Dan Rabinowitz

0:05:05 Questioned on family background and attitude to Zionism; both parents from Zionist families; mother born in Kiev in Ukraine to a Polish family; when she was very small her father decided to become a Zionist, probably convinced by hearing a brilliant narrator; family went to Palestine and landed in Haifa in 1925 when mother was seven; rest of the relatives who remained were later murdered by Nazis; father was born in South Africa in 1912 to a family who had arrived from Lithuania in the 1880's; middle-class family in Jewish Johannesburg; studied law at Witwatersrand with Max Gluckman and during that time decided to become a Zionist; 1935 joined the South African delegation to first Macabre Games (more or less equivalent to Jewish Olympics) in Palestine; he stayed and later met mother; own stance towards Zionism has been very critical due to anthropological influences; have an ambivalent and complex relationship to Zionism

4:03:09 Questioned on the difficulty of teaching in an Israeli university with liberal views on the predicament of Palestinians; has not found it too difficult; my writings on Palestinians are radical rather than liberal in approach; helped by having published pieces in 'Haaretz' (Israeli equivalent of 'The Guardian') which gives a kind of seal of legitimacy from Israeli mainstream; true that some academic colleagues think social scientists with similar views are a pain in the neck to the national effort, which I am proud to be

6:15:06 Questioned on thoughts about the future; am an optimist by persuasion but the last few decades have been worse than our worst nightmares; if I do have any hope it is from doing ethnography amongst Palestinians and Arabs generally; found how malleable and positive humans can be; not naive enough to project the good experiences I have had with Palestinians to politics at large, but humanity there all the time as a powerful beacon; having studied otherness where that is Palestinian gives courage to believe that there is something open and accepting of each other beyond the abyss; think that Jews and Arabs can live together as I know from experience on a micro scale

9:01:18 Questioned about anthropologists who have influenced him; firstly Max Gluckman who used to come regularly to my parents home in Haifa and then rediscovering him as a prolific writer on anthropology; Levi-Strauss has also inspired by his intellectual breadth: Jack Goody who mentored me when I was doing my M.Phil here, impressed me as both a person and writer; Ernest Gellner as my Ph.D. supervisor learnt intellectual tolerance which I try to give to my own students; Evans-Pritchard's lethal logic on witchcraft, probability and rationality, keep going back to his Nuer work; also influenced by the critical view of anthropology coming from America in the last 20 years - Clifford, Marcus, Michael Fisher - powerful influences on a more reflexive tendency which I have in my anthropology; I accept my biography as a legitimate part of my enquiry; Edmund Leach for his explanatory work on Levi-Strauss

14:36:00 Refers to special quality and resonance to the visual project which Alan Macfarlane has been leading here since 1982; comforted because I cannot think of a better medium to capture anthropology and anthropological insight, even if only by interviewing people; impressed by tireless efficiency with which it has been done; encouraging to think that this visual project has been here, is here and will probably go on here; in my case probably had an influence on some of the intellectual interests I have developed as an academic after my years in Cambridge.