Prof. Avshalom Shmueli

(1925-1981)

Abstract

Avshalom Shmueli enjoyed two closely intertwined careers – the military and the academy. Born in Rishon Le’Zion, his youth was dedicated to the pioneering Labor movement, first in preparatory training at Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov and then, in 1944, as a worker at the Dead Sea Potash Works. On October 6, 1946, he was among the founders of Kibbutz Kedma, one of the eleven settlements established to stake out a Jewish foothold in Palestine’s Northern Negev and Southern Coastal Plain region. Kedma represented the start of his military career as a member of the Hagana, which he then continued in the newly founded Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1948. During his military career, first in the infantry and then in military intelligence, he served in a variety of units and held varied levels of command.

After his recovery from wounds suffered in a military exercise in 1961, he enrolled in the Hebrew University, concentrating in the History of Islamic Lands and in Geography. Upon completion of undergraduate studies in 1964, he resumed his military career until demobilization in 1969. He then pursued graduate studies at the Hebrew University and at Clark University in the United States under the guidance of Professors David Amiran and Saul Cohen. The topic of his doctorate work at the Hebrew University was “Bedouin Settlement in the Jerusalem Region in the Twentieth Century”.

Shmueli began his academic career in the Geography faculty at Tel Aviv University. One of his early contributions was to initiate research programs between the IDF and Tel Aviv’s geographers, as well as to encourage cooperative ventures amongst the country’s various university geography departments.

Influenced by his experience at the Hebrew University where the regional tradition in Geography was so dominant in the 1950s and 1960s, Avshalom Shmueli poured his energies into the development of regional geographical studies. It was largely at his initiative that the project “Eretz” was established with the goal of enlisting the country’s leadership specialists in publishing research on the various geographical regions of Eretz - the Land of Israel. The traditions of this project, which had a life of twenty-five years, continue to be reflected in contemporary geographical research directions.

A major emphasis in Shmueli’s regional studies was the effect of the changes within traditional societies upon the landscapes of Israel. His love for the Land, and his knowledge of its Arab populace – much of which he gained through his military experiences, found expression in his academic research. He was among the first to organize studies of Judea and Samaria after the 1967 War.

The relationships between natural and cultural landscapes and local traditional societies permeated his research efforts. He was especially drawn to the desert regions, both of the Judean foothills and the Negev, where he carried out extensive studies of the Bedouin. However, Bedouin were not his sole passion. He also focused attention on rural and urban Palestinian Arab settlement, and on the role of traditional agriculture in landscape formation. An example of this interest was the monograph written jointly with Yehuda Karmon on Hebron – the Face of a Mountainous City (1970).

Stimulating others to pursue regional research was a continuing preoccupation for Avshalom Shmueli. In the volume on the Mediterranean Sea Basin which he edited together with Karmon and Horowitz (1984), his chapter on the unique characteristics of the Mediterranean Basin presented a strong methodological argument for the importance of regional studies in general.

Avshalom’s military command experience instilled within him a sensitivity to the needs of others which he carried over into the academy through his close relations with students. Together with colleagues whom he enlisted, he initiated the creation of student learning aids, and published guides to geographical research and writing, and maps and mapping.

Avshalom Shmueli’s passing marked an untimely end to a career marked by scholarly dynamism, creativity and productivity.