I have a research grant from Canadian government to conduct ethnographic field research on mixed marriages within the mixed legal jurisdiction of Israel/Palestine. A sub-speciality in comparative law has begun to emerge in classic comparative legal studies over the last several years: jurisdictions such as Quebec, South Africa, Louisianna …and Israel, where both common law and civil law legal traditions co-exist. Israel presents a more complicated twist on mixed legal jurisdictions as in the domain of family law, Talmudic law, Islamic law, Christian law, and Druze law are also in play. I am interested in how individual couples and families intermarry across these legal traditions.
This research involves frequent travel to Israel/Palestine for the purposes of participant observation and carrying out ethnographic interviews. I have just begun to publish and disseminate material relating to my research agenda in conventional and less conventional venues of scholarly work.
My sabbatical year, which began on August 1, 2005, was to crown several preliminary years of doctrinal and bibliographic research on my topic.
Having a twelve year old son meant that I could not go and live in the Middle East throughout the course of my sabbatical, as I cannot take him out of school. So throughout the course of the 2005-06 academic year, I fly to Israel many times for short periods lasting anywhere between two to six weeks.
My Rogers-serviced cell phone does not work in the Middle East. I left it in Toronto when I left for Israel for a stint in July/August, 2005.