to the humanity, the printing press, called the ‘crown of all science’, and by Jews in a religious context, melekhet shamayim (a divine craft) or melekhet hakodesh (a sacred craft). Warsaw in the summer months is a delightful city, avenues of Linden trees, an