Do Jews owe their relationship with the God of the Bible to the Bedouin populating Israel’s Negev? That’s the theory of Israel’s foremost expert on the nomadic people of the Negev, an American Israeli who has spent the last four decades living among the Bedouin and researching them. Clinton Bailey posits that Moses, who fled Egypt into the ancestors of the Bedouin, adopted their way of life and their deity as his own before leading the Jews to freedom.

Dr. Clinton Bailey is a leading authority on Bedouin culture, and has done fieldwork in Sinai and the Negev for the past 50 years. His B.A. is from the Hebrew University; his M.A. and Ph.D from Columbia University. His publications include, Bedouin Poetry (OUP 1991), A Culture of Desert Survival: Bedouin Proverbs (YUP, 2004), Bedouin Law (YUP, 2010) and, most recently, Bedouin Culture in the Bible (YUP, 2018). Bailey was born and raised in Buffalo, NY and made Aliya in 1958. In 1994, he was awarded the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award for his efforts to obtain civil rights for Bedouin in Israel.

Dr. David Mendelsohn supervises the entire academic program of Kivunim. His areas of expertise include Islamic Studies, History and Culture of Arabs with Israeli Citizenship, Bedouin Law and the relationship between language and culture in Arabic and Hebrew. His current research examines the influence of Hebrew on the dialects of Arabic spoken in Israel. Mendelsohn also lectures on the history and relationships between Middle East countries and militant organizations. David holds advanced degrees in diverse fields: a Ph.D. Classics / Linguistics, an M.A. in Archaeology / Linguistics and an Honours B.A. in Classical Studies. David is the recipient of one of Canada’s highest academic honors, The Trudeau Prize, and is a world medalist in wrestling. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Ronny and 3 children.

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